Literary Notices.

[We hold it to be the duty of an Editor either to give an early notice of the books sent to him for remark, or to return them at once to the Publisher. It is unjust to praise worthless books; it is robbery to retain unnoticed ones.]

THE REVIEWER'S CANON.

In every work regard the author's end,

Since none can compass more than they intend.

SPRINGDALE ABBEY: Extracts from the Diaries and Letters of an English Preacher. London: Longman, Green & Co.

THIS book has a fictitious costume, but is, in truth, a picture of Church and Dissent. The writer is ostensibly a clergyman, his culture, learning, and literary ability, are worthy of that ecclesiastical institution to which England is indebted for its advanced learning and classic literature. But his narrow and exclusive spirit, his ritualistic notions, his intolerent bigotry, connect him with that large class of ecclesiastical priests who misrepresent Christianity and disgrace the venerable establishment whose ministers they profess to be. The picture he gives of his clerical life, his intercourse with the members of his congregation, and the squires of his parish, indicates a servility of mind only worthy of the basest of flunkeys. We would sooner be a scavenger than a parson such as he represents himself to be. The dissenting minister, Matthew Washington, whom he satirises and contemns is to him morally as a giant by the side of a dwarf. The book is an exaggeration. We have seldom met in real life with a clergyman as morally small as the author, nor with a Nonconformist preacher as great as Matthew Washington. In a literary and artistic sense the book is first class. There are many representative characters, such as Squire Fogden, Gladdon Anndson, sketched by the hand of a master, and true to life. The style is charming, clear, racy, and often booming with eloquence.

HUMAN SOCIETY: Its Providential Structure, Relations, and Offices. Eight Lectures, by F. D. HUNTINGDON, D.D. London: Arthur Miall, 18, Bouverie Street, E.C.

THERE are authors who can say nothing worth hearing on the greatest of subjects, and there are others whose utterances on comparatively small subjects are rememberable and priceless. To this class Dr. Huntingdon belongs. He is a thinker. In this volume he looks upon society as divine appointment; a living instrument of divine thought; a discipline of individual character; a school of mutual help; in relation to social theories; in relation to the intellect; subject to a law of advancement; and the sphere of the kingdom of Christ on earth." Each chapter abounds

with royal thoughts, in kingly costume. Such expressions as these abound: Knowledge is not the world's saviour. The Kingdom of Heaven is not built in the brain. Letters and libraries are the text book of generations. Civilization is a perpetual provocative to mental skill. Society is an unceasing beggar at the gates of wisdom. Here is a fine passage illustrating the universal expression of thought. "What are those colossal structures, that architecture rears at his bidding along your thoroughfares, but solid treatises upon forethought and enterprise? What are those palatial vessels that glide new every week from our shipyards, and go out to battle with elements fiercer than any veteran battalions, but thick ribbed creations of the mind, swimming thoughts with rudders and sails, chapters of political economy written in iron and oak, speeches spoken round the globe to the oceans and continents, volumes launched and gone to sea, the circulating library of the climates?" This book will prove a tonic to young men.

DEMONOLOGIA SACRA; or, a Treatise of Satan's Temptations. By RICHARD GILPIN, M.D. Edited with Memoir, by the Rev. Alexander Balloch Grosart. Edinburgh: James Nicol.

THE author of this work flourished some two hundred years ago. He was a man of great natural abilities, a scholar, a physician, a divine, and a most eloquent preacher. One of his contemporaries, Dr. Harle, thus refers to him in verse

"How oft have we with admiration hung
On th' angelic Gilpin's powerful tongue;
Whose perfection had the mighty art
To form the soul and captivate the heart;

Pour Gospel balm into the wounded soul,

And vengeance on the hardened conscience roll.
When he hell's gloomy stratagems did clear,

Man ceased, and Satan then began to fear

His empire's utter ruin drawing near.

Great man! whom goodness did to greatness raise.

Nor forced applause, nor warmly courted praise.

The tempting dignity he did despise

Made him more glorious still in good men's eyes."

This volume is one of the best works we have on the subject, not excepting the able work of Rev. Walter Scott on Demonology. It gathers up all the statements and suggestions of the Bible on the subject. There is a very large amount of deep suggestive and practical thought in almost every page. The writing is very vigorous and full of point. We regard it as decidedly one of the best of the series of "Standard Divines." The editor has furnished us with an able sketch of the author.

THE HOMILETICAL TREASURY; or, Holy Scripture Analytically Arranged. By the Rev. J. LYTH, D.D. "ISAIAH." London, R. D. Dickinson, 92, Farringdon Street.

"THE design," says the author of this work, "is to develop the teaching of Holy Scripture and suggest suitable material for pulpit ministra

tion and private reflection. The method adopted is to give a short analysis of a whole paragraph by one or more views of individual passages, according to their importance, thus forming a complete commentary on an original plan." This is strictly a homiletic commentary on Isaiah. It contains a sermonic outline on every passage, and the outline in every case, so far as we have examined, developes the leading idea which has been reached by the best critical examination. All the outlines are exceedingly brief, which is an excellency, and many of them are remarkably philosophic in their structure and suggestive in their spirit. Some of them, it is true, are mere skeletons, which to us, of all things, are the most ghastly, but the majority of them are germs that only require the breath of meditation to bring out a sermonic tree clustering with fruit. We sincerely hope that Dr. Lyth will go through the whole Bible as he has gone through Isaiah.

MEMORIALS OF THE REV. WILLIAM J. SHREWSBURY. By his Son, JOHN V. B. SHREWSBURY. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co., Paternoster Row.

THE preparation of these Memorials, says the Author, has been a severe tax upon my heart. If I am not self deceived, my frequent disquietude has not been about my reputation as the biographer, but lest I should fail to do justice to the memory of one who, I hesitate not to say, had less than justice done to him while living on this earth. Knowing how rich his life was in God-glorifying incident, and the artless and beautiful simplicity of his style as a writer, I importuned my revered father, personally, and by means of influential friends, to give to the Church and the world an autobiography; but he firmly refused, saying more than once, "I have made noise enough in my time; let me go quietly home to God!" The Rev. William J. Shrewsbury lived a life of godly thought and action worth recording. The biographic sketch which his loving son has furnished, is deeply interesting, and will perpetuate the memory and extend the influence of a noble life.

CHRIST ALL IN ALL: being the Substance of Many Sermons. By RALPH ROBINSON, late Pastor of Mary Wolnoth, London. London: R. D. Dickinson, 92, Farringdon-street.

HERE are fifty-three sermons on one subject, and that subject Christ. They were preached upwards of two hundred years ago by one of the ablest preachers and most godly men of that period. Nearly everything said or implied in the Holy Word about Christ, is brought into this volume. On every page Christ appears in some fresh and precious aspect. Every leaf is fragrant with his name. Whilst every devout reader will peruse this work with delight, it will be especially valuable to the preacher. Although the author's methods and phrases may not exactly suit the mental condition of this age, the thoughts they embody and represent are for the most part admirably adapted to form and suggest the most powerful of

evangelical discourses. The volume is literally crowded with thoughts about Christ.

BIBLICAL EXPOSITIONS, LECTURES, SKETCHES OF SERMONS, &c. By the late HENRY CRAIK. London: Morgan & Chase, Ludgate Hill. THIS work is posthumous-the production of an able man, a useful minister, and a distinguished biblical scholar who has recently gone to his reward. The little volume is full of such thoughts as will aid ministers of the Gospel in their important mission by throwing light upon obscure passages, and originating useful trains of original thought.

THE BOOK OF FAMILY PRAYER: Composed Wholly of the Words of Scripture. London: William Macintosh, 24, Paternoster-row. THIS Book of Prayers is what it professes to be, composed wholly of Scripture, and such words, as we have endeavoured to show in our introduction to the "Biblical Liturgy," are the best words. Best, not because of their grand Saxon character; they are the vehicles of inspired thought and feeling; they are charged with life, and they give life. The devotional parts of the Bible are numerous, and grand beyond description. We heartily recommend this book as the best Form of Family Prayers.

Short Notices.

SERMON THOUGHTS. Analysing and Illustrating Bible Texts. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row. These thoughts we are told, are the substance of so many sermons, preached by the author to his own congregation, on Sabbaths, and at Week night Services during 1867. They are published in the hope that they may provoke other thoughts, nobler, devouter, and worthier such themes." These thoughts are worth publishing, and will beget thought in all thoughtful readers.- -OUR DISPENSATION: or the Place we Occupy in the Divine History of the World. By Josiah Miller, M.A. London: Jackson, Walford and Hodder, 27, Paternoster Row. This is an able, learned and elaborate discourse on the Spiritual Dispensation under which we are privileged to live.-LAYS OF

A HEART. By G. Wade Robinson. London: Houlston and Wright, 65, Paternoster Row. Most of the poems in this little book are exquisite productions. They are marked by great devotional feeling, and poetic genius of a high order.- -CHATTERBOX. Edited by J. ERSKINE CLARKE, M.A. London: Wm. Macintosh, 24, Paternoster-row. THE CHILDREN'S PRIZE. By J. ERSKINE CLARKE, M.A. London: Wm. Macintosh. We should scarcely think that there is a more popular man with children in England than the Rev. Erskine Clarke. Certainly there is no one who serves them so lovingly, so constantly, and so well. The stories and the anecdotes all bear strongly on the side of honesty, temperance, veracity, and soul nobility, and all the pictures, which are life-like, appear to give force to the moral of the literature.

A HOMILY

ON

The World's Challenge and the
Church's Response.

"The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir (or, a cry cometh to me out of Seir), Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come." Isa. xxi. 11, 12.

S he stands in Jerusalem, giving utterance to many prophecies of woe, Isaiah hears a voice calling to him out of Seir,* and asking, "Watchman, what of the night ? ” His reply seems to intimate the possibility of a great difference of spirit and intention in those who cry to Him from amidst the

darkness. With some the inquiry may be

but a derisive taunt; with some, the utterance of a momentary alarm; with some, the cry of an inert and helpless despondency; and with some, the call of waiting, earnest

Seir, the mountainous country to the south of Palestine, of which Edom took possession after the expulsion of the Horites. Dumah, meaning deep and utter silence; hence, the land of the dead-probably a symbolical name, without any demonstrable topographical application. See Delitzsch on "Isaiah," in loco.

VOL. XXII.