SERMONS.—Man's Knowledge of Man and of God. The Donnellan Lectures,

1884-85. By the Rev. R. T. Smith. (Macmillan.) —Bishop Butler, in the "Analogy," assumed, without making an effort to demon- strate, the existence of God. To "underpin his work with a proof of the being of God by means of the same great principle," the argu- ment from analogy, is the aim of these discourses. The lecturer

further states his "object to show that there is such an analogy between belief in personal man and in a personal God, that whoever accepts the one is thereby proved capable of attaining to the other ; and, secondly, that not only do the same difficulties meet us in believing human personality as those which we have to face in believing that of God, but the perplexities in our knowledge of human nature are inexplicable, unless we follow that knowledge out into that divine sphere to which its analogies lead. us." It is obvionaly im- possible to do justice in a very small space to this line of thought. We will, therefore, make two remarks which seem especially called for, and then leave the work to be read by those for whom this kind of reasoning has fascination :—(L) Students of the scope and limits of science are assured that "the whole force of the argument depends upon the fearless application of the methods of science to every part of man's bodily and mental life." Whereupon follow contentions to prove that personal consciousness, the conviction that we have a will, and our moral nature or conscience, are not accounted for by

molecular activity, nor by heredity, nor by any chain of causation which excludes a personal, free, and moral cause. It is the

argument of the Psalm, pushed inwards,—" He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ?" (2.) The preface says that there are "really no metaphysics properly so called in the volume," a statement whereof the utility is as obscure as the truth is doubtful. Bishop Hampden defined metaphysics as "the philosophy of the facts of conscious- ness." It can only be by a quibble that an argument based on that philosophy can be Galled other than metaphysical. While if this dis- claimer is intended to disarm prejudice, that would have been better attained by the omission of the unpopular word entirely.—Forgive-

ness, and other Sermons. By the Rev. R. H. Charles. (Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—These sermons "are published in compliance with the wishes," &c. And the sermons are each and all sensible, thought-

fa], and unpretending. In the five opening addresses, "Forgiveness" is treated. The preacher has perhaps tried to say too much in a small space; had he dealt with his subject in ten sermons, he had

probably done it even better. For instance, he says rightly enough,— " Forgiveness of sin is deliverance from its bondage." (p. 18.) This

he intends us to take as the subjective aspect of forgiveness; but he omits to even name the objective, to which allusion is made in 2 Cor. v. 19, the "not imputing" by God. Again, in a very just explanation of the passage, " Whosesoever sins ye

forgive "he omits to make any use of the strong support of the latter, the retaining clause, where he might so easily have pointed out that the Christian who fails to forgive robs his fellow-man so much the more, in that if be who knows God is unforgiving, there is no other power on earth which can bring the sinner comfort. In the last of these sermons on forgiveness, sin against the Holy Spirit

is well explained :—" Sin against the Holy Ghost is sin against known light and troth and love and he who commits it

is beyond the teaching of the Spirit now : for he has driven forth the Spirit, and without Him there can be no forgiveness." The book may well be liked by readers of sermons for its common-sense spirituality.—Sermons on Old Testament Characters. By the Rev. Julius Lloyd, Canon of Manchester. (G. Bell.)—It is difficult to know why these sermons were published. They do not show profound thoughts or apt suggestions. We might suppose them to be youthful productions, but that references in the last one, on Esther, show that that, at least, is recently composed. Nevertheless, it is hard to regard them as the efforts of a matured mind, and harder still to think of their being read with any interest whatever.—Christian Facts and Forces. By the Rev. Newman Smyth. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—Great part of a preacher's power consists in patting old thoughts in a new and vivid setting, that their latent force may seize hold of us through its medium. The following extracts may serve as samples of Dr. Newman Smyth's power in this direction :—" Christlikeness is what God is.

God is essentially and eternally Christlike It is [a new revelation] even to some of us, for we have hardly dared always to think of God as Christlike." "When we see sins rapidly revealing themselves, we know that the hoar of their destruction draws nigh This law of divine judgment, under which evil grows and is doomed, is a reason for courage and hope." "The other

evening I looked up and saw over me a black sky. I sup- posed that the stars were hid. But I was standing under an electric light. When I had walked on, and looked up [again, the stars came out. There is a man who is living under the light of his one science. And it is honest, white light. But in it he loses sight of the

whole heavens. He needs to go further on in his life

to widen the circle of his experience A lawyer, a physician

sees some things in a good light : and he wants to see everything else in the same light. Talk to him about spiritual truths, and he wants you to prove them to a jury, or demonstrate them as

you would anatomy He, too, needs to step oat from under his own blinding light, in order that he may gain faith's larger vision."—The Appeal to Life. By Theodore T. Manger. (James Clarke and Co.)—This is a remarkable book. Like the last under notice, it is by an American ; like that, it presents old ideas in new colours and forms that arrest attention. Bat it is more in sympathy with that aspect of truth which is fermenting in so many minds to- day,—the Immanence of God, "the recovery of [which truth] to its original force and meaning underlies the quickened religious thought of the age." (p. 178.) The preacher, moreover, confesses that he uses a method whose very name is terrible to the theologian, albeit theologians have been ever wont to use it a little, and with timidity,—viz., the inductive. "The method we advocate will entertain dogma ; it does not hesitate to generalise truth, but it insists that the generalisation shall be an induction from the whole revelation of God, and chiefly from the revelation in humanity regarded as inclusive of the Christ. It holds to this because it believes that the Word came by inspiration through humanity, and by the processes of human life and the actual life of its Head. The interpretation of the Word must be according to its method. Hence it searches and reads life in the world, in history, in the family, and in the nation." In the sermons them- selves, ono of the best things is the contrast between the wisdom of Solomon—worldly shrewdness at its height, clever, pungent, but with no personality behind it—and the wisdom of the Christ, simple, authoritative, based on asserted certitude, and with his life behind his teaching. (p. 52 seg.) The discourse or essay—for it was not preached—on "Immortality and Modern Thought" has a happy suggestion that the laws of evolution become suspended by man as he becomes moral. This is man's first introduction into the laws of the kingdom for which he has been evolved. Not only this sermon, but the whole book is worth study, both on account of its elevated tone, its deep thoughtfulness, and its sympathetic insight.