17 AUGUST 1889, Page 25

What the Gospel Has Done for the Working Classes. By

A. R. Cooke. (Wells Gardner, Dayton, and Co.)—Mr. Cooke's argument really takes in the work that Christianity has done for the world. It is succinctly and, for the most part, forcibly put, though we cannot accept all its statements. We cannot, for instance, allow that it "negatives the idea of any superstitious reverence for the Church in the Middle Ages that six prelates were murdered." (Why " Scroop of York, in 1405 "? Surely he was righteously executed for rebellion.) But when he says that " Secularism or Communism might be possible so long as the traditions of Christianity survived," he is, we think, very near the truth.