Lord Charnwood's style is always one of rare beauty and
restraint, and we are glad that in A Personal Conviction {Hodder and Stoughton, 2s. 6d.) he has reprinted the Epilogue to his According to St. John. Although he refrains from a direct verdict on great issues such as the Divinity of our Lord, the Atonement, or the possibility of miracles, yet his guidance is always towards the acceptance of Christianity, as when he makes the point that " a considerable part of the doubts that arise about the fundamental beliefs of Christianity are simply due to the boundary, indefinable but inexorable, which shuts in human thought. A world ruled by God seems inconceivable, but so does the world anyhow." Or again, God's service, and the following of Christ, " does present itself to you as the ceaseless, generally trivial, opportunities of doing something a little above your ordinary level," above all, for one's fellows, contact with whom is contact with reality.
It is not necessary to agree with every word, as, for instance, that to Christ alone " a simple and wholesome discipleship is possible," for the names of Socrates or Plotinus or other leaders of thought will occur, but the student will recognize that charm of meditative and suggestive writing which made Abraham Lincoln, biased though it was, the best and most brilliant of all biographies of that statesman. This little book, on a greater than Lincoln, is one to be read and re-read. * * * *
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