21 FEBRUARY 1914, Page 28

SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK. - [Under this heading cts

mite. such Books of ho wok as Min sot Dm swerved for mine in other form.]

The Issue of Kikuyu : a Sermon. By Hensley Henson (Dean of Durham). (Macmillan and Co. 6d. net.)-We desire to call the attention of our readers to this sermon on the issue of Kikuyu preached by the Dean of Durham before the Univer- sity of Oxford on February lat. We have no hesitation in saying that the Dean's sermon is one of the most illuminating and, in the truest sense, most moving contributions that have been made to the Kikuyu controversy. In it he urges with great eloquence the grave spiritual disaster which must result to the Church of England if she were officially committed to the position of religions isolation to which she now appears to be drifting-or, we might add, is being steered by those who support the Bishops of Oxford and of Zanzibar. But if religious isolation is to be regretted at home, what words, asks the Dean, 'are adequate to describe its mischiefs abroad, in those remote lands where the missionaries of Christianity are seeking to bring the Pagan populations into the Church of Christ" ? We wish we had space to give a further précis of the sermon or to quote fully from its eloquent pages. It behoves every man who is taking part in the Kikuyu controversy to study it. He will find there, not rhetoric or empty polemics, but the very heart of the matter. We cannot refrain from one quotation. The Dean tells us that one of his predecessors, Dean Grenville, who died in the year 1703, "left behind him an opinion which is still relevant and timely"

"I fear that that is a had piece of service to Christendom, and to the Church of England itself, to =church therewith so great a part of Christendom as the Reformed Churches which want Episcopal Government, and to make our poor Church of England a distinct thing from all other Churches."