The "Daily Mail" Year - Book of the Churches, 1908. Edited by
Percy L. Parker. (Associated Newspapers. 6d. net.)—In this volume the leaders or official representatives of various religious communities are permitted to speak for themselves, and they tell us much that is well worth hearing. We cannot recommend implicit trust in what may be found in those pages ; we do not suppose that the editor would expect or even wish it to be given. Of the "Religious Census," which is quoted hate, wo expressed an opinion which was not wholly favourable. It was a great effort, but vitiated by faults of method. Nor can we accept Mr. Charles Booth's opinion that as a pervading spiritual force capable of uplifting the mass of its adherents the Church of England " fails even among the rich," while " the Salvation Army has been entirely successful in bringing the Gospel of Salvation fully and simply to the notice of all," —he acknowledges its failure in London. But what Church does "uplift the mass of its adherents " P Probably in a really well-worked country parish, where the numbers do not overpower the energies of the minister, the general elevation Is all that can be expected. (The writer knows of one such where there are a hundred and fifty communicants in a population of fokr hundred and fifty.) The "saints" of the primitive Churches were not above sins which would be held to exclude all claim to be genuinely religious, as St. Paul testifies again and again. Then we do not see the use of such reflections as Mr. HOW Begbie's "Layman's View of the Pulpit." It reads like an invective against reason. "We are building to heaven a Babel of encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and philosophers." Does Mr. Begbie happen to know that the Bible is written in Hebrew and Greek? The most degraded of churches are those where the priest does not know his own sacred books. But these occasional divagations are inevitable, the plan of the book being what it is. As a whole it is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the religious side of English life.
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