24 JUNE 1876, Page 20

Select Thoughts on the Ministry and the Church. By the

Rev. Dr: Davies. (Tegg.)—An octavo volume of about seven hundred pages, containing extracts from about a thousand authors, is sure to contain some good things. The difficulty is to estimate whether these good things are in a fairly largo proportion to the bulk of the whole. Unfor-

tunately, the index is most ineffective, giving us the bare names, but not the references. Every name that we could expect, and some that we could not expect, we find. A rapid glance through the pages shows us the usual result of good, bad, and indifferent, with perhaps this dif- ference from Martial's estimate of his work,—that the indifferent, rather

than the bad, predominate. But bad there are ; this to wit, from Malan : —" The Lord Jesus Christ awakened me, as a mother awakens a sleep- ing child, with a kiss." The editor himself appears to be responsible