The St. James's Lectures; Companions for the Devout Lye. (John
Murray.)—These seven lectures are all on subjects of general interest, and will, we are sure, be acceptable to a wide circle of readers. The first is on that now much-read and remarkable book, the" Thoologia Germanica," which, as the lecturer says, "no student of the various phases and expressions of the Christian consciousness will leave-un- studied." Luther ranked it with the writings of St. Augustinevas. next the Bible, and Baron Bunsen estimated it quite aa highly. It -is interesting to know that it represents the deepest yearnings of a devout, soul in the fourteenth century,—a period of horrors, of the Papah schism, of wars and pestilences, and the frightful Black Death,--a_time,. too, of moral and religious anarchy. In such an age this volziniebecame the -spiritual feed-of thousands. Its mystical theology was exactly that in which distracted souls were likely to find refuge, though for us, as is here pointed out, its close approximation to the Oriental doctrine of absorption and nirvana gives it something of an unwholesome one- vitledmses. There is a little of the same tendency in the beautiful teachings of Fenelor, which form the subject of Mr. Carter's lecture. Of the " Christian Tear "Canon Barry observes that its special characteris- tic is a calm confidence of faith, a perpetual realising of the divine presence, and that to this it owes the "music which pervades the whole book." "There may," he says, " be books of devotion in which the Christian hope is more rapturous and vivid, but hardly one in which it better deserves the name of ' confidence.' " It has certainly caught, as he further says, the essential spirit of our English PrayerBook, and as we read it, we can understand why the English Church kept Kahle and lost Newman. On the whole, we think Dean Howson's lecture on "The Pilgrim's Progress" the best of the series. He shows a thorough appreciation of the many striking beauties of this wonderful allegory, and shows us how Bunyan's old tastes and amusements must often have been present to his mind when he wrote it. Thus the book, as the Dean says, " is the poetical result of the experience of the man. It is Bunyan himself transfused into an allegory:"
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