25 DECEMBER 1875, Page 22

-Lift of Robert Gray, Bishop of Capetown. Edited by his--Son,

the Rev. C. Gray. 2 vols. (Rivingtons.)—We do not propose to do more than briefly notice the appearance of this book. To deal with it in detail would be to discuss some of the fiercest ecclesiastical and theo- logical controversies of the last twenty years. And the biography of a good man, for such Bishop Gray, for all his imperious temper and narrow sympathies, emphatically was, does not seem to us the fitting opportunity for such discussion. The friends and partisans for whom these volumes are written will find all their side of the question stated in the fullest detail. This is what they want. It will not disturb them that not even a suspicion seems to have crossed the minds of writer and editor, as it never crossed the mind of the Bishop, that those who stood on the other side may have had some right with them. Would it be possible to write a memoir of Bishop Gray, extending to 120 instead of 1,200 pages, which should have no controversy in it, and simply tell us what he did as a Missionary Bishop ? One passage that we have marked for extract must be given. Mr. Gray consults a friend as to whether he should accept the offered bishopric. The friend writes, among other things, "I cannot justify a priest marrying, except by deter- mining to put the wife aside when duty calls." Presuming that " determining " means the "priest's determining," we wonder whether the writer thought that priests married on the name conditions as other men.