R. H. HADDEN.*
WE wish that biographies were more often constructed on the modest scale which Mr. Pearce has here employed. In a volume of little more than two hundred pages he gives us a vivid picture of the man, and an excellent sample of what he could do as a preacher. The sermons, it is true, can scarcely be said to reflect the image of the man. They are eminently literary ; he was eminently practical. The great achievement of his life was the bringing of order out of the chaos of the Aldgate Charities. When he entered on the benefice of St. Botolph, Aldgate, he found endowments amounting to £10,000 a year made as useless as was possible,—the charity frittered away in doles, the educational revenue used to serve private interests. At first he stood almost alone in his efforts for reform ; but when he left the parish to take up a West End charge—for the last eleven years of his life he was vicar of St. Mark's, North Audley Street— everything was established on a sound footing. The common quality that brings into harmony the two aspects of the man was the steadfast devotion to duty in its practical form. He did his best as an administrator ; he did his best as a preacher. He was never tired of adding and improving. "Each sermon," says his biographer, "is a complicated palimpsest of cor- rections and refinements and illustrations." Of course as we read them we miss something of the effect which they bad when they were delivered. There was indeed nothing specially oratorical about them. The Demosthenic sine qua non of action was wholly absent. There was not a hint of pro- fessionalistu in his tone. Some might say that it was matter- of-fact. But it was easy to see that behind this plainness of speech and style there was a wide preparation, a great store of reading, a long-continued exercise of thought. And a little knowledge of the congregation that assembled to hear him proved that these qualities did not lack appreciation. One short specimen of the sermons we must give. It is on the text "Curse ye, Meroz" (in the Song of Deborah) :—" There is not one of us for whom Meroz has not a lesson, It is short, sharp, decisive. No words need labour it nor can lend it emphasis. Every social sore, every remediable injustice, every unequal law, every unwholesome influence, every bad • Robert lienny Haddon Selected Sermons. With Memoir by the Uev. E. 11, Pearce. London ; Macmillan and Co. [32. 68.. net.]
example, every false moral standard, every assertion of religious intolerance, every attempt at religious supremacy —these summon us in our several stations to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty."
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