28 NOVEMBER 1863, Page 20

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Sermons on the Saints' Days. By Henry Whitehead, M.A., Curate of Clapham. (Bosworth and Harrison.)—In days when it is thought a mark of ability for a preacher to weary out the attention of his audi- ence, we receive with gratitude a volume of discourses, each of which may be contained in seven not very closely printed 12mo. pages. The sheep who sit under the Curate of Clapham have also the very great- advantage of always hearing sense, and people who are sure of hearing- a short, sensible sermon, have, in these latter times, no reason to corn-' plain. The natural bent of Mr. Whitehead's mind seems to be pastoral. He likes to study the peculiarities of others with a view to influencing them for their good ; and most of these sermons show that he has studied the New Testament in accordance with this bias. The various. dispositions of the Apostles are skilfully developed from the occasional notices of their sayings and doings which are scattered through the four Gospels, so as to give dramatic reality to their characters ; and then, when he has established the diversity of the characters of the Twelve, Mr. Whitehead hastens to point out that one reason for this was, that each might serve as a discipline to the other. No one settled type of disposition has been proposed by Our Lord as the unvarying standard of Christian excellence, nor is any man better or worse merely as being of a given type of character, but only as ho does or does not endeavour. to become a better specimen of that type. Nothing is more needed in an age of really earnest endeavour to improve others—perhaps to the neglect, often, of improving ourselves—than the enforcement of this large spirit of toleration. Half the zeal of the religious world is simply narrowness—they can recognize only the virtues to which they are, and the vices to which they are not, inclined. Mr. Whitehead's sermons, in this volume at least, are not doctrinal, and are altogether wanting in that fervour of tone—that "blast," for the absence of which to some men's minds nothing atones. But, perhaps, a clergyman is best employed in making good men. Those who aim at making saints are not com- monly very successful, and their productions, when compared with the saints of God's making, are of rather a Brummagem character.