Life and Letters of William Fleming Stevenson, D.D. By his
Wife. (Nelson and Sons.)—William Stevenson was an Irishman of the North, descended on his father's side from a settler who had come over with Cromwell, but having much Scotch blood in his veins. This was a typical Ulster descent, and it quite harmonises with it when we read that, "as his character ripened, he became an Irishman with sympathies and aspirations wholly divested of provincial prejudice." After an education carried on at Belfast, Glasgow, and Berlin (his descriptions of life as a theological student in Berlin are peculiarly pleasing), he became a minister in the Irish Presbyterian body, first as a town missionary in Belfast, and, after two or three temporary engagements, in charge of the newly founded Christ Church, Rathgar, Dublin. Here he remained at work for more than twenty-six years, dying some- what suddenly in his fifty-fifth year. He was a man of much culture and broad sympathies, his best work being given to the mission cause. A " missionary journey round the world," com- menced in June, 1877, and lasting for more than twelve months, was an undertaking as useful as it was laborious. A special chapter, which is perhaps more interesting than any other in the book, is devoted to a description of it, this description being mainly taken from his own letters. An opinion may be quoted from the address in which he summed up his experiences and observations :—" He was convinced that the Christian mission was the one power that would keep India loyal and make India great."
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