2 NOVEMBER 1895, Page 11

Biblical Character - Sketches. By Dean Farrar and others. (Nisbet

and Co.)—The volume is divided into two sections- " Young Men of the Bible," and " Young Women of the Bible "- all the essays or sermons numbering twenty. Some of the sub- jects are, we think, a little strained. Why should we think Lydia to have been a young woman P She had come on business from a Phrygian city, and was probably of an age to travel about without scandal. The lecture on " Vashti " we read with wide-opened eyes. What would Evangelical readers have said twenty years ago to the words, " the narrow-minded zealotry that pervades its pages " (the Book of Esther) ? What would the late Mr. Spurgeon have said ? There is something of the sensational in some of the papers, but the book as a whole may be commended.