3 MARCH 1866, Page 22

atriet the Light of the World. By C. J. Vaughan,

D.D. (Strahan.)-- It it hed fallen to our lot to hear the sermons contained in this volume in the ordinary course of the parochial dispensation, we should have telt that we-had no riglit to complain. Some better, very many worse, are preached every Sunday. We need hardly add that this is not the impression that we should have expected to have made upon us by a work that bears upon its title-page the distinguished name of Dr. Vaughan. The learned author, who has written so much that has tended to edification, seems to have taken a backward start, and to be =done now to dissociate himself from those who are holding that inquest regarding religious ideas, with a view to the purification of them from the admixture of error and false philosophy, which has been very well said to constitute the necessary condition of all real thought about religion. We gather front the sermons on the "Fall" and the "Flood" that Dr. Vaughan considers that inquiries are only cavils, and that some "better times will come round again, when men will blush to think that they wasted precious time in discussing the probability of the Deluge—its extant in space, or its compatibility with facts of science—before they had yet laid to heart its solemn lessons, and learnt from it what sin is." There is no doubt that it is better to learn what sin is thee to pursue an investigation into the facts of the Deluge; but why may not a man do both, and why should the contrast be drawn, except as an argument in inoidiam?