THE PULPIT AND THE PEW
Broken Lights. By Harold Begbie. (Mills and Boon. 5s.)
The Art of Preaching. By Harold Ford, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L. (Herbert Jenkins. 2s. 6d.)
To be able to understand the outlook of other people is a gift, but having understood, to be able to state it clearly and fairly without partisanship and without bitterness is a grace. Those who read Mr. Harold Begbie's newspaper articles on the various phases of religious belief will be glad to know that he has expanded them into a book which is a model of clearness and of fairness. Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, Modernist, Quaker, Methodist and Agnostic alike are caught in the sympathetic web of his mind and thoughtfully examined.
Mr. Begbie makes much the same appeal as Donald Hankey did in his articles published in the Spectator during the War. "Every school of religious opinion," he writes, "is a beam of light broken from the white radiance of eternity," and he ends his book with a brief appeal for tolerance and earnest- ness: a willingness "to recognize as co-workers all those who sincerely serve truth, goodness and beauty."
Granted the message—whichever message it be—how shall it be delivered ? Dr. Ford has written two excellent and compact guides on how to speak and how to prepare for speak- ing, and on the pitfalls to be avoided by the orator, whether he be layman or cleric, amateur or professional.
One welcomes the frank recognition of the deficiencies ot both matter and manner to which he alludes. Dr. Ford is an oratorical anatomist, so to speak, who teaches us how tat make up skeleton speeches and sermons, and how to clothe the bones so that we shall make them live. He is undoubtedly right in saying that self improvement is easy if taken in hand seriously : such training is a duty owed to their hearers by all who preach or speak. Yet I believe the root of the matter, so far as the pulpit is concerned, lies deeper than he recognizes.
Meditation, prayer and study are deeply necessary for the highest spiritual fruits, but I think that the average churchgoer would say that his greatest trial is to listen to the pulpit oratory of men who really do not know the world as it is, men who have no experience of business life and its troubles, and who fail to grasp the extent to which psychology and physiology enter into the ups and downs of the soul. It is said that a coloured preacher, taken to task by one of his elders for dealing with subjects which, the latter said, were inscrutable, replied with dignity, "I am here, sub, to
unscrew de unscrewtable " I Perhaps it is too much to promise that the preacher imbued with Mr. Begbie's spirit and fortified by Dr. Ford's directions will be able to perform' this feat. But at least he would keep somnolent worshippers awake, and make some at least enter the house of God with gladness who now stay away.
E. S. H.
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