The Gospel of Home Life. By Mark Evans. (C. Kogan
Paul and Co.)—" To yield the religions sentiment reasonable satisfaction " is the object, very earnestly followed, of this book. In our own home life and family relationships, we are taught, indications are given us of the glory of God's fatherhood, and of the blessedness of loving, trusting sonship to Him. This is a subjective indication of that which alone can satisfy the religious sense. Jesus, the perfect, the ideal son, is the objective indication of the same. By his perfect love of, perfect fellow- ship with the Father, he manifests the Father to us. By his perfect submission to his will, he reveals sonship, and so is for us the way to the Father. By his resurrection, he manifests the eternal nature of this son- ship. This, according to Mr. Evans, is the sum and substance of the Gospel, and he has much and to some extent just indignation for those who have in any way added to it, and so, as he thinks, obscured it. But mach of this indignation is unnecessary. If there be in man a distinct faculty, this religious sense, which alone has to do with God, then Mr. Evans may be in the right, and his statement of the Christian religion a fall one. But David says, "My heart and my flash crieth out for the living God." Man is a many-sided organism, and the whole man cries out for God. God's Gospel is the answer to that cry, and there is a fullness in it which we do not find in Mr. Evans's version of it, true though that may be, for the most part, so far as it goes. The reader will find in this book many excellent sugges- tions on the education of children, and a timely protest against much of the religions literature provided for them.
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