Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer. By E. Wordsworth. (Longmans and
Co.) —These lectures of Miss Wordsworth's, though written in the first place for the students of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, may be read with pleasure and profit by the ordinary reader, for they combine qualities not often found together. There is freshness and often depth of thought on the one hand, and on the other the application of the thought to the common needs of every-day life is pointed and practical. Miss Words- worth sees the spot where the nail is wanted, and knows how to drive it well in. This, her clear insight into the tendencies of the present day, with its particular needs and dangers, enables her to do ; and there is a pleasant unconventionality in her "modern instances." Perhaps those parts of the book in which the more personal note is struck, where the writer gives herself free scope in expressing and applying her own spiritual philosophy of life, will prove most attractive; but such parts are well balanced by the more solid and instructive ones, where she gives definite Scriptural teaching. She writes strongly on the duty of real study of the Bible. "Very few—even good people—in the present day," she remarks, "have any conception of the vast amount of mind, of system, of harmony, of deep consistent thought and far-stretching sym- bolism, there is between the two covers of those Bibles, whose gilt edges look so suspiciously clean, whose pages stick together as if seldom turned." Perhaps the most marked characteristic of the book is its breadth of sympathy. To borrow Carlyle's favourite commendation, Miss Wordsworth is so delightfully human. Take her remarks on the duty of reverence for the character of others ; on the dullness which makes us content to know just the side of a person that affects ourselves and no more; her pity for the slow, the limited, the ignorant; her indignation against the "shallow, petty, pitiable ignorance and stupidity of irreverence" shown towards great and noble characters. In style the addresses are animated and pointed, and what gives them a certain richness and distinction in tone is the writer's evident enthusiasm for the great Latin and Greek poets. The fine characters and tragic histories of their heroes and heroines occur spontaneously to her mind when she touches on some of the deepest feelings of human nature, and are quoted simply and naturally, without a trace of pedantry. In contrast with these poetical illustrations are the homely ones, which lend freshness to her writing, as when speaking of the vindictive- ness which sometimes lurks in woman's nature, she reminds us that "the cat on the hearthrng of human life is first-cousin to the tigress of the jungle." She certainly shows a catholic spirit in her examples, the lofty and the simple often finding themselves in close contact on the same page, Augustus Csesar and Napoleon being only separated by a few lines from the flat-iron in Ander- sen's fairy-story ; Dido and the Furies following close upon the Babes in the Wood. But it is the earnest thought, the deep, religious sincerity of the book, that will most impress the reader. In no part, perhaps, will these characteristics be more fully realised than in the do sing chapter, in which Miss Wordsworth writes sternly, but not too sternly, of the horror of moral evil, with its special forms and developments in the present day. There is one criticism we must make. Is not her saying that the words, "Give us this day our daily bread," "are by implication a thanksgiving," a little overstrained? Does a request always imply, when granted, a return of thanks. We fear not.
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