Memorials of the Life and Writings of the Rem W.
B. Mackenzie, M.A. By the Rev. Gordon Calthrop, M.A. (W. W. Gardner.)--Mr. Mackenzie was for many years the well-known incumbent of St. James's, Holloway, a church to which from very small beginnings he had gathered together a large and earnest congregation. His theology was of a somewhat strongly pronounced Evangelical type. Little else than this, indeed, comes out in Mr. Calthrop's unsatisfactory memoir, which leaves us, except for the very little to be gathered from Mi. Mackenzie's own utterances, almost wholly ignorant of the personality of the man. The conventional phrases are employed, but how he differed from other zealous clergymen of the same type of piety we are not told. It is a carious instance of the unsatisfactory nature of the memoir that the writer does not even tell us of the degree which Mr. Mackenzie took at Oxford, an omission all the more remarkable because he does tell an anecdote on which it has an important bearing. Ho wanted, it seems, to read for a fellowship, but Dr. Macbride, the Principal of his Hall, die-. suaded him, on the ground that if 'he obtained a fellowship, he would become a "mere learned bookworm." The real fact is that the degree was a third-class, and that the advice was probably a kindly dissuasion from &hopeless attempt. Dr. Macbride himself was "a learnedbook worm," and, nevertheless, was of some use to his generation. So certainly was Mr. Mackenzie, who found in his London church a sphere admirably suited for hispowere. Few men have had such success, and none, it may safely be said, for honesty and industry, have deserved it better. The greater part of the volume consists of sermons, compositions full of life and vigour. A few private prayers are added.
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