The Rise and Progress of Religious Life in England. By
Samuel Rowles Pattison. (Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.)—The object of the author seems to be to show that at all times there have been in England historical personages,—as well of course as countless obscure individuals,
—who have lived under the influence of Evangelical truth, who have felt "their own sinfulness and helplessness in the sight of God, have in
this extremity heartily sought pardon and aid on the ground of the Redeemer's merits, and have realized spiritual communion with God." The difficulty was to give this idea an historical form, a difficulty from which the compilers of the Romish lives of the saints have shrunk, or perhaps were saved by their Church theory ; and we think that Mr. Patti- son has attained a fair measure of success.. Written altogether from the Evangelical point of view, his book is nevertheless quite free from Evangelical narrowness, and he reckons Fisher, Sonthwell, Parsons, Leyburn, and others to have " risen into real fellowship with all who love the Saviour." If he has not succeeded in his task, it is, we think, because the subject he has chosen is not capable of historical treatment. So far as the piety of one generation is the result of the piety or in- difference of the preceding generation, the connection depends on minute domestic incidents which elude the grasp even of biography.
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