SERMONS TO WESTMINSTER BOYS.
The Key to Knowledge. By William G. Rutherford. (Mac- millan and Co. 6s.)—The judgment and strong Scotch sense of the late Head-Master of Westminster are admirably exhibited in these sermons, twenty-seven in all, which he preached to his boys in the Abbey. Very many of them deal with the qualities, such as purposefulness, sincerity, vigilance, and enthusiasm, which go to the making of a man of character. As a specimen of the kind of exhortation in which he has indulged this may be taken : —"Fight, I beseech you, like men delighting in the play and clash of swords, and not like children or angry women, sulking or scolding or calling names. Put all your strength into each stroke, but let it be a fair, not a foul, stroke. Let your weapon be the clean white blade of argument and reason. Keep the conflict a war of ideas, and not of classes or interests, or it may change, aa this century has more than once seen it change, into a battle of the warrior with confused noise and garments rolled in blood.' " Very many of Dr. Rutherford's sermons will appeal to adults as well as to boys, such as the excellent one on "The Inevitableness of War," in which he emphasises "the two Christian duties—the duty of peacemaking to be realised for the single life by each sundry soul, and the duty resting upon each, as one in the community of the nation, of maintaining at any cost by war, and the suffering that war entails, that which he holds to be a righteous cause." Dr. Rutherford's sermons will not compare in point of spiritual subtlety with Maurice's, or in general breadth of human sympathy with Robertson's. But they have a special charm and value of their own, and they are the work of a man who has opinions of his own, especially on education.
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