Samuel Wilberforce. Faith: Service: Recompense. Three Sermons. By Thomas Pinches,
M.A. (C. Kegan Paul and Co.)—The first of these sermons (which surely are of excessive length, averaging seventy-six pages each) deals with the character of Bishop Wilberforce, taking a more favourable view than many would be disposed to, but not passing beyond the bounds of a reasonable admiration. Mr. Pinches has a power of seeing a subject from various points of view, and generally manifests some power of thought and expression, but he must retrench his style most unsparingly. Why not have been content with saying that "in no walk of life could he have remained in obscurity," without adding, "for the rays of his genius would have diffused ambrosial morn where thickest shadows gather ?" And why express the fact that the Bishop departed from the theology of his father, by saying that "he did not, in the event, symbolise with the paternal teacher ?" The second and third sermons have little to dis- tinguish them from those of the usual hortatory kind, except, indeed,
a vigour of expression which is not nnfrequently carried into ex- travagance, but it is better than the dead-level of common pulpit mediocrity.
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