Ssamoxs. — England that is to Be, by William B.
Philpot (Marshall Brothers), contains some twenty sermons reprinted from the Church of England Pulpit. Mr. Philpot's volume is not easy to review; bat, what is more to the purpose of the public in general, it is easy to read. He is a writer who thinks for himself, and who has his own way of saying what he thinks. Matters political and social, as well as matters theological, are treated by him with boldness and originality, and with illustrations gathered from an ample reading. Here is a passage, breathing, we think, a large and charitable wisdom, in which he touches on a difficult question :— " The question as to what sports help rather than hart the highest life, is always one for fair discussion. Still I hold it for the present to be a distinct part of a Christian minister's duty to protest, in the name of the Christian congregation, against the tyranny of all false- hood in religion, and herein against that falsehood which assumes to say of this or that social gathering,' Lo here, and lo there is Satan, and nothing but Satan;' for that is a kingdom which, like the king- dom of Christ, cometh not with observation, and is not always with- out us so much as within us. Satan pushes himself into most places, ae well as into places of pleasure. If indeed any honest and sensible person, owing to any special reason (beet, or only, known to himself), feels that this place or that scatters his mind instead of bracing it, disturbs and pollutes his spirit, instead of giving it wholesome satis- faction—why then he will not himself frequent each gatherings. But it is obviously as wrong and dangerous for any man to say of his neighbours that they are bad because they go to one place, as to say that they are good because they go to another. This too frequent practice leads to all manner of false and uncharitable estimates. It spoils wholesome consciences. It is a mistake full of peril and need- less offense against Christian freedom. So here let us leave this vexed, and vexing, question of sports."
—The High Estate of Service (David Douglas, Edinburgh) is a series of six discourses, dedicated, by a preacher who does not give his name, to the " servants who worship in the St. George's Parish Church, Edinburgh." Few audiences are so difficult to address, and few, perhaps, are, on the whole, so poorly ministered to. The author of this little volume sets an excellent example.--Constitutionat Loyalty. By D. B. Chase, D.D. (Rivingtons.)--The seven sermons contained in this volume have been delivered at intervals extending to a period of more than thirty years. Perhaps we may say that the key-note of all ie struck in the title given to the sixth,—" The Studied Moderation of the Church of England." The principle here announced is excellently exemplified in the fifth, where the preacher deals with the very difficult question of the inspiration of the Bible, and finds an answer in the distinction between things essential and things non-essential.—The Hopes of the Passion, by W. J. Knox Little, M.A. (Rivingtona), is a series of nine sermons, full of the preacher's well-known eloquence, an eloquence which, while it has inevitably Met something, still retains much of the effective power of the viva von. Here is a powerful passage from the sermon on "The Decision on the Value of the Soul ."— " Yee, young man, you will get pleasure of a sort by drunkenness, by debauchery, by impurity—if you give up your own high nature and your own personal life. But 0 remember, like King Charles, in the great romance of this century, starting from his bed in the mid- night, realising the footstep of Strafford, as he comes in his ghostlike visitation to reprove hie treacherous friend,—you will spring up, yea, you will spring np—not when I speak to you, not when you stand in the crowd, not when your bad friends are round you, not when your wild convulsing passions are exciting you—but you will spring up, 0 kindled soul, trying to bo a king, yet diserowued, unrobed by your own disregarding of evil—and you will find a spectre passing up the gallery of life, making his footfall felt in the gallery of death ; and you will hear a cry—first, like the rising of the winds of the Atlantic—low, mysterious, touching ; then like the gathering storm—loud, tremendous, convulsive ; then like the wild tempest on the sea of the future life, when the question comes with unanswerable solemnity,—What did it profit ? Old merchant of London, if you have committed yourself to dishonesty ; dear young man, if you have allowed yourself—God help you! and am I too cruelly to condemn you ?—have allowed yourself to be the victim of sensual desire ; what.' ask from one and from the other is, that you will fix your eyes upon that great picture, that you will fasten your thought upon that moving object, and that you will listen to the low word, to the gathering wind, to the increasing storm,—listen till yon read in its awful crescendo the judgment of the Passion. Yee ; you have shattered your nerves ; you have betrayed that friend ; you have raised this man or that woman ; you have joined hands with the spectre of death. Hard ! Yes, it was hard ; but you have done it. Look at the thing you have done ; look at the price you have paid. Mankind thinks well of you ; the crowd applauds you ; the multitude join their voices in your praise ; your friends are not ashamed of you. They say, We have done the like ourselves.' Surely there are plenty to help you to go on? Yes, plenty ; but across the darkness, across the storm, through the noise of the music, among the footlights on the stage, under the gee•lamps of the street, in the whirl of the drawing-rooms of our wild Logdon, in the offices of our not too scrupulous commercial life, in the columns of our newspapers, there comes a voice, which it is my duty to re-echo from the pulpit—the voioe of the sense of purity, the sense of honesty, the sense of self- denial, the mime of truth—the voice of common-sense. Look at the thing acquired,' it stays, admire it, make the moat of it—es a connoisseur after a purchase does with his pictures or his china; then reckon up the account, pay the bill, consider how much you have given for it, and ask—Christ gives you the answer—What does it profit ' My brothers, that practical question must be pushed to a severe, an unvarnished answer, because when you translate such deeds into intelligible language, they mean this—the loss of your soul."
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