SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[tinder this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been rained for review in other forms.]
Critical Questions : a Course of Sermons. With a Preface by the Rev. James Adderley. (Brown, Langham, and Co. 5s.)—Mr. Adderley deserves well of his country for bringing about the preaching and publishing of the seven sermons contained in this volume. A more satisfactory contribution to Christian apologetics it would not be easy to find. Professor Kirkpatrick discourses of "How to Read the Old Testament." It makes one almost despair of the cause of belief when some hot-headed champion of orthodoxy anathematises every one who does not believe that Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon; Professor Kirkpatrick, who frankly recognises that the " Preacher " must have been "one of the latest of the writers of the Old Testament," reassures us. It does not trouble his faith. Professor Swete's subject is " The Trustworthiness of the Gospel Narrative," Professor Knowling's "The Authority and Authorship of the Gospel Narrative," Bishop Robertson's "The Resurrection of Christ," and Principal lleadlam's "The Witness of St. Paul" (in two sermons). All these are well worth study ; but we have been particularly struck by Canon Sanday's discourse on "The Virgin Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ." He works out with great delicacy and skill a theory of the source from which the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel are derived. He sees this in a tradition, probably a document—he gives some cogent arguments for this belief—which originated with the mother of our Lord, the intermediary, so to speak, being Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward. We put this very crudely, apace compelling; our readers should not fail to see how Canon Sauday puts it. We have seldom seen a more interesting study of its kind.
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