SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Undo this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been merged for review is other forms.] Th4 Church in Greater Britain. By G. Robert Wynne, D.D (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 6s.)—Archdeacon Wynne has treated a great subject with an earnestness and an eloquence that are worthy of it. He was limited to a narrow space, a series of seven lectures (on the Donnellan foundation in the University of Dublin), and in these, with a supplemental chapter, he has contrived to give an adequate account of Church work in Canada, Australasia (2), the West Indies, South Africa, adding a supplementary chapter on "The Church in the Lesser Colonial Possessions." Lecture 1 is given, we should say, to early missionary efforts from the British Isles; and Lecture 2 to the American Colonies (before separation). It is a story that at once humiliates and excites; the nation has done so little, in comparison with its powers, and individuals have done so much. Our author spares neither blame nor praise. Where there has been failure, he does not seek to gloze it over ; where there has been effort and self-sacrifice, he can worthily appreciate. Unhappily, missionary zeal does not grow as time goes on. The cold shade of doubt seems to cramp our efforts. The old conviction that constrained the earlier preachers of the Gospel, that if men do not hear the Gospel they must perish, has gone, and zeal has gone with it. Meanwhile hallow and hasty observers, who mock at Christian doctrine and are shamed by Christian morality, lose no chance of saying that the missionary does more harm than good. We do not say that this book will convince such men, but it will be a powerful antidote to the evil which they do. Those who know the work of such men as Bishop Field of Newfoundland, of Selwyn, Patteson, Strahan of Toronto, and Stewart of Quebec, will hardly think that they laboured in vain. It must never be forgotten that what was once thought the most hopeless of missions, that to Pata- gonia, earned the special admiration of Charles Darwin.
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