The Mystery of Growth, and other Discourses. By the Rev.
Edward White. (Elliot Stock.)—Although Mr. White says that the discourses in this volume are not wholly disconnected from each other, there is no very evident link of unity between them. This is perhaps hardly a defect, as they will be read, if at all, for their intrinsic merit as dis- courses, and as such they are likely to be attractive. The modern element is somewhat too apparent in them, as where Mr. White talks of the name of God being engraved on every coin of the realm as being a
proof of the omnipresence of the Deity ; or quoting Nahum on the valiant men of Nineveh dressed in scarlet, compares the dress to that of the IBritish Army ; or describing the siege of Tyre by the Babylonians, says that the Tyrians retreated with all their remaining wealth, like the Russians in the Crimea ; or illustrates the failure of the Jewish officers to take the person of our Lord when He was preaching in the Temple, by reference to the night arrests of statesmen and generals before Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. But no doubt these modernisms strike us more when the discourses are all printed in one volume than they must have struck the hearers of each separate discourse, and hearing is the true test of what is meant for verbal delivery.
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