Addresses to Working Men. By S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of
Rochester. (Edward Arnold.)—These Addresses have the merits, and occasionally the faults, of the lecture and the sermon. Written for the platform and pulpit, the speaker's vigorous and racy style must have made them effective in delivery. The Dean of Rochester is plain-spoken, homely in illustration, and apt in the use of arguments likely to win the popular ear. He means what he says and goes straight to the point, and no command of rhetoric could add force to the manly sincerity which marks these pages. They cannot fail to be of service to working men, and, one would hope, not to working men alone. In an " Address " on "True Education," the Dean recalls the Duke of Wellington's warning that an education without Christianity would make a nation of clever devils. In three sermons on " Unbelief," he replies with ability and persuasiveness to the objections so often urged by thoughtful, but uneducated, men. A single rash statement, however, may do more harm than twenty sound arguments can do good. " What great book," the Dean asks, " has been written by an unbeliever ? " Does he deny the quality of greatness to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall " ? Argu- ments against the pew-system are numerous, and to those who regard pew-rent as a necessary evil, the Dean, a strong defender of the free-and-open church movement, gives the reasons for his faith. He declares that an offertory on the first day of the week is the way of the Bible and of the Church, and that he has not heard of an instance in which the system has failed. In two addresses upon " Bible Temperance," the Dean counsels modera- tion and not total abstinence, a vow which, save in the case of the drunkard, he considers repugnant to Scripture. The volume also contains a paper upon gambling and betting, which was originally delivered at the Manchester Church Congress.
Previous page
