A Record of Thoughts. By J. B. Waring. 2 vols.
(Trubner.)—Here is a strange phenomenon. A man has been thinking for thirty years or so, and concludes that the Bible is of less value than a penny
almanack. For listen to Mr. Waring :—" The comparative value between a work commencing with an actual falsity or unmeaning :allegory, and ending with a brain-distracting vision, and the simple, useful directions of a good ahnanack, or one . of those cheap periodicals which are an honour to their compilers, may well be a matter of opinion." Such language displays a defect of judgment absolutely fatal to any claims to attention, as fatal as would be the denial of the law of gravita- tion to the pretensions of a man of science. If anything is certain out of the region of demonstrable things, it is the vast literary and his- torical value of the Bible. On matters political and social Mr. Waring is not wanting in common-sense, though he has nothing very striking or original to say. These nine hundred pages might very well have been "boiled down " into a tolerably readable volume of one hundred ; nor, if that had failed to see the light, would the loss have been irreparable.
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