The Revel and the Battle, and other Sermons. By George
Ridding, D.D., Bishop of Southwell. (Macmillan and Co.)—It needs
patience, a trained eye for puzzles, and a disposition to take the will for the deed to make any way with the sermons in this book. Should it fall into the hands of the intelligent foreigner, we trust he may not regard it as exemplifying the normal English style of our public schools, or even of our prelates. The slips in syntax are too numerous even for a busy Bishop of to-day ; and there is hardly a fault in rhetoric that might not be illustrated from its pages. Take obscurity, for instance. What is the meaning of "Success bribes to death" (p. 47), or of "It was to preach the gospel of love that Uganda had missionaries before it was on the map, as Britain had at the first and the ends of the earth" (p. 43) ? Or take false ornament. From the same page (91) we cull these two unnatural blossoms of alliteration :—" Courtier claims for caste command no consideration " ; "St. Paul pro- fessed to prevail by the power of plain preaching popularly." But if the reader will push on despite what Dr. Ridding calls an occa- sional " averruncation of terror," he will not be disappointed of his hope. For Dr. Ridding is a teacher who thinks, and though nature or art compels him to produce his thoughts in such crabbed and repellent husks, there are kernels. He is excellent in short, telling phrases. " Progress must look across an interval" (p. 35); "Exaggeration is the foreshortening necessary to pre- sent the true appearance of things to men who are themselves in false positions" (p. 18) ; "Blame is of little use unless the blamer is believed to be willing to praise" (p. 62). For a longer speci- men we will quote a passage on the "Beautiful Gate" which closes one of the Oxford sermons :—" Some, lame from their mothers' womb, are laid by their own parents outside in the sun, with no idea of this place beyond a sunny lounge and a source of money. Some laid there by friends, lamed maybe by themselves, by custom, or talk, or indulgence, too weak to stand on their feet like men, and content to use their time here in small gratifica- tions which bound their desires. There is a deliberate sordidness which counts social and material gain the one reality even in education. There is a spiritless cynicism which asks about the highest ideas, What is the good ? There is an earthy dulness which measures all knowledge by asking, Will it pay ? Yet among the weak and lame so laid outside there are some who have faith to be healed, and when education and religion speak to them as Apostles of God they will respond to nobler calls."
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