Preaching. By F. E. Carter, M.A. (Longmans and Co. 2s.
6d. net.)—Dean Carter, who contributes this volume to the series of "Handbooks for the Clergy," speaks with authority. For some years before he took up his present dignity he was in repute as a mission preacher, and he knows as well as any man how far the preacher is "born, net made." There are certain physical gifts without which a man cannot reach the very first rank of preachers, —voice, the natural gift of intonation to which the most perfectly learned elocution makes but a distant approach, and presence, or the fiery energy which makes up for its want. A man may have these, and yet fail because he has not the root of the matter in him. If he is to be a persuasive force, he must believe what he seeks to persuade. What is true of the chiefs, who, after all, can be but few, is true of the followers. Something can be learnt, but more comes into the class of gifts. The only thing that a man can acquire with absolute certainty is a well-furnished head, and even here more than an average intelligence must be presupposed. If there is a fault in Dean Carter's excellent manual, it is that he is not emphatic enough on this point. The Anglican clergy are, as a rule, professionally ill-equipped. A Scottish minister has learnt his business. His sermon is the production of a skilled workman. No one can say so much for the discourses of the average Anglican parson.
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