Materialism and the Spiritual World, by Joseph Henry Hutton, B.A.
; and 27te Christian Name, by Alexander Gordon, MA. Two Sermons lately preached at the Octagon Chapel, Norwich. (Williams and Nor- gate.)—The Non-subscribing Churches certainly, as a rule, turn out more thoughtful sermons than the Established Church. Take up at a hazard a sermon by one of the clergy of the Establishment, and another by an outsider, and it will happen in two cases out of three that the latter is the more original and thoughtful. These two sermons are both 4 good ; the first earnest, eloquent, though standing, we think, a little too anxiously on the defensive against the Materialists,—as if Mr. Hutton were a little overpowered by their calm pertinacity,—and the second an ingenious essay on the great variety of meanings attached to the word 'Christian,' a sermon full of reading, if a little too dry and didactic at times, though Mr. Gordon singles out, to our mind, the finest of the senses given to the name 'Christian.' But why should he talk of a poet "plaining in song the dread denials of God "? That is the only
touch of what we may call clerical artificiality of sentiment in either sermon.
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