The Life that Now Is, and Nature and Life. By
Robert Collyer. (Simpkin and Marshall.)—This does not strike us as a very appro- priate title for this little volume of sermons, though Mr. Collyer in his preface implies that it is so admirably chosen as to express quite inadequately the tenor of his book. The sermons range over an infinite multitude of topics, from tho " thorn in the flesh " to the " battle-field of Fort Donolson." Mr. Collyer, it seems, was once a Methodist preacher in England ; be is now a minister of the Church of the Liberal Faith, in Chicago, where, we understand, he is particularly acceptable. In plain English, ho is a Unitarian, as might at once be inferred from almost any one of his discourses, which dwell much on the tolerant and progressive aspects of Christianity. He began life, it appears, as a blacksmith, but it is fair to say that though he is now and then rather too homely, and even grotesque, and lets slip here and there expressions not exactly in good-taste, he is never, as far as we can see, vulgar. But he seems to us to try too much to modernise the Bible, and the result occasionally is hardly satisfactory, and produces a sense of incongruity. St. John the Baptist, for instance, is spoken of as a Jewish John Knox, or John Brown,—this latter comparison is perhaps not out of place in America ; but one may easily glide into inappropriate and even ludicrous parallels, in the constant effort to be vivid and lively. And this is specially the danger of a man whose culture is not of the highest order. Still we can well believe that Mr. Collyer is an effective preacher.
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