THE GOSPEL OF CONSOLATION.*
Tiers is undoubtedly one of the best volumes of sermons we have read for many a day, and we regret to observe that it is posthumous. A memoir of the author, Canon Danks, is contributed by the Rev. H. D. A. Major, and both Bishop Boyd-Carpenter and the Dean of Canterbury prefix appreciative notices. Both urge that a conspicuous merit of the preacher and one great cause of his effectiveness lay in the fact that his sermons were addressed to human perplexities and sufferings, which he had experienced himself before he attempted to minister to them in others. Undoubtedly the sincerity of the preacher is con- spicuous in every page of the book, but sincerity alone would not give it its peculiar power. What strikes the reader equally is the imaginative vigour with which the characteristic features of a situation are seized, whether in ancient or modern times, and the corresponding trenchancy with which its spiritual lessons are expressed and applied. The problems and issues discussed are alive, and the solutions proposed are those of the Christian Gospel intelligently and feelingly understood. The sermons are most of them short, but the point to be discussed or en- forced is always so firmly grasped, and the arguments and illustrations so well chesen and clearly stated, that the shortest contains abundant food for thought. The least happy thing about the book is its title, for it !suggests that the main topics discussed are those of suffering. In fact, the preacher throws his net much wider. There are a few sermons preached recently, and one:several years before war broke out, on the consecration of War and the meaning of Christian peace. Other subjects aro " The ' Name of God," " The Fall of Man," " The Perils of the Empty Soul," " The Servant of the Lord " ; and there are sermons on such necessary doctrines as. Prayer and Charity. But however familiar the text or the subject, the treatment is always fresh, and we anticipate for the book a wide popularity among persons who still read sermons.
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