• CURRENT LITERATURE. • •
Counsels of Faith and Practice. By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt.
which Mr. Newbolt disclaims in his preface, there is certainly a fair share; if there is no theological speculation, yet doctrine is stated with precision and force, and the whole remains, even when "set . forth," to use the preacher's expression, "in the passionless evenness of printers' type,". instinct with no little of the force which we can well imagine to have accompanied delivery.. We cannot say that we always find ourselves in agreement with Mr. Newbolt's theology ; but we recognise the earnestness, the manifest conviction of his teaching.
We may give a specimen of his manner :— " The Church has settled down over the field of literature, science, morals, art—wherever we turn. There are great varieties in characters and pursuits, and great varieties in ate members of the Church ; and this variety, as well as her numbers, is sometimes a cause of weakness, as she endeavours to draw them in. And this is not unfrequently objected to the Church of England by those who regard her with no friendly eye. You are like the builders of Babel, you all speak different languages; • it is confusion.' If one man works for souls in one direction, somebody calls after him and says he is a Methodist ; if another works in another direction, one shouts after him that be is a Papist ; another is roughly reminded that he is an infidel. Certainly it were possible to reduce these discordant cries, but it would be at a great sacrifice of vitality. A dead uniformity is not always life; there was a time, it has been pointed out, when the builders of Babel all spoke the same language, but they were then all
fatally in the wrong. Subjective religion, God's dealing-with the son]; objective religion, God's dealing with the Church ; intellectual religion, or religion in reference to scientific truth ; these, to return. to the original metaphor, are all sides of the Gospel net ; and some fish are pressed against one side, some against another. Variety within the limits of the net is not an evil ; but at the same time it strains it to its utmost capacity, and sometimes the net breaks."
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