CURRENT LITERATURE.
Fancy-Fair Religion. By the Rev. J. Priestley Foster, M.A. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)—Mr. Foster denounces in emphatic and pointed language a practice which no one, we presume, ventures seriously to defend, but which many are weakly ready to follow. The bazaar for religious and charitable objects is simply a scandal. It is economically extravagant. People spend a sovereign in the materials for some worthless article which is sold for half the cost price. The labour is utterly lost—that, perhaps, matters but little—and half the expenditure. But there are many so inordinately selfish that this seems the only way to approach them, for what they spend in this way is really spent on themselves. But the economical evil is not the worst. There are concomitant evils that concern religion and morality. Mr. Foster has collected a number of details about the pro- ceedings at these bazaars. Some of them are nothing less than revolting. At a bazaar held to raise funds for Trinity Church, in the town of B—, a place not difficult to recognise when we are told that it is "one of the wealthiest of England's wealthy health-resorts," a café chantant was one of the attrac- tions. " Half-a-crown a programme will earn a smile; half-a- sovereign a wreath of smiles ; and any member of the public, on payment of five shillings, can shake hands with a performer." This is really something like—well, we would rather not finish the sentence. It is consoling to find that those who descend to such arts are sometimes rebuked. A young gentleman ordered a cup of tea, charged sixpence in the price-list. The waitress sipped it, and said, when he tendered the money, " Now it is half-a-guinea." He paid the money, and asked for a clean cup ! She blushed, let us hope with shame as much as anger. This is a formidable indictment against what the writer calls " Fancy-Fair Religion."
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