7 26 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



September I. i91S. 



forty years of my public life, you will 

 not be surprised at the decision I am now 

 compelled to take. I cannot accept any 

 share of the responsibility for the acts 

 of war which have taken place at Alex- 

 andria." 



Nearly seven years later he passed 



quietly to his rest at One Ash, the house 

 in which he had lived for fifty years, 

 and the " organ-voice cf England." 

 which had spent its music in the service 

 of humanity and freedom, was hushed 

 for ever — but its influence will be ever- 

 lasting. 



A REVELATION. 



The Inside of flic Cuii. By Winston 

 Churchill. (Macmillin, 6'-.) 



Mr. Winston Churchill has accus- 

 tomed us to novels in which adventure 

 predominates, and to a reconstruction 

 of the lives lived before our own era, so 

 that it is with astonishment we discover 

 that this tale of his is not a fairy carpet 

 to spirit us away from our everyday life 

 for an hour, then to be lightly laid aside, 

 but it is a setting for one of the most 

 moving lay sermons that has ever been 

 written ; a denunciation of the union of 

 millionaires and the Church, an invita- 

 tion to make clean the inside of the cup 

 and platter, to discard outward conven- 

 tional doctrines, and to make Chris- 

 tianity what it should be, a mode of life. 

 In his " Afterword," Mr. Winston Chur- 

 chill says that the setting forth of his 

 personal view of religion is not only un- 

 avoidable, but necessary, and such as it 

 is, it represents many years of experience 

 and reflection. 



His hero, the Rev. John Hodder, was 

 not an ascetic ; when he was at Harvard 

 his boiling, contagious spirit of youth- 

 fulness had led him into the thick of the 

 life there, and his personality had drawn 

 his comrades with him. On the point of 

 being employed by a New York lawyer 

 of distinction, he went into one of the 

 Metropolitan churches, obeying an im- 

 pulse which he did not attempt to ex- 

 plain to himself ; and suddenly the 

 words of the hymn they were singing 

 came to him fraught with a startling 

 meaning : — 



Fill me radiancy divino. 

 Scatter all my unbelief ! 



Then came the sermon, with the text, " I 

 will arise and go to my Father " ; and 

 as a revelation it appeared to him that 

 he had always wished to preach, to help 

 to revive a faith, a dying faith, in a 



material age. Thinking thus, he went 

 home to his mother, who not onl\' con- 

 sented to his proposed change of a pro- 

 fession, but accompanied him to his first 

 curacy at Bremerton. After ten years' 

 work there he was invited to become 

 rector of the Church of St. John, in n 

 great American city of the Middle Wchi. 

 Hodder was chosen not only on account 

 of his brilliant talents and successful 

 work, but also because of his orthodox\-. 

 The great power in the church was Eldon 

 Parr, a man of the people who had be- 

 come a millionaire, and who was in 

 right truth the king of the city. For two 

 years Hodder jireached quietly, but with 

 a continuously growing conviction that 

 the religion he was preaching was m- 

 eff"ectual. By an extraordinary grim 

 chance, when he had just packed his bag 

 to go for a short season of quiet into the 

 country, he was called upon to help a 

 woman in a neighbouring street ; her 

 home had been one of those broken up 

 in the course of Eldon Parr's climli to 

 riches. Helping her, he came across 

 victim after victim, and so spent his 

 holiday in Dalton Street instead of in 

 the country. 



After this experience he realised what 

 had been wanting in his ministry ; he 

 knew why his pulpit appeals had lacked 

 efficiency. His well-to-do hearers did 

 not want the world to change. Hodder 

 knew that he had been risking " fatt\- 

 degeneration of the soul." He had gone 

 to Dalton Street for a short visit to a 

 woman in need, and there he received 

 a second revelation. The shock was ter- 

 rible, for he had learned to care for, 

 sympathise with, and greatly admire 

 Eldon Parr, who, in spite of his riches 

 and luxury, was a lonely and suffering 

 man. The shock tore from him the 

 flimsy garment of orthodoxy, and 



