the complex phenomena of our spiritual nature is always accompanied by a mental oversight of its actual and possible aberrations.  A sound, large, “round-about” common sense, keen, eager, vigilant, sagacious, encompasses all the emotional elements of his thought.  He has a subtile sense of mystery, but he is not a mystic.  The most marvellous workings of the Divine Spirit he apprehends under the conditions of Law, and even in the raptures of devotion he never forgets the relation of cause and effect.

The style of these sermons is what might be expected from the character of the mind it expresses.  If Dr. Walker were not a thinker, it is plain that he could never have been a rhetorician.  He has no power at all as a writer, if writing be considered an accomplishment which can be separated from earnest thinking.  Words are, with him, the mere instruments for the expression of things; and he hits on felicitous words only under that impatient stress of thought which demands exact expression for definite ideas.  All his words, simple as they are, are therefore fairly earned, and he gives to them a force and significance which they do not bear in the dictionary.  The mind of the writer is felt beating and burning beneath his phraseology, stamping every word with the image of a thought.  Largeness of intellect, acute discrimination, clear and explicit statement, masterly arrangement of matter, an unmistakable performance of the real business of expression,—­these qualities make every reader of the sermons conscious that a mind of great vigor, breadth, and pungency is brought into direct contact with his own.  The almost ostentatious absence of “fine writing” only increases the effect of the plain and sinewy words.

If we pass from the form to the substance of Dr. Walker’s teachings, we shall find that his sermons are especially characterized by practical wisdom.  A scholar, a moralist, a metaphysician, a theologian, learned in all the lore and trained in the best methods of the schools, he is distinguished from most scholars by his broad grasp of every-day life.  It is this quality which has given him his wide influence as a preacher, and this is a prominent charm of his printed sermons.  He brings principles to the test of facts, and connects thoughts with things.  The conscience which can easily elude the threats, the monitions, and the appeals of ordinary sermonizers, finds itself mastered by his mingled fervor, logic, and practical knowledge.  Every sermon in the present volume is good for use, and furnishes both inducements and aids to the formation of manly Christian character.  There is much, of course, to lift the depressed and inspire the weak; but the great peculiarity of the discourses is the resolute energy with which they grapple with the worldliness and sin of the proud and the strong.

The Monks of the West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard.  By the COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT, Member of the French Academy.  Authorized Translation.  Volumes I. and II.  Edinburgh and London:  W. Blackwood & Sons. 1861. 8vo. pp. xii. and 515, 549.