In the latter part of this year Urbane and His Friends appeared.  Urbane is an aged pastor and his Friends are members of his flock, whom he had invited to meet him from week to week for Christian counsel and fellowship.  Some of their names, Antiochus, Hermes, Junia, Claudia, Apelles and the like, sound rather strange, but, together with those more familiar, they are all borrowed from the New Testament.

Urbane and His Friends is the only book of a didactic sort written by Mrs. Prentiss.  It is not, however, wholly didactic, but contains also touches of narrative and character that add to its interest.  Among the topics discussed are:  The Bible, Temptation, Faith, Prayer, the Mystics, “The Higher Christian Life,” Service, Pain and Sorrow, Peace and Joy, and the Indwelling Christ.  She was dissatisfied with the work and required some persuasion before she would consent to its being published.  But its spiritual tone, its tenderness, its “sweet reasonableness,” and the bright little pictures of Christian truth and life, which enliven its pages, have led some to prize it more than any other of her writings.

And here it may not be out of place to insert the following letter of her husband, written several months after her death.  It gives her matured views on certain points relating to the Christian life, about which there has been no little difference of opinion: 

NEW YORK, April 16, 1879.

MY DEAR FRIEND:—­Many thanks for your kind words about Urbane and His Friends.  So far at least as the aim and spirit of the book are concerned, no praise could exceed its merits.  It was written with a single desire to honor Christ by aiding and cheering some of His disciples on their way heavenward.  At that time, as you know, there was a good deal of discussion about “the Higher Christian Life” and “Holiness through Faith.”  She herself had felt some of the difficulties connected with the subject, and was anxious to reach out a helping hand to others similarly perplexed.  I do not think her mind was specially adapted to the didactic style, nor was it much to her taste.  When writing in that style her pen did not seem to be entirely at ease, or to move quite at its own sweet will.  Careful statement and nice theological distinctions were not her forte.  And yet her mental grasp of Christian doctrine in its vital substance was very firm, and her power of observing, as well as depicting, the most delicate and varying phenomena of the spiritual life was like an instinct.  A purer or more whole-hearted love of “the truth as it is in Jesus,” I never witnessed in any human being.  At the same time she was very modest and distrustful of her own judgment when opposed to that of others whom she regarded as experienced Christians.  I wish you could enjoy a tithe of the happiness that was mine during the winter and spring of 1873-4, as, evening after evening, she talked over with me the various points discussed in her book, and then read to me