Presbyterian Worship: Its Meaning and Method, by Donald Macleod (John Knox, 1965, 152 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by Edward L. R. Elson, minister, The National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C.
This book arises out of two pressing needs: first, the need of an adequate textbook for theological education (the last one being C. W. Baird’s Presbyterian Liturgies, published in 1851), and second, the need of parish ministers for a convenient reference manual. Dr. Macleod’s book admirably meets both requirements. On the whole, the book is historically, theologically, liturgically, and functionally authentic.
At the outset the author properly points out that the Presbyterian or Reformed church, when true to itself, is a liturgical church: “The issue in Presbyterian churches is not, nor can it ever be, a matter of liturgical versus a non-liturgical service. The problem has been bad liturgy—shapeless and formless—and the search for proper means by which it might be reformed and improved” (p. 11). Accordingly, Dr. Macleod takes note of the corruption and distortions that have come into Presbyterian worship from non-Presbyterian sources as the Presbyterian Order of the Holy Catholic Church has moved through the centuries since the great sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation.
In his first chapter, which has to do with “meaning” in worship, the author outlines the theological basis of common worship as being anchored to the creeds and confersions of the Presbyterian Church. He emphasizes the teachings and practices of the Great Reformers, especially John Calvin, Diebold Schwarz, and Martin Bucer. Common worship is the “one distinctive and essential task of the Church,” the high occasion for the people who are the body of Christ.
Based upon the intention of the Great Reformers, Presbyterian worship is catholic in origin and evangelical in spirit. The Church is the whole family of God’s people, redeemed by Christ, gathered around the table over which the living Christ presides as host and feeds his people by Word and sacrament. In this worship, the Word of God from Scriptures and the Word mediated to the people by the sermon are relieved of the medieval practice of prayers to saints, exultation of the Virgin, and the mass as a sacrifice. Presbyterian worship restores both the sermon and the spirit and practice of the Upper Room. John Calvin and other Great Reformers of the sixteenth century doubtless would be appalled at what they might observe on entering some contemporary churches. For What they might observe is not what they intended—one holy catholic and apostolic church reformed. Dr. Macleod recovers the Presbyterian heritage, interprets its meaning, and points the way for valid Reformed worship today.
The second chapter outlines worship as including preparation, the liturgy of the Word, the response by offering and sacrament, the prayers, the benediction, and reverent withdrawal. The author enhances this discussion with many practical suggestions. Another chapter has to do with the sacrament of baptism as the symbolic act of the new life in Christ and the admission badge for a member of the church. Dr. Macleod’s chapter on the Lord’s Supper is one of his chief contributions. The actions by minister and people are seen in proper sequence, and the practical suggestions for ruling elders and musicians are very helpful. We wish there could be a renewal of the practice of the preparatory service, which in its own way was the Protestant equivalent of the confessional.
There are chapters on weddings and funerals which, though in part elemental, contain many profitable instructions for the elimination of non-ecclesiastical procedures. Throughout the book the author touches upon many overlooked little items that can add to the refinement of the minister and the people at worship.
The discussion of the minister’s vestments is helpful. In the Reformation, sacerdotal and eucharistic vestments were discarded and the cassock retained as the basic dress, along with the “Geneva gown” for the service. This was an essential part of the Reformation. Dr. Macleod’s comments on the use of stole, scarf, or tippet need further clarification.
The book contains a glossary of terms that is sufficiently inclusive for Presbyterian churches, and an ample bibliography. The author is familiar with the vast number of works on various aspects of worship, and he draws upon his bibliography in almost every paragraph. Indeed, though he writes precisely and clearly, Dr. Macleod’s book would read more easily with more of Macleod and less of his sources.
This book is thorough in concept, structure, movement, and expression. There are inspiring passages for the active pastor. Let us hope that it will be used to improve both the understanding and the practice of worship where it is lax or defective, and to bring deepened appreciation where Presbyterian worship is already authentic. Its title, Presbyterian Worship, will not limit its usefulness to that family of churches. It ought to and will appear in the studies of pastors and teachers in many denominations.
Trimmed To Fit The Task
The Office of Bishop in Methodism: Its History and Development, by Gerald F. Moede (Abingdon, 1964, 250 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Gerald Kennedy, Bishop of the Los Angeles Area, The Methodist Church, Los Angeles, California.
When Methodism was founded as an independent church in America, it separated from John Wesley’s control. It established general superintendents with power to direct and supervise the ministers and their work. These men soon came to be called “bishops,” and the Methodist episcopacy was established and became, in many ways, a unique office. While Wesley was to all intent and purposes a bishop, he shied away from the title, probably because of some unfortunate experiences with bishops in the Church of England. In a letter to Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop in America, he wrote: “Men may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am content; but they shall never by my consent call me Bishop!” That is plain enough.
Gerald F. Moede has written a history of the development and changes in this office from the beginning to the present. It is a good, scholarly job that will please students of church history. Yet its style is easy enough to carry the interest not only of specialists and experts in the field but also of serious-minded laymen. And in discussing one office in the Methodist Church, the author tells the wider story of Methodism. For the episcopacy has been the center of the church’s life, and in the conflicts around it, the main advances and modifications of Methodism are apparent.
There is, for one thing, the power struggle and the decisions concerning final authority. Over the years the principle was established that the General Conference is the ultimate authority in the Methodist Church and that the bishops are subject to its directions and restrictions. This was done gradually and in a sense naturally, as the church adjusted its life to the new land. It is quite clear that the practical nature of Wesley carried over into the life of his spiritual children who separated themselves from him. The main thing was to get the job done, and because Methodist bishops were important for this accomplishment, their office has grown and been trimmed to fit this main task. The Methodist doctrine of the itineracy has left the appointment of ministers in the hands of the bishops.
It is significant that the episcopal office was at the center of the church’s growing recognition of itself as a world church. The concept of “missionary” bishops proved inadequate, and Moede shows how the polity was adapted to recognize Methodists in all countries as of equal status. Methodist bishops find their equal status affirmed by membership in the Council of Bishops with the privilege of voting on all matters affecting all parts of the church. Moede calls one of the sections of his book “A True International Methodist Episcopacy.”
But the place toward where all of this is pointing, according to the author, is union with the Anglicans. He believes that this is God’s will and that the episcopacy is the first hurdle that must be leaped. I got the impression that nothing is important enough to stand in the way and that Methodists ought to yield gladly to the Anglican doctrine of “apostolic succession.” While both traditions would benefit from union, it is plain enough that the adjustment would be pretty much on the Methodist side. Personally, I would find it very easy to accept consecration or ordination from any other tradition, if it would help the others to receive me as a brother. I remember that the late Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam said the same thing to an Anglican bishop one time. But the answer was that he not only must go through the ceremony but also must believe that something important has happened. This is where I would find the difficulty, because, like Wesley. I do not believe it has ever been proved, and, even if it were proved, I do not think it is very important. Certainly it is not essential.
Indeed, I think it may be true that the Methodist doctrine of the episcopacy may be nearer the New Testament thought and practice than the later doctrine of “apostolic succession.” But this young man is zealous for the cause of union, and he wants Methodists to put no stumbling block in the way. I do not find myself quite so anxious to discard something that works for a new arrangement that is theoretically enticing but still untried.
GERALD KENNEDY
She Returned To Tell
Beyond All Reason, by Morag Coate (Lippincott, 1964, 227 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Ralph Heynen, hospital pastor, Pine Rest Christian Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
This is an autobiography of a person who, having faced and overcome the frightening experience of schizophrenia, is now able to tell in a graphic way of the struggles of her soul. Many of us have observed persons with delusions and hallucinations, but it is particularly valuable to have a first-hand account of such experiences.
In the second half of the book the author interprets many of her feelings and thoughts, laying special emphasis on the spiritual factors in her illness. She had moved away from the “safer realms of organized religion” and gradually drifted off into rationalism. At the onset of her first attack she felt that she was given special powers to commune with God, and even with the spirits of the dead. But she had a problem of communication: God did not speak to her. She then lost the solace of her childhood faith and moved through spiritual doubts to an open denial of the existence of God.
She had five schizophrenic breaks in fourteen years. During the last hospitalization she established a very warm therapeutic relationship with her psychiatrist and gradually was led back to sanity. When she recovered, she found a strange existential view of religion. “I may convince myself that I do not believe there is a God, but I find that I love him still.”
There are many books on schizophrenia, but few so well describe the terrifying feelings and thoughts that are part of a schizophrenic break. Miss Coate’s constructive comments on psychiatrists, psychologists, hospital chaplains, nurses, and mental hospitals show the deep desire of a patient to be treated as a real person.
This absorbing and well-written book should interest all pastors, as well as psychiatrists, psychologists, and others concerned with mental health. Although we would not agree with her conclusions on religion, the author makes an important contribution to the subject of the relation between religion and psychiatry.
RALPH HEYNEN
Feel The Winds Blow
Journal of a Soul, by Pope John XXIII (G. Chapman, 1964, 453 pp., 42s. [also by McGraw-Hill, $7.95]), is reviewed by Angus W. Morrison, minister, St. Ninian’s Priory Church, Whithorn, Scotland.
This is a good book, well illustrated, well translated, well compiled. It is neither an autobiography nor a balanced collection of material for a biography. The “Journal” is two-thirds of the book, and this is a spiritual diary sometimes full, sometimes scanty. Half of it covers the years of formation, 1895–1904, and the other half the long working life, 1905–63. The last third of the book contains spiritual testaments, considerations, maxims, and, above all, prayers. There is a full chronology. The book is a model of its kind, but the impression Pope John has made on the world will give it wider range.
The whole volume is alive with invocations, to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, to his “Fathers in God.” Without them, and without the warm sunshine and shade, the yoke of the seminarist would have been heavy indeed. “Sic decet …” said the decree of Trent, in establishing the system of clergy training: “Thus it is fitting in every way that clergy … should so order their lives and habits that in their dress, gestures, gait, conversation and all other matters they show nothing that is not grave, controlled and full of religious feeling; and let them also avoid minor faults which in them would be very great.…” Obedience does not always bring peace, in its fullest sense, to men under discipline; but the conjunction “Obedientia et Pax” can be seen from these pages to have been a rightly chosen motto of life. With obedience to the rule came obedience to military service, to “monotonous years” at apostolic delegations, to old age, to “allowing others to dress me.”
There are few references to world events. In 1903 he is at Rome when King Edward VII and Emperor William have papal audiences within days of each other; to say that the latter was “willy-nilly” a source of distraction may be the translator’s joke, though in the Johannine spirit. But the echoes of war are for the reader to supply. One might catch a change of note when we reach the years after the Second World War in France; perhaps he feels exposed to a colder wind within the church than among the Muslims and schismatics of the East. Those same winds were blowing in industrial Milan: may all the successors to the “Chair of Peter” feel them also!
If we are grateful for the inspiration that brought the Second Vatican Council to birth, we might reasonably include this spiritual diary in our background reading. Its author, looking on his first writings some sixty years after “as if they had been written by someone else,” blessed the Lord for them.
ANGUS W. MORRISON
Good Critique
Toward a Theology of History, by J. V. Langmead Casserley (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 238 pp., $6), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, professor of history, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.
The neo-orthodox and existentialist emphasis on history and its meaning has called forth a more general quest for the answer to the meaning of history. Many of these efforts are of little value because they proceed on the assumption that the meaning of history is to be found within the stream of human events; that is, that history supplies its own meaning. Dr. Casserley is to be commended for repudiating this assumption and for looking for the meaning of the human past in theology. He rightly sees all these other approaches as misleading and futile.
He takes the positivists and the behaviorists to task for their failure to interpret the facts of history, and he also rejects the approach of Bultmann and his school because they fail to give an adequate historical foundation for biblical revelation. Although he pays high tribute to Toynbee’s Study of History as the best approach to the problem of the meaning of history since Augustine’s City of God, he also criticizes him for sharing some of the weaknesses of Spengler and for leaning too heavily on the position assumed by the comparative religionists. Casserley is at his best in his careful criticisms of the various contemporary schools of historical interpretation.
Although the author rightly sees that the real key to the understanding of history is to be found in the theological approach, it is at this very point that his own weaknesses begin to appear. The basic weakness is apparent in the first pages, where we find a denial of the orthodox view of revelation and of the inspiration of the Scriptures. Insisting that his view of revelation is not that of neo-orthodoxy, he nevertheless holds that the Scriptures do not teach doctrines but only present the revealing acts of God by which he becomes known to man. On the other hand he rejects the favorite cliché of the neo-orthodox school that revelation is non-propositional in form and prefers the term “non-oracular” to describe his view of revelation, asserting that the idea of an oracular revelation from God is a scandal.
This nebulous view of the authority of the Scriptures allows Casserley quite a bit of freedom in his interpretation of the content of the biblical message, and he uses this freedom to reject the orthodox doctrine of creation in favor of the theory of evolution and the idea that the account of Adam and Eve is a myth (despite his insistence elsewhere that revelation must take place through historical events).
The author does set forth a theology of history (particularly on pages 152 to 185), which he builds around the concepts of sin, eschatology, time and eternity, and freedom. But it leaves much to be desired and will be quite unacceptable to evangelicals in general. In his theology he fails to do justice to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, and he falls far short of the biblical position on the sovereignty of God, human sin, election, and the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The real value of this work lies in its criticisms of contemporary approaches to the meaning of history apart from the Scriptures. This reviewer could wish that the author had built upon the sure foundation of the inspired Scriptures in his effort to correct current philosophies of history which he rightly regards as false.
C. GREGG SINGER
Preaching Is Bifocal
Preaching To Be Understood: The Warrack Lectures on Preaching, Church of Scotland, by James T. Cleland (Abingdon, 1965, 128 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by James D. Robertson, professor of preaching, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.
The 1964 Warrack Lectures on Preaching came from a Scot who is currently professor of preaching and dean of the chapel at Duke University. Here is a stimulating treatment of problems of vital interest to the contemporary pulpit. In our age of many voices, the writer in an opening chapter places strong emphasis on the Word as the activity of the living, personal Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer made known in the Bible, in the Spirit, and in the tradition of the Church. Not everyone, however, will agree with the statement, “The Bible is not the Word of God, but the Bible contains the Word of God” (p. 16). The chapter dealing with sound principles of biblical interpretation is interlaced With witty but conscience-smiting examples of the homiletical sin of eisegesis.
Perhaps the richest part of this slender volume is that which discusses the need for the minister to realize that contemporary preaching is bifocal—it concerns itself with both the historic faith and the people in the pew. Together these constitute the Word. “The Word of God is constantly, in the biblical records, the linking of revelation with a Contemporary Situation” (p. 43). The preacher must understand that his immediate job is to relate the sermon to the hearer, with a conscious purpose in mind. A final chapter seeks to show that communication is possible only when pulpit and pew are aware that each depends on the other. If thorough preparation of the sermon is the sine qua non of the pulpit, earnest, cooperative listening is the responsibility of the pew.
Drawing on his experiences in pastorate and classroom, Dr. Cleland stays close to the daily experiences of today’s minister. Not least commendable in these lectures is his fertility of imagination and wit, which again and again conspire to kindle truth into a flame.
JAMES D. ROBERTSON
End Of The Line?
Hume, Newton and the Design Argument, by Robert H. Hurlbutt, III (University of Nebraska, 1965, 221 pp., $5), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
The author’s penetrating thesis is that natural theology and its prime support, the design argument, have reached the end of the line as a logical proof for the traditional supernaturalistic God. He concedes that theology and religion in general do not share the fate of the design argument, since they may be defended on other grounds. Misled, however, by neo-orthodoxy’s skepticism concerning the role of reason in its appeal to revelation, and by linguistic philosophy’s surrender of a cognitive basis for theology, he excludes reason as one of biblical religion’s resources, since the only cognitive justification he allows is empirical and scientific.
CARL F. H. HENRY
A Miss
The Reformation of the Church, edited by Iain Murray (Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, 414 pp., 15s., paperback), is reviewed by Geoffrey S. R. Cox, vicar of Gorsley with Clifford’s Mesne, Gloucestershire, England.
One is sometimes disappointed by the contrast between the promise of a title and its fulfillment. An instance of this is The Reformation of the Church. The blurb boasts such scriptural writers as Martin Luther, William Cunningham, Charles Hodge, and John Owen, and hopes are further raised by the claim that “among the subjects dealt with [my italics] are: The Regulative Principle and Things Indifferent … Episcopacy … New Testament Church Government, etc.” Alas for such hopes!
This “collection of Reformed and Puritan documents on Church issues” purports to be based on “the principle that Scripture is a sufficient and perfect rule for the ordering of the Church of Christ”—the regulative principle of Scripture—but in fact it never submits the question fully to the test of Scripture. It is therefore weak on what should have been its strongest point, the scriptural evidence; and, although intended primarily for the English situation, it never grasps the heart of the English problem. GEOFFREY S. R. COX
How To Serve
Servant of God’s Servants: The Work of a Christian Minister, by Paul M. Miller (Herald Press, 1964, 236 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Gordon J. Spykman, associate professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
This book is not laboriously academic but prevailingly practical. Its claim upon the reading public rests not upon intensive research but upon its broad scope of commentary upon parish service. It is not, however, shallowly pragmatic. The author explores pastoral problems within a sustained biblical-theological framework.
This book’s emphasis is quite consistent with its title, and it is a proper one: the minister is a servant to all God’s servants. Miller’s concept of Christian “servanthood” is, however, free of any syncretistic sell-out of congregational conviction to “worldly” accommodation. Ministerialism is neither jovial fraternalism, nor stuffy professionalism, nor aloof clericalism. The pastor’s calling is to help those servants of God whom he serves to help themselves in the fulfillment of their callings.
Miller reflects a vital awareness of the congregation as a community, a worshiping, serving community. The book is not strong in relating the life of the Christian community to the affairs of the community that surrounds it. But Miller’s organic view of the structures of the Christian Church offers a healthful antidote to the religious individualism all too characteristic of large segments of American Christianity.
This book on pastoral theology grew out of the Conrad Graebel Lectures of 1963. The author introduces himself frankly as a Mennonite, and he orients himself generally to Mennonite church life; yet his perspective is applicable to other communions as well. Many critical readers will question such points as the author’s views on infant innocence and on the universal atonement of Christ, the exclusion of infant baptism, the depreciation of the eucharistic presence of Christ, the view of man as “soul,” the tendency to ecclesiasticize Christian life, and the easy reference to “worldly” culture as secular.
No serious reader will fail, however, to benefit from the many keen biblical-pastoral insights, the pointed exposure of uncritically adopted patterns of parish practice, and the sane advice on the work of the minister.
As a starter or refresher, Miller’s book should prove to be a helpful servant to the servant of God’s servants.
GORDON J. SPYKMAN
Witness At Second
The Bobby Richardson Story, by Bobby Richardson (Revell, 1965, 159 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell, executive editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Now and then there appears on the sports scene an outstanding athlete who is also an outstanding Christian. Such is Bobby Richardson, star second-sacker of the New York Yankees.
The highest tribute that can be paid any Christian comes from those who live with him and see in his daily living the Gospel he professes. This book is a testimony to what Christianity made of Bobby Richardson, a man his associates highly admire.
Ralph Houk, general manager of the Yankees, says: “He is the best second-baseman I have known. In short, he is the type of person I think all fathers would like to see their sons grow up to be.”
Tom Tresh, star outfielder of the Yankees, says, “He is an example of everything fine, not only as an athlete, but as a person.”
Richardson is an unashamed and articulate Christian, blessed with a fine Christian wife and four children. The frankness of his Christian testimony makes this book refreshing and inspiring. L. NELSON BELL
Tears Down Idols
The Greeks and the Gospel, by J. B. Skemp (Carey-Kingsgate Press, 1964, 123 pp., 25s.), is reviewed by J. Neville Birdsall, lecturer in theology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England.
This book presents in publication dress the W. T. Whitley Lectures for 1962. These lectures were founded in 1949 to “encourage Baptist scholarship, primarily in Great Britain.” The first four lectures, which form the first four chapters, were delivered to student audiences; the last chapter, an epilogue, has been specially written for the published work. From this history arise two features of the book: it is written in as simple and unpretentious a way as its subject matter allows, and it is frequently concerned with contemporary and denominational questions in the ecumenical setting. It may very well be that these two inevitable facets will detract from the book’s reputation in circles of pure learning. It will be a pity if this prediction is justified, for the book is founded on the secure scholarship which the tenure of a chair of Greek by the author implies.
If the reviewer has one major complaint and regret, it is that in this book Skemp has not subjected his fellow students of classical antiquity and the Bible to bibliographical bombardment and to the impact of argument in the language and full accouterments of scholarship. It is a book that demands further pursuit of the questions which it raises or reraises. I venture to think that not only the professional scholar will suffer from this defect but that the student still learning the rudiments may also suffer, because his tendency is to accept the printed word rather than to be challenged to examine again the matters under discussion. It should be added that the absence of such features may derive from economic publishing reasons rather than from the desire of the author.
The four lecture chapters deal with the subject primarily in the historical perspective. In the first chapter, the author takes issue with the fashionable dismissal of the Greek dress of the New Testament and the heritage of Greek thought and culture in the Church, forcibly arguing that while the Gospel is evidently not Greek, neither is it Jewish, for both Jew and Greek when encountered in the New Testament have as Christians been baptized into Christ. In the second chapter, he traces the contacts of the “ordinary Greek” with the Gospel, suggesting that he brought to the Church a valuable political awareness and that his often rehearsed vices were offset by some neglected virtues.
The third chapter deals with the “intellectual” Greek and rightly emphasizes the importance of speculative thought in the growth and maintenance of Christian understanding. “If we regard as perversions the Greek influences … we have to deny that the very language and forms of thought in which the New Testament writers wrote are a sufficient vehicle for the word of God” (p. 56). Chapter four deals with the “religious Greek” and is significant for its discussion of resurrection and immortality and of the meaning of baptism in the light of the mysteries. The final chapter summarizes the preceding and urges, though guardedly, the value of Plato for the Christian thinker. One is also refreshed to see emphasis on the Greek heritage of the Eastern Orthodox churches.
In all, Professor Skemp, true to the heritage of learning, is not afraid to challenge shibboleths and to tear down idols, and this he does to open his readers’ eyes to the truth—historical, philosophical, theological, spiritual. In this his book will succeed, and he is to be thanked for it.
J. NEVILLE BIRDSALL
Book Briefs
Two-by-Fours, by Charles M. Schulz and Kenneth F. Hall (Warner, 1965, 40 pp., $1). Whimsical counsel to adults dealing with children in the two-four age group, particularly in relation to church; fortified by two dozen cartoons with captions like: “Just when I was getting strong enough to defend myself, they start telling me about sharing!”
Great Heresies and Church Councils, by Jean Guitton (Harper and Row, 1965, 101 pp., $4). A Roman Catholic philosopher muses over seven crises in the Roman church (the sixth is the Reformation; the seventh, the present day), seeing in all of them a similarity that in the flow of history tightens and concentrates. He detects a receding of the negative element in every heresy, and a converging of the affirmative elements which, under God, may surprise most of us. A kindly spirit and keenly perceptive mind provide provocative reading. A book that is utter delight for the thinking Christian.
A Synoptic Philosophy of Education, by Arthur W. Munk (Abingdon, 1965, 276 pp., $4.50). Dr. Munk’s book is partially described by its title and does not fully live up to its subtitle, A Unified and Adequate Philosophy of Education for Our Times. Eclecticism, particularly when advocated by one so deeply committed to theological liberalism as Dr. Munk, is not the answer to the desperate need for a consistent God-centered and biblically oriented philosophy of education.
Write the Vision!: A Biography of J. Edwin Orr, by A. J. Appasamy (Christian Literature Crusade, 1964, 254 pp., $2). The informative story of thirty years of evangelistic itinerating by the evangelist who left Belfast to purvey the Gospel by bicycle, train, and jet in 140 countries.
Paperbacks
Of Sex and Saints, by Donald F. Tweedie, Jr. (Baker, 1965, 73 pp., $1). The author says much more with much less fuss than most.
The Church of the 21st Century: Prospects and Proposals, by Richard Sommerfeld (Concordia, 1965, 103 pp., $1.50). A critique of the Church by one who loves it. Good reading, especially for laymen.
Declaration of Dependence: Sermons for National Holidays, by John H. Baumgaertner (Concordia, 1965, 135 pp., $2). Good sermons in a category where good sermons come hard.
The Epistle to the Colossians: A Study Manual, by Charles N. Pickell (Baker, 1965, 70 pp., $1.50).
The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, by Samuel Bolton (Banner of Truth Trust, 1964, 230 pp., 4s. 6d.). A discussion of the place of Law in the Christian life. Though first published in 1645, it is remarkably relevant in the current climate of opinion about Law.
A Christian Introduction to Religions of the World, by Johannes G. Vos (Baker, 1965, 79 pp., $1.50). Brief, lucid; good for church study groups.
Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre (Schocken Books, 1965, 153 pp., $1.45). First published in 1946.
The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, by P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 1964, 357 pp., $2.25). Almost a Christian classic.
Invasion Alert: Rising Tides of Aliens in Our Midst, by Mary Barclay Erb (Goetz Company Press, 1965, 100 pp., $1.50). “Documented exposé of the army of aliens and foreign born in our midst.”
Outlines for Preaching, by Walter L. Moore (Broadman, 1965, 80 pp., $1.50). A preacher who profited much from the sermon outlines of others gives some of his own.
Stewardship Illustrations, edited by T. K. Thompson (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 112 pp., $1.50).
The Body of Christ: A New Testament Image of the Church, by Alan Cole; Called to Serve: Ministry and Ministers in the Church, by Michael Green; and Confess Your Sins: The Way of Reconciliation, by John R. W. Stott (Westminster, 1965; 90, 95, and 94 pp.; $1.25 each). Scholarly and biblical. Good reading for both ministers and laymen.
