The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-06-15

way the advantages of the written and the oral style. There is the lit erary charm of clear and coScnt thought always concisely and often eloquently expressed with all the racy vigor and punch of direct speech. There is not a dull, dry or cloudy sentence in this volume. The crafts- manship is that of master. But the great thing about it is that 1t is alive cut anywhere and it will bleed. It throbs and glows with all the passion of a great soul, who not only describes the mantle worn by one of the great est of all the inspired seers who lived through a world crisis strangely like our own. but who in his own way wears that mantle himself and pro- phesieS to our day with much Of the same spiritual authority.
 The central idea of Dr. Kirks study is Isaiah's original conception of the divine holiness as an atmosphere of fire-a consuming fire-burning about the universe like a great devourins flame, permitting only that to survive which is fitted to live in such blaze of righteousness. The play of this ir- resistible force in the great world drama of the seventh and eighth cen- turies B, C., when the Assyrian war lords waged their campaigns for world conquest, is unfolded in these lectures
 
 We see every nation, every group and class-the statesmen, the women, the professional men of religion, the big business men--all living in this fiery atmosphere, the very substance of tne living God, the ultimate reality of the universe, and by this infallible ordeal by fire they are judged and tested.
 Dr. Kirk has made this period his own. He lives in it, and paints every shade of color, reproduces every type and character, catches every detail of the social drama of this far-off civil Zation so perfectly that the parallel to our own day does not have to be stressed or argued. We see it and ate convinced that we too live in this at mosphere, that our environment is also this same Consuming Fire" The writer plays the searchlight upon ev- cry sphere of life and interest in our modern world.
 This gives us book that will ap- peal to every vigorous mind. The preacher will find it a mine and a model in the divine art of bringing forth treasure old and new from the library of God The lovers of truth great brotherhood, will find here 2 guide who knows the way of the old paths of righteousness and peace in the generations that are gone and who passionately and eloquentiy pleads that we make them our ac- cepted safeguards in the new day.
 As one reads this brilliant and stim- ulating survey of past and present he marks epigram and paradox, word pie ture and haunting bits of narrative, all so skillfully and spontaneously wrought that he wishes to remember and to quote them all. Take this as sample of what one finds all through the book. It's paragraph in the chapter of The Staleness of the Years" Indeed it was difficult task to enlighten such people as these whose eyes were gummed up and whose ears were stopped because their minds were stale. As one reads the story of Judah's social decay, tn- gether with her appalling lack of re- captivity, it makes one feel as if one were looking into a modern banquet hall after the feasters had left it. The atmosphere of staleness is over all; the foul stench of cigarette smoke. the paralyzing dullness of the after dinner speeches still clogging the mind --the staleness of the years with As- syria rolling down upon the land 100 miles away, and round it all to ths vision of the prophet, the binding fire of that holy atmosphere-God"