The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-04-23
'PAINTED WINDOWS"

While we all agree that the clergy needs "dusting" just as much as poll tiles and society. yet "The Gentle man with a Duster," who so grace fully removed the corroding debris from Downing street in his remark able book, "The Mirrors," evidently thinks tho clergy Is more in need of B "dusting" than the majority of us think.
 With his little bunch of feathers, the author of "The Mirrors of Down ing Street." and "The Glass of Fash ion' comes now with Painted Win dcws," to which Hawthornes ex- quisite words in "The Marble Faun" may easily be applied.
 'Religion is like brilliantly light ed cathedral where every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendor."
 "The Gentleman with Duster" writes again in his most brilliant and fascinating style, taking for his sub jects a dozen of the most notable men-and one woman in the re- hgious world of England.
 Painted Windows by A Gentle- man with a Duster," with i1lustra- tions by Emile Verpilleux, c. P. Put nam's Sons, Publishers. New York City, is "sub-titled," Studies in Re- ligion Personality" and the per sonalities beginning with Bishop Gore run the gamut, including Dean Inge, Father Knox, pr, L. P. Jacks, Bishop Hensley Henson, Miss Maude Royden, Canon E. W. Barnes. Gen. Bramwell Booth, Dr. ". E. Orchard, Bishop Temple, Principal W. B. Selbie and Archbishop Randall Da- vidson.
 There is a "Foreword" to Painted Windows" written by Professor Kir- sopp Lake and An Introduction to the American Bditlon," by the author followed by another '1ntroduction," while In conclusion" gives the au- thor an opportunity to sum up" as it were, the entire substance of the quoting "Lamartine," who said that "The ideal is only truth at a distance"
 While the author of Painted Win dows." who seems to be an evanes- canet as a will-o'-thew as far as his identity is concerned-various differing opinions declaring Harold Begbie to be the author, while equal ly as many If not more, declare for Strachey-reveals the chaos of opin- ion which disturbs the church mod ern at present; at the same time, there is no tearing down nor shat tering of ideals, no iconoclastic ten dencies, but rather the work Is con structive, hopeful, destroying only that which cumbers the ground and then destroying with amazing sure tv and wonderful brilliance-as only .aThe Gentleman with a Duster" can do.
 One of the Illuminating things that the author of Painted Win dows% gives out in regard to the many disturbing influences which surround religion in this:
 ''I asked a certain dean the other dav whether the old controversy be- tween high church and low church still obtained in his diocese. oh, dear mo- said the august dean, high or low and low arc now united to fight modernists.
 While Painted windows" is pri- marily designed as study or per sonalities," according to the sub title" one might say of it as did tho lady at the opera about a world Ia nous prima donna:
 .~rhere were too little clothes and too much Mary" which translated in regard to the book, as too much creed and too little personality.
 From what we read of the opinion of "The Gentleman with Duster there Is evidently no very great re- ligious personality in England, and the art of the preacher in that coun- try seems, as it Is in ours, to be Tn "a condition of innocuous deseutude.
 It is the conviction of "A Gem tleman with Duster" that the church in England has lost it's moral leadership, largely through the in- tellectual decadencs of the shepherds of the flock.
 He analyses the bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev. Charles Gore, who' he says, Is head and shoulders above all other religious teachers of our time;" but we are told that. The IS now in the unhappy position of party leader whose followers begin to question his wisdom" He Is by nature a mystic, but has become controversialist; he has preferred to work through dialectics rather than through the sweet reasonabieness or the Christian life. Posterity, we are told. will reckon him among the big ots. He represents a sect in the church which Ifs entirely out of character with the English tenpera- ment." It is altogether lovely to ob- serve how possessively sthe masked author of this book holds "the Eng fish temperament;" whenever he calls it it comes.
 Dr. Gore Che tells us) belongs to the Catholic party, the sepndthrlit heir of the Tractarians. which, with little of the intellectual forces that gave so much signal power to the OK ford movement, endeavors to make up for that sad if not fatal deficiency oy an almost inexhaustible creduIity' marked ability in superstitious cere- monial, a not very modest assertion of the claims of sacredotalism, a mocking contempt for preaching and a devotion to the duties of the parish priest which has never been exceiieo
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