FROM WHENCE COMETH MY HELP

Boynton Merrill's New Volume is a Spiritual Antidote For Those Weary of Conflict in a Ruthless World

by Boynton Merrill '15, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1939, "7 PP.,$1.25.Reviewed by

THE WORLD IS FULL of a number of things so diverse, so conflicting, that it is seemingly falling apart. Here is one world, crashing constantly into our consciousness, that of bomb-proof shelters and marching millions, of ruthless ambitions and clashing "isms," of crime and grinding poverty. Its noisy demands upon our attention make us forget that there is another world, that of man's deathless dreams and hopes, of mans enduring quest after truth and beauty, of man's imperishable faith and love. Now comes a persuasive voice calling men, tortured by the anguish of one world, back to the abiding reality and healing power of the other.

This little book provides no analyses of society's struggles, no answers to the problems of school, church or state—that is not its purpose, though the author has been for many years the pastor of a large suburban parish and therefore involved in such concerns. In these pages he is never the theologian, the ethical teacher, or the prophet of social justice, but rather the mystic and the seer, the opener of closed doors and darkened windows. His is the poet's vision and the artist's pen. Everywhere his sensitive imagination touches the commonplace with fresh beauty, and finds in the fleeting a certain time lessness. His deftness in illustration is matched with terseness and concreteness in style. He portrays both the fraility and the nobility of men with a sure hand, and always as if bringing them into the presence of the Divine.

The fruit of long brooding over the best that man has written and over man's strivings after the fuller life, these fifty short meditations should be read in the same, devotional spirit. They call not so much for a sharpened mentality as for a deepened awareness. Such a volume should reach many a hungry heart. It will be often found on a bed-side table, a lastmoment companion before one falls into sweet sleep. It will bring renewal to the faltering, tenderness to the strong, and wings to the earth-bound. It will be a "support and stay" in moments of decision, a ray of light in clouded hours. It will lift men and women out of the tawdry into the lovely, out of the ephemeral into the eternal. For every page suggests what mere words can never fully say, that a man, if he will, may in very truth walk his days with One who, though forever unseen, is actually "closer than hands and feet."