THE NOBLER RISK AND OTHER SERMONS OF AMBROSE WHITE VERNON.

Edited by Roy B. Chamberlin. Hanover:Dartmouth Publications, 1955.148 pp. $4.00.

This slender volume, beautifully printed by the Stinehour Press of Lunenburg, Vermont, contains seventeen sermons by the late Dr. Ambrose White Vernon, carefully and judiciously selected for publication by Roy Chamberlin.

To the large number of Dartmouth graduates who knew Dr. Vernon personally as preacher or teacher or both they will bring back vivid memories of his strong power of communication, his ability in the pulpit and in the classroom to rouse minds and touch hearts. And those who come to this book with-Bermuda is only twenty-four miles long, yet within its small area are any number of things which charm visitors into going back year after year.

Bermuda is a group of 365 islands. One for each day in the year, so Bermudians say. Sailing among them is a neverending pleasure. Golf, tennis, fishing, cycling, picnicking are all-year sports. Bermuda's beaches are wide, pink and soft. The water is blue, inviting and refreshing. Bermuda's houses are unique — an artful blending of white roofs, pastel-coloured walls and massive chimneys. And flowers—Hibiscus, Oleander, Bougainvillea, Easter lilies - splash the Islands with brilliant hues.

Bermuda is only 700 miles from the mainland. It's easy to get to for a holiday whether you go leisurely by ocean liner or speedily by plane. Living is simply solved too for the Islands hotels are noted for their service, food, accommodations and sports facilities. And guest houses open wide their doors to Bermuda's easy way of living.

There are many details to be considered in planning any holiday. You'll save yourself time and trouble by talking things over with your travel agent. Helpful too is the Bermuda Vacation Kit which you can get by writing to: The Bermuda Trade Development Board, 620 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y. out having had the good fortune to know him previously will find here an equally rewarding mental and moral experience.

The sermons are of wide variety, but all are marked by clarity of thought, beauty and dignity of expression, and profound depth of meaning. They reflect an astonishing range of experience, reading, and study, yet never miss touching the average man's practical, everyday life. Man's doubts and failures in his struggles with an imperfect world are given full recognition, but are not accepted as an excuse for the avoidance of renewed effort toward righteousness. Constant stress is laid on man's duty to set himself high purposes and to follow his ideals with rigid selflessness. Only thus can he come to know the mystery and the bounty of God's love.

With sermons as with poems the response of individual readers will depend upon those unpredictable variations of personal characteristics that mark off man from man, and a reviewer therefore hesitates to select any one of them as more excellent than another. Yet I dare say that all educated men will find the sermon which is printed first and which gives the title to the volume, "The Nobler Risk," particularly stimulating. Many Dartmouth men will recall it as the baccalaureate sermon preached by Dr. Vernon for the Class of 1929, and perhaps no higher praise can be given it than to say that it is as timely today as it was then. None of the others, however, has lost immediate applicability with the flight of the years.

For myself, I would place on the same level with this one the sermons entitled "I Thought that I Ought," "The Conflict between Ideals and Institutions," and "On Reading Oneself into Eternal Life." This is not, of course, to disparage the others; I commend them all to you.

BERMUDA

Her charm and grace are made of many tilings