“Now and Then” is a Christmas book for a Christian people. It is a tale of fiction, which the most devout may read with no fear of insult, and without risk of being obliged to suspend their orthodoxy for the sake of an hour’s pleasant reading. The book invests Christmas with its legitimate Christian associations. It cannot be denied that the tendency of this species of literature, for the last few years, has been to denude the sacred season of all these associations, and to surround it with others which are at once trifling, irreligious, and heathenish. We dwell upon this fact, because there needs some courage boldly to speak God’s truth in an age rapidly verging towards practical infidelity. In Parliament, the once great leader of a greater Christian party publicly denies the necessity of a declaration of Christian faith as the test of a legislator. In our light literature, we find references enough to the goodness of Providence, but a studious avoidance of the name and properties by which that Providence is recognised when we come to our knees by the bed-side or in the sanctuary. There is, we grant, not so much a denial of the essential doctrines of Christianity every where about us save in the church, as a studious and utter disregard of them; but there is imminent peril in this very disregard. Neglect precedes desertion. Let us be duly grateful, we say, to one who, in the modest pages of a simple tale, recalls us to our obligations, and reminds us that the chief of duties here is to cling firmly to the faith by which the world is saved, and to proclaim _first principles_ when that world is basely shrinking from their free and open recognition. Let us, however, not be misunderstood. “Now and Then” is not a religious novel—popularly so called. Mr Warren is not on the present occasion a “religious novelist,” as controversial divines, usurping the functions of the tale writer are, for want of a better term, absurdly styled. The Christianity which pervades this book is pure and catholic, and has nothing to do with the quarrels of sects and classes: it is applicable to universal humanity. There is no vulgar presumptuous dabbling with controverted points of Scripture, which, appearing in works of fiction, is utterly abominable and ludicrous, even in its futility: but the author, starting with a high and admirable purpose, and keeping that purpose in view to the very last, confines himself strictly and solely to what we all regard as Christianity’s irrevocable and fundamental principles;—great saying truths which none can blink with safety, and which he brings forward with an evident profound sincerity and reverence, impossible to mistake and difficult to slight. The story, potently simple in itself, opens with marvellous simplicity. We quote from the beginning:—