“We shall read today in the Book of Experience.” These words of Bernard of Clairvaux serve well as an adequate preface to the six short novels by “Mark Rutherford,” which constitute an important contribution to the intimate religious literature of the last century. For, although cast in the form of fiction, these narratives clearly belong to that comparatively small class of inevitable and significant works which are best described as “confessional.” Indeed, neither the form of the books, nor the shelter sought behind his now familiar pseudonym, served long to conceal the identity of the author, or to divert attention from the autobiographical aspects of his works.