SOME VOLUMES OF SERMONS"
CANON HOLLAND sets himself with characteristic energy and power to argue against what he calls "the absurd and ignorant commonplace, that Christianity is a separate matter from its dogmatic belief." Perhaps the epithets might have been spared or modified ; there is a suspicion of arrogance in them ; and nothing could be more fatal than such a suspicion to the per- suasiveness at which the preacher, above all men, should aim. But the originality and ability of the argument is beyond all question. Nothing is more familiar than the complaint that the simplicity of the Master's work and teaching was over- laid with a dogmatic system. Nor does this complaint refer to the later developments of theology ; it points to a contrast between the Gospels and the Epistles. It is urged that the Christianity of the Creeds and Confessions comes from Paul rather than from Christ. And hence arises, we are told, its great weakness, the tendency to division, and its consequent failure to deal adequately with the evils and troubles of humanity. ' Let us go back,' it is said, ` to the Jesus whom the Evangelists '— some would go still further, and say, whom the Sinop- tists picture to us ; study the message which he taught, the work which he did, the example which he set ; and free our- selves from the depressing weight of theological system which human ingenuity has laid upon it.' Canon Holland takes, so to speak, these disputants at their word ; he goes back to the Christ of the Gospels, and endeavours to ascertain from the Gospels which record the acts and purposes of his life what was his mind. We cannot condense within our very narrow limits the argument which he builds upon this reference. It will be best to quote a passage which seems to us to set forth very forcibly one, and perhaps the most important, side of it Behold, we go up to Jerusalem.' Here was His great secret, here His burden; this is the commandment He received from His Father, that He should lay down His Life for His sheep. On this He brooded. This was the Will of the Father which was to Him His meat and His drink; this was the baptism wherewith He should be baptised, and how wee He straitened unto the day of its accomplish- ment ! This was His secret ; but not one word, not one whisper of all this to the Galilean crowds ; not one syllable stole out to tell the secret that worked within—not one word. He moved among them tenderly and pitifully; He helped, He healed, He forgave ; the aline eight of those tusshepherded multitudes was enough to stir His com- passion but His Heart was hidden from them, and they knew and
F guessed nothing of His Mind or, indeed, He has work to do, urgent, vast, and awful, before the night draws on. Why is He here ? He is come, not to heal a few sick folk only, but in the mind of those eternal counsels which reach from the beginning to the end, He is come to cast the stone from Heaven which shall break all the kingdoms of the earth and grind them to powder. He is come to gather into one act the entire story of the world, to fulfil all things that are written in Moses, and the Law, and the Prophets. He is come, laying His Hands on the courses of the stars, on the motions of the earth, on the empires of men, on the wars of the flesh, on the tyrannies of sin. He is here, as Samson, lifting the gates of death from the house of evil ; He is here wrestling with principalities and powers; He is here to beget the new race of men; He is here to
build the new House of God, the Temple of his Body Where, then, can He find building ground ? Not in them who bring Him but sand; only in those Twelve, selected, prepared, set apart from the crowd, led off with Him in lonely places, men who could be trained at last to penetrate His secret, to apprehend His ]ifework, to name His Name. 'Whom say ye that I am?' ' Thou art the Christ.' Oh, the great opening, the relief of the soul! The Spirit of the Lord, so hidden, so repressed, leaps forward out of its secret place, out of its loneliness, out of its silence. At last, at last, He is through the sand ; He has touched ground; He can begin. 'Blessed art thou Simon Barjonas ; and I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this hook of My Name, now first apprehended, I will build My Church; and so build that the gates of death shall not prevail against it.'"
It is impossible to deny the force of this argument, though one can hardly help thinking that the works of mercy are treated too much as if they were w,iezeya, a quite secondary activity to which, for compassion's sake, he turns aside, as it were, from his main purpose. "He went about doing good, and healing them which were possessed of the devil," seemed an adequate
• Creed and Character; Sermons. By the Rev. Ef. EL Holland, M.A. London: RivIngtons. 18137.—Sormons Preached to Harrow Boys. By the Rev. 3.5. C. Welld.ou, H.& London : Riringtons. 1887.—Swntons Preached at Uypingluent School. By the Rae. Edward Thring. M.A. 2 vole Cambridge Deighton and Boil; London : Hell and Sons. 1886.—T he Bird's Nest, and other Sermons for Childrra of all Ages. By the Rev. Samuel Cos, D.D. London T. Fisher Unwm. 1226.
description of his Master to an Apostle when he was preaching him to the first Gentile convert.
The sermons, besides being closely argued, are rich in illus- tration, and adorned with passages of noble eloquence. Here, for instance, is a statement, plain almost to boldness, of one aide of the truth of the Incarnation :—
"Oar Lord took our flesh, not in pity, not in any fanciful licence, but in all sober earnest. He did not take it up as a dress, to do what He chose with. Nay, He took it, took it as it stood, as it really was ; as Si. John says, 'the Word became flesh.' He became that which His Birth from His Mother's womb made necessary and essential. That Mother was a Jewess, of a certain lineage, with a certain fixed body of natural and historio conditions about her; and all these are His ; all this He undertakes. He pushes nothing of it aside ; He uses no freedom of peculiar privileges ; He will not pick out and choose. What His flesh is, that He assumes."
We have detached this passage from its context, which is to show the limitations to which Christ during his human life sub- mitted, on account of what we conceive to be its great value as correcting the ordinary conception of the humanity, a conception which reduces it to a mere shell and covering, so to speak, of an indwelling divinity. But the context itself is full of a rare beauty and thoughtfulness, and we would gladly have quoted it at length. And we can only refer our readers to a very fine sermon on "The Fellowship of the Church," preached on the anniversary of the Queen's accession, before the Commissioners delegated to the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of last year. The least satisfactory discourse is that which treats of "The Activity of Service." The preacher, as it seems to us, states the problem of the apparent contradiction between the necessity of preparation for Christ's coming and the necessity of our life's work without solving it. It is no answer to say :— "'Who are those whom he approves at the Judgment Seat ? Those who had sought with deepest zeal to better the state of men here, —to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners." The problem does not exist for them. It is for those who have to rise early and wake late, buying and selling, ministering to the world's wants, and—more perplexing task still—to its pleasures. How about professional players, dancers, acrobats
We hardly know what to say of a volume of sermons of which the preacher says in his preface that he does not "expect or wish them to be read beyond the limits of the Harrow world." Why, then, has the volume been sent for general review? There is really a little exaggeration in this matter, and others besides Dr. Welldon are guilty of it. Each great school has its special character ; but, after all, it resembles its fellows much more than it differs from them, and would, indeed, be a mischievous rather than a beneficial institution if it did not. If a Harrow, or Eton, or Rugby boy were sent out into the world with any kind of stamp that distinguished him from other English gentlemen, he would have no reason to thank his alma, mater. We have ventured to disregard Dr. Welldon's wish by reading his volume, and shall again offend by heartily recommending it to other readers outside the limits which he sets. And, indeed, patting aside a very few names and words and allusions, all of which it would be very easy to omit or adapt, there is little in the sermons which might not be advantageously spoken to any audience of schoolboys. The preacher expresses himself with admirable directness and simplicity, while all his utterances are informed with a sympathy which cannot fail to make them highly effective. The sermon on "The Bible" is an excellent instance of the way in which he deals with one of the intellectual difficulties of boys ,—" I do not wish to conceal from you, that when you come to read the Bible in a thoughtful spirit, you will find a good deal in it which will disturb and also distress you." And he proceeds to speak of these disturbing and distressing elements in a frank, manly way which must be most helpful. A practical difficulty of a very serious kind is handled in "The Keeping of Sunday." Every schoolmaster knows that Sundays are one of the chief difficulties of his work, a difficulty which, we venture to think, must be enormously increased if he is a secularist. Dr. Welldon deals boldly with the question from the religions standpoint. "As regards the details of your life," as he tersely puts it, "I always feel not so much that Sunday imposes on you novel duties, as that it tests the degree of your spirituality." Another practical discourse, with which we find ourselves in the heartiest sympathy, is that on "The Animal World." Here are some eloquent and touching words from it :— "It is for the love of these dumb creatures that I plead with you. We know little of them ; but we know that they are strangely like ourselves, that they have bones and nerves and sinews even as we have ; that they are keenly sensitive of pain; that they are capable of affection; that they often return good for kindness that we have done them ; nay, sometimes return good for our very evil. Physiology in its indisputable teachings is ever narrowtn• g the gulf (except indeed spiritually) which parts, or was deemed to part, the animal world from oars. Can you doubt that, by however mysterious means, God is accomplishing a purpose in their lives as in ours ? Think of the providential power shown in the making of any one of them. There may be some one here who recalls how the historian Gibbon, in closing his narrative of the building of the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, having said that the enthusiast who entered it might well regard it as the residence, or even the workmanship, of the Deity, adds, 'Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant is the labour, if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple.' Thew are the creatures—so mysterious, so fall of marvel--of whioh, as I have said, you are the masters. Do not be ignorant or careless of the duty you owe them. Remember, even in your daily life remember, what they may lemma to you and you to them. For the poetry of the world begins with the story of one who was a wanderer over many lands and seas, and, when he came at last to his home, there was none that knew him but only the faithful hound that wagged his tail and drooped his ears and had not the strength to draw nearer to his master. And the latest word of modern science is the frank avowal of the great naturalist who was laid not long since to his rest in Westminster Abbey, that he for his part should deem it no discredit to be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy to save his keeper's life."
Dr. Thring gives us so many of his sermons—no less than one hundred and sixty-one—that, while we are enabled in an uncommon degree to judge of the character of his teaching, it is impossible to describe them but in the most general way. These are direct, plain-spoken, and often original in conception and treatment. This originality is, indeed, their most striking characteristic. Much has been said, for instance, about the petition in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," and the difficulty of the seeming assurance of the daily bread to many who utter the words still remains. Here is a striking suggestion
"Daily bread, remember, prayed for daily, not a far-off future supply ; prayed for every day, though the bread is there, what does it mean ? The bread is indeed there, but that has little to do with the prayer. It is not a matter of food only, it is also a prayer, it is also an aaking on your part, it is also an asking God. Whether you get your daily bread from God depends on you and your heart. Whether you get your daily bread from God, or are listening to the tempter's voice, saying as of old, command that these stones be made bread ;' whether it is God's bread, or devil's bread, the fruit of prayer, or the fruit of selfish and evil-hearted thoughts and work, does matter. It is the whole matter."
We would single out for special praise a quite admirable sermon on "The Glory of Defeat." But Dr. Thring is always worth reading, and his two volumes, which we do not wish shorter by a single sermon, are fall of solid, valuable matter.
We have only a few lines to give to Dr. Cox's sermons, sermons abounding with that writer's characteristic merits. They were delivered at the anniversaries of a Sunday-school, and one entitled "The Function of Children," may be taken as typical of all. They show admirably how a preacher may be simplicity itself, and yet give his hearers of his best, speak so that all may understand, and yet not speak down. Another quality they have which one naturally expects to find in all that Dr. Cox says,—the rich illustration which comes from a certain felicity, together with careful study and wide reading. Here is a happy example in the comment on our Lord's reply to Martha's complaint of her sister :— "Though He rebukes the temper, the petulance of her reproach, Lord, wrest thou not that my sister hath loft me to serve alone !' He rebukes it very tenderly, turning it off with a kindly and humorous play on words, with a pan, with an equivoque, which makes his rebuke half a jest. I think He was a little amused to see the busy Martha complaining of having too mach to do, as well as a little sorry to see her so troubled and careful about many things of comparatively slight importance. For there is a touch of playfulness in his reply to her. He takes au image from the very table about which Martha was so unnecessarily and unduly anxious for the words rendered Mary bath chosen the good part,' mean Mary hath chesen the good portion, the best dish, the Benjamin's mess,' It is as though He had said to the careful and fretted housekeeper 'You are very kind, Martha ; you are doing your best to please me, and to give me as good a dinner as you can and yet it is Mary who has brought me the beat dish, the food I like most. She is nourishing and refreshing my spirit with her love and sympathy. She is giving me an oppor- tunity of feeding her with the bread of life and the wine of the king. dom. Our fellowship with each other is the true feast. And you, 0 you poor Martha, are so taken up with your dainties that you are losing the feast!'"
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