BOOKS.

MR. PAGE ROBERTS'S NEW SERMONS.*

We explained laet week how far we agreed and how far we dis- agreed with Mr. Page Roberts on the subject of "Liberalism in Religion," a subject to which he devotes two of these sermons, besides a very considerable element in many of the others. In reviewing the book more generally, we need not return to this particular subject, though it may he necessary to touch on matters closely allied to it. For instance, the view which we criticised last week that the truths of religion may stand almost as completely clear of reliance on authority as the truths of science, appears to have influenced very gravely, and not entirely for the better, Mr. Page Roberts's account of the meaning and drift of revelation in the following powerful passage :— " The Christian revelation offers itself as a guide for a life which reaches from the present into eternity. It tells the way in which the soul may rise superior to evil of every kind, and so it is said that Christ came to save His people from their sins.' Now this law of life, this saving method of Christ, is a thing that can be tried. Men can find out by experience whether it can do what it professes to do. Just as you can try a medicine and find out whether or not it is effec- tive, so you can listen to Christ's words and find out whether they are indeed a revelation of salvation. They commend themselves at first sight to nearly all men as laws which are good and high. They can be tried, and it will be found that they are also trite and practicable. Take them then on the ground of their truth—for it is not miracles which make them true—and at least prove their saving powers before you enter upon the difficult realm a the supernatural. This was the teat to which Christ submitted His revelation. He said, If any man will do His will, be shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself.' What would you think of a man who declined to take a medicine, which had proved by large experience to be efficacious, because it was said to have been whis- pered, in ancient days, to some one in a dream, or a mysterious being had told it to some mage or medicine-man of the past ? The one practical question is, Does it cure ? The question, How was the cure discovered? is purely historical ; and it is improper, and I think I may say irrational, for a man either to reject or disparage or ignore that which has the appearance of truth, and offers itself for verifies. tion in individual experience simply because the revealer of the truth is said to have been a wonder-worker. Any man can try Christ's method of salvation, and find out for himself whether indeed it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. The humblest man can test it and prove whether it is true or not. But to prove whether or not some miracle took place is a very different thing indeed. One man will conclude that the miracle did take place, another that it may have taken place, and a third that it did not take place. I can never be certain what effect upon an individual mind may be the evidence which I bring before it for the truth of a miracle. I may be eon. vineed of it, but I can never be certain that the same evidence will convince some one else ; indeed, I may be very doubtful whether it will or not. Bat I am sure about Christ's revelation of the plan of sal- vation, I am certain of its effect when it is honestly tried and faith- fully adopted. Its evidence is in itself, and, as Christ said, 'The • Liberalism in Religion, and other Sermons. Hy W. Page Roberta, Y.A. London Smith, Rider, and Co.

words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.' No man is justified in refusing Christ's laws for life and wellbeing on the ground that they are miraculously attested. If they are true, that is their sufficient foundation."

And Mr. Page Roberts goes on to remark that Carlyle, who was always claiming that man's soul is a medium in which reflections of Divine truth may be discovered, yet rashly rejected the Christian revelation only on the ground that he could not believe in its miraculous attestations. But was Carlyle in this matter so unreasonable as Mr. Page Roberts suggests ? Sup- posing that Carlyle was as reasonable as we think him unreason- able in rejecting the miracles with which our Lord's life is, according to the only accounts we have, thickly studded, how could he regard Christ's life itself as the pure reflection of God which is essential to accepting him as the revealer P To pretend for a moment that we can separate the records of Christ's personality from his belief that a supernatural life of the most perfect kind was manifested in himself, and needed rather an effort of will to restrain than to express, seems to us utterly idle. Now, if that belief were mistaken, should it not justly shake our trust in Christ's self-knowledge? Or if, on the other hand, it did not exist at all, in spite of the overflowing evidence of it in the records remaining to us, can we accept those records as faithful enough even for the purpose of entering into Christ's life and example ? We cannot hold with Mr. Page Roberts that if Carlyle were right in his conviction that the whole story of Christ is penetrated with legend, it would be possible any longer for the human spirit to assume that attitude towards him which is of the very essence of spiritual discipleship.

In the fine sermon in defence of 'devotionality' as a frame of mind, written mainly by way of reply to the late Mr.

Clough's paradoxical remark, that "the belief that religion is, or in any way requires, devotionality, is, if not the most noxious, at least the most obstinate form of irreligion," Mr. Page Roberts puts most powerfully the extreme tenuity of the danger that Protestants are ever likely to forget practical life in spiritual contemplation and emotion

It is possible that by devotionality may be meant the neglect of practical life for absorption in Divine contemplation. For the writer speaks of devotionality as more common in Roman Catholic countries than in England. He talks of absorption in the contemplation of the Deity being the whole life. Now that this is to be condemned is evident. For he who neglects his worldly duties is as imperfect and one-sided as he who does not respond to his heavenly environment. The world is a fact as God Himself is a fact, and we mast respond appropriately to each. We are not only religions beings, but social beings ; and if we are to be perfect, we must be all that we are capable of being, we must live all round, live our complete lives. The patriot is not to ignore his family, the intellectual man his body, nor any his son). It is true that absorption in religion, while the other relationships of life are ignored, is perverting and mutilating. For a human being to live an exclusively religious life is to be half dead ; as it is to be half dead to lead a merely worldly life. But is there much danger of our leading a life of absorption in religion ? There may be more danger of it in Catholic countries. The cloister has constrained many to find in spiritual raptures, reached by asceticism, the joys denied them elsewhere. But is this a danger against which the generality of Englishmen need to be particularly guarded ? Are you afraid, you men of high position and active pro- fession and crowded affairs, that you are really in danger of becoming too religious ? Do you feel that you need plucking up from your knees, lest you should forget to go down to the House, or to be in Court, or Chambers, or society, because you are absorbed in devotion ? Do you think you will lose many fees, or dinners, or dances, because you are so entranced by heavenly ecstacy that the world is an alien and forgotten thing ?—while

'deep asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make.'

No, that is not the danger. The danger which most of us feel, which drives some of us to church on Sundays, that perchance we may escape it, is that of absorption in the world and destitution in religion. The danger is the hurrying life of business or of society— dressing and dining, talking about the same things until we are tired to death of them, and pushing into new places which soon become as monotonous as the old, working and worrying year after year, trying to look young when unkind age is scoring his lines upon us; and still each year coming back to the same dull round of work and pleasure, ever growing duller, until men shake their heads over us and say— 'He is gone,' having lived without God in the world. I know you are not afraid of becoming too prayerful. There is no need to guard you against an encroaching devotionality. I would we had a little more of this Catholic spirit. It is a rational spirit and a becoming spirit. It is the only reasonable response to the greatest of facts. Other facts we must also respond to. But I venture to think that de- votionality will add new energy and warmth to sociality."

That could hardly be more effectively presented ; but does not Mr. Page Roberts's doctrine tend to knock out the foundations of devotionality, when he assumes as beyond question that prayer neither has nor can have any effect except its reflex influence upon our own hearts P-

" I suppose we none of us think that by certain regulated formali- ties and ecclesiastical machinery we can manipulate the heavenly world, as the sails of a mill are managed from below. We do not think we come to church to work upon the Almighty by a prescribed ritual ; nor, by a kind of celestial wizardry, to make heavenly spirits do oar bidding. We do not think we come here to alter the mind and law of God, which are holy and just and good. It is to express our own minds and souls, and to alter our own minds and souls, we come here to draw nigh to God."

Surely, if ever there were a certainty in this world, it is that Christian teaching distinctly insists that intercessory prayer has consequences other than those exerted on the minds of the petitioner. "The prayer of faith shall save the sick" is not merely an incidental saying of St. James, but is expressive of an attitude of belief which runs through the whole story of the primitive Church. Nor does that belief in the least imply that "human beings can alter the mind and law of God, which are holy and just and good." Of course, God does not alter his purposes at the prayer of men ; but it is one of the first of his purposes,—if we can trust to revelation,—that men should pour out their hearts freely to him ; and in order to make them do. so, he has seen fit to tell us that there are many things which may be good for us if we do pray for them, which would be bad for us if we obtained them without prayer. Indeed, it is the very heart of Christian teaching that God admits us to a real interchange of life with himself, giving us much as the consequence of our availing ourselves of this privilege of true worship, which he would not, and in his perfect goodness, could not, otherwise give us at all.

Again, has not Mr. Page Roberts's religious " Liberalism " obscured his sense of the absolute irreconcileability between Christian teaching and the doctrine of "Determinism," when he writes as follows ?—

" Because a man is bad this minute, must he always remain bad ? Is there a stern, absolute fate in human life, and is an iron Calvinism the only resting-place for the perplexed spirit ? Not only may character change—I believe it is changing every minute. But change implies a cause. A thing must remain the same if there is nothing to change it. A change cannot rise up spontaneously, without any reason, antecedent, or cause. When naturalists talk of spontaneous variations and sports and so forth, they only mean that the variations are of a kind whose cause is too remote or obscure for them to dis- cover. There is no more spontaneous variation than there is spon- taneous generation. Sports are as impossible as chance. Each has an adequate, if as yet undiscovered, cause. Every variation is a reaction of some kind or other ; it is the result of some change which we call a cause. If a change occurs in character, it is the result of some change outside of character. Change comes on change. No man, without any reason whatever, can in a moment determine to change his character from bad to good, still less can he in a moment

do it There is no freedom of the will to act in opposition to the nature. It is not the will which rules the nature, but the nature which expresses itself in the will. Your will and your nature or character are not two separate things. Your will is a part of your nature and cannot be separated from it. You may say 'you could do things if you liked, bat that you would not.' Precisely—' if you liked.' But it is because you do not like that you do not do them. To say you could do a thing, only you would not, is a flat contra- diction. You mean that, if it were not for the strong feeling you have on the subject, the mere act would be quite easy. Bat the strong feeling which would not let you do that thing is you; it is your character which makes that act impossible. You must act in accord- ance with your character. A bad man will sot badly, and a religious man religiously. 'The willing is the doing in this case ; and he that says he is willing to do his duty, but he cannot, does not understand what he says.'"

To our mind, that virtually denies the voluntary agency of men altogether. Of course, it is perfectly true that "no man without any reason whatever, can determine to change his character from bad to good," and equally true that if he did, he could not succeed. But this argument confuses between the reason for a change, and the cause of a change. There is often reason enough and to spare for a change, which there is yet no causal power to make, till the will adopts that reason and sup- plies the force needful to give it effect. There is always a reason for trying to do right; but that reason does not at all imply doing right unless the will exerts itself to give effect to the reason. To say that in order to produce a right change in character there must be a reason for the change, is true ; but if there be ever so much reason, it does not in the least imply that the change will take place. The reason why a man aims at a mark is that he wishes to hit the mark ; but that reason will not furnish him with the power to shoot or to throw, if he has not got the power

or resolve needful. To say that there must be an external cause, apart from the self-cause, the free will, to begin the change, is surely not true. That which supplies the power is already ther and it can at least bestir itself, and begin to move, how',7r imperfect its initial efforts, without any external car '"c)

set it in motion. A bad man need not act badly ; he may fight his own badness, and commence a struggle against it. A religious man need not act religiously ; he may refuse to exert his will as religion would have him exert it, if he finds the temptation to yield to the stream of his own spontaneous desires so great as to need a violent effort to oppose it. Again, when Mr. Page Roberts says (p. 153), "Leave men in all which surrounds them and acts upon them, in precisely the same state, without the smallest change, and they must remain the same," he says what appears to us to justify the Calvinist In his predestinarianism. The will is no doubt a very limited force in human nature ; but within narrow limits, it is free to commence a struggle without any external action upon it, and constantly does so. If not, then the whole language which ascribes sin and righteousness, demerit and merit, to human action, is erroneous from beginning to end, and the very essence of the Christian Gospel is false.

But we must not conclude our review as if we differed so widely on one or two points from Mr. Page Roberts that we cannot appreciate to the fall the value of these thoughtful and thoroughly real-minded sermons. For one page from the drift of which we differ, there are ten with the drift of which we heartily agree, and the substance of which we thoroughly admire. They show, too, not only a very reflective mind, but a mind which delights in appreciating heartily the best thoughts of others. There are more striking sentences quoted from other writers in this volume than in any volume we have lately read, and we only wish that, with the names of the authors, Mr. Page Roberts had added full references to the particular works in which they might be found. It would add something to the value of a most valuable book if he would give these references in a second edition.