. BOOKS.

MR. LLEWELYN DAVIES ON SUPERSTITION.* WE have seldom read a wiser little book. The four sermons it contains are short, terse, and full of true spiritual wisdom, expressed with a lucidity and a moderation that must give them weight even with those who agree least with their author. They are written with the view of counteracting the superstitious elements connected with the late London "Mission," and nothing could have been better adapted for that purpose. The author's steady grasp of the true spirituality of the Christian faith gives a charac- ter of almost apopbthegmatic strength to many of the passages, and the style is so simple and completely free from the slightest tinge of rhetoric, that every one can see that the sermons represent not merely the author's convictions, but his calmest, gravest, and deepest convictions.

Dr. Newman, in one of the most celebrated of his Oxford sermons, expressed his belief that "it would be a great gain to this country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be." " Not, of course," he added, " that I think the tempers of mind herein implied desirable, which would be an

evident absurdity ; but I think them eminently more desirable and more promising than a heathen obduracy, and a cold, self- sufficient, self-wise tranquillity." Mr. Davies's first sermon, on "Light and Health," is in many respects a comment on this line of thought, though it makes no reference to Dr. Newman's doctrine on the subject, and indeed, in mere logic, is not necessarily quite opposed to it. For Mr. Davies is not comparing, as Dr. Newman was, the superstitious temper with the cold, self-wise temper, and he passes no judgment on the comparative hopefulness of these two neither of them very hopeful states of mind. But he is attacking the idea that ' religion' as such, and a religious tem- per as such, is necessarily good. He accepts the assertion of the Ritualists that their teaching tends to make men religious, but he says, Christ came to deliver us from many sorts of religion ; not to make us religious in the abstract, but religious in the sense of believing in a God who is light, and iu whom is no darkness at all. Whether or not a low type of religion is better or worse than no religion he does not discuss. He does lay great stress on the fact that Christ intended to deliver men from some kinds of religion no less than from the absence of all kinds of religion, that he intended to release us as much from the gloomy super-

stitions of false religion as from the dreary and hopeless wastes of no religion :-

"It is a mistaken habit to speak of Religion as if it were absolutely a good thing. But it is a not uncommon one, and one into which any of us may naturally slide. For many uses the term is a convenient one, and it seems to save the names of God and Christ from too familiar handling. Religion, however, it ought to be remembered, is not the same thing as God, or as the Kingdom of God, or as the Gospel of Christ. It may be the duty of the followers of Christ to contend against the spread of Religion. Recall to your minds how earnest and vehement St. Paul was against a sort of Religion which was spreading itself in the Churches over which he had the oversight. His adversaries were those whom we call Judaizers; they sought to maintain the authority of the Jewish ceremonial over believers in Christ. It could not have been fairly affirmed of these Judaizing Christians, that they were not religions, or that they were not in earnest. They were very religions ' • they held the civil authority in most religious contempt ; they appealed to men in the name of supernatural sanctions to take trouble and do what was disagreeable to them. Yet St. Paul declared that they reduced his Gospel to a nullity, and he never tired of beseeching his converts to beware of allowing themselves to be brought into a religious bondage. This conflict of his, which occupies so much space in his letters, is the more remarkable, because he is opposing a subtle and insidious tendency, and not a rival creed. Many, I imagine, of his hearers most have been * IVarnings against Superstition, is Four Sermons for the Day. By J. Ldewelya Davies, M.A. London: Macmillan. startled and surprised at the vehemence with which St. Paul protested against the teaching of men who were fellow-Christians, and whom he had no desire to cast out of the Church. Some, I dare say, put it down to personal jealousy. But they did not know St. Paul. Those who had entered into his convictions and feelings about the Gospel of the grace of God wore bettor able to understand his anxiety, that the preaching of a Redemption to be won by human hearts and lives through a joyful acceptance of the reconciling purposes of God, should not be supplanted by the preaching of a Religion to be forced by threats upon men's observance. Even Paganism was entitled to the name of Religion. And the Apostles who went about proclaiming Christ had it much more in their minds to announce a deliverance from Religion than to persuade men to be more religious. From some emphatically religious influences, from some fears of the supernatural, they earnestly desired to sot men free."

That is admirably said, and the whole sermon is quite beyond any praise of ours. But there is one weighty sentence in it from which we strongly dissent :—

" Love and righteousness, we are taught, are the essential attributes of the Divine nature. Gracious and righteous is the Lord. Of these two attributes, as we see them declared in the Old Testament and manifested in the life of Jesus Christ, Love is the more fundamental. Righteousness, or the maintaining of Order, is the mode in which God's love works. Love that does not maintain a harmonious order is incon- ceivable; and the order of the universe, especially its moral order, cannot be thoroughly understood, except as having its root in a Loving Will."

Now we cannot admit that either in the teaching of revelation or in the view of natural religion, love is a more fundamental attri- bute of God than righteousness ; still less that righteousness, as Mr. Davies seems to imply, is a mere maintaining of order, or a sort of

moral condition under which alone God's love can work. We do not say, indeed, that God's righteousness, which is certainly the first subject of historical revelation in order of time, is more fundamental than his love. That might be as great a blunder iu the opposite direction. But if you say that of two divine attributes, one goes deeper than the other, you imply by that, as Mr. Davies's further language seems to imply, that the more superficial is only a sort of derivative from the deeper attribute, that righteousness is a mode of love. Can we assert this without abolishing altogether the intrinsic distinction between good and evil ? Would love for absolutely evil beings,—if there be any such,—or what is the same thing, for beings even not purely evil, so far as they are evil, be conceivable in God ? Can God love us not only for what we are capable of being, but as selfish, insincere, treacherous beings ? If not, we do not think it is possible to say that God's righteousness is merely the orderly mode in which his love manifests itself. We must admit that his righteousness is as intrinsically and fundamentally divine as his love, and that his love is given—to moral beings at all events—only in regard to their capacity for

receiving his righteousness. But Mr. Davies's statement is not of the essence of his teaching, and the teaching itself seems to us absolutely good, though this doubtful and dangerous remark is interpolated. Still, in the case of so lucid and coherent a thinker as Mr. Davies, it is always better to call attention to any obiter dictum of a prolific character likely to bear fruit in subsequent teaching, that he may be induced to reconsider it. This remark, if logically worked out, might tend, we believe, to a religion of mere good-nature, which is further from Christ's teaching on the one side, than the most superstitious form of it can be on another.

Mr. Davies's second sermon, on "Sensuous Awe," is as succinct and vigorous as his first. It is not easy, for instance, to put the wisest view of the modern discussion about ritual into better words than these :—

" It is difficult for a thoughtful and considerate person to speak positively on this subject, because, in all that relates to common forms, so much depends upon taste and feeling, and taste and feeling, again, are so powerfully influenced by custom. We are familiar enough with different extremes of practice, with regard to the forms of religious worship. You may represent to yourselves, on the one hand, a building like a barn, with its inside walls bare and cold, marked in every part, and not least where the Christian altar stands, by signs of indifference and neglect ; the worshippers and perhaps the minister using hardly any forms of religious gesture, but behaving with nearly as much free- dom as if they were outside the building. This you may describe as the Presbyterian or the Puritan usage. You may represent to your- selves a very different scene ; • a beautiful ecclesiastical building, with the dyes of its storied windows casting a dim religious light., rich with solemn ornament, each part reverently cared for, but especially the sanctuary and the altar, the forms and the attitudes and the tones of worship all studied for imaginative effect,—a scene striking you as something so different from the common outside world, a sheltering refuge for faith and devotion. This you may call the Catholic usage. Yet every one knows that the feeling towards religions forms is pro- foundly affected by habit, and that there may be more of devotion and reverence iu some Presbyterian than in some Roman Catholic wor- shipper, in a Presbyterian than in a Roman Catholic congregation ; nay, that the very action of the service may in particular cases not improbably touch and move the Presbyterian more than the Roman Catholic. Forms which are perfectly familiar to us, we take as they come, and are not greatly affected by them. The way in Which a

service may impress any one to whom it is new and strange, is no

measure of its influence upon those who are accustomed to it The introduction of more taste and art and care into our ritual has in some degree carried the whole population along with it. It belongs in part to a movement which is general as well as religious, and affects common life no less than Churches. There is ritualism among Dissenters as well as in the Church. Probably most persons of middle-age are conscious of having moved with the stream, and many can remember that they once felt a repugnance to things which now almost everyone prefers. It is not creditable that there should be unreasonable panic and misjudgment about attempted improvements of the externals of worship. But I venture to plead two justifying considerations in excuse of the instinct of resistance to such attempts. First, I think it is reasonable to deprecate excessive or abrupt change, in our traditional ways of worship. Feelings of reverence grow up entwined with arrangements or customs which may not be in themselves the best. And the real want of reverence is in those who treat with levity or roughness religious habits which have been the inheritance of any generation. Whilst it is not to be desired that ritual forms should be stereotyped, the change of them ought not only to be manifestly for. the better, but it ought also to be made as smoothly and gently as possible. Secondly, I am convinced that it is well to be watchful against making too much of the senses in religion. We are always in danger of falling away from spirituality. A sensuous worship, appealing in however refined a way to eye and ear and artistic feeling, may be a subtle snare ; and the danger of it is much increased, if there is a deliberate attempt to muzzle and chain up the understanding, in the interest of sentiment and of the- imagination.

Again, in relation to Confession and Absolution, Mr. Davies, while carefully fair to the Roman Catholic view, and admitting that even the Roman theology does not give the priest the power of preventing in any way the granting of God's pardon after a true act of penitence, or of conferring that pardon where there is no penitence, yet states the objection to the sacerdotal system in its strongest, because its soberest, form in the following terse words :

"The practice of Confession invites Christians to depend upon a continually renewed private absolution. I do not say, to substitute the priest's forgiveness for God's forgiveness ; but, to look for God's forgiveness as coming, from time to time, in the word I absolve thee from the priest's mouth. This would hardly be denied. And a most serious element it is in this practice of confession. Consider what it involves. I am in the habit, say, of going to confession. I do some- thing of which my conscience accuses me. My thoughts immediately run forward to the next occasion on which I shall kneel to the priest's ear. Lot it be allowed in favour of confession that the prospect of having to make my sin known distresses me. It may be also that I look forward with hope to the absolution which I desire at any cost to receive. But in the meantime I am keeping my sin for the priest's ear. Until I can confess it, I carry it with me as a burden. From week to week, in fact, or from month to month, I am accumulating a load which at a given hour is to be cast off. Most assuredly, a momentous depend- ence upon the priesthood is thus inculcated. The transactions of the spirit with God are not to be carried on directly, but at intervals through an external representative. The whole idea of Divine forgiveness tends to become associated with the utterance of spoken words dealing with things that can be recited."

It would be hard to add a word that could strengthen the force of that criticism.

The sermon which is, we think, the least satisfactory of the four to us, is the one on " Prayer," though it is full of valuable and thoughtful passages. What can be truer, or finer, for instance, than that on the relation between prayer and the belief in evolution?

But the following principle seems to us both doubtful and dangerous, at least in its application to the duty of social prayer :—

" Before resolving to absent himself from social worship, or to break any other rule intended for the common edification, a Christian ought to satisfy himself not only that the ordinance is not good for his own soul, but also that it is one of which he- may beneficially promote the general disuse. He should not only ask, Can I stay away from Church without loss ? but, Is it desirable that other people also should not come to Church ?—not only, Is it profitable for myself that I should spend Sunday in such a way ? but, Would it be better for the community in general to spend it in a similar way ? In Christ, no man lives to him- self; and rules which it is good for the whole body that the members should observe, become thereby binding on the individual members."

Now to give up our liberty in things morally indifferent to us for the sake of others to whom its exercise might cause temptation, is one thing, and to go through a form which is hurtful if it is not of the heart, is another. Mr. Davies is referring, of course, solely to Christians, and not to those wbo might object on fundamental

grounds to private as well as to social worship ; but even with that limitation, is it not an infinitely higher example to set, to treat communion with God as something perfectly free, as something depending on inward wants and not on outward habits, than to• insist on people going to church for the sake not of 'their own hearts, but the example set to others, on whom that example may perhaps operate precisely in the same unreal way? For ourselves, we believe that social worship is as natural as social enjoyment. But worship is ao sacred that in cases where, through any singu- larity of mental constitution, it is otherwise, we maintain that to do what is unnatural, in such a sphere as this, for the sake only of example, is to set an example of making a formal habit of the most real and inward of all acts. On the very same ground, a man

might fairly argue that though confession did him no good per- sonally, or even did him harm, (and must not any unreal religious act harm us ?) he ought to continue it, if he held it good for the multitude. It seems to us a very dangerous thing to introduce the formal motive of ' example' into a region as deep as this. Again, we do not think this sufficient, as an answer to those who say that if God does all outward things by law, prayer for any outward objects is a mistake :—

" I am not disposed to give way to the argument that Prayer must at all events lot outward things alone, because outward things are evi- dently ruled by Law. If the argument asserts that the course of things is so fixed that no change can possibly be made in it, it proves too much. It tells us that all desire is ridiculous, that all effort is vain, that all thankfulness is a delusion, inasmuch as we are but passive ele- ments in a course of things which cannot be altered. We may safely disregard an argument which affirms all this. But if the actual order of things is of such a kind that it may be modified by the effort of will, where is the impossibility of its being modified by prayer ?"

That is not accurate, because a great desire for really unattainable things is not "ridiculous," but only unfortunate ; the fact that there is no hope of the satisfaction of a desire does not in any way destroy the desire, and in some cases may not destroy, but only enhance its moral value. A desire for the unattainable may be one of the best elements in human discipline. And next, "desire" for things which it is within human power to grant may be, and often is, one of the links in the chain of causes which secures the satisfaction of that desire. Haman beings being so made as often to take pleasure in satisfying each others' desires, the severest fatalism would not deny that a desire might tend to work out its own fulfilment. In the case of prayer, the argument of the sceptic always is, that God, knowing all our desires and being omnipotent, will gratify all desires tbat it is good for us to have grati- fied, and that to pray for the gratification of any that he does not think it good for us to have gratified, is an impiety as well as a blunder. Of course that is an argument which applies only to the case of the divine answer to prayer. The dilemma is simple. Either what you desire is good for you, and then you need not pray, because God out of his own love will grant it with- out your praying,—or it is not good for you, and then to pray is not trusting him, but distrusting him. We know of but one answer, but we believe it to be complete ; and that is that tt great many things are good for such creatures as we are, if we are in the constant habit of pouring out our hearts to God, which would not be good for us, if we were not, and that therefore God makes the habit of communion with him one of the conditions of granting prayers which, merely for their own sake, and apart from the habit of bolding communion with him, he would be obliged to refuse. If any one will watch the moral condition formed by the belief that God cannot change his purposes, and that the proper attitude for man is simply to acquiesce in his better will, we think it would be evident that it was an attitude tending to freeze the religious affections, and to render thankfulness and all the chequered play of personal feelings towards God, nearly impossible. We do not therefore think the last of Mr. Davies's four fine sermons quite adequate to its object. But of the little volume, as a whole, it is hardly possible to speak with too cordial an appreciation.