Archdeacon Hare's Sermons Preacht in Herstmonceux Church are characterized by
the author's plain directness of purpose, and a racy old simplicity partaking more of the age of Luther and Latimer than of these days of artificial style. In the Archdeacon's discourses there is little respect for persons and station, no mincing of terms, and no roundabout substitution of descriptive phrases for the word expressive of the thing. Hence these Parish Sermons must have been "plain to the meanest capacity" in Herstmonceux Church, while a sort of Homeric spirit pervading them renders them alike attractive to the cultivated and the ignorant. This is mainly owing to the treatment ; for the choice of subject would not always at first sight seem very popular, being some- times quaint if not allegorical. Six sermons are on the building of the Lord's House, from Haggai; whose texts the Archdeacon applies to the duties connected with church-attendance, church-extension, and the Christian practice of individuals,—sometimes pushing the parallel of the real and the allegorical quite as far as they will run together, but well adapted to the rustic mind of some of his congregation, and redeemed from bathos by the mental vigour with which they are presented.
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