THE LATE DR. E. A. ABBOTT
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,-I am surprised that. in the various notices which have appeared with regard to Dr. Abbott no reference should have been made to a remarkable sermon lie preached before the University of Oxford about 1883. Jowett had just become Vice-Chancellor, and one of his first official nominations to
the University pulpit was Abbott. Abbott, if I rightly remember, had been inhibited from preaching in the diocese
of London by Bishop Jackson on account of views publicly expressed which were then regarded as more heterodox than they might be now, and, needless to say, on the appointed day there was scarcely standing room in St. Mary's. I never listened to a sermon which impressed me more by its sincerity, beauty of expression, and fineness of delivery. It lasted almost an hour, and the peroration in which he declared that he had never felt belief in a corporal resurrection to be necessary to his faith produced an effect which was almost dramatic. An old pupil of his at the City of London School, then, as now, of most orthodox views, told me that his spiritual indebtedness to Abbott, more especially in connexion with his New Testament lectures, was unbounded. He never
preached at Oxford again.—I am, Sir, &c., J. K. F. CLEAVE.
Oxford & Cambridge Club, Pall Mall, S.W. 1.
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