12 JUNE 1858, Page 17

CAIRD'S SERMONS. *

Tin celebrity of Mr. Caird as a preacher is no doubt owing in a de- gree to his sermon on " Religion in Common Life," delivered before the Queen, and published by her Majesty's command. He has qnalities that would have excited attention apart from extrinsic circumstances, though we cannot say that those qualifies are of the very highest order. He has none of that originality which arises from an original feeling as it were on the subject of Chris- ty, such as distinguishes Maurice and Kingsley ; and Which though it may lead to some vagueness in matters of doe-

* Sermons. By the Bev. John Caird, M.A., Minister of the Park Church, Glas- gow, Author of "Religion By Common Life." Published by Blackwood.

trine, creates a real religious sympathy with the deadness of the poor, and even with the struggles of conscientious doubt search- ing for truth, while it barbs attacks upon the conventional virtues and "respeotabilities "—the " whited outsides" of mo- dern society. Neither has Mr. Caird the peculiar genius so to speak which gives a personal originality to the sermons of some men, as the scholastic learning and genial unction that charac- terize the Bishop of Oxford. It does not strike us that the now minister of " the Park Church Glasgow " has that lesser originality in any high degree which arises from taking a more searching view of existing society and throwing a new light on the doctrines of Christianity by applying them to the actual re- quirements of contemporary life. The most prominent peculiarity of Mr. Caird, as it seems to us, is the power of enforcement. We do not trace any remarkable novelty in the choice of his subjects—such no- velty as would excite attention by the mere statement of the theme. Neither is the theme treated with extraordinary literary skill or urged with that living fervour of mind and style which distinguished the late Frederick Robertson of Brighton. It is not meant to say that Mr. Caird's subjects are stale, or his treatment common. His choice of texts, or more properly the views he de- duces from his texts, indicate a thoughtful and experienced theo- logian; his style possesses that power which arises from well-chosen images closely expressed and ably argued. Indeed logic is the essential characteristic of Mr. Caird's genius ; not so much in the sense of comprehensive reasoning, for we think that there is oc- casionally some failure on this ground, as in the sense of intelli- gence. his mind is observing rather than inventive ; he is rich by accumulation rather than by nature ; he impresses more by multiplying images than by at once stamping his conclusions on the hearer. Reasoning in fact is at the bottom of everything ; be religious and you will gain by it is the scope of the hortative.

This logic is quite different from coherence of parts and a con- sistent soundness of conclusion, in which the preacher is apt to fail. In two very able sermons on the Sufferings of Christ, the first as regards the solitariness of those sufferings, and the other our participation in them, he seems not to draw the line of dis- tinction sufficiently clear between the human and the divine na- ture of Christ. For example, Christ's knowledge of sin and his disgust at it, must have been just as great before the incarnation as during its continuance ; in fact, according to the arguments of theology, his sufferings from this cause would have been greater, because we are told that his human nature gave him a sympathy with man by subjecting him to the feelings and exposing him to the temptations of the human race. Again, in another sermon on the comparative influence of character and doctrine, the preacher seems, at the outset, to be addressing the clergy on the import- ance of earnest belief in the substance of their sermons, as mere scholarly or literary skill will not suffice. He afterwards speaks of the importance of Christian conduct in laymen in general without distinctly marking his change in purpose. We are not, indeed, sure whether throughout the discourse the difference is sufficiently marked between logical or intellectual subjects, where skill of a certain kind suffices, and matters of faith and feeling where conviction is all in all, as was intimated long ago. " Si vie me flere dolendum est

Primum ipsi tibi."'

It must not be supposed that the predominance of the logical over the feeling and imaginative qualities removes the discourses from human nature to mere abstractions. On the contrary, life and its interests are continually present. Even the illustra- tions of the preacher are mostly drawn from the natural world or the experience of mankind. Take as one instance a short pas- sage from the opening of the sermon already alluded to on the solitariness of the Saviour's sufferings, from the text, " I have trodden the wine-press alone."

" There is always a certain degree of solitude about a great mind. Even a mere human being cannot rise preeminently above the level of his fellow men, without becoming conscious of a certain solitariness of spirit gathering round him. The loftiest intellectual elevation, indeed, is nowise inconsist- ent with a genial openness and simplicity of nature ; nor is there anything impossible or unexampled in the combination of a grasp of intellect that could cope with the loftiest abstractions of philosophy, and a playfulness that could condescend to sport with a child. Yet whilst it is thus true that the possessor of a great mind may be capable of sympathizing with, of entering kindly into the views and feelings, the joys and sorrows of inferior minds, it must at the same time be admitted that there is ever a range of thought and feeling into which they cannot enter with him. They may accompany him, so to speak, a certain height up the mountain, but there is a point at which their feebler powers become exhausted, and if he ascend beyond that, his path must be a solitary one.

" You who are parents have, I dare say, often felt struck by the reflection what a world of thoughts, and cares, and anxieties are constantly present to your minds, into which your child. en cannot enter. You may be con- tinually amongst them, holding familiar intercourse with them, condescend- ing to all their childish thoughts and feelings, entering into all their childish ways,—yet every day there are a thousand things passing through your mind, with respect, for instance, to your business or profession, your schemes and projects, your troubles, fears, hopes, and ambitions in life, your social connexions, the incidents and events that are going on in the world around you,—there are a thousand reflections and feelings on such matters passing daily through your mind, of which your children know nothing. You never dream of talking to them on such subjects, and they could not understand or sympthize with you if you did. There is a little world in which the play of their passions is strong and vivid, but beyond that their sympathies entirely fail. And perhaps there is no spectacle so exquisitely touching as that which one sometimes witnesses in a house of mourning—the elder members of the family bowed down to the dust by some heavy sorrow, whilst the little children sport around in unconscious playfulness.

" The bearing of this illustration is obvious. What children are to the mature-minded man, the rest of mankind were to Jesus."

The following passage descriptive of the gradual changes in nature may be quoted as a specimen of Mr. Caird's power of en- forcing an idea. As an argument tending to show why men are self-ignorant it is not so conclusive ; for self-love, vanity, and the real difficulty of " seeing ourselves as others see us' have more to do with our self-ignorance than the gradual changes that may be wrought in us by time. "Apart from any other consideration, there is something in the mere feet of the gradual and insidious way in which changes of character gene- rally take place, that tends to blind men to their own defects. For every one knows how unconscious we often are of changes that occur by minute and slow degrees. If for instance, the transitions from one season of the year to another were more sudden and rapid, our attention would be much more forcibly arrested by their occurrence than it now is. But because we are not plunged from midsummer into winter,—because, in the declining year, one dapp is so like the day that preceded it, the daylight hours contract so insensibly, the chilly feeling infuses itself by such slight increases into the air, the yellow tint creeps so gradually over the foliage,—because autumn thus frequently softens and shades away into winter by gradations so gentle, we scarcely perceive while it is going on the change which has passed over the face of nature. So, again, how imperceptibly do life's advancing stages steal upon us ? If we leapt at once from boyhood into manhood, or if we lay down at night with the consciousness of manhood's bloom and vigour, and waked in the morning to find ourselves grey-haired, worn and withered old men, we could not choose but be arrested by transitions so marked. Bat now, because today you are very much the same man as yesterday— because, with the silent growth of the stature, the graver cares, and in- terests, and responsibilities of life gather so gradually around you ; and then, when you reach the turning-point and begin to descend, because this year the blood circulates but a very little less freely, and but a few more and deeper lines are gathering on the face, than in the Last ; because old associations are not suddenly broken up, but only unwound thread by thread, and old forms and faces are not swept away all at once by some sudden catastrophe, but only dropt out of sight one by one,—you are not struck, you are not forced to think of life's decline, and almost unawares you may not be far of from its close.

"Now, if we know that changes such as these in the natural world and in our own persons take place imperceptibly, may not this prepare us to admit, that analogous changes, equally unnoted, because equally slow and mdual, may be occurring in our moral character, in the state of our souls before God ? And with many I maintain that it is actually so. There is a winter of the soul, a spiritual decrepitude and death, to which many are advancing, at which many have already arrived, yet all unconsciously, because by minute and inappreciable gradations."