BISHOP ALEXANDER'S SERMONS.* THE Bishop of Derry evidently speaks with

absolute simplicity and sincerity when.he says in his preface that even if he had been able to publish these sermons in the form in which they * The Great Question., and other Sermons. By William Alexander, D.D., Hon. D.C.L., Lord Bishop of Derry and itaihoe. London: Kagan Paul, Trench, and Co.

were preached,—which he could not, because he only preached from notes, and in his belief "the hearers made the preacher,"— those who requested him to publish them might still have been disappointed, because they might have lost much of that effect which the immediate sympathy of the hearers lends to the speaker. As it was, it was not possible for him always to render even the texture of thought and feeling as they had been rendered in the sermons, his notes not enabling him to recall the images and colouring which lend so much life to sermons preached but never written. With all these drawbacks, the volume before us will, nevertheless, take a high place in the literature of the pulpit. These sermons have a vividness and a certain natural splendour which raise them far above the level of many even equally thought- ful productions. They have true life in them, and they are illustrated with references to history and literature which keep up the close attention of the reader. We have seldom read so terse an outline of the central points of Christian theology, weighted with so much genuine reflection, as the first sermon," The Great Question," contains. It is a mere outline, and no doubt might be criticised with effect by any hostile critic who should choose to regard it, not as what it is, a shorthand compendium of the reading and thought of a lifetime, but as an adequate review of all the great issues on which it touches. That is just what it certainly is not. But as the mere index to thought, reading, and criticism which it is, we have seldom met with any- thing richer in suggestion than Bishop Alexander's sum- mary of the reasons for believing Christ to be what the Church defines him to be. And we may say the same of the fine sermon on "The Self-Assertion of Christ." The sermon on "The Mystery of Sickness," though it has some fine passages, does not satisfy us as well. On what does the Bishop ground his assumption that our Lord never knew what sickness is ? We have the record of very brief fragments even of his public life, and no record at all, except a glimpse here and a glimpse there, of the years of his childhood and

youth. The Bishop appears to reason a priori, " Our Lord took the common penalconsequences from the common sin of humanity. He did not endure particular sicknesses, but death, which, as it were, sums up all. He had no particular sickness, because he had no sin. And thus his very exemption from sickness implies the connection of sickness with sin." Does it Why, then,

does sickness abound among creatures far below the level of moral responsibility of any kind ? Are not birds, and also animals even lower in the scale of reason than birds, frequently sick? Is that because they have sinned ? Was there not certainly death in the universe long before man and human sin appeared in it ? And how are we to know that when our Lord deliberately accepted the infirmities of man, he did not also accept the liability to human sickness with it ? We think it unfortunate for theologians to assume to know so much more of our Lord's life than any one of the accounts, or even of the early traditions of the Church, has handed down to us. But, with the exception of this assumption, the sermon on " The Mystery of Sickness" is one of great beauty and power.

Of the sermons in the first three parts of this volume, how- ever, the finest, we think, is that on " The Efficacy and Joy of Repentance," a sermon of singular imaginative glow and power. There are two passages in it, one on the efficacy which Christ gives to a repentance which, without him, would not necessarily have any final efficacy in it,—since no one can undo the evil he has done,—and one on the character of the joy attaching to repentance, in the Gospel, which strike us as singularly fine. This is the first passage :—

" The efficacy of repentance is not in the nature of things. It is not inherent in the thing itself. For however deep the sorrow, how- ever complete the confession, however real the amendment, guilt has been contracted and punishment is deserved. The convert of today is the sinner of yesterday. He is answerable for his whole life, not for a late and selected fragment of it. There are, no doubt, some signs of relenting in the moral order of God's natural government of human society. There are cases where the culprit's sorrow, and the reparation which be makes, are allowed to tell, if not in the way of acquittal, yet in the way of mitigation. Still, sincere repentance does not entitle the penitent to pardon. Such teaching cannot validly be gathered either from nature or from grace. Not from nature, or why the almost universal prevalence of sacrifice ? Not from grace, or why the cross and the Lamb of God ' Who taketh away the sin of the world' ? The assertion of the intrinsic efficacy of repentance was much more common and unhesitating in the last century than it now is. It was evidently in the air, not only among Deists, but in the Church itself. The reason, no doubt, is the enlarged conception of the reign of law, which is necessarily created by the advance of science. What modern philosophy thinks of repentance is as follows. Each of us is set down in the perilous game of life, to contend with a player who is perfectly fair but absolutely remorseless. The stake for which we play is happiness. Play well and wisely, and your chance of success is fair. Play but one pawn ill, and you must abide the consequences. You cannot reconsider the move. You have to do with the passionless majesty of an order that can never be broken, with the pitiless sequences of an iron necessity. Talk of perfect absolution for the past, of the music and the dancing which greet the penitent hack to his father's home ! From rash triflers, who have walked carelessly about the engine-room, and who are caught in by the cogs upon the wheel, and about to be ground by the iron teeth ; from men who have wasted their years, and women who have sold their beauty ; —from these and millions more there dies into a wail, or storms into a shout—' for us there is no repentance.' You may be of a sensitive temperament. You may have an unpleasant sensation, physiologically connected with a spasm of the diaphragm and an exudation from the lachrymal duct, sentimentally styled con• science. But the feeling has no real objective effect.

' Fool ! all that is at all Lasts ever past recall What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be.'

You are in an awful land, where every rock is literally a rock of ages ;' where the facts which some men call spiritual are bound by a fatal succession quite as much as the facts which all men call material ; where God is frozen into an icicle, and no tender touch of miracle can come from His law-stiffened fingers; where two and two always make four, and your sin always finds you out. To remove this impotence and inefficacy of repentance, Jesus lived and died. Repentance is His indulgence, flung down from the balcony by our great High Priest. Repentance is His gift ; the efficacy of repent. ance is His secret. Hear His own words of commission to His apostles—' thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again the third day : and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name.' Hear St. Peter and his company—' Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance.' Let me pause for a moment to show you the comfort which is directly afforded by this great truth in seasons of doubtfulness, and under thoughts of despondency, which not rarely exercise pions and noble souls. No rational man,' said Dr. Johnson, in prospect of death, can be without uneasy apprehensions. The hope of salvation must be founded on the terms on which it is promised that the mediation of Christ shall be applied, i.e., obedience, and, when that has failed, repentance as suppletory to it. Bat who can say that his obedience has been such as he would approve upon close examination, or that his repentance does not need to be repented of ?' I will not be guilty of the insolence of reading an obvious lesson to that great man, who was so much greater than all he wrote. I will admit that, as a preparative, such a state of mind might be safer and more hopeful than many of our wholesale and superficial self-absolutions. Yet it is cheering to be assured that, ' for some time before Dr. Johnson died, all his fears were absorbed by faith in the merits of Jesus Christ.' Yes ! He will speak peace unto His people.' We, His ministers, speak of peace ; He speaks peace."

And here, again, is a fine passage, in which the Bishop in- sists that the joy over repentance is felt not by the penitent, but by those who witness his penitence ; and that the thank- fulness which the penitent himself feels must be not by any means pure joy, but something blended equally of gladness and sternness, of thankfulness for what has been escaped, and of a sort of sombre indignation with oneself that it has been escaped at last only after a loss that can never be wholly repaired :-

" We have to speak, finally, of the joys of penitents. Grim moralists think the mention of this indecorous and even dangerous. Ah ! I had almost forgotten the elder brother. There was, as many Fathers of the Church have held, a better side to his character. He repre- sents some who, by God's grace, have walked in the covenant of their baptism. Let us speak of him not without respect; for, after all, be represents, however imperfectly, a higher ideal than his more interesting brother. We may not explain away the fulness of the father's words : Son, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is thine.' He heard music.' But he was not skilful to inter- pret that ' inarticulate poetry.' Dancing was, probably, still more distasteful to him. In his peevishness he made the prodigal a little blacker than he was. What justified the taunt—' thy son, which bath devoured thy living with harlots' ? There are two considerations which have always been urged by masters of the spiritual life. 1. To judge the inner life only by the joy of which it is conscious is a sort of spiritual epicureanism. The joy described three times over in this chapter is one which is external to the penitent= rejoice with me ;" joy shall be in heaven ;" there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.' And again, ' let us eat and be merry ;" they began to be merry ;" it was meet to make merry and be glad.' This simple observation should be laid to heart by blatant penitents who seem to gloat over the peculiar ugliness of the swine which they have fed, and to delight in analysing the stench of their portion of the stye. The tears of penitents are the wine of angels;' but they were not intended to intoxicate those who shed them. 2. Past sin, even when its guilt is pardoned, has penal consequences upon the inner life. It continues in the memory with its poisoned springs, and in the imagina- tion with its perilous susceptibilities. The fierce light thrown upon drunkenness by the exhaustive study devoted to its physiological and moral phenomena has proved this demonstratively of one sin. The liability of the drunkard to relapse is stated not seldom, I think, with some exaggeration. Why should drunkenness be the solitary excep- tion ? The penitent, like Jacob, has a glory of God's light upon his face; but, like Jacob, he halts upon his thigh. Yet they know not the mind of God to whom penitence is only bitter. There are , Tears that sweeter far

Than the world's mad laughter are.'

There is a triumphant, a victorious delight, which leads the will along the narrow way, and will not be gainsaid. It is a mutilated Miserere which omits the verse, Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which Thou bast broken may rejoice.' And repentance is not real, unless we are careful to shun the whole coast whose breath is death ;' nor deep, unless it continue. The blessing of the second Beatitude is not for those who have once mourned, but for those who are mourning. Repentance is a loving eorrow that we have offended God.' Of an English bishop, one of the nonjurors, noted ever for the delightful cheerfulness of his religion, Archbishop Bancroft wrote that ' he was cheerful under persecution, as birds that sing sweetest in winter.' Yet in advanced life that very bishop, in a letter to a

much-loved friend, leaves this record I daily ask God's pardon for what bath been amiss in my life, and would do it day by day if I lived a thoasand years.' Such is the meaning of the General Confes- sion and Absolution for every day in the year. By one of those apparent contradictions which lies at the root of the Christian life, a perpetual yearning after pardon is consistent with a perpetual serenity of hope. God would mould His penitents that they may combine sorrow with joy ; that they may hear at once a sigh in the depths of their souls, and a music far away. There must be in the renewed nature something of the iron that has been moulded in His furnace, and something of the rose which has been expanded in His sunshine. The life of Frederick the Great, by a writer of transcendent genius, contains incidentally a record of the death of an English general defeated in Canada. Twice only did the unhappy officer arouse him- self out of the mortal stupor into which he fell from a broken heart. Once he sighed heavily—' who would have thought it ?' Many days after he said with more animation= another time we will do better.' And then the cataracts of soft sweet sleep' rushed down upon the weary man. Do not these two sentences give us this view of the two- fold aspect of repentance ?—the first, the humiliation of the beaten soldier as he comes to himself ; the second, his hope through Christ as he catches the music of the march of victory."

That last passage is a very fair sample of the higher eloquence of these eloquent and yet simple sermons. In the sermon on "The Tolerance and Intolerance of the Gospel," Bishop Alexander seems to us to give two quite different and very inconsistent views of the vindictive spirit of what are called the imprecatory Psalms. He says first, what is very just, that the Jews, who thought that the providence of God always found out evil-doers in this world, were bound to wish for the visible downfall of injustice, whereas we, who no longer believe that the justice of God must manifest itself in this present life, are not bound to pray for that open and visible punishment which was expected by Israel to vindicate the divine righteousness. To that we agree. But then the Bishop goes on to say :-

"But., further, we must interpret every book by the mind of the author. If so, we must apply this to the Bible and to the psalms. Their real author is the Holy Spirit. And, assuredly, this was the light by which St. Peter read the imprecatory psalms. It is remark- able that, in the first chapter of the Acts, the very strongest of these imprecations is applied as a prophecy to the betrayer of our Lord. 'It is written in the book of psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein ; and his bishopric let another take.' To the Divine Mind the words before and after are applied by our human weakness. He who is eternal and infinite sees all things at once. To God,' says Augustine—and it the deepest and truest solution of the difficulty—' all things are as certain as if already done. And so the prophet in these imprecations seems to speak as if in prayer, when he sees that which will certainly come—showing that the known counsel of God, which He has firmly and immutably fixed, should not displease us.' Yes ! here is the point from which we are to view the text and all the imprecations of the psalmist. Conceive a created spirit enlarged so as to embrace the will of God in relation to all the children of men—a spirit looking from the margin of an eternal world upon the petty histories of the past, purified from personal hatred, partiality, and prejudice, and measuring all things by the counsels of God—such a spirit could say, without a taint of personal revenge—' let all mine enemies be ashamed.' " Now, surely it is in no sense true that the Holy Spirit was " the real author of the Psalms." Would not Bishop Alexander shrink from saying that the Holy Spirit was "the real author" of Ecclesiastes ? Yet the only difference is that the Psalms are purer and nobler than Ecclesiastes, fuller of the divine inspiration, and less tainted by human cynicism. But can any one who understands the spirit of either book doubt that in different degrees human infirmity is in both, and has set its mark on both ? And how can the Bishop's explanation that the imprecations of the Psalms are prophecies in disguise, apply to such a Psalm as the 137th ?—" 0 daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed ; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be. that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Does the Bishop of Derry suppose that this is simply a prophecy that the counsels of God involve the destruction of Babylon ? Surely, on the very face of it, it is a declaration that he who revenges the cruel sufferings of Zion most sorely on the innocent children of Babylon, shall be happy because he performs that act of vengeance. To our minds, every effort to get rid of the human element of infirmity,—sometimes,

no doubt, infirmity relative only to the age, in which those Scrip- tures were written, but not unfrequently infirmity relative to the individual who is below rather than above his age,—is vain. Scripture is not the work of the Holy Spirit of God. It is the work of various authors of various genius and goodness, all of them more or less educated by God for their task, and more or Iess inspired by his Spirit,—some more, some less. And not only in the Old Testament, but even in the New, we have occasional evidences of the triumph of human infirmities over the Divine Spirit. When even St. Paul says,—we quote the Revised Version,—" Alexander the coppersmith did me ranch evil : the Lord will reward him according to his works," is it not clear that in a comparatively trivial instance, the same spirit which got the mastery of the writer of Psalm cxxxvii., had for a moment prevailed over the almost limitless charity of St. Paul ? That was not the tone of him who said, " Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do."

We heartily thank the Bishop of Derry for these thoughtful and often nobly imaginative sermons, which we believe will gain a wide and grateful circle of readers.