14 DECEMBER 1907, Page 24

DR. CAIRD'S LAY SERMONS.*

THESE sermons were delivered by Dr. Caird during his tenure of the Mastership of Balliol College. The first of the twelve, "The Two Aspects of College Life," is specially addressed to an academical audience; such an audience is more or less pre- supposed in the others. Generally they deal with the diffi- culties of belief as presented in the problems of life or stated in the "bard sayings of the Master." It can scarcely be denied that these statements accentuate such difficulties. The believer is bound to accept them in some sense, to find a modus vivendi which will reconcile for practical purposes his own life and the ideal which they set forth. "Salvation Here and Hereafter" is an exposition of the text, Mark x. 29-30, in which we are told that the man who leaves the' blessings of home, family, and Inman existence generally for the sake of the Gospel "shall receive a hundredfold now in this time." There is no evading this; it seems to have been too strong for the writer who used the Marcen document in putting together the x•Lilt Sermons and Addresses. B-7 Edward Caird, LL.D. Ediainirsiis one and Sons. 168. net.] .Gospel of Matthew, for he °mita the worth; "now in tl is time." Dr, -Laird has no ready-made answer, -any more than the thousands of commentators and preachers who have essayed the bask before him. Still, he puts us in the way of finding air answer. The Church began by formulating the Conception of-the religious life;- bet, seeing that the majority of men and women were unequal to it, distinguished a religicius This was to give' uTheverything that seenied most precious in the .world, and by so doing to come t6 command all that the world possessed. We have outgrown this conception. It was good for US time; -it oppoSed to -violence and license a noble idea. Butwe* have to .put sornething•Wider and better in its place. We are not to give up the world ; We are to save it, and "the way to salvation here and hereafter lies in a deeper under- standing of the wonderful world in whieh we are placed, and a higher conception of all the ties, material and spiritual, th:it bind us to our fellow-men." The "hundredfold now in this time" is to be realised by the "purer and more noble relations of men and women in the household, in the higher honesty and justice of our politics and our commerce, in the growing refinement of the manners and the elevation of the morality of our people, and in the opening up of intellectual enlighten- ment and aesthetic enjoyment to all those who are capable Of them ; in short, in the realisation of the Kingdom of God among men in the present world." If we can substitute the Kingdom of God for the kingdom of the world, we have attained the "hundredfold now in this time."

We have space only for the bare mention of the admirable address on "Immortality," as illustrated by that which follows it-on "The Faith of Job."