Salt and Light, and other Sermons. By D. Jones Hamer.
(Hodder and Stoughton.)—One's first feeling, after reading these sermons, is regret that there can be no more of them. They seem so very specially adapted to the state of general thought and feeling in the Colonies, where they were uttered, and where we hope they may yet be extensively read. Not that there is any- thing in them of the attempt to startle and astonish with mere novelty, such as would render them repellent to sober-minded readers here; but, on the contrary, a sober good sense and direct- ness of statement which are nowhere more to be desired than in dealing with Holy Scripture. The sermon on " Forbearance" is specially to be noted for this directness of which we have spoken:—
"Forbearance demands the strength of God. Any man and any devil can retaliate, but it takes the power of the Spirit of Christ to endure Upon us rest the wondrous privilege and responsibility of determining how much men shall know of God—those men, I mean, who have not yet been interested enough to search and inquire for themselves. If we, in our life and morals, are pagan rather than Christian, and exhibit the laws of the Old Testament rather than the New, then we are hiding the light of Christ from men. The Father's face is not seen as clearly as He would show it. We are limiting the Holy One of Israel. And if any one should say, ' My heart yearns after a better and greater God than you reveal to me,' I am not sur- prised. When an unbeliever cries, `Christianity is effete, power- less, out-lived,' I know that he has never seen the Christianity of Christ. He may have seen that, in the words and life of a dis- ciple, which moves his utterance ; and if he reasons that this is the best that Christ can do for men, he may be wishful to look elsewhere for a Saviour great enough really to save the world."
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