DR. MOBERLY'S SERMONS.
Christ Our Life. By R. C. Moberly, D.D. (John Murray. 9s.) —This is a collection of sermons preached for the most part in the Cathedral, Christchurch. The most interesting, to our mind, are those upon prayer. Dr. Moberly faces with entire candour the difficulty presented by the promises made to prayer in the New Testament. We are almost compelled at first, he says, "to fall back before them and ask whether we have heard or understood aright." "At first sound," he goes on, "they sur- round our imaginations with an air of Fairyland, they seem some- thing out of relation to the seventies of every-day life." For the obvious fact that what we ask for is often refused he finds an explanation in the words of St. James, "Ye ask and have not because ye ask amiss." It is we, he tells us, who misuse prayer, who substitute for it something which is not of the true nature of prayer. We try to move, "even to instruct God," saying in effect "May my will be done." The man who prays aright, Dr, Moberly teaches, prays that God's will may be done, not using the words as "a prayerful sign of sad resignation," a "mere necessary tag," but putting into them all the fervour of which his soul is capable. Now, while this may be a truth acceptable to highly spiritual natures, we cannot but feel that to the ordinary man who would gladly be religious it means very little indeed. Such a man—or so it seems to us—must pray, if he prays earnestly, for what be wants, in other words, to get his own way. What we may call fervent resignation is too hard a lesson to put before any but the most spiritually gifted. Every honest prayer which a man makes to obtain any desire, not consciously wrong, is in its very nature a cry for sympathy, and as such it
is not only not forbidden in the New Testament, but enjoined, and as such again it may be answered even while it is refused. St. Paul "besought the Lord" three times to be delivered from "a thorn in the flesh," and he found the grace which he obtained "sufficient" for him.
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