2 JANUARY 1886, Page 11

The sermons which the Dean of St. Paul's has preached

in the Cathedral during December as a substitute for Canon Liddon, are sermons which all Churchmen should read with the utmost care before they throw themselves into the Church and State controversy anew. The sermons on "The Kingdom of God" were evidently intended to bring Churchmen into a spiritual attitude of mind before engaging in the political con- troversies of the next few years ; and it is hardly possible to exaggerate the power and beauty of those sermons—which the Guardian has reported fully as they have been preached. The last sermon, on" Hope," is in some ways even more powerful still ; and though it has a less clear connection with the immediate controversy of the day, it is hardly too much to say that no one could read it without feeling his pessimism rebuked, or with- out feeling himself rebuked so far as he has limited his optimism to the event of the success of his own pet solutions of the problems presented to our generation. There is some- thing in Dean Church's Christianity which seems to us to come nearer to the spiritual Christianity of the early Church than it is usually given to the " modern " spirit to approach. And yet there is nothing archaic about him.