3 AUGUST 1867, Page 22

Sermons Preached to English Congregations in India. By George Edward

Lynch Cotton, D.D., Lord Bishop of Calcutta. (Macmillan.)—

The sermons are models of what sermons should be, not only on account of their practical teaching, but also with regard to the singular felicity with which they are adapted to times, places, and circumstances. In some respects it is difficult to address a totally strange congregation.

It is true that novelty is an attraction, and that nothing is more fatal to listeners than to know beforehand every word that will be uttered, and to be deadened by sameness. But the preacher is too apt to fall at once into the old beaten track, and by the time the sound of his voice has become familiar to the ear his thoughts have all proved trite to the mind. Of course a great preacher does not produce this effect, whether he speaks to strangers or those accustomed to him. But Bishop Cotton's sermons are not of that high order which is unapproachable by clergy in general ; if they were, we should praise them, but should not hold them out as examples. What we find most remarkable in them is, that they are so thoroughly what their name represents them to be. They are evidently preached in India, yet their lessons would abide by Eng- lishmen after they had returned thence, and would with little variation be equally useful to those who had never been out there. We grant that there is something spacial and local in preaching on moral courage to English soldiers in Cawnpore, on mountains at Simla, on the slaughter of the Gibeonites during the Orissa famine, and on the difference between proselytism and conversion amongst the creeds of Eastern races. But the teaching of such sermons is not merely local, and the moral they convey is deep and enduring. It is something to find a Bishop with the courage to quote a newspaper account of the temptations and difficulties to which Englishmen in India are exposed, and the effect produced ors many who come out for great public works and are removed from the contact and example of their countrymen. It is much to find him cen- suring in bitterness the petty gossip and jealousy which often defile Indian stations. Yet he does not confine himself to denouncing what is wrong, and deploring what is inevitable. The advice he gives to all classes of his hearers is such as will remain in their memory, and assist them to do good in their several capacities. Thus we think his sermons to soldiers especially practical, whether he dwells on the calling of Cornelius as reflecting great honour on the military profession, and refuting the notion that a soldier cannot be expected to be a religions man, or reminds those who boast of their courage and have proved it so often on the field of battle, that while they are free from physical cowardice, which is the fear of those who kill the body, they may be slaves to moral cowardice which is the fear of those who heap insult and shame upon the mind. There are many other instances of prac- tical application which we should be glad to notice, if it was possible to do justice to these sermons in the space at our disposal. But we have already exceeded our limits, and we must leave our readers to forro their own judgment on the many points which we have been forced to pass over, or which we have just touched upon in so cursory a manner.