MR. FOOTMAN'S LECTURES.* This little work is just another straw

showing in what direction the stream is setting. It strengthens our conviction that the National Church would do well to institute an order of Preachers, whose lives should be devoted to this special work, without the thousand distractions which so often make the clergyman's study a mere office for the transaction of parochial business. We know all about the modern cry of the Pulpit having done its work, and the Press having superseded it. Perhaps of all popular cries it is the one which has the smallest substratum of truth. The Press does indeed supply the place of the Pulpit to a certain class, but till the conditions of our common humanity are very materi-

ally altered, that class will be a very limited one. For one man who is touched by a written truth, fifty would be penetrated by the same communicated by a human voice. How many of the men who heard and understood Mr. Gladstone at Greenwich ever read through a column of his speeches in the House? A few, doubt- less; and to those few, perhaps, that afternoon's listening was a

burden and a bore, but not many.

The fact is, a man gifted with a lively imagination can take in truth, or for that matter error either, at every pore, can hold com- munion of spirit with a writer as easily, perhaps more easily, than with a speaker. But the imagination of most men is not lively,

especially in things spiritual, and is repressed, moreover, at every turn by the stern necessities of daily life, where,— "Each day still brings its petty dust, Oar soon-choked souls to fill, And we forget, because we must, And not because we

With most people imagination is rather a half-awakened crave than a self-supplying power. And thousands of human beings long for some human exponent of their own dumb thoughts, some band stretched out from the other side of the darkness wherein they are groping, who would never read the page which might meet their necessity, and would not understand that it met it if

* Life: its Friends and Foes. By Henry Footman, B.A. London: Longman. 1873.

they did. One thing doubtless has distinctly changed, and that is, the question of demand and supply in things spiritual. And this accounts for much of the popular discontent with the preaching of the day. The demand is for one thing. The supply at the present moment is too often quite another. Life has become very complex, doubt very subtle, faith grievously emasculated. Temptation often comes with a touch of that invisible sword which a man recognises not till he finds it has cut him in twain. The joints of his harness were not proof against that invisible foe. Then he is alone, and his next neigh- bour and nearest friend may neither see nor pity that loneliness, —he is wounded, yet in his heart he cries out for sympathy and help, for human help, which shall yet not come too near. And it is because in this strait men get shreds of divinity and dry bones of doctrine flung to them from the pulpit, that they get impatient of the whole thing ; but it is just to such as we have described that men like Mr. Footman are invaluable. Led by the intense conviction that he had within him the power to touch other men's souls, he resigned the claims an active business career had upon him, and equipped himself for his special work. A pupil of Maurice, and deeply imbued with his spirit, though differing from him on one or two essential questions, he comes into the arena of spiritual conflict, to see if there be not life left in the old truths yet. And we may suggest that deeply as these lectures interested those who heard, they will prove no less valuable to those who can and will read them.

Mr. Footman commences his lectures with an inquiry into the nature of that life of which Christ spoke when he said, "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hest sent." After an earnest appeal to his hearers not to think of eternal life as something which belongs to a future world alone,—in the course of which be says, "Great harm is done by this way of looking at it. Men are led thereby, often unconsciously to themselves, to allow eternal things to get shunted to a siding, in order that there may be room enough upon the main line of life for an uninterrupted traffic in the things which are not eternal"—he enters into the question of the essential elements of this eternal life, and adds :—

" Of this new life in Jesus, the enemies still live and are mighty. There remains against us—the Devil; and for us—God. There remains a lusting of the flesh against the higher Maine' of the spirit. There re- main the influence of the passing age against the purer, higher influences of the Divine Brotherhood. There remains the straggle of the spirit of indifference and frivolity, and deadly coldness, with the earnest spirit which befits us as fellow-workers with God. Finally, there remains a straggle of that lower:self which loses life in seeking to find it, with that Spirit of self-sacrifice which is our reasonable service, and should be our lifelong liturgy!"

In the second lecture he deals with that great struggle, and with the intricate question of the personality of the Devil; and here he meets again the thought which, far more than the doctrinal ques- tion, will be disturbing the minds of some of his hearers :—

"By this time I can fancy that some of you are beginning to want to ask a question of this kind :—' Granting you, Mr. Preacher, the truth of all this—granting you the personality of Satan, and the importance of allowing the light of God to open our eyes to his virulence and wile, and upon the Love and Wisdom of the Lord of Life and Liberty— granting you all this, can you point out any special tests by which we may recognise the workings of the foe, or do you mean merely that he takes advantage in a general way of our weak spiritual condition ? Do you mean that he offers temptations, now through the flesh, now through the world, now through fears and hopes, now through our joys and sorrows' now through our individual peculiarities of inherited or habit- fostered temperament, now through external circumstances ?' Well, I will tell you what I think. 1. In the first place, there can be no doubt that whenever the flesh contradicts the spirit, whenever the world tries to draw us into its vortex, whenever we are tempted to make our inherited or habitual temperaments excuses for sin instead of goads to prayer, it is the Devil who adds malignity to, these temptations. To resist these is to resist the Devil—is to turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God. To yield to these temptations is to yield to the Devil, is to tarn from light to darkness, from the power of God to Satan. This makes our struggle with these temptations assume a very awful character, but yet we must not shrink from this view of it."

But we pass to the third lecture, upon the flash lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, "So that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Where he maintains this attitude :— "Aly friends, what a grand thing it would be if you could believe that in what you call your better moments Christ is touching you! I wish you could! What a grand thing it would be if you could realise the fact that these twinges of conscience, these dreams of better things, which come in between you and your fleshly lusts and purposes, are the motions of God's Spirit within you, the fightings for you of the Eternal Helper against the Devil-haunted, carnal self,—pulsations in you of the Infinite Love of Christ, who will not let you rest while you are bent on suicide ! Christ wants you : that is why it is that you can- not get your evil way straight out. Give not, then, that nature which Christ has made holy to the dogs. Cast not that pearl within, which -He has ransomed, to the swine. He wants it to be near His heart, in at holy, not in a degrading neighbourhood and air."

We must pass over the lecture on" Earnestness and Frivolity," and on "The Church and the World," though there are admirable sug- gestions in each, especially one thought in the latter, on the incli- nation to sterotype for oneself a standard of worldliness. We give the passage :-

"Let me give you an illustration. Consider the case of a religious professional man or tradesman. He may have determined that the vain potups of the world shall have no hold upon him. Nothing on earth could induce him to go to a ball or a theatre, or to play cards. He has made up his mind (you, who have not made up yours, do not laugh at him)—he has made up his mind, I say, that when God tells him to renounce the world, these are the kind of things which are meant. Good then he must renounce them,—sins against God if he does not. So much is plain. But is it also plain that by these arrange- ments he has got out of the reach of the world spirit? Let us see. Suppose he finds a custom established in the trade or profession to which he has been brought up, and by which he is to get his living,— out of the profits of which, may be, he honestly intends to subscribe liberally to the cause of God in his town. Suppose that he becomes convinced that this custom is a bad ono, that it involves acts of injus- tice, perhaps even, indirectly, of cruelty towards others. And yet, suppose further, that he feels that in breaking it he should be setting himself against the public opinion of his trade or profession, incurring loss of caste and credit among those whose good opinion and fair speeches are of much greater value to him than the cold passing praise of some customer who might come to know that a trade custom had been broken in his favour, a great maxim violated. There you have the man face to face with his world. Now, will his rigid regulations about balls and theatres help him ? or rather, will they ensure him victory ? To enable him to outface the world in this new phase of its seductiveness, must he not be conscious afresh of the clear shining into his heart of the light of God's countenance ? Must he not yield him- self afresh to His transforming power, that the spirit of his mind may once more put forth the energy of its true life,—once more receive anew the pressure of the image of God ? He wants to resist the bribes or the threats of his own coterie, to get above what they will say' whose sayings he must the oftenest listen to, to escape the tyranny of their evil will. How is he to do it but by taking refuge in tho Perfect Will, the Gracious Will, of his Father ? "

This is followed by an illustration of the distinct claims of the world, namely, of every man, upon the man who honestly recog- nises himself as a member of Christ's body ; but the dominant thought in these lectures culminates in the sixth, on self-sacrifice and selfishness, in which Mr. Footman endeavours to prove that self-sacrifice lies at the very root of all true life. That the theory that selfishness is, or can be, any true bond in human society is false, the sacrifice and offering-up of Christ being "really decisive as to the true scientific ground of all life and all society." And after giving apt illustrations of this theory, or rather fact, illustra- tions which must strike home to any sense not utterly dulled and blunted, he adds the last passage we have space to quote :—

"Take another case. I want to show you how sacrifice explains sacrifice,—how Christ, through sacrifice, helps you to sacrifice, and so to live. I call upon you, then, to give evidence yourself. Have you never sacrificed yourself ? Have you never crushed some passion which seemed almost irresistible, and done so, not by calculating the possible inconvenience to which indulgence might put you afterwards, but because you found that to give way would be to wound or ruin a brother or a sister for whom Christ sacrificed Himself ; and because to hold this passion or ambition down, to pray it down, would be to give that brother or that sister a heavenward impetus, a joy which would otherwise be broken in upon for ever ? And then, have you not felt what a bond of union such an act created between you and him or her, —what a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood sprang up between you? In the face of such an experience as this, how can you maintain that

selfishness is the bond of men ? 0 Lord ! so let the mystery of Thy death and of Thy sacrifice unlock for us the mystery of life."