5 SEPTEMBER 1868, Page 10

THE DEAN OF CORK AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

ONE of the most noteworthy incidents in the brilliant and busy week just spent by the sevens at Norwich was the delivery of a sermon on Sunday in the cathedral by Dr. Magee. Such an occasion seldom occurs in a preacher's life, for in the vast congre- gation which filled every cranny of the building, there were the President and principal officers of the Association, besides conspi- caous representatives of all those forms of modern thought and inquiry on which Christian preachers too often look with jealousy if not with avowed hostility. It was an occasion on which weak men of one school would have vented vague denunciations of the aggressive and sceptical spirit of modern science ; while still weaker men of another type would have flattered their hearers by making light of the conflict between science and religion, or by expressing a dim belief that a reconciliation between " truth-seekers" of all classes and of opposite tendencies was nigh at hand. The Dean of Cork avoided both of these mistakes. His copious Irish eloquence, and a powerful voice, might easily have tempted him to indulge in impassioned rhetoric, but this temptation was severely resisted, and with one or two momentary exceptions, the sermon was a fine example of logical precision in the use of language, even though it was delivered without written notes. His theme was, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." There was a sense, he said, in which these words might serve as the motto for all true teachers in all ages of the world. The final cause and aim of all science and all philosophy is the enrichment of human life, the making of the life of humanity in some way or other a nobler, a cleaner, a fairer thing than it was before. And as that great Association moved about from city to city, investigating the conditions, the resources, and the philosophy of existence, and bringing to light such truth as was attainable in relation to the world in which men lived, it might, with greater significance and without the least irreverence, adopt for itself the language of the Founder of the Christian religion, and say, "We are come among you, that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." In discussing the sense in which these words had been first used, he observed that the Christian religion differed from all other ancient faiths in the profession which it made to impart a new and divine life to man. Christ did not come to be the teacher and helper of man's life only, He claimed to be the author and the giver of it. He does not merely say that Ile is the discoverer of that life or the teacher of its laws, but He says, "I am that life. I am essential to it. It cannot be without Me." The writings of His followers, and notably of Paul, are filled and saturated with this idea of a Christ whose life is in them, who lives in them. No Jew ever said that he lived in Moses, no Mussulman that the life of Mohammed was imparted to him or reproduced in him. It is the distinctive mark of Christianity that it alone prof( -mses to give the life of its Founder to men, that it is not merely a creed, or a system of doc- trine, or a code of laws, or a scheme of philosophy ; but a new vital force in the world—a life having its own phenomena, its own conditions of existence, its own laws of manifestation, a life as real as ally of those forms of life which science arranges and classifies, a life which it was said had been supernaturally given to man, being the divine life of Christ our Lord. "This is the record that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Yet it must be confessed that the evidence of the supernatural is hard to give. No amount of facts in the world of nature will ever prove the existence of a world or a life above nature.

"Between the man who believes only what he sees, and the man who believes in order that he may see, there is a necessary and endless opposition ; they arc exactly in the position of two men, one of whom is looking at a picture from a right point of view, and sees the whole beauty of the design ; and the other of whom is closely examining it piecemeal through a powerful lens. Both testify to what they see, but one sees more than the other, and the only answer he can make is, Stand where I stand, and you will see what I see.' It is impossible and in vain to dream of a reconciliation of the belief in the supernatural with the belief only in the natural. There must come a point when the man who walks by faith must part company with the man who walks, and is resolved to walk, only by sight. But is it not a great matter that they should reach that point in company, that they should not part before they have reached it? Is it not a great matter that the man of faith should bring with him the man of science to the very verge of the supernatural, showing him all he can see before he asks him to believe what he cannot see? Now, have religious men, as a rule, done this ? Too often they have done exactly the opposite. They set forth the claims of Christianity in this wise :— " Eighteen hundred years ago there lived a man in Nazareth, who came down from heaven, and claimed to be the Sou of God, and proved His claim by miracles ; believe it, and ye shall be rewarded with salvation ; believe it not, and ye shall be punished with damnation.' Whether this was rightly or wrongly put, the result of such a statement was that the men of science started aside from it at once, and rejected the belief in the supernatural all the more resolutely, because an attempt was thus made to enforce it by penalties."

The Dean proceeded to say that there was another way of enforcing the claims of Christianity, far more efficacious and more consonant to the legitimate demands of science. The inductive method of investigation was confessedly the fairest in regard to all forms of physical life ; it would also be the truest in regard to the Christian life. Instead of beginning with a theory, historical or dogmatic, about the origin of Christianity, and reasoning down- wards from it to the facts of Christendom, it would be well to begin by ascertaining the actual phenomena, and then ascend afterwards to the religious system which undertook to explain and account for those phenomena. With singular force and eloquence the preacher invited his hearers to consider with him the mani- festations in the history of Christendom of a noble and beautiful life which could not be accounted for without a new hypothesis of some kind. He recounted the deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice which had been done in the name of Christ, and said that there was visible to all who looked for it a kind of life "that lifts itself above mere morality, respectability, and decency ; a life that is saintly and beautiful, which is ever ready to give itself for others, which is ever contending with the evil and misery there are in the world ; a life which sends the pastor to the outcast and the ignor- ant, which spends itself in efforts to reclaim the wanderer and to reform the criminal," and which had originated all the greatest agencies for the amelioration of our race. And if a still closer inquiry was made into the motives and purposes of Chris- tian men, it would be found that they all professed to have a bidden life of joy and solace and hope which was more beautiful than any which they could reveal. "Take up the biographies of men who in their day had belonged to the most opposite and contending sects, and who would scarcely have owned one another to be Christians. Read the records of their secret thoughts and feelings, uttering themselves in their prayers, their hymns, their journals of religious experience. Blow - away from their books the dust of the old bitter controversies, by which these men were kept apart, and what do you find? You find living souls that wept, sorrowed, joyed, hoped, and prayed alike ; men who speak of the realities of a hidden life, of the sin they hated, of the temptations they struggled against, of a life and spirit in them which enabled them to conquer, and of the hope that sustained them. So much had they been animated by the same spirit, that however divided they might have been in creed, it was clear that they might have sung one another's hymns and prayed one auother's prayers. And the explanation which they would each have given of these phenomena would have been substantially the same? This life is not ours, there was a time when we were dead ; this life is in us, but not of us ; it comes from another, it is the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us, we believe in Him, and believing in Him, we find his life and spirit in us ; as we trust in Him, the life grows stronger ; when we forget Him it grows weaker ; we can do all things through Christ, for He is our life." There, he continued, were phenomena in the history of the world which the student of human life could not disregard. They required some explanation, there was, somewhere, a theory to account for them. He could not now ask them to go into the evidence of Christianity, but he invited them to consider whether, with these facts before them, the super- natural theory which Christianity set up appeared quite so impro- bable, as it had seemed, a priori ; and whether it would be philo- sophical to reject without farther examination an exceptional explanation for phenomena so hard to account for on any natural theory. They had been considering the outward manifestations of a life ; and what was a life? He asked the man most profoundly versed in science there present to define for him what was that mysterious and hidden force for which he was searching day by day into the recesses of beings that live, or that have lived, and which still eludes his search ? What was the mysterious power which makes of the inanimate the animate? The men of faith had to tell of the life of man's spirit, should it surprise us to be told

that this life is more mysterious than the life that the men of science seek vainly to discover of the body? Was it so very strange a thing that they who already believe in an invisible influence in the realms of science, should be asked to go one step further, and believe the invisible in the realms of faith ? They might not be entitled to say, "Believe the Christian theory ;" but they might be justified in claiming for it a respectful and patient hearing.

"The men of faith make their earnest appeal to the men of science for help, and for help which they can give. From the babbler, from the shallow smatterer in science and theology who prattles about the supernatural and the natural, and who refuses • to believe in the mystery of religion, from him, to the real high priests of science, to the men who have reached the innermost shrine in her temple, and stand there reverently with bowed heads before the veil which they acknowledge they cannot lift, but beyond which they confess there is a power which influences them, .and the acting of which they feel and see ; we make our appeal ; we ask you to listen to us, as we say, 'Behold, we show you another mystery, the mystery of a hidden life." And, he pro- .ceeded to urge, so long as the Christian life yields fruits of holiness, of nobleness, and of beauty, so long its origin and history will be deserving of the study of every man of science. But if Chris- tianity ever ceased to purify and ennoble the lives of men, it would die out as a (treed, and ought to die. Its Founder had com- pared His disciples to the salt of the earth, " but if the salt have lost his savour. . . . it must be cast out and trodden under foot of men." There was no dead thing more odious and pestilential, as it lay reeking on the earth, than the corpse -of a dead religion, one which had ceased to operate on the con- sciences and behaviour of its professors. It was yet in the power of Christian men to vindicate the truth of their faith, if not in -controversy with the modern forms of scientific belief, at least by -consistent and holy Christian life. They might patiently wait for that reconciliation between science and religion which men were looking for ; when science and philosophy, on the one hand, should help religion to a truer expression of its own beliefs ; and religion, on the other hand, should give clearer evidences of its history and creeds. But one thing they could not afford to wait for,—the Christian life itself, as revealed in daily acts of self-sacrifice and holiness,—Christian men must take care that at least no one should be able to challenge them for proofs of the .reality of this life, and to say that there was no answer to the challenge.

It is very difficult to give in this brief summary a fair repre- sentation of an argument which was as remarkable for close sequence and for concentration as for the richness and variety of its illustrations. Still more difficult would it be to describe the ,profound emotion and interest which was kindled and sustained by the preacher during a pulpit address of far more than the average length. But we hope that the Dean of Cork will be induced to publish a full and accurate report of his sermon, and that in this way he may address a yet wider and more influential audience than that which listened to his voice on Association Sunday in Norwich.