The Decay of Modern Preaching. By J. P. Mahaffy. (Macmillan.)
—We are inclined to traverse Professor Mahaffy's fundamental asser- tion, and to contend that it is not preaching which has decayed, but the power of listening to preaching. That preaching, both in the Established Church and the Nonconformist communities, is much better now than it was twenty-five years ago, can hardly be doubted. As, likewise, it is equally certain that there is yet vast room for im- provement, Professor Mahaffy's candid criticisms may be listened to with attention. Piety, in the higher sense of the word, will always be a rare gift, and genius not less so, at least until men and women give up the foolish practice of marrying for liking, and consent to be paired on those principles, approved by Professor Mahaffy, which will ensure a gifted progeny. Meanwhile, we must do the best that we can. Celibacy, general culture, and special theo- ivies' learning, an orthodoxy not too strict and a heterodoxy not too lax, not too much sameness in preaching and not too much effort at variety, and lastly, if we can only reconcile it with other requirements not to be always in the mean between two extremes,—these are the chief points on which our adviser insists; these secured, preachers will gain an audience, not indeed of intelligent and educated people, who will gradually drop the inherited conventionalism of listening to sermons, bat of the multitude. Professor Mahaffy is always worth listening to, for if he does not instruct, he never fails to entertain ; but we cannot honestly say that this little book is to be ranked among his happier efforts. It is a curious thing that one who has assumed the part of an authoritative teacher should make so fundamental an error as to say that "it was the assertion of his [Christ's] divinity and his atonement which formed the real substance of early Christian preaching, and it was this which reformed the world." If anything is plain in the Acts, which is surely an authority on the subject, it is that the Apostles preached "Jesus and the Resurrection."
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