The Bishop of Argyll and the Isles preached a very
striking sermon at Westminster Abbey last Sunday, from which we have had occasion to extract one remarkable sentence elsewhere. It was upon the text, " God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all," and was an attempt to reconcile the faith in a God of such light with the darkness which we see actually in the shape of both scepticism and sin around us. The Bishop's faith was that the delay, the tardiness in the coming of God's kingdom, is necessitated by the sort of kingdom which alone God has shown His purpose through Christ to establish,—a kingdom not imposed by Him, but accepted and implored by us, a kingdom to the light of which we shall have worked our own way intellectually and morally. God will not put all things under His feet in the sense of " force," but will have all things put themselves under Ilia feet "in the way of choice." In other words, science must find its way to God by its own light, and the spirit by its own free choice ; and God will wait for this, however long, rather than strain the human intellect and conscience by too overwhelm- ing a manifestation of His own power and will. Of many impres- sive sermons recently delivered in the Westminster Abbey services, this must have been one of the most impressive.
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