SEamozos.—If any one of our clerical readers, not being a
well-known personage, were to go to a publisher with a proposal for a volume of sermons, be would probably meet with a chilling reply. Yet, undoubt- edly, many volumes of sermons do get published, more volumes of ser- mons certainly than of any other kind of discourses, and more volumes about theology generally than about any other subject. If we were to judge from the talk which one hears continually, the sermon is an obsolete insti- tution, which intelligent people endure only out of respect to the conven- tionalities. If we are to judge from facts, no literature—the novel, perhaps, only excepted—appeals to so numerous a public. It is cer- tainly a fact that the volumes which may be classed under this head constitute from their gravity and number a very serious part of our work of reviewing. Of all that we propose to notice on the present occasion, none excited in us more interest of expectation than Moral Difficulties connected with the Bible. By J. A. Hassey, D.D. (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.) — Dr. Hassey is an able man, a practised theologian, and willing, as has been shown by his Lectures on Sunday, to deal frankly with subjects on which controversial feelings are strongly excited. But we cannot profess to be satisfied with the volume before us. Indeed the plan on which it is written pre- cludes the possibility of such satisfaction. "A fall answer to this diffi- culty," says Dr. Hessey—he is speaking of the language of Deborah about dael—" I must reserve until I can consider the subject of the inspiration of Scripture as a whole." It seems to us that any answer that is not "full" is absolutely valueless, while we perfectly agree with the writer that the subject of the inspiration of Scripture must be discussed before any such full answer can be given. The want of a plain, intelligible principle by which we may judge the words and sentiments of the writers of Scrip- ture makes itself felt throughout the volume. Nothing could be more calm, temperate, and conciliatory in tone. It is not wanting in can- dour. It contains many suggestions for the settlement of difficulties which reasonable opponents will at least allow to be of weight, but we cannot see that it makes any sensible impression on the "Moral Difficulties of Scrip- ture," and that for the reason that it does not define what Scripture is. Dr. Hassey has been preaching the Boyle Lectures for a second time this year—the volume before us contains the Lectures for 1871—and we eball be glad to return to the subject, and to notice his argument in greater detail when we have it placed hilly before us.—The Voice of God, by B. Morgan Cowie, B.D. (W. W. Gardner), contains a series of Warbur- tonian Lectures on the subject of Prophecy. Mr. Cowie takes up a position on what may be called the extreme right of Orthodoxy. The mention by name of some future deliverer, to be born centuries after the supposed prophecy has been uttered, does not trouble him. He can see no reason, for instance, why Isaiah should not have spoken of Cyrus. On the contrary he argues, if the prophecy is to have any effect in con- vincing unbelievers, it had to appeal to wonderful coincidences of this kind. "They must contain," he says, "minute particulars beyond the conjecture of the most sagacious of mankind." We recollect reading some time ago a similar argument relating to the latter part of the book of Daniel. "How those good men, the Maccabees," said the writer, "must have been encouraged when they felt assured by the prophecy of how events would tarn oat!" Our own notion was that a more damaging argument could not have been discovered. Such a supposition seems absolutely inconsistent with the freedom of human action. Foreknow- ledge on the part of the Creater presents difficulties enough, but fore- knowledge on the part of those who take a share in human action makes a hopeless puzzle. It is not too mach to say, that we cannot apply any accepted test of ethics to the action of those who have known beforehand the results of such action. The confidence in the future that arises from a firm faith in principles is very different, but the idea of a statesman or warrior having an oracle by which he can foresee the results of his policy or his strategy is an absurdity. It reduces prophecy to soothsaying. There is, therefore, a radical difference of opinion between Mr. Cowie and ourselves, and this necessarily influences our judgment on the whole of his book. We cannot help thinking, when we remember the place—Lincoln's Inn Chapel—where these lectures are delivered, what different teaching was once heard there in that masterly series of the "Prophets and Kings."—Truth and Life ; or, Short Sermons for the Day, by the Rev. Stanley Loathes (Hato/lards), is a volume that has a controversial purpose. The sermons are very hard and ungracious : witness the sermon about Esau, where the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, and of the choice and rejection of nations and men, is stated with a harshness that is repulsive, and, as we cannot but think, derogatory to the true conception of the Divine character. We hold that every statement of the doctrine of election— which as a fact it is indeed impossible to deny—should insist on the beneficial purpose of such choice as regards the multitude whom it seems to pass over or rbjeet. Mr. Stanley Loathes' views are argued out with some power, and stated in clear and precise language, but we cannot welcome his championship of Christian truth. —The Atonement of Christ. By Alfred Barry, D.D. (Macmillan.)—Dr. Barry, to whose eloquence and power as a preacher these sermons are a sufficient testimony, is not uni- formly successful in dealing with his subject. The most important of hie six lectures is that which takes for its subject "Christ our Propitiation," and it is of all the six the least satisfactory. He is unwilling to state in its repulsive bareness the scholastic doctrine of the substitution of the innocent for the guilty ; and he is not prepared to accept the doctrine that finds an explanation of atonement in that perfect obedience—itself the highest of sacrifices—which in the person of the Representative Man reconciled Humanity to God. He seems, in fact, unwilling either to affirm or to deny that God is propitiatel Take this passage, for instance, "This word [propitiation] is one which we must not, we dare not, in order to avoid mystery, explain away. It does most certainly imply a change in the relation of God to man. I do not say a change in God's will or His eternal love to man ; but I do say, a change in our state and in our relation to God." But is it the same thing to say, "a change in the relation of God to man," and" a change in our state and in our relation to Him." About the latter we are all agreed ; it is the former that wants explanation, and here we look, and look in vain, for teaching. But on the whole, the impression left on the mind as to the change which has passed over so-called orthodox doctrine on this subject is encouraging. Might we take the liberty of calling Dr. Barry's atten- tion to the following passage :—" Turn to the great Epistle to the Romans—the crown, as I have reminded you, of the four epistles of that time—in which St. Paul declares that he cares not to know anything but Jesus Christ, and him crucified.'" These words were used once only by St. Paul, and that in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where it seems to us they have a special significance. St. Paul had been preaching natural theology at Athens ; at Corinth he would take a different line. To quote them generally is surely a mistake. As a matter of fact, St. Paul speaks far more of Christ risen than of Christ crucified. But what are we to say of quoting them as if they came from the Romans ? or is the antecedent of " which" to be found in the four epistles of that time " rather than in "the Epistle to the Romans "?--Chrialianity and Modern Thought. By R. Haynes Cave. (James Parker.)—Mr. Cave is certainly candid. "There are," he says, "three religions in the Established Church at the present moment." These three are Protestantism, Free Thought, and Catholicism. The last of these dates hack to about thirty years ago, for, says Mr. Cave, "the High Churchmen of the last generation and of the Caroline epoch were thoroughly Protestant, their High -Churchism being rather a political than a religious theory,"—exactly what we have always been saying. What calls itself the Catholic party in the English Church has absolutely no past to appeal to unless it goes back beyond the Reforma- tion. The divines to whom they sometimes appeal have nothing in common with them ; as Mr. Cave says, they were thoroughly Protestant. But the amazing thing is that Mr. Cave is satisfied with the sacerdotal validity of his position as an Anglican priest. It is probable that he received his orders from a bishop of "another religion ;" it is quite certain that the succession on which he relies for the validity of his orders has passed, at one time or another, through such a prelate. The matter is perfectly plain. Catholicism, or true Christianity, is only thirty years old in the Established Church. For three centuries a false Cbristianity,another religion, dominated it. Surely Mr. Cave might as well trace his succession through a Massulman or a Brahmin.—DijficsIties of the Day, and How to Meet Them, by the Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes, B.D. (Lyall.)—Mr.Ffonlkes' book will be a useful corrective to any one who may be shaken by the confident assertions of Mr. Cave. He has known, by familiar acquaintance, the inner working of that great system of which Anglican Catholicism is but an indifferent copy. What he has to say on the matters which are the subjects of contro- versy is all the more valuable, because his change of attitude has not been accompanied by any violent revulsion of opinion. The sermons on "Scripture-Interpreters and Interpretations" and "The Unity of the Church" seem to us especially worthy of attention.— The Valiant Woman, by Monseigneur Landriot (Burns and Oates), is a volume of "conferences" happily not controversial. "A series of dis- courses," the author, who is now Archbishop of Rheims, calls them, "intended for the use of women living in the world." "The Valiant Woman " is the "virtuous woman" (as our version has it), whom King Lemuel, or rather King Lemnel's mother, describes in Proverbs xxxi., 10-31. It is not too much to say that the volume is admirable. The archbishop is not above descending, when the occasion demands, to homely details in the lives and occupations of his hearers. Whatever he says, he says with admirable taste and judgment, and with a certain tact and grace which are characteristic of the French mind in its best temper. We doubt whether among ourselves an archbishop would have the courage to advise his audience about "the form and ma- terial of their beds." Our archbishop does so with perfect gravity, but with just the tinge of very quiet humour which would be wanted in mentioning such a subject from the pulpit. The piety which Monseigneur Landriot recommends is of a very genuine, reasonable kind. "Silliness" he says, in one place, "particularly if one has the unhappy talent of joining it to an ill-understood piety, is capable of spoiling everything, even all that is best." The book may be read by anyone with pleasure and profit, and without offence. It seems well translated. —Sermons on Special Occasions. By Daniel Moore, M.A. (Rivingtons.)— These sermons have been preached at the special evening services at St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, before the Queen, in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, before the University of Cambridge, at the Oxford Lenten Mission, and on the occasion of sundry anniversaries, &c. They are of the safe, dignified kind, which have a fluency sometimes approaching to eloquence, but which, on the whole, we cannot but think fail to retain the interest which they very probably possessed for the audiences to which they were first addressed. They aro religious compositions of a sufficiently sound and wholesome character, but with hardly a pretension to deal with the deeper theology. Surely, for instance, in speaking of the appearance of our Lord after the Resurrection, it is quite misleading to slay that though "He might have appeared, to the utter confounding of his enemies," in the streets of Jerusalem, "there were troubled disciples to be comforted, and He could brook no delay in ministering to their relief." We have no reason to suppose that there was any such motive -for these appearances. The post-Resurrection Presence of Christ was at once real and spiritual, which was not to ho appreciated by mere faculties of sense. This was why He appeared "not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of God." The sermon on "Prayer and Providence" is, perhaps, as good as anything in the volume. It strikes us as strange that a preacher of such reputation as Dr. Moore should countenance a translation so very questionable, to say the least, as "not slothful in business for (1,1; Crr.00Z;Ip P;) SKIVOX. ••• The National Thanksgiving, by A. P. Stanley, D.D. (Macmillan.)—These are three sermons preached during the illness and after the recovery of the Prince of Wales, which many who read the notices or summaries that appeared in the newspapers at the time of their delivery will be glad to possess in fall.—We have also to mention, After this Manner Pray Ye, ten discourses on the Lord's Prayer, by R. Wickham, M.A., Archdeacon of S. Asaph ; 'Christ's Healing Touch and other Sermons, preached at Surbiton, by Alexander Mackennal (Elliott Stock); The Christ for All the Ages, and other Lay Sermons, by D. C. Davies (Hodder and Stoughton), these last being discourses preached in small outlying village chapels by an educated lay member of the central community to which they are attached. In such places a minister could not be main- tained except, we may be allowed to add, being instant on this subject just now "in season and out of season," by an Established Church. —Outlines of Sermons. (J. R. Smith.)—These are taken, we are told, "chiefly from the published works of Unitarian writers." We fancy
that the young minister who should build his discourses impartially on the lines here drawn for him would find himself involved in an coos- sional difficulty. Weald all Unitarian'', for instance, accept Dr. Priestley's thesis that "God influences our minds by natural methods. only "? Would they absolutely reject as impostures or delusions all the events of which the conversion of St. Paul was a type? Yet they must, if it be true, as Dr. Priestley says, that "the doctrines of irresistible grace, of instantaneous conversion, and of a new birth are dissipated by this view of God's method with us." To us it seems the most preposter- ous dogmatism to limit the Divine methods to what we are pleased to call "natural ;" and as for the historical fact, if the inner religious Ms is a reality, sudden conversions, changes, or whatever we may call them, are a reality also.--We have also to acknowledge a volume of what seems to be a useful and readable periodical, The Preacher's Lantern. (Hodder and Stoughton.)
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