SERMONS.—The Evangelica/ Revival, By R. W. Dale. (fodder and Stoughton)—The
first sermon of Mr. Dale's volume should be read in connection with the very able and interesting address to the students of Airedale Theological College, which concludes the volume. "I knew very much more at fourteen than I know now," says Mr. Dale, with characteristic force and brevity, in reference to the Catechism in which the youth of his generation were instructed. It would be unfair in this very brief notice, to attempt to state, much less to criticise, the preacher's statements about dogma. We would only point out to our readers their importance and significance. Other remarkably interesting eermone are those on "Natural Morality." With much of them we heartily sympathise ; but wo cannot agree with Mr. Dale that "the nppeal to the authority of God should be only occasional." Surely that would be to bring about the result which he himself would deprecate as earnestly as any man, the making the Divine Authority an u/tima ratio of terror, which is to be invoked when everything else has failed. We hold, on the con- trary, that the Divine Sanction should be ehown as underlying all morality ; and if we lived, and taught our children to live, with a duo reference to a Divine Presence with us, that should be aasy enough. Mr. Dale says something so like this, that we the more wonder at his statement. We gladly commend this very able volume of sermons to our readers.—The Preacher's Pocket : a Packet of Sermons, by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A. (Skeffington.)—Mr. Baring-Gould aims at doing what none are better qualified to do, giving sermons which will supply those who arc not to be included in the "large body of good, soft-headed and hearted Christians." We are far from agreeing with all that the preacher advances, We think that he sometimes expressos himself with a narrowness and a bigotry which are almost inconceivable in a man of so large a range of thought. "1 would not have you attempt to argue with the Emus of this world who deny baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence. They are denying what they know nothing about, because they have not spiritual discernment." Cannot a Zuinglian, then, have "spiritual discernment ?" Are all the spiritual emotions of Evangelical
Churchmen and Nonconformists hypocrisies or delusions ? Can there be no vision of the Unseen in what he contemptuously calls "a meeting-house, not a Malianaim ?" Such words are worthy only of the silliest and narrowest young "priest." But it is not the way
of Mr. Baring-Gould to be strictly consistent. He ventures so far in criticism as to tell us that " Daniel " was written in the times of the Maccabees, (what would Dr. Pusoy say to this ?) and elsewhere he talks in the strangest fashion about the spurious text of the Witnesses. "It may not have existed," he says, "in the Epistle as first sent forth, and thus it happens that early copies are without it, and the apostle may have added them [sic] in a second edition." Surely, he must have been writing here for the " soft-headed Christians." As if it could have made any conceivable difference whether they were put into a first or second edition, when the earliest MS. is of the fourth century ? In much better style are such sermons as that on "The Song of Songs," and "The Life in Christ," with its bold prevision of what Christianity may be to a world in which the old "Roman Law" of property shall have given place to a new social order. This, too, would make some congregations rub their eyes. But those who hoar Mr. Baring-Gould, whether directly or by deputy, will never rub their eyes for sleep.—In Christ° ; or, the Monogram of St. Paul. By I. R. Meoduff, D.D. (James Nisbet and Co.)—This is a series of sermons, chiefly devotional in their aim and character. The preacher collects the various passages in which the phrase "in Christ" occurs in St. Paul's Epistles, and examines and comments on them as "themes of meditation." The style seems to us some- what more ornate than quite snits such a book. Nor can we accept all the theology. Dr. Macduff quotes, apparently without dis- approval, a sentence which seems to us to contain a radically false statement of the meaning of the words "In Christ." Speaking of the doctrine of "imputed righteousness," he cites these words :—" A soul castled within these walls is impreg- nable. God cannot see the sinner, because Christ hides him."— Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. By Marcus Dods, D.D. (Macniven and Wallace.)—Dr. Dods' name will be favourably known to meat English students of theology, from his connection with Messrs. Clarke's most valuable series of the "Foreign Theological Library." This little volume belongs to a series of the "Household Library of Exposition," two previous volumes, of which we have had the pleasure of noticing in these columns. The present volume is worthy of the writer's reputation. He deals with the problems of human life and character which these biographies suggest, in a candid and manly fashion ; and where he discovers a spiritual significance in them, his course is always marked by sobriety and caution. Yet ho is not wanting in fervour and earnestness. We may note, as one of the things which struck us in reading these discourses, some excellent remarks on the character of Rebekah, its merits and its faults. Apt illustration is not wanting on occasion. Wo aro told, for instance, of a curious parallel to Esan's sale of his birthright. "Thu birthright of Ishmael's lino, the guardian- ship of the temple at Mecca, passed from one branch of the family to the other in a precisely similar way. We road that when the guardianship of the temple and the governorship of the town "fell into the hands of Abu Gabsban, a weak and silly man, Cosa, one of Mahommed's ancestors, circumvented him while in a drunken humour, and bought of him the keys of the temple, and with them the presidency of it, for a bottle of wino. Bat Abu Gabshan, being gotten out of his drunken fit, sufficiently repented of his foolish bargain ; from whence grow these proverbs among the Arabs,— ' Moro vexed with late repentance than Abu Gabshan ;' and More silly than Abu Gabshan,' which are usually said of those who part with a thing of great moment for a small matter." We cannot agree
with Dr. Dods' now of "Joseph's administration." It is little better than a plea for a benevolent despotism. Unhappily, despotisms are seldom benevolent in the second generation. That
Joseph's changes introduced or advanced thia 'form of government s3ems perfectly plain.—Two volumes of posthumous sermons may be mentioned together,—Memorials of John Legge, M.A., with Memoir by James Legge, M.A. (J. Clarke and Co.) ; and Christ our Hope, and other Sermons, by the Rev. William Giant ; with Memorial -Sketch by D. Macla,gan (Macniven and Wallace).—Mr. Legge was the minister of a Congregational church in Victoria, Australia, where he died in his thirty-second year. A career of great promise, interrupted at an early ago by ill-health, was thus out short. His sermons give the impression of strong feeling and considerable mental vigour. Such a discourse, for instance, as that on "Man's Power over Nature, and its Limitation," far transoonds the ordinary standard of even good sermons, In a different style, but not without force, is an essay dealing with "Supernatural Religion," and entitled, "Curious Result of Applying Sceptical Critioism to Itself." Mr. Grant was one of those who left the Established Church of Scotland at the time of the great Disreption. After that event up to the time of his death, in 1878, he laboured as a minister of the Free Church in Ayr. The sermons have been published to satisfy a wish of his congregation. They deal chiefly with the spiritual life, and express with fervenr and earnestness the views of a moderated Calviaism.--Sermons, Doctrinal and Practical, By the Rev. S. Morgan Dix, S.T.D. (W. W. Gardner.)—Dr, Dix is rector of what is, we suppose, the best-known Episcopalian Church in the States, Trinity Church, New York. Their theology is based upon Sacramental doctrine, but, if we may so put it, the superstructure has an Evangelical form, as, indeed, is not uncommonly the case in these days. Sometimes the preacher deals with social topics. We may notice in particular one discourse, "The Rich and the Poor, Here and Hereafter." Here the preacher seems to hint, though not very plainly, at a restored monasticism, or some kindred system. The volume is chiefly interesting as showing, as far as it can be taken as significant, the lino of thought in the Episcopal Communion in the States.—Dr. Quarry, in his Religious Belief, its Difficulties in Ancient and Modern. Times, Compared and Considered (the Donnellan Lecture for 1877-78) (Hodges, Foster, and Figgie, Dublin ; Longmans, London), discusses with learning and acuteness fundamental questions of belief,—the "Question of Evil," "The Goodness of God," "The Freedom of Man," "The Being of God." A fifth discourse, on "Modern Views of Miracles," is followed up and illustrated by what will introduce some readers to a comparatively unfamiliar region of thought) "Ancient Views of Miracles."—The Rev. Philip Brooks, author of the Influence of Jesus, the "Bohlen Lecture for 1879" (R. Dickinson), made himself favourably known last year by his preaching to many in this country. These eloquent discourses, bearing as they do on the great question of the influence of religious belief—it should rather be said, of the thought which underlies religious belief—will be read with special interest.—Another contribution to apologetic theology is .Tesus Christ's Mode of Presenting Himself to the World a Proof of his Divine Mission and Supernatural Weak, by the Rev. John Cooper. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Professor Cidderwood, in a brief preparatory note, describes the book as seeking to rest an argument for Christianity upon ultimate principles of' reason, and to develop the argument by detailed consideration of the adaptation of Christ's teaching to the moral and spiritual wants of men," Man's intrinsic want of a revelation, and the actual want of the world at the time of Christ's coming, the adaptation of His character and work to that want, the real success of the religion which Ho founded, and the reason of any apparent failure, these are some of the theses which Mr. Cooper argues, and argues with lucidity and force.—The Atone. moat, awl other Discourses, By Thomas Cooper. (T-Iodder and Stoughton.)—Mr. Cooper is a vigorous and effective lay preacher, who has acquired for himself a good title to ho heard. We cannot accept his theology ; and his views, as can be imagined by those who are acquainted with his style, are not stated with any kind of com- promise. That view of the Atonement which speaks of Christ being "regarded by almighty justice and holiness as the one great Criminal"
shocks all moral sense and feeling of reality. But there is plenty of sound sense and theology, for all that, in Mr. Cooper's volume.—We may mention another contribution to theology from a layman, Dr. George Sexton's Theistic Problems : being Essays on the Reistence of God and his Relationship to Man (Hodder and Stoughton), which is ably and temperately reasoned.—Nigh unto the End ; or, a Passage in Sacred Prophecy (Rev. covi., 12-15), now in Course of Translation into History Considered, by the Rev. J. C. Boyce, M.A. (Bentley and Son), is a book which we cannot pretend to criticise. It may be gross prejudice, but we own that Mr. Boyee's appeal to his readers for "an earnest consideration of the Anglo-Israelite theory" was enough for us. It would be easy to make fun of this book, with its strange discoveries of prophetic analogies in most unlikely quarters, but we prefer to pass it with a brief expression of our inability to enter into its modes of thinking.
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