THREE VOLUMES OF SERMONS.*
FEWER sermons are published to-day than was the case a generation ago, because fewer are read. The taste for eloquence has diminished, and so preachers give less time to its cultivation. This loss of interest in pulpit eloquence might be deplored, were it not the other side of a deepened interest in religious ideas. Where the subject-matter of sermons was fixed, attention could be given to the skill with which it was presented; and as long as churchgoing was an established custom, the congregations demanded intellectual or emotional satisfaction, and the preachers supplied it. When, however, the disturbing influence of the new learning made itself felt in the region of theology, the serious-minded who had once read sermons turned to apologetics, which are more satisfactorily treated in books and magazines; and the sermon tended to dwindle into a more or less perfunctory exposition or exhortation. The volumes of sermons that are still published—except in the case of one or two preachers who throw their apologetics into sermon form—are generally of the nature of memorials : either of a preacher after his death, or of a schoolmaster's faithful dealing with his youthful flock in the school chapeL Of the first kind of memorial we hare two examples before us, both interesting, but very dissimilar in type. Canon Duckworth was a fine example of the old-fashioned divine, who was both a scholar and a gentleman. He had read the classical literature of ancient and modern Europe, and could write his own language with ease and grace, and preach in French as readily as in English. The writer of a brief intro- ductory memoir assures us that he retained to the last his mobility of mind, and never lost interest in the movement of theology ; but his own views must have been settled before the first half of the nineteenth century closed, and in consequence he belonged in matters of speculation to the world before the Flood. The sermons here given all bear the stamp of the Addisonian essay ; they are unmistakably Christian, but there is no note in them of urgency. The most characteristic seem to be those which treat of the virtues and graces of the Christian life, such as humility and contentment, and so they form a fitting memorial of a life which woe eminently that of a high-minded Christian gentleman. In Mr. Lund we have a preacher of quite another sort; less of a scholar, perhaps, and more of a thinker. Dr. Rendall, who attended St. Mary's Chapel in Liverpool, where Mr. Lund was incumbent for twenty-eight years, while he was Principal of Liverpool University College, gives a very sympathetic study of the impression made upon him by the preacher's personality; his passionate loyalty to truth, his skill as a teacher, his effective- ness in counsel. And the sermons reveal very clearly such a man as he describes—a man with a message, passionately in earnest abounds business of trying to make men and women see truly and will firmly. The most striking sermons are not those which have Um more unusual subjects, such as that on The Second Mrs. Tangueray or that on letter-writing, though these are excellent of their kind; we should rank higher those which deal with the mysteries of Calvary and the Resurrection, because, in a few pages, they penetrate to the heart of the matter, and present to their hearers a clear issue, which they must needs accept or reject. A good many of the sermons deal, in the same simple and direct fashion, with the problems • GI Occasional Barnes.. /3,y the late B. Dackworth. Edited by G. E. Troutbeck. London : Mowbray aude2o. fid. net.]—(2)A Sorer Went F,,rth. Sermons by T. W. M. Lund. Selected by G. H. Randall. Loudon: Longman. and Co. Oa net.1--(31 Msinbars Om of Another. Sermons preached in Sherborno Pclicol Chapel by Nowell Smith. London: Chapman and C5s, net] of family life and friendship. The sketches of the various ways in which mothers are unkindly treated by their children, in the sermon called "Wombs that are Blessed," show a very observant eye and a deft hand. It might be preached with advantage in most pulpits. But there is nothing Swiftian in Mr. Lund's view of men and women. If he shows them where they ail, it is only that, like a wise physician, he may point them to the remedy. The sermons on "The Vale of Life," "The Dignity of Work," "Humour," and "Sins of Omission" are full of wise counseL We have seldom met a volume of sermons of which it may be as truly said as of this that "all is work and nowhere space."
The special interest of Mr. Nowell Smith's sermons preached in the school chapel at Sherborne is that they are the work of a layman. Perhaps that accounts in part for their freshness and intimacy of appeal, though Mr. Nowell Smith would probably retain his attractiveness of personality under any professional unifolen : it may account also for a certain want of directness in the style, a modest tentativeness, and a profusion of such phrases as "I think perhaps," which are great deadeners. A preacher should avoid a parenthesis like a rock. But whatever the style may be, the thought is direct enough. The subjects discussed are those which must be common to all school sermons—independence, courage, the government of the tongue. Pharisaism, proper pride ; but there is a noticeable attempt to make the analysis psychologically correct, though, of course, without any display of technical language; and also to show the dependence of the Christian virtues upon the Christian faith. Further, there is a commend. able effort to treat the Bible as a living book, by helping the boys to realise the motives which actuated the Prophets and Apostles, and to supply illustrations from current history of the working of similar motives. No school sermons that we have read of recent years have struck us as ao likely to stimulate thought among the more intelligent sort of boys; and even the more thoughtless might find such a question as the following uncomfortably sticking in their mind when Sun- day was over : "What right have you to be proud of Sherborne School, if the school has reason to be ashamed of you?"
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