the ecclesiastical year, and the texts are taken from all
the prophets in their canonical, and not their chronological order.. The author's standpoint seems to be that of an open-minded orthodoxy, and if, as we suppose, the discourses were delivered from his own pulpit to an ordinary congregation, he seems very happily to fit on the practical exhortations needed in our own day, to those spoken by the prophets of old to the people of Israel.
He does not attempt the solution of great difficulties such as rarely trouble the popular mind, but in many cases gives clearly the results of recent criticism, with which, of course, he is not always in sympathy. We may give as a fair specimen of his style and mode of thought, his remarks towards the end of the sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity, on " The Ever-
lasting Kingdom,"—" Yet it may well be asked : Is this state of Christendom, which we see now, the complete fulfilment of
Daniel's vision of a kingdom of the saints ? ' We cannot deem it a complete fulfilment. If we take up the first newspaper that comes to hand, we find a shameful chronicle of vice and crime-, disgracing our Christian profession. What is recorded daily in our land, and especially in our great cities, is in hideous contrast to the ideal of holy peace and love, which the kingdom of Heaven seems to denote. To any objector who points to these scandals as arguments against our religion, we can only reply by the parable, The kingdom of Heaven is like leaven.' So far as the spirit of Christ has really penetrated modern society, by His holy influence, so far is Christendom a fulfilment of the kingdom of Heaven and no farther."
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