ROBERTSON'S POSTHUMOUS SERMONS..

Tire second series of Sermons by the late Mr. Robertson of Bright- on appear under the same disadvantages as the first series. They were not prepared by himself for the press; indeed, some of them are not printed from any regular manuscript, but from his notes furnished to some of his flock who could not attend church, or from " reports " by his congregation. This process precludes finish either of arrangement or diction. It is possible that it better exhibits the salient characteristics of the author's mind. His earnestness of purpose, his independent view of social opinions or practices, his power of applying the incidents of Scripture to the circumstances of modern life, are all displayed with greater force than might have been the case had the sermons been more carefully revised for publication. They have less than might have been ex- peoted of a fragmentary character, from the definite conception of the subject and the logical nature of the author's mind. Modern sermons owe much of their character to the preacher's class. If he belongs to the strictly orthodox and formal school, which brings every question to the test of Scriptural interpretation as conventionally received, and would make the truths of science, or more properly the development of creation, square to the inter- pretation of certain passages, the greatest natural ability will be fettered. Shut in and shut out, the preacher's genius is compelled to triteness by the necessity of enforcing such trite subjects as the fleeting nature of life, the certainty, of death, the unsatisfactory character of earthly pleasures or earthly acquirements. A little of force and freshness may be imparted by an application of gene- ral morality to the general failings of the time. The conventional preacher, however gifted, cannot enter into the great social ques- tions that in this period of movement are stirring or tormenting the minds of men; for he lacks sympathy alike with the heart or the intellect. He begins, in religion, by demanding a credence his hearers will not or cannot give him; in science, by dogmatically contradicting what they think demonstrable truths; and when they ask for the resolution of a doubt, he tells them their doubt is sin, and bids them in effect be silent.

The new school, which was perhaps founded by Arnold, and whose leading members are Maurice, Kingsley, and some other dis- tinguished men, though covertly branded by the extremely ortho- dox with want of faith, has really more faith than the orthodox impugners. The former, when science and Scripture appear to dash, do not strive to reconcile the seeming opposites by strained interpre- tations, but show faith in all and each, and trust to further de- velopment for a reconciliation. Again, when a Scriptural text contradicts a general practice, they do not seek to combine the worship of God and Mammon or rather to give preference to Mammon ; they show an unfashionable faith i by standing on the text of Scripture. Above all, they have faith n man and sym- pathy with his " infidel " struggles, and with the blinder, dumber struggles of the poor, and suffering, and possibly wicked masses. We do not know if Frederick Robertson was enrolled in this school, for some belong to it who might not acknowledge the fact; but his views were essentially of it, especially in opposition to the social hypocrisy, formalism, and "respectability" of the age. Here, for instance is part of a passage describing the preaching of Christ, and the unlikelihood that its reception should have been other than it was in the age in which he appeared; followed by the question how such a teacher would be received here now.

"Or should we have rather said, This is dangerous teaching, and revolu- tionary in its tendencies; and he who teaches it is an incendiary, a mad, democratical, dangerous fanatic ? "That was exactly what they did say of your Redeemer in HisIday; nor does it seem at all wonderful that they did.

• "The sober, respectable inhabitants of Jerusalem, very comfortable them- selves, and utterly unable to conceive why things should not go on as they had been going on for a hundred years—not smarting from the misery and the moral degradation of the lazars with whom He associated, and under whose burdens His loving spirit groaned—thought it excessively dangerous to risk the subversion of their quiet enjoyments by such outcries. They add, prudent men ! if He is permitted to go on this way, the Romans will come and take away our place and nation. The Priests and Pharisees, against whom He had spoken specially, were fiercer still. They felt there was no time to be lost."

Many similar extracts might be made from various sermons, as fearlessly dissecting the vices of the rich, and as frankly but more tenderly touching the excusable faults of the poor. Still, not very much can openly be said against this tone ; indiscreet, ill- timed, violent," must be the extent of the censure. The following passage from a sermon on the doubts of Thomas and the Resur- rection might have been obnoxious to a different charge, though in reality cogent in the orthodoxy of the argument. The preacher is speaking of the necessity of revelation to establish the immor- tality of man. After showing that the transformation of the but- terfly and similar illustrations fail as proofs, he proceeds.

"Look at it in another point of view, and it is a dark prospect. Human history behind and hudian history benre, both give a stern No,' in reply to the question, Shall we rise again ?

"Six thousand years of human existence have passed away : countless armies of the dead have set sail from the shores of time. No traveller has returned from the still land beyond. More than one hundred and fifty gene- rations have done their work, and sunk into the dust again, and still there is not a voice, there is not a whisper from the grave to tell us whether indeed those myriads are in existence still. Besides, why should they be ? Talk as you will of the grandeur of man why should it not be honour enough for him, more than enough to satisfy a thing so mean, to have had his • Sermons prtswhed at Trinity Chapel, Brighton. By the late Rey..Frederiek W. Robertson, M.A., the Incumbent. Second Series. Pnblished by Smith and Elder, London ; and King. Brighton. twenty or his seventy years' liferent of God's universe ? Why must such a thing, apart from proof, rise up and claim to himself an exclusive immortal- ity ? Ian's majesty ! man's worth! the difference between him and the elephant or ape is too degradingly small to venture much on. That is not all : instead of looking backwards, now look forwards. The wisest thinkers tell us that there are already on the globe traces of a demonstration that the human race is drawing to its close. Each of the great human families has had its day—its infancy, its manhood, its decline. The two last races that have not been tried are on the stage of earth doing their work now. There is no other to succeed them. Man is but of yesterday, and yet his race is wellnigh done. Man is wearing out, as everything before him has been worn out. In a few more centuries the crust of earth will be the sepulchre of the race of man, as it has been the sepulchre of extinct races of palm- trees, and ferns, and gigantic reptiles. The time is near when the bones of the last human being will be given to the dust. It is historically certain that man has quite lately, within a few thousand years, been called into ex- istence. It is certain that before very long the race must be extinct. " Now look at all this without Christ, and tell us whether it be possible to escape such misgivings and such reasonings as these which rise out of such an aspect of things. Man, this thing of yesterday, which sprung out of the eternal nothingness, why may be not sink after he has played his appointed part into nothingness again ? You see the leaves sinking one by one in autumn, till the heaps below are rich with the spoils of a whole year's vege- tation. They were bright and perfect while they lasted, each leaf a miracle of beauty and contrivance. There is no resurrection for the leaves ; why must there be one for man? Go and stand some summer evening by the river-side ; you will see the mayfly sporting out its little hour in dense masses of insect life, darkening the air a few feet above the gentle swell of the water. The beat of that very afternoon brought them into existence. Every gauze wing is traversed by ten thousand fibres which defy the micro- scope to find a flaw in their perfection. The omniscience and the care be- stowed upon that exquisite anatomy, one would think, cannot be destined to be wasted in a moment. Yet so it is ; when the sun has sunk below the trees its little life is done. Yesterday it was not ; tomorrow it will not be. God has bidden it be happy for one evening. It has no right or claim to a second; and in the universe that marvellous life has appeared once, and will appear no more. May not the race of man sink like the generations of the mayfly ? Why cannot the Creator, so lavish in His resources' afford to an- nihilate souls as He annihilates insects ? Would it not almost enhance His glory to believe it ?

"That, brethren, is the question; and Nature has no reply. The fearful secret of sixty centuries has not yet found a voice. The whole evidence lies before us. We know what the greatest and wisest have had to say in favour of an immortality ; and we know how, after eagerly devouring all their arguments, our hearts have sunk back in cold disappointment, and to every proof, as we read, our lips have replied mournfully, That will not stand. Search through tradition, history, the world within you and the world with- out,—except in Christ, there is not the shadow of a shade of proof that man survives the grave."

These and many analogous passages belong to the passing time by the treatment of the preacher, the sermons being on the general doctrines and duties of Christianity. A few discourses bear more upon temporary questions. There is a sermon on opening the Sydenham Palace on Sunday, which will hardly please either party. The text is from Romans, chapter xiv, verses 5 and 6, the pith of which is "Let every man be persuaded in his own mind.' The preacher is Egger that the Jewish Sabbath is abrogated as of obli- gation. A min may lawfully keep it if he is conscientiously con- vinced—" persuaded in his own mind." He may lawfully disre- gard it as an institution if "he regardeth it unto the Lord." But, says the preacher, the arguments of the advocates for the opening of the Crystal Palace break down on this point.

"He who not trying to serve God on any day, gives Sunday to toil or pleasure' certainly ainly observes not the day ; but his non-observance is not ren- dered to the Lord. He may be free from superstition; but it is not Christ who has made him free. Nor is he one of whom St. Paul would have said that his liberty on the Sabbath is as acceptable as his brother's conscientious scrupulosity. "Here, then, we are at issue with the popular defence of public recreations on the Sabbath-day : not so much with respect to the practice, as with respect to the grounds on which the practice is approved. They claim liberty; but it is not Christian liberty. Like St. Paul, they demand a licence for non- observance; only, it is not 'non-observance to the Lord.' For distinguish well. The abolition of Judaism is not necessarily the establishment of Chris- tianity: to do away with the Sabbath-day in order to substitute a nobler, truer, more continuous sabbath, even the sabbath of all time given up to

i God, s well. But to do away the special rights of God to the Sabbath, in order merely to substitute the rights of pleasure, or the rights of mammon, or even the licence of profligacy and drunkenness, that, methinks, is not Paul's 'Christian liberty.' "

The Eesthetical argument fails also.

"The second point on which we join issue is the assumption that public places of recreation, which humanize, will therefore Christianize the people. "It is taken for granted that architecture, sculpture, and the wonders of nature and art which such buildings will contain, have a direct or indirect tendency to lead to true devotion.

"Only in a very limited degree is there truth in this at all. Christianity will humanize' we are not so sure that humanizing will Christianize. Let us be clear upon this matter. -Esthetics are not religion. It is one thing to civilize and polish; it is another thing to Christianize. The worship of the beautiful is not the worship of holiness : nay, I know not whether the one may not have a tendency to disincline from the other. "At least, such was the history of ancient Greece. Greece was the home of the arts, the sacred ground on which the worship of the beautiful was carried to its perfection. Let those who have read the history of her decline and fall, who have perused the debasing works of her later years, tell us how music, painting, poetry, the arta, softened and debilitated and sen- sualized the nation's heart. Let them tell us how, when Greece's last and greatest man was warning in vain against the foe at her gates, and demanding a manlier and a more heroic disposition to sacrifice, that most polished and humanized people, sunk in trade and sunk in pleasure, were squandering enormous sums upon their buildings and their 'esthetics, their processions, and their people's palaces, till the flood came, and the liberties of Greece were trampled down for ever beneath the feet of the Macedonian conqueror. " No ! the change of a nation's heart is not to be effected by the infusion of a taste for artistic grace."

On the other hand, the preacher is equally distinct against qte mere puritanical enforcement of the Sabbatical law.

"The second ground on which we are opposed to the ultra-rigour of Sab- bath observance, especially when it becomes coercive, is the danger of in- juring the conscience. It is wisely taught by St. Paul, that he who does anything with offence, i. e. with a feeling that it is wrong, does wrong. To him it is wrong, even though it be not wrong abstractedly. Therefore it is always dangerous to multiply restrictions and requirements beyond what is essential, because men, feeling themselves hemmed in, break the artificial barrier, but breaking it with a sense of guilt, do thereby become hardened in conscience and prepared for transgression against commandments which are Divine and of eternal obligation. Hence it is that the criminal has so often in his confessions traced his deterioration in crime to the first step of break- ing the Sabbath-day ; and no doubt with accurate truth. But what shall we infer from this ? Shall we infer, as is so often done upon the platform and in religious books, that it proves the everlasting obligation of the Sab- bath? Or shall we, with a far truer philosophy of the human soul, infer, in the language of St. Peter, that we have been laying on him ' a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were:-able to bear' ?-- in the language of St. Paul, that 'the motions of sin were by the law,' that the rigorous rule was itself the stimulating, moving cause of the sin ; and that when the young man, worn out with his week's toil, first stole out into the fields to taste the fresh breath of a spring day, lie did it with a vague, secret sense of transgression; and that having as it were drawn his sword in defiance against the established code of the religious world, he felt that from thenceforward there was for him no return, and so he became an outcast, his sword against every man and every man's sword against him ? I believe this to be the true account of the matter; and be- lieving it, I cannot but believe that the false, Jewish notions of the Sabbath. day which are prevalent have been exceedingly pernicious to the morals of the country."