SOME SERMONS.*

ONB chief characteristic of Canon Beeching's sermons is that they touch both closely and felicitously on practical life. The

.discourse which gives its title to the volume, "The Grace of Episcopacy," is not, as might possibly be supposed, a vindica- tion of episcopacy as the rightful order of the Christian Church, but an utterance of admirable counsel as to how a Bishop should bear himself both as teacher and ruler. Along with this should be read "The Grace of Kingship," preached on the Sunday following the Coronation, supplemented as it is by "The Two Girdings," the occasion of which was the deferring of that great function. But the preacher is not satisfied with laying down the duties of Kings and Bishops :—

"Woe to the shepherds who feed themselves.' Are, then, kings and ordained priests the only shepherds ? Is there not a sense in which we all share a kingship ? Is not St. Peter's doctrine of the inalienable priesthood of the laity a topic familiar -upon our Protestant platforms ? If that is so, while we may be justifiably critical of the vice and luxury of kings, of the arrogance or idleness of priests, whenever we meet with them, and perhaps they are less common than we think, let us see to it that we act up to our own high calling in the Church of Christ. Simon, son of Sohn, lovest thou Me more than these? Feed My sheep.' Do we love Christ ; then does our love drive us to feed sheep or tend lambs? Have we 'girded ourselves' to some task in which our own profit is not concerned ? have we committed ourselves to any cause, so as to give others a chance to carry us whither we would not ? Let us not accept that miserable view of a layman, that he is a mere non-clergyman, a negative thing, a man unfettered by creeds and articles and definitions—that is but a poor idea of a layman. A layman is a member of the laos or people of Christ, and as such he is like his brethren of the clergy, both free and bound, free and yet the servant of Christ in whose service alone he can find true freedom."

We would gladly deal, did limits of space allow, with others -of the sermons. One noble passage we cannot refuse our- selves the pleasure of transferring to our columns. The -preacher has been quoting a passage from George Eliot, and goes on to summarise and to controvert it :- "Each ordinary human life, that is to say, which lives to its 'natural close, is a tragedy. Does not that judgment of itself suggest that something is wrong in the un-Christian view ? In our own experience, is old age always a catastrophe ? God forbid. To see the brow wrinkled, the cheeks fallen, that were once the pride of your heart, is a loss not to be gainsaid; to note the weakening of power, in will or in wisdom, in those who have been to ourselves the guides of life and the inspiration of our achieve- ment—is a loss far sadder, not to be gainsaid. But that is not the failure of the life; that is not catastrophe, any more than the withering of a leaf or the falling of a blossom is catastrophe and -failure. The only failure in human life is fruitlessness; a starved spirit, a character on which the sun and showers of Almighty -God have all spent themselves in vain."

Upon the little volume on the Creed by the same author we -can make one observation only,—that the caution against Tritheism in popular theology is not a little needed. Divines who ought to know better sometimes express themselves as 'deploring the tendency to give to the Third Person in the Trinity less than His due share of reverence. It may be said that from one point of view such a tendency is inevitable. If the Eucharist is the centre of spiritual life, we cannot deny "the fact that the whole service makes but a bare mention of -the Holy Spirit. The remedy is to remember that "we cannot -draw a distinction between the presence of Christ in us and -the presence of the Holy Spirit in us." "In two remarkable passages St. Paul expressly refuses to distinguish them. 'Now the Lord,' he says, is the Spirit—the Spirit of God'; and again he says, the second Adam became a life-giving We are glad to see that the success of an earlier volume has

induced Dr. Hort's literary executor to publish another series of his Village Sermons. It is interesting to turn from the -story of how these sermons were written—how be would sit for hours unable to write a word, dumb, so to speak, till the 'Sunday morning was well advanced—to the reading of the sermons themselves, and see how simple they are, how -absolutely free from all trace of effort. The Christmas Sermon, for instance, is a model of what such a discourse • (1) The Grace of Episcopacy. By H. C. Seething, D.Litt. London : J. Nisbet and Co. {30... 64. net.] —(2) The Apostles' Creed. By the same Author. London: John Murray. [Es 64. net.] —(3) Village Sermons. Second Series. By 'the late F. J. A. Hort. London: Macmillan and Co. [6s.]—(4) Loweente Day Addresses. By George Granville Bradley, sometime Dftn of Westminster. London Jahn Murray. ps. net.] —(5) Sayings of Tem. By if. D. Sevenoaks : The Beaver Press.—(6) Conversations with Christ. By the Author of "The Faith of a Christian." London: Macmillan and Go. [Is. 64. net.]

should be. The preacher builds it, as it were, on a thought

familiar to every one of his hearers,—birthdays. One's own birthday; the birthdays of kinsfolk and friends ; the birth-

days of the dead: these bring thoughts that must in some way touch every one. Then he goes on :-

"Who is this Christ who was born on this day He was on oarth, the Son of Man ; a man like the rest of men, the son of an earthly mother and so a true member of the race of men ; but more, one who was not only a son of man but the Son of Man, one who as being also the Son and Word of the Everlasting Father was the Head and Chief of men, the Life of their life, the Light of their light ;—brother of each and every man, but more than this, the elder brother of all; the one man who is more closely connected with each and all of us than any of us can be with any other."

There is nothing here out of the way. Dr. Hort does not

furnish us with purpurei panni for display, but it puts the central truth of Christmas with admirable lucidity.

Dean Bradley's Addresses have, as may be easily supposed, a special character. It was in 1871 that Dean Stanley first established the practice of a Children's Sermon

on Innocents' Day,—a characteristically modern substitute for the mediaeval Christmas sport of the Boy-Bishop. He carried it on for the ten years that followed, and his successor con- tinued it during his tenure of office, failing only twice in twenty-one years to occupy the pulpit. Happy the preacher, one may think, who- has such a choice of themes as such a day in such a place suggests ! But it needed a special gift to choose and use to good purpose. Dr. Bradley handles legend and history with equal felicity. He tells, for instance, how the Confessor gave a ring of gold to a beggar, and bow the beggar, who was St. John the Evangelist, sent it back from the Holy Land as a taken that the King's time was come. In another sermon he relates the story of David Livingstone, from the cotton factory of Blantyre down to the burial in the Abbey.

Canon Rawnsley had a happy thought when he took the newly discovered "Sayings of Jesus" as the subject of a series of sermons, even though it was a village congregation which he was addressing. Few of us realise what power of appreciation even the uneducated hearer possesses, so long as the language in which he is addressed is fairly familiar. Canon Rawnsley does not think that the Sayings," taken as a whole, add to our knowledge of the Spirit of Christ as revealed to us in the Gospel," and he draws from them a perfectly legitimate inference as to the power of critical selection which the com- pilers of the Gospel record possessed. All the sermons are suggestive and instructive ; but naturally the most striking is that in which the Fifth Logion is handled : "Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood, and there am I." One of the thoughts which it suggests is the blessing that rests on work, a truth that always needs to be specially emphasised in a land where, as in Egypt, Nature has been bountiful. He makes, too, a very happy quotation from Ecclesiastes :—" Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt there- with; and he that cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby." (The volume is printed at the Beaver Press, and is a fine specimen of typography ; but the proofs would have been bettered by more "reading.")

The author of Conversations with Christ has taken between twenty and thirty passages from the Gospels in which

questions put, or petitions made, to the Master, and His answers, are recorded. In all of these we have portraits of Christ, wonderfully various, but with an unmistakable like- ness, and also with an unmistakable reality. As our author says, "they have too much personality to be mythical." That such a Being should be a literary creation is simply incredible. The book is characterised throughout by insight and sympathy. The first study is of Nathanael. At first sight the cause seems inadequate to the result, a full confession of belief brought about by the words, "When thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee." It would be so if this merely meant some preternatural power of vision,—the man seen

when he is sure that he is alone. There was much more than this. There were two Nathanaels, one sceptical and cynical

—" Can any good thing come out of Nazareth P "—the other cherishing hopes and looking up to ideals. The fig-tree had been the scene of a conflict between the two, and "He bad both seen and understood He bad done more than explain the past, He had interpreted the future, and His forecast of the future inspired Nathanael with new hope, by declaring

him not to be the mean and deceitful Jacob of his pessimistic

moods, but the Israel of his hopes and strivings." With this we may compare the last study, "Faith versus Sight," the familiar story of the doubting Thomas. The writer of the Fourth Gospel has preserved the trait of the man's courage. "Thomas said, Let us go that we may die with him." He had been swept away by the panic which overwhelmed the whole company. But his self-reproach had been the more bitter because the purpose in which he had failed had been more resolved. He can think of nothing else but that the Master was dead, and that he had not died with Him. He is absent from the Upper Room, possibly recalling at Calvary the scene of the death which he ought to have shared:—

" His mournful thoughts are suddenly broken in upon by the other disciples with the announcement that they have seen the Master, and their hearts are overflowing with joy. The two states of mind are in marked contrast to one another, and hence Opposition is to be expected. Thomas is in the depth of despair and humiliation, while they are on the mount of exaltation. Over and over again he has said to himself: 'He is dead, He is dead; would to God I bad died with Him.' The disciples meet Him with the words : 'He is alive, and we have seen Him.' To Thomas, in the frame of mind in which he is, it is simply in- credible. Impossible,' he says. The only conception of his Master in harmony with his thoughts is as he saw Him in the agony of death."

This is a fine reading of the story.