PLAIN SERMONS.*

AT a time when sensationalism in religion is somewhat in favour, and when it seems to be a recognised thing that old

facts must be clothed in new dresses, if they are to have atten- tion, it needs some courage to publish a small volume, in homely brown cloth, under the simple title of Plain Sermons, Preached

in Town and Country. Mr. Obbard has not only displayed this rare courage, but he has justified the use of it. We have seldom seen a better collection of short, earnest, and striking addresses than those which lie before us, preached, as the short preface informs the reader, before hearers of different classes, printed at the request of those who heard them, and left 4' rough-hewn, as they originally stood."

To avoid the two extremes, the dull, doctrinal sermon, on the one hand, which sends the duller village intelligence to sleep over original sin and the " vain talk of the Pelagians," and the frantic attempt, on the other, to attract a weary and diminish- ing congregation by startling announcements and sensational utterances from week to week, ought not, to an educated man, who has his subject at heart, to be a matter of great difficulty.

And yet we all know preachers who make shipwreck on one or other shoal. The present writer has frequently passed a chapel -whose notice-board could be outdone by nothing, unless it be by the Salvation Army itself. The story of the "Fall" was made to appear on this religious stage as "the first game of hide and seek," that of Zacchens as "the little man up the tree."

For our part, we greatly prefer the opposite extreme of hopeless dullness to this irreverent method of offering worldly baits, in order to entice people to swallow with it some spiritual food.

Mr. Obbard has too much faith in his subject, and too much natural freshness of thought, to condescend to any artificial gild- ing. His sermons are essentially sermons of to-day, as we may see from a glance at his index. The Census, the Revised New

-Testament, the Imprecatory Psalms, and God the Creator (which

deals with the relations between religion and science), are titles -which show us at the outset that our author believes, and believes intensely, that religion and matters of every-day in- cident and every-day speculation are not and cannot be divorced.

And yet the great fundamental doctrines are not overlooked. In the sermon which opens the volume, Mr. Obbard deals with

the love of the Father, and asks :—

" Why do you ascribe all harshness, coldness, and severity to God the Father, and all love, pity, compassion, sympathy, to God Jesus Christ ? If God the Son gave his life for you, God the Father did no less for you, when he spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up to die for you. I fear the Trinity is believed much more practically than the Unity."

It may be said there is nothing new in this ; neither is there anything new under the sun. But the reminder is needed. The

love of the Son in making the Atonement has so dazzled men's blurred vision, that the love of the Father in originating it has come to be overlooked. Yet he that for duty's sake or love's cake gives up that which is nearest and dearest to him, gives sometimes more than his own life. The pointsman who had to turn a train on to the line on which his infant child played, to nave that train, was no less a hero than was the engine-driver who, a few weeks since, passed through the flames himself to save his freight of human lives. " God so loved the world, that

* Plain Sermons, Preached in Town and Country. By the Rev. Augustus Obbard, M.A. London: Rivingtons.

he gave his only begotten Son," is a text so familiar to our ears, that we are apt to forget its fall significance.

. On the unity of the Old and New Testaments, Mr. Obbard touches very happily, in his sermon on the imprecatory Psalms, on the difficulties of which he throws some valuable light.

Taking into account the obscurity of the Hebrew language and the age of these wonderful religious poems, our author can hardly be blamed by the most cautions critic for accepting the argument of Dr. Taylor, in his Gospel in the Law,—i.e., that, for instance, in Psalms cis. and lxix., David represents himself as surrounded by his enemies, and ascribes to them the use of curses which we suppose him, on the contrary, to direct against them. One verse in the cix.-th Psalm, Mr. Obbard tells us, needs re-

translation; it will be interesting to see whether any fresh light is thrown on these and kindred passages, when the Revision of the Old Testament is completed. Here Mr. Obbard takes some pains, and, we think, rightly, to show that tho so-called " spirit of the Old Testament " is not altogether absent in the New, and instances Revelation xviii., 6-20, and the woes pro- nounced on Scribes and Pharisees by our Lord, as examples- The fact is, that except for the sake of cavilling and trying to

prove two " spirits " in the one Revelation of God's dealings, no one would expect it to be, or wish it to be otherwise. The spirit of Christ is, indeed, as far in advance of the spirit of the Mosaic law as Paradise Lost is an advance on a first primer ; where Elijah called down fire from heaven, Christ forbad the exer-

cise of such power, with an accompanying rebuke. But we are nowhere taught that Christianity is a nerveless philosophy, which precludes the use of righteous anger, and even of irony.

We are inclined to think that a righteous man's anger, as well as his prayer, " availeth much."

The pages on the " Thorn in the Flesh " deal chiefly with the much vexed question of,—What are the limits of reasonable requests addressed to God in prayer P And here we come at

last to a passage which we venture to think Mr. Obbard should not have left " rough-hewn, as it originally stood." The preacher is, of course, for the sake of argument, making the objections of others his own ; but his interpretation we think hardly fair:-

" We may not pray for a good harvest, because the harvest depends on the weather, and the weather is governed by physical laws, which will act irrespective of our wishes; nay, if toe dare put it into words, irrespective of the will of God."

The words we have italicised are those to which we take excep- tion. Some may surely believe that " the weather is governed by physical laws, which will act irrespective of our wishes," and yet have full faith in the power of God and his wilL Are not these very physical laws his will ? Who shall say that it may not be better for the course of this world that our weather should be ordered by divine law acting directly, rather than by divine law acting through the agency of man's desires and the laws of prayer ? For prayer, as well as weather, may have its laws, since it is part of the system of the law-making and law-abiding God. If we differ from Mr. Obbard on this point, we can still agree with him very fully when he says :—" If, then, we are to pray for nothing which is governed by laws which we can understand, in these days of advanced enlightenment, there will be nothing left to pray for; nothing, at least, connected with the body or the visible world." And we can follow him when he pertinently asks :-

" Were Abraham, David, Paul, in the wrong, ignorantly indeed, but still in the wrong ? Ought St. Paul to have gone to the doctor about his thorn in the flesh ; but whatever he did, to have abstained from mentioning it in his prayers ? Did the Lord forget we had bodies, and that our bodies had needs of their own, when he said, 'Ask, and ye shall receive ? ' or the Apostle speak only of spiritual need, in his wide estimate of the divine love, Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you ? ' "

Mr. Obbard's style is generally as terse and epigrammatic as his thought is fresh and vigorous. Many books of collected " sayings " can boast of few specimens so good as those which might easily be calla from these pages. " We are so sur- rounded with other people, and their habits and customs, religions views and sins, that we seldom get alone with God." "As God has made no revelation to man of what science can discover, so science can never reach to the subjects which God has revealed." " There will be pure and purified in heaven." "It is said, indeed, None shall pluck God's sheep out of his hand.' Still, if I read rightly, I see no assurance that we have not the fatal power to pluck

ourselves out of his hand. Free-will is always ours, and of necessity it must be so ; and our comfort must lie, not in a

passive inability to be lost, but in an active striving to be saved." And sometimes the quiet irony for which we have con- tended as the lawful weapon of the Christian, peeps out, as in the sermon entitled " Costly Offerings," an answer to the question of Judas asked at the anointing at Bethany, " To what purpose is this waste P" We seem to find it in the opening sentences :—" This was the question of a thief. It is still the question of thieves. Let us first look at the original thief ; afterwards, we will turn to the modern thief," and undoubtedly we find it reappear very soon. " Christ blames Judas for being a Utilitarian Thank God, we are seeing a change ! We are getting to acknowledge that because God can be wor- shipped in a cottage, still, He never said he preferred a cottage, or that because Christ condescended to be born in a stable, that therefore He takes delight in a building as near a stable as may be." If Mr. Obbard's congregation did not subscribe largely to the organ for which he thus appealed, we despair of the power of preaching. The sermon is a masterpiece of argu- ment in favour of a reverent and beautiful service ; and the reference to the inspiration of Aholiab and Bezaleel, which, to our mind, for ever sanctifies as well as sanctions art, even in its humblest forms of expression, is particularly happy.

And if we may single out two more of Mr. Obbard's sermons for especial notice, we shall choose those on " Purity " (p. 176), and on " Christian Loveliness " (p. 187). Both strike one key, and both subjects are admirably handled. One might well be a prelude to the other, for the former deals with the coarser forms of temptation, and the latter is directed rather to the preservation of all that is pare and holy in our surroundings, our occupations, our lives. To these occupations, to our books, and our recreations, the preacher bids us apply the test of St. Paul's lofty standard, " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, pure, lovely, of good report, think on, these things." When we apply this to the books we read, shall we not also to the society papers we buy,—the food which, no less than a three-volume_novel, goes to feed our own minds, and the younger and more impressionable minds around us ? The Christian ideal of character is not that from which gross impurity is absent, but that in which holiness is present ; and holiness is not a mere matter of action, it is a state of mind and of heart. Were the standard of professing Christians that of St. Paul—and we may add, without irreverence, that of our author—there would be no need for sensationalism in religion, since its beauty would be apparent to all men; and still less necessity for Christian Evidence lectures, for the Christian life itself would be proved to be the most powerful argument in its -own defence.