BOOKS.

MR. SCOTT HOLLAND'S SERMONS.*

THERE is a great difference between the power of the different sermons in this volume, but some of them are as powerful as any preached in this generation, and, indeed, full of genius, original thought, and spiritual veracity. Of the three first, it would be hard to speak in terms too high;—they show something of the painstaking originality, the careful searchingness, the candid courage, of Bishop Butler, though clothed in an oratory of higher force than anything which was at all in Bishop Butler's way, an oratory, indeed, which men who choose to judge a priori would suppose to be inconsistent with any gifts at all resembling those displayed by Bishop Butler. Stilt, the fact is that Mr. Holland combines with an oratori- cal power which sometimes runs away with him, and diffuses itself like a flood till the mind is almost over- powered by the wealth of his accumulated illustration, very nearly as careful and precise an appreciation of the ins and outs of the question with which he is dealing, the qualifications of a truth, the set-offs against an argument, the difficulties in a • Logic and Life, with other Sermons. By the Rev. H. Scott Holland, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. -London : Riringtons.

, true position, the plansibilities in a false one, as the great bishop himself could have displayed. We do not say that any of the sermons in this volume cover anything like as wide a ground as the great sermons on human nature, nor even that they display a strength as remarkable as the sermons on " Compassion," " Re- sentment," and "The Ignorance of Man." But the first three sermons in this volume, to say the least,—and several of the others approach them in power,—appear to us sermons that de- serve to rank high in the theological literature of England, and that appear likely to maintain their place there as long as ser- mons on the greatest subjects that affect human nature continue to be preached and read.

The first is on the place of reasoning in relation to its influ- ence over life, especially, of course, with regard to the assertion of the Rationalists that spiritual truths are not verified. After pointing out that men now pay less and less attention to abstract arguments, and appeal from all such abstract arguments, especially, for instance, in relation to politics, to the concrete lessons of experience, and that even men of science are perfectly indifferent to the verification of the great primary assumptions of all science, like the law of causality, so long as they find that they actually gain power over nature by virtue of their scientific discoveries, Mr. Holland goes on :—

" This modern way of regarding things does not in reality sup- pose itself irrational, because it distrusts abstract argument : rather, it is the conception of reason itself which is changed ; reason is regarded, not in its isolated character as an engine with which every man starts equipped, capable of doing a certain job whenever re- quired, with a definite and certain mode of action ; but it is taken as a living and pliable process by and in which man brings himself into rational and intelligent relation with his surroundings, with his ex- perience. As these press in upon him, and stir him, and move about and around him, he sets himself to introduce into his abounding and multitudinous impressions, something of order, and system, and settlement. He has got to act upon all this engirdling matter, and he must discover how action is most possible and most successful ; he must watch, and consider, and arrange, and find accordance between his desires and their outward realisation : so it is that he names and classifies : so it is that he learns to expect, to foretell, to anticipate, to manage, to control : so it is that he rouses his curiosity to ever new efforts, and cannot rest content until he has got clearer and surer bold on the infinite intricacies that offer themselves to hand, and eye, and ear, and taste. Continually he reshapes his anticipations, con- tinually he corrects his judgments, continually he turns to new re- searches, continually he moulds and enlarges, and enriches, and fortifies, and advances, and improves the conceptions which he finds most cardinal and most effective. Undieturbed in his primary con- fidence that he has a rational hold upon the reality of the things which he feels and sees, he acts on the essential assumption that, in advancing the active effectiveness of his ideas, he is arriving at a more real apprehension of that world which he finds to move in in- creasing harmony with his own inner expectations. This effective and growing apprehension is what he calls his reason ; and its final test lies in the actual harmony, which is found to result from its better endeavours, between the life at work within and the life at work without. Reason is the slowly formed power of harmonising the world of facts ; and its justification lies, not in its deductive cer- tainty so mach as in its capacity of advance. It proves its trust- worthiness by its power to grow. It could not have come so far, if it were not on the right road; it mast be right, because ever, in front of it, it discovers the road continuing. Reason moves towards its place, its fulfilment, so far as it settles itself into responsive agree- ment with the facts covered by its activity, so far as its expectations encounter no jar or surprise, so far as its survey is baffled by no blank and unpenetrated barrier. Every step that tends to complete and achieve this successful response tends, in that same degree, to enforce its confident security in itself and in its method It is on our inner and actual life, then, that the action of our reasoning depends. Deep down in the long record of our past, far away in the ancient homes and habits of the soul, back, far back, in all that age-long experience which has nursed, and tended, and moulded the making of my manhood, lies the secret of that efficacy which reason exerts in me to-day. That efficacy has, through long pressure, become an im- bedded habit, which if I turn round upon it and suddenly inspect it, will appear to me inexplicable. Why this gigantic conclusion ? Why this emphatic pronouncement ? Why this array of dogmatic assumn- Mons ? I may take those assumptions up in my hands, and look them all over, and poke and probe them, and find no answer in them for their mysterious audacity. No, for they have no answer within them- selves : their answer, their verification, their evidence, their very significance, can only be got by turning to and introducing all that vast sum of ever-gathering facts which the generations before me, under the weight of the moving centuries, pressed into these formulas, ordered under these categories, wielded by the efficacy of these in- struments, harmonised, mastered, controlled in obedience to the judg- ments,—judgments which justified their reality and their power by the constant and unwavering welcome with which the advance of life unfailingly greeted their anticipations, and fulfilled their trust. I am, of necessity, blind to their force as long as I have no correspond- ing experience,—as long as that body of fact which they make explic- able remains to me unverified and unexplored. What to me, for instance, can be the potency of the conception of Soul, if I have no soul-facts that require explication ? I feel the need and necessity of a name only when there are certain phenomena before me which no other name suits or sorts. What need or necessity, then, can I see for the word Spirit, unless I have, within my experience, those spiritual activities which were to my forefathers so marked, so dis- tinct, so unmistakable, so constant, that it became to them a mental impossibility to retain them under a material name, and a practical impossibility to carry on an intelligible common life without distin- guishing those activities from the motions of their flesh ? What sense or reason can I discover for the assumption of a God, unless I can repeat and re-enact in the abysses of my own hidden being those profound impressions, those ineradicable experiences, those awful and sublime ventures of faith to which the existence of God has been the sole clue, the sole necessity, the one and only interpretation, the irresistible response, the obvious evidence, the unceasing justifi- cation ?"

Thus far the first sermon takes us. In the next one, "The Venture of Faith," Mr. Holland paints a most powerful picture of the manner in which man is impelled by the im- perious nature within him to assume that the outside world is really akin in its laws and principles to the world within him, that even though nature is wholly independent of our feelings, yet it is not by discharging all feeling, but rather by the free use of our feelings, as well as of our reason, that we can best learn to control nature ; that even our passions become intelli- gent, and help to feed the force of our intellectual power ; that without passions and emotions and affections which have so often been called irrational, we could never have, or make mani- fest to others, that fundamental basis of personal character on which. alone men can rely for the purposes even of intellectual life ;—in short, that what seems most alien in us to the causes at work in the external universe, is really essential to the progress which we make in investigating the nature of that universe, and building up the habits and rules by which we learn to make the most use of it. We have rarely read a passage of more pregnant and impressive force than the following, for instance, describing how the passions essentially contribute to the growth of that natural order with which, as it is so often supposed, they are at variance :— " We each individually reveal a character built up out of feelings which, at first sight, we class with the instincts of the animal, or attribute to the blind influences of fleshly impressions. And yet, after all, it is out of these that our rational character emerges ; it is out of these feelings that we elaborate a history which is perpetually advancing its problems, its needs, its solutions, its satisfactions ; it is in these very feelings that we make manifest to all who have eyes to see, or ears to listen, the tokens of an enduring self, whose actions men can count upon and calculate, whose movements they can classify and connect, whose growth they can confidently anticipate. And still deeper down in our self-study, we discover strange effects in those impulses which at first we called animal. They are not con- tent to lie back behind the narrow barriers within which the simple passions of that dim animal world run their unchanging round. They break through that ancient monotony ; they ta)te to themselves larger powers ; they feel their way towards new possibilities; they increase the force and extend the range of their desires. The passions, in becoming human, are no longer animal. It is not that they are differently managed and treated ; it is that they themselves. are changed ; they themselves desire what no animal desires; they themselves exceed, as no animal exceeds ; they themselves disclose- in their very excess a secret instinct of self-discipline, in which lies the seed of the new law, the law of Parity and Holiness. The appe- tite that is capable of self-assertion is driven by its own inner necessities to the task of self-control. Morality, as we look at it closely and carefully, is no system imposed on passion from without ; it is itself the very heart of all desire, the very principle of all human impulse, the very inspiration of all passion. Out of the growth and increase of these vaster passions, righteousness springs like a flower to perfect, like a revelation to interpret, all that without its manifestation is left unfulfilled and unexplained. And if so, then these passions, these impulses, cannot be altogether blind and unpur- posing. They have it in them to produce a ,rational order ; they hold, hidden within their extravagance, the mystery of control ; they inevitably tend towards temperance and chastity. They are, then, already rational ; they are, from the very start, already moral."

And yet, as Mr. Holland shows, this essential individuality of the reason in every man, which makes that reason blend with his passions and affections, so that you can hardly say whether his impulses be rational, or his reason impulsive, is so far from making men really solitary,—so far from separating them into units, that, on the contrary, it is always found that the litera- tures and languages which most powerfully represent the turns and distinctions of individual feeling and thought, also appeal most powerfully to the reason and imagination of the whole race. In short, the intensely individual character of reason in each man is not only not inconsistent with the power to awaken response in the race, but is essential to it :—

"Do men find that there follows, on the use of their reason, a sense of bitter loneliness, of horrible isolation ? Do they, the more they think, hold ever more aloof from their fellows ? Do they find themselves thrown back, shocked, jce tied, when they utter their minds ? Are they, when they try to argue or discuss, ever ruuning their heads against bard walls ? Or is it not exactly the contrary ? Is it not in ignorance of each other's minds that men meet with rude rejections, and batter vainly against blind barriers ? Is not the exercise of thought one long and delightful discovery of the identity that knits us up into the main body of mankind ? If ever we do succeed in putting our thoughts into words that others understand, is it not a sure road to their hearts ? Do they not run to greet us with open arms ? Our sympathies, our hopes, our desires, do we not, when once we can find a language to express what they are to us, rediscover them all in the soul of our fellows ? Is not all language one enduring and irresistible witness to the reality and depth of the communion which our thought arrives at, as soon as man touches man ? And each new tongue or dialect brings with it new and delicious proof."

Bo that even in relation to society, the growth of the reason is not only identified with the growth of the passions and affec- tions, but inseparable from it; and you cannot wield a great power over others, without digging down deep into that part of your nature which seems most purely individual. Not only does the love of righteousness, the love of holiness, the love of all things most potent for the government of society, grow out of the grafting of what seemed purely individual emotion and desire -on the reason, but we learn that the very constitution of the universe is at bottom based upon this blending of reason with desire and affection against which we are often warned, as if it prejudiced our minds against the light of truth :-

" Does reason itself refuse to exist, except to those who venture with no faint heart to follow the fascination of hope ? Is it impos- sible to be rational without passing beyond the bounds of reason, without surrendering reason itself to the compulsion of a prophetic inspiration ? Does all thinking hang on an act of faith ? Can it be true that we can never attain to intellectual apprehension unless the entire man in us throws his spirit forward, with a willing confidence, with an unfaltering trust, into an adventurous movement; unless the entire man can bring himself to respond to a summons from without, which appeals to him by some instinctive touch of strange and un- known kinship to rely on its attraction, to risk all on the assumption of its reality ? A touch of kinship ! Yes, kinship alone could so stir faith ; and the call, therefore, to which it responds must issue from a Will as living, as personal, as itself. Ah ! surely, then, ' God is in this place, and I knew it not.' From the first dawn of our earliest intelligent activity we move under the mighty breath of One higher and lordlier than we wet of ; we walk in the high places, we are car- ried we know not whither. Not for one instant may we remain within the narrow security of our private domain ; not for one moment may we claim to be self-possessed, self-contained, self-cen- tred, self-controlled. Every action carries us outside ourselves ; every thought that we can think is a revelation of powers that draw as forward, of influences that lift us out of the safety of self-control. To reason is to have abandoned the quiet haven of self-possession ; for already in its first acts we feel the big waters move under us, and the great winds blow."

The third sermon is on M. Renan's assertion that " A man who would wri the history of a faith must believe it no longer, but must have b *eyed it once," a maxim on which Mr. Holland comments wi curious power :—

" How, then are we to prepare ourselves for historical and critical treatment of !igloo ? How can we be sure of securing the fit con- ditions F- Can we believe experimentally merely for the purposes of discgkery ? Can we be certain of being able to cease from our belief , attthe moment at which we propose to begin our critical examination ? Or must all then be left to happy chance ? Must the historical study of religions be confined to those who have happened by good luck to fall outside the faiths which once they held ? It is an awkward test to have to apply to candidates for the study. And, again, are we to consider them fortunate or unfortunate to find themselves so quali- fied ? Which is the healthier condition of mind,—the earlier, or the later ? If the later is the more natural and the more perfect, bow can the earlier be at all sound or entire ? Ann, if not sound, how can it be the essential groundwork of the critical temper ? It can hardly be that the later temper is a product of the earlier,—that the natural evolution of uncritical faith is into critical doubt. For what happens in the loss of the temper of faith is, that we abandon the attempt to develop our faith."

And he goes on to observe that we accept implicitly the ordinary assumptions as to the freedom from preconception in which all history ought to be written, until we discover that the very forces of history are passions, that unless we can enterinto these passions, we cannot write history at all, and that the spirit of indiffer- ence has no balance by which " it can test the fury of warring opposites." " Without some living interest in the issue, history looks to us as the wild melody of madmen, whose rage, and anxieties, and dangers, fill us with a painful distress at their reckless exaggeration, and their ungentle obstinacy." If, then, a strong sympathy with one kind of issue is far from a disqualification for entering into history, it is hardly possible

that the possession of a belief is a positive disqualification for the study of ecclesiastical history or theological controversy. Mr. Holland, in the most powerful pages of his book, recalls to us what it is that faith really means,—over how many of the

various chords of human life it has the mastery,—and how im- possible it is even for the believer to recall fully all the influence which from time to time his faith has exerted over the spirit and practice of his life. Yet if it be difficult for the believer to recall that of which he has still the moral traces left in him and the full possibility of experiencing again, how much less possible must it be for one who has left behind him what he thinks illegitimate spiritual emotions, so to recover and revive them, as to present to the rest of the world an adequate insight into their essence and significance. He reminds us how widely

the historical criticism of a religion depends for its results on the critic's apprehension of the forces actually at work in

the world, on his "experimental insight into the Presences and Powers whose efforts he is measuring, and whose significance

he professes to declare." It is, he says justly enough, at once rational and inevitable, that one who does not believe any longer in special supernatural influences, should distrust the statements of all who profess to record facts assuming such influences ; and that he should consequently look at the asser-

tions of fact which imply such occurrences, in a wholly in- credulous spirit. Mr. Holland concludes, then, that if to have

believed once is necessary for a true historian of religion, it is impossible that he should ever enter into the history truly when

he has ceased to believe and has declared to himself that all the cardinal facts with which he has to deal are founded on illusion ; but he adds the following fine remark, on the true drift of M. Renan's warning :-

" Has belief, then, by its own faithlessness, incurred this taunt against its honesty, its uprightness, its courage ? Has it, indeed, feared to face its own problems with the reality and the singleness of heart which unbelief can bring to their unravelling ? Has its sin- cerity, then, fallen so low that it cannot be trusted to use an equal scale ? Has it had to appeal to those who have not enjoyed its good chances, nor possess its excellent tools, to assist it in the task for which it alone is adequately equipped ? These are solemn questions for us. They cannot be dismissed by a brave word of frank denial; they arouse in us shameful and humiliating doubts. We ought to have seen for ourselves long ago much that now we are shown by others' guidance. We ought to have learned to correct our blunder- ing misapprehensions, without having had to undergo such late and painful schooling."

We have tried to show our readers something of the power of these sermons. They are, we think, the finest, in a volume of which the majority are really fine ; but they are not so much finer than many others, that even had these been wanting, we should have failed to discern the great powers of this preacher, and the pro- mise of this volume for the Christian Church of our day.