cumbrous load of life; just as they trust to gain the farthest steep, and put an end to strife,

"Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep,

And hurls their labours to the valley deep,

For ever vain."

But this is diverging farther and farther from the direct import of our theme. More to the purpose is the same poet's description of Celadon assuring his betrothed of perfect safety, and triumphantly asserting her absolute immunity from the perils of the storm, and as exultantly inferring his own, from his relationship to her; when, "from his void embrace,

Mysterious Heaven! that moment, to the ground,

A blackened corse, was struck the beauteous maid."

Some innocents, as Cleopatra has it, escape not the thunderbolt. Innocence, as well as iniquity, may know something of that breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.

The loving friends of Charlotte Brontè, after her marriage, are described by one among them as catching occasional glimpses of brightness, and pleasant peaceful murmurs of sound, telling, to them who stood outside, of the gladness within; and they said among themselves, "After a long and a hard struggle--after many cares and bitter sorrowsshe is tasting happiness now." Remembering her trials, they were glad in the idea that God had seen fit to wipe away the tears from her eyes. "But God's ways are not as our ways, Mrs. Gaskell adds. Just as Currer Bell's happiness seemed beginning, and her goodness ripening, came fever, delirium, death. Mrs. Gaskell's own career was similarly cut short, just when she was finishing, but ere yet she had finished, the completest and ablest of her works; just when public recognition of her merits was growing earnest as well as general. It is the old, old story. For what, as the old ballad says,

"is this worldys bliss,
That changeth as the moon!
My summer's day in lusty May
Is darked before the noon."

FRANCIS JACOX, B.A.

F"the way to do a thing is just to do it," as is commonly said, the way to learn how to do it is to see it done by another. It is this latter principle which we desire, in the present series of articles, to turn to profit. We propose to analyse and examine, in each article, some one sermon or portion of a sermon, of some living preacher of ability and reputation; and to endeavour to ascertain in this manner both what other preachers ought to do, and also, what they ought to avoid. In carrying out this idea, and giving such a succession of brief clinical lectures on Homiletical Anatomy, we hope to be equally generous and unsparing in commending what is praiseworthy, and blaming what is blameworthy, according to our view of the case. Of the correctness and value of our criticisms, our readers will judge for themselves.

The "subject" we select to begin with is a sermon preached on a pre-eminently important topic, and on a kind of national occasion.* For these reasons, as well as for its own intrinsic merits, it well deserves the first place. Let us endeavour to investigate its organization and structure.

The sermon opens with a graphic and arresting description of the Resurrection of Christ as it appeared to his disciples at the time, which is followed by a similar description of its place in the thoughts of St. Paul some thirty years afterwards, leading him to speak as in the words of the text. The circumstances of the text thus clearly set before us, its discussion is next approached by a consideration of what we ordinarily mean by the "power" of a fact, viz., its influences and effects, a point illustrated with great judgment and force by the fact of the then present immense assemblage, and the enormous power it involved. From this the transition is easy to the great question to be con

"The Power of Christ's Resurrection." A Sermon preached in St Paul's Cathedral, on Easter Day, 1869. By H. P. Liddon, M.A., Studen of Christ Church, &c., &c.

sidered, viz., Wherein consists the true power of the Resurrection of Christ?

This Exordium we hold to be good, as being (1), natural and simple in the order of its thoughts; (2), only brief, a great point in introductions-it occupies little more than one page; (3), free from all forestalling of what has afterwards to be said, and yet (4), quite sufficient for its purpose. Like a flight of broad and easy steps, not too many in number, it brings us up without fatigue to where we can command a full view of the special and sacred thought which is enshrined in the text. And this is, evidently, the very thing-if not, indeed, the only thing -for which an Introduction is required. All that we ask of a porter is to attend to the door.

Whether the tone of the Introduction is quite as good as its structure, may perhaps admit of a doubt; there is something, it may be, a little sensational and abrupt in throwing down a text of Scripture at the beginning of the two first paragraphs, and then picking it up again with an air. At the same time it must be remembered, that the occasion itself, if not exactly sensational, was very peculiar and special, and such as almost to call for something different from that calm and lucid earnestness with which a sermon should open as a rule. A preacher must begin with his hearers at the level on which he finds them.

In the sermon itself, the first topic discussed is the evidential power of Christ's Resurrection;-"it is the fundamental fact which satisfies the Christian of the absolute truth of the Religion of Christ." This "evidential power" is illustrated, partly by the peculiar prominence given to the Resurrection in all Apostolic teaching, partly by the public and open nature of the testimony of the Apostles, as of men without any manner of misgiving on the subject, partly by the manifold and converging evidence of it on which they relied, and partly by the failure of all endeavours to explain it away. Having thus established the firmness of the fact itself (without which, of course, it could communicate no firmness to anything else), its bearing on the truth of Christianity is next briefly and most ably considered; the principal thought being, that the Resurrection was not only the fulfilment of ancient Jewish prophecy, but the fulfilment also of the most distinct, express, extraordinary, and decisive of all the predictions of Christ Himself. From this the inference is well worked out, that, unless there is something intrinsically wiser and better in doubt than in faith (which no one can affirm), you must either "deny the Resurrection, or accept the creed." "To admit the Resurrection, and then to be perpetually fretting with the real results of your admission; by explaining away Christ's lesser

miracles, or by grudging their authority to His Apostles, or by questioning the power of prayer and the reality of Providence, or by depreciating the Sacraments* which Christ has instituted to sustain the higher life of men, or by denying the truth of those Old Testament Scriptures to which He has set the seal of His Personal witness;-this is to be guilty of mental inconsistency, as well as of irreligious hardihood; it is to have granted the greater and then to raise a difficulty about granting the less. The only question for a believing Christian is, what is, and what is not warranted, immediately or through necessary inference, by His authority, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. When that question is settled, controversy ought to be at an end; it ought to have been ended by the evidential power of Christ's resurrection."

Excellent and triumphant, however, as all this is in its wayand made the more so by the sustained and chastened energy and fire of its diction-we must be permitted to express a modest doubt whether it is not excellence out of place. In opening the second division of his subject- "The power of the Resurrection in the moral and spiritual life of the Christian"—the writer proceeds to say, "This was the main scope of the Apostle's prayer. He had no doubt about the truth of the Gospel." But, surely, if this is true, something more is true too. If the Apostle "had no doubt about the truth of the Gospel," the "moral and spiritual life of the Christian" was not only the main scope, but the entire scope of his prayer; or, at any rate, the "evidential power" of the Resurrection was no part of his prayer. The man who is free from all doubt does not ask for more evidence but more experience. Such a man, having arrived at the summit, does not ask for assistance in climbing, but for a telescope to examine the prospect. But this, according to all reasonable inference, and according to the express admission of the preacher himself, was St. Paul's position at this time. He was at the summit, not on the ascent; he was longing for wider knowledge and riper experience, not for deeper conviction and more proof. All this first part of the sermon, therefore, which treats of "evidential" power, and which occupies some eleven out of twenty printed pages, must be pronounced a mistake. It is most important, no doubt, in itself; it is admirably suited to the place, the audience, the season, and the age; it is a "splendid error," if you will, like the celebrated charge at Balaklava; mais ce n'est pas la guerre.

* We should have preferred saying, "the means of grace,” as wider in sense and in doctrine both.

Examined calmly and critically, and considered as an illustration of the art of preaching, it cannot be pointed to as an example. So large a portion of any sermon ought not to be foreign to its text.

Is such an error of real importance? Would many persons note it who heard the sermon delivered? Probably not. But we may be well assured, all the same, that it would tell on its power. When a piece of music is played incorrectly, almost all the hearers will be conscious of something wrong, though only those acquainted with the instrument employed may know exactly what it is. We believe it to be the same in such a case as the present. The ideal of a sermon is an exposition, not a speech, a setting forth of certain thoughts which grow out of a text. The more loyally a preacher keeps to this ideal, the more of a preacher (and of a true orator, too) he will be, and the more of a preacher's work will he do; but if once he allows bimself to be tempted away from it, just so far will he find that he misses both his office and his mark. Only one or two sermon-mukers, perhaps, will see his mistake; but multitudes of sermon-hearers may feel its effects. *

Our remarks on the second portion of the sermon we reserve for the present.

MATHEMATICUs, M.A.,

Formerly Chaplain, Trin. Coll., Camb.

Biblical Criticism.

“ Καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσομεν, ἐάνπερ ἐπιτρέπῃ ὁ Θεός.”—Heb. vi. 3.

verse.

REAT diversity of opinion has prevailed respecting this The first point that claims consideration is the reference of τοῦτο. Does it point to the immediately preceding clause, μὴ πάλιν θεμέλιον καταβαλλόμενοι, or does it look further back still, viz., to èïì tηv tedeiótyta pepúμeta? Schlichting,

* If the first part of this sermon had been worked out as a separate and fuller discourse on 1 Cor. xv. 14, treated as a negative way of describing (1) the certainty of Christ's Resurrection, and (2) the immensity of its issues, would not its beauty and strength have been greatly increased? For such a sermon, we think, would have grown naturally out of the soil of the text, instead of being a kind of transplanted tree, as at present, injuring others and itself.