'qualities for which he was most eminent-faithfulness, scriptural knowledge, forcible reasoning, persuasive eloquence, love of the truth, diligence in preaching and teaching, and charity and meekness, even towards those who opposed themselves.

DR. VAUGHAN'S CAMBRIDGE SERMONS.

Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, May, 1861. By Charles John Vaughan, D.D., Vicar of Doncaster, and Chaplain-in-ordinary to the Queen; late Head Master of Harrow School, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Macmillan and Co. 1861.

THESE Sermons were preached, as the title indicates, before the University of Cambridge, in May last, on Ascension Day and on the three Sundays following, the Sunday after Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, and Trinity Sunday. They deserve to be known beyond the pale of the University, to the members of which they were addressed. "A word spoken in season, how good it is." If we are not misinformed, their delivery was blessed by God in bringing some young men to decision for Christ, and in leading others to consecrate themselves to the work of the ministry. We hope that they may now do good in a wider circle. Many discourses, preached under the pressure of pastoral engagements and parochial work, are earnest, and therefore impressive in the delivery, but would be, if committed to print, tame and lifeless. There are others of a different type belonging to a class that reaches beyond the passing occasion: sermons which are equally forcible in the hour of delivery and in the quiet perusal of the closet; and to this class these of Dr. Vaughan belong. They are thoughtful; the tone is evangelical, the style is transparently clear; and they are well adapted in style and manner to the auditory to which they were preached, and to that large class of cultivated minds beyond the Universities, unhappily infected with the scepticism or semi-rationalism which filters through the periodical and other literature of the day.

In these discourses Dr. Vaughan has addressed himself to the task of combatting this spirit of doubt, or-what is still worse-indifference. Though the "Essays and Reviews" are not named, he has clearly had them in view, and writes as one who measures and appreciates the dangers to which their readers and admirers expose themselves. The four sermons are closely connected with each other, and we do not think that we

are mistaken in recognising this as their purpose and aim. We shall review them under this aspect, and endeavour to illustrate them from this point of view.

The peculiarity of the infidelity or semi-infidelity of the age is its indeterminateness, and this indeterminateness constitutes a source of grave, because subtle peril. Minds that would be repelled by the coarse, positive, dogmatic form of unbelief which formerly prevailed in this country and in France, breathe insensibly, and without consciousness of danger, an atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt in regard to the vital question of God's revelation to man in the Bible. It is true that this coarser form of infidelity exists in England still. If we only descend low enough in the strata of society, we find that Voltaire and Tom Paine are not quite forgotten yet; and every clergyman or evangelist who has laboured among working men, knows that Dr. Vaughan is right in his statement of the mischief done by hired emissaries of infidelity among the operatives of our great manufacturing towns. (p. 78.) Moreover an equally bold, though not quite so coarse a type of infidelity, is advocated by the Westminster Review. But this is not the peril to which educated young men are exposed. The forms of disbelief which prevail among ruder minds repel and disgust them. They shrink too from the open and avowed unbelief of more polished and educated infidels. Their peculiar danger is that spirit of doubt which hazards no denial, but makes no assertions. They are in danger of falling into a state of mind in which nothing of "those things which are most surely believed among us" seems certain, but an air of dubiousness is spread over every historical fact and every distinctive truth of the Holy Scriptures. A dim haze covers the whole field of revelation, so that they scarcely even see, as the half cured blind man did, men as trees walking." Those truths which are the ground of the church, the sole justification of her existence, and the very life of the individual believer-the fall, the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, righteousness by faith, the work of the Spiritare regarded as questionable and doubtful-as not perhaps exactly capable of being proved false, but as incapable of being proved true-as sharing in the general uncertainty which attaches, as they suppose, to the authority of the Bible, not merely as the inspired word of God, but as even a truthful record of historical facts. Dr. Vaughan has well described this unhappy state of mind in his sermon on "6 suspense":

"Suspense in matters of religion begins oftentimes in a mere excess of candour. There is so much to be said on both sides of everything. All evidence is so doubtful: all motives are so mixed: all conduct is such a compound: it is so difficult to arrive at certainty in things an cient, in things resting on written testimony, in things largely mingled with miracle, in things involving suspensions of ordinary laws by

Divine interference and interposition. It may be true; I hope even more than I fear that it may be true. I admire the character of Christ: I love His tenderness towards human infirmity, His condescension towards the young, the ignorant, and the sinful, His unwearied patience, His holiness of life, His expansive and inexhaustible charity. Perhaps He was more than this: perhaps there was something in His death beyond the mere example. Yes, I can imagine something of a propitiation, something of a sacrifice: not a substitution, but still something which human language, in its necessary imperfection, might style a mediation and an atonement. Yes, it may be so: sometimes I can almost trust in it. But, on the whole, it is safer perhaps to take a slightly different ground: I will rely upon God's mercy: I will hope that He who made us made not so many of us for naught: I will cherish the hope that, if I do my best, if I am kind and generous and serviceable to others, if I do what I can to live a good life, if I am a useful member of society, and if I look, all along, to God's providence and protection and guidance and mercy, all will be well with me at the last; I may lay me down in peace and take my rest; I will enjoy God's gifts and trust him with the future.'" (pp. 28, 29.)

Well may Dr. Vaughan say that "such views may be the religion of a shut Bible, but they are not the religion of a Bible opened"! Such views of religion and of life, and of their mutual relations, are the more dangerous, because the man who entertains them virtually renounces the authority of Christ as his Redeemer and Lord, without seeming to do so either to himself or to others. Standing aloof as "a spectator rather than a follower," and criticising instead of believing and obeying, he is in fact "counting himself unworthy of eternal life"; but the very fact, that he does not take avowedly the position of disbelief, but retains some amount of reverence for Christ and for Christian institutions, blinds him to the guilt and peril of his condition. It is probable that were such a man to avow to himself the purpose of deliberately rejecting Christianity as untrue, he would be shocked and alarmed at his own state of mind, whereas a simple state of suspense scarcely strikes him as placing him under an equally grave responsibility. There is One who refuses to tolerate neutrality, who will have us for or against Him, cold or hot; He claims the allegiance of every man, and the devotion of his whole being to Him. His requirements will not admit of this dubious treatment. And to continue to think and to live as though the balance were evenly adjusted between the validity and the nullity of His claims, must be the most serious and fatal of crimes, unless indeed it be true, that there is no preponderating evidence of any kind in favour of the Gospel.

But, in fact, this state of dubiousness is as logically indefensible as it is morally wrong. And it is so, because Christianity is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact. On the face of it, it is an historical religion taking its place in the world like other

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historical events. The evidence by which it is supported is evidence strong enough to produce conviction in its favour as high as the nature of historical evidence will allow. The phenomenon is the appearance in our world of a person, whose advent was prepared by a long series of antecedent events, whose selfmanifestation was spiritually and supernaturally unique, and followed by results which reach down to our own day, and this phenomenon, bearing upon the very face of it the stamp of Divinity, is supported by historical documents which have abided the test of the keenest hostile criticism, and which in weight and number far excel and exceed those upon whose testimony other historical facts are received without hesitation. Is it not idle to say that educated men can attain to no certain, definite conviction on a subject like this? We cannot but regret that the tone which defenders of the faith too frequently take is much too apologetic, making in their excess of candour so many concessions and seeming to admit that there is so very much to be said on the other side, as rather to confirm the impression that men may safely live and die in doubt of the claims and authority of Christ. Of course it is possible to err on the other side too, -it is possible to fail in candour in the advocacy of truth, and to substitute vituperation for argument; and this is the more injurious error of the two. The tone in which Dr. Vaughan writes is equally removed from both these extremes. It is the tone of one who is at the same time sympathetic and firm,-of one whose heart bleeds for the doubter, whose mind comprehends his case and feels his difficulties, yet of one whose own conviction never wavers, who knows what and whom he has believed, and who with this unwavering personal conviction seeks to guide others out of irresolution and doubt into decision and faith-out of the foggy marsh-land of scepticism, into the bright, clear atmosphere and solid footing of definite, assured belief.

The festivals of the church upon which these discourses were preached, are significant of the strength of the Christian argument. Ascension Day and Whit Sunday commemorate the two great events in the history of Christianity which corroborate the Incarnation, the sacrifice of the cross, and the Resurrection; and in the present day we feel more deeply than ever how wise has been the arrangement of the services of our church in thus keeping in perpetual remembrance the facts upon which our faith is founded, and that it is founded upon facts which remain unchangeable amidst all the fluctuations of opinion. Vaughan takes his stand upon the great Christian facts.

Dr.

"Let us be thankful," he says," for a Bible that records, and a church that commemorates, facts that link together, as it were, earth and heaven; things done or borne in the body by One who came from

God and went to God; One who first descended to bring God to man, and then ascended to raise man to God." (p. 17.)

"It is a remark," he observes earlier in the same sermon-The two departures of Christ, "old but never unseasonable, that the doctrines of the gospel all spring out of its facts. Not only do its facts prove its authority, and give it a right to be listened to when it professes to reveal: far more than this! the revelations of the gospel are deducible from its facts; or, if not deducible-for we dare not, even in appearance, disparage the value of any one page or sentence of the inspired wordyet at least provable out of them, insomuch that when we know who Christ was, and what He did, and what befell Him, our acquiescence, our acceptance, our gratitude, is already secured for the revelation of the meaning and the purposes of all: the mind of God is disclosed to us in deeds more expressive than words; and instead of being left with verbal assurances, however emphatic, or verbal exhortations, however persuasive, we are enabled to say, 'I know that this and this is God's truth and God's will, for this and this hath God wrought.'" (p. 4.)

The principle indicated in these extracts is the right one for meeting and counteracting scepticism. The question is-Are these facts ascertainable? May their import be placed beyond reasonable doubt? If it be so, the position of every man who possesses sufficient knowledge to enable him to discuss such questions and who voluntarily remains in uncertainty about them, is a false and culpable one. We have already given an extract from the sermon on suspense." This is the second sermon in the series, preached on the Sunday after Ascension Day, the season in the Christian year which recalls the interval between the departure of Christ to His Father, and His return in the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. During this interval the disciples were awaiting the fulfilment of "the promise of the Father," and "all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication." This was an attitude of "suspense"; but the suspense of which Dr. Vaughan speaks, is of a different kind from theirs. Theirs was the suspense of faith. The suspense described in this sermon is the suspense of doubt. And the preacher grapples closely with this indeterminate, dubious, uncertain mental condition of those persons, numerous in our own age, "whose whole life is passed in this balancing, floating, wavering state of mind as to the truth of God, as to the revela tions of the Bible." (p. 22.) In language of great power and eloquence, he unfolds the characteristics of this mental state. He shows how it affects intellect, life, and character; how it is in fact an obstacle to the attainment of religious truth, instead of a help to inquiry; how it cuts the sinews of action, and unfits for the work of life; how it distorts every true, earnest view of the infinite significance of human life and of its relation to God and eternity;-how it is always a state of spiritual indolence;how it hinders prayer, making communion with God a burden