his name and family, was already assured by his own deeds, and needed not the extrinsic help of titles or privileges. And had he left his reward to the free will of the sovereigns whom he so greatly served, it could not have been a niggardly one. Leaving the toils and anxieties of government to others, had he asked and obtained better and more efficient fleets of discovery, he might, in his own lifetime, have circumnavigated America, and colonized Mexico and Peru.

"A

Among the many lessons of practical wisdom for every-day life which are scattered up and down the pages of the word of God, there is, perhaps, scarcely one which is more needed for constant use, or one which men are more ready to pass over with silent disregard, than God's message to Baruch, "Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not, saith the Lord." Although again and again enforced by Christ himself, in such words as,-"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth; for where your treasure is, there will your hearts be also :"man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth:"-" How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of God:"-these emphatic warnings fall ineffectually upon "ears that are dull of hearing." Apostles have followed their Master in warning their hearers, that "they that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition;" and in exhorting them to "set their affections on things above, not on things on the earth;" but, throughout all ages, 'the love of this present world" has carried away the vast majority of hearers, and "the deceitfulness of riches has choked the word, so that it remained unfruitful."

Yet beacon-lights, marking the rocks on which many gallant ships have foundered, are not wanting. Numerous, indeed, are the fearful mementos which have come to us from past ages, of those who either have "made shipwreck of the faith," or else, as God's erring children, have had "their offences visited with the rod, and their sin with scourges." We are not called upon, nor are we able, to discriminate actually between the one class and the other; but when we observe a notable instance of a great and perhaps a good man, bringing suffering and humiliation on himself by disregarding all these warnings, it seems a plain duty to compare the fault with its consequences; so that, even to human eyes, "God may be justified when he speaketh, and be clear when he judgeth." And among all the records of the past, we know of no more remarkable proof of the practical wisdom and benevolence of the message to Baruch than is given in the biography of which we have sketched the outline.

We follow the great navigator with sympathy and with painfal commiseration. We abhor the hard-hearted selfishness of his numerous enemies, and the frigid indifference of those who ought to have been his zealous protectors. But still, amidst

all this, we trace the main cause of all Columbus's sufferings to himself. Not to any crimes, not to any excesses, not to any immoralities, but simply to that one mistaken idea with which he set out; an idea which ran entirely counter to that divine wisdom which had said, "Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not, saith the Lord.”

DR. TEMPLE'S RUGBY SCHOOL SERMONS.

Sermons preached in Rugby School in 1858, 1859, 1860. By the Rev. Frederic Temple, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, Head Master of Rugby School, &c. Macmillan and Co., 1861.

A CHARACTER Once lost is not easily recovered. Dr. Temple has not a character to lose, but a character to restore. Friendship may put itself forward to excuse what it cannot defend, and urge that a man's character may be better than his opinions; but it is not for us to admit such a distinction; for it is a man's opinions that constitute his true character, morally considered. They are much more a part of himself than are occasional acts of wrong doing, into which the best may fall through inadvertence, or the force of sudden temptation. "As a man thinks, such is he," is a maxim as true as it is trite. If, then, a man has deliberately published thoughts and opinions that will not endure the test of truth, he must either retract what he has thus advanced, or prove, by some other writings of his, contemporaneously produced, that his character, as a Christian, has been mistaken. So only can his lost character be restored.

What, then, is the position in which Dr. Temple stands before us? Compromised voluntarily, so far as we can judge, by his connection with the Oxford Essayists, and never having, in any open way, accounted for that unhappy connection, nor retracted any of the statements which have identified him with the more advanced assailants of Divine truth, it is impossible to regard him otherwise than as the pioneer of scepticism at the least; unless, indeed, he can vindicate himself by some means unequi. vocally from the charge. The volume of sermons which he has now put forth is intended, we doubt not, to be an indirect answer to the accusations of unsoundness in the Christian faith. How far it may justly serve that end can be determined only by a careful examination of its contents. Charity "hopeth all things." None would more sincerely rejoice than ourselves to find that he had succeeded in clearing himself entirely from the suspicion of being tainted with the Neologian heresy, and had re-established himself in the confidence of his countrymen as a trustworthy teacher of religious truth. His error, we will fain believe, has

been more one of the head than of the heart; and yet we can hardly suppose the heart to be quite right where the head has shown itself so very wrong. It is not, however, a question of personal condition, so much as of safety to the public; for a man may carry an infection in his clothes even when he is free from it in his person. A man's published thoughts are the dress in which he shows himself to others; and if within the folds of this dress there be wrapped up a deadly disease, the man must be put apart, as was of old the leper.

There is always a disadvantage in having to deal with a man, or his writings, against whom there already exists a prejudice; for it is very difficult, in such a case, to see things without some colour, or to judge altogether without a bias. It is, too, the way of the world to condemn, without reflection or inquiry, those who have, by any misfortune, fallen into disrepute, and not even to accord them a hearing. We trust this is not our spirit. We fully admit the justice of the principle that a man's writings are to be judged of as a whole, and not by one separate part; and that then only are they to be condemned when the poisonous admixture that vitiated the part is found to pervade the whole. Dr. Temple, by the volume of sermons which he has now put forth, may be considered as appealing for a fresh hearing. That hearing it is our duty, in all fairness, to give him; and though we cannot say that we approach it altogether without prejudice, it will be our endeavour to conduct it without partiality, having respect only to the truth.

A chemist, when he has to test food, to discover whether there is any poison mixed with it, subjects it, as a matter of necessity, to a most minute analysis. There is a spiritual as well as a material chemistry; and Dr. Temple must not be surprised if, in passing his sermons through our alembic, we should analyse them closely, and test them by such tests as our knowledge of the new system enables us to apply.

It is an extremely painful thing to a Christian mind to be obliged to speak of the work of an estimable man like Dr. Temple, as we felt obliged to speak of his "Education of the World" in our September number. But the purity and integrity of God's truth must be held paramount to every other consideration. "Though we, or an angel from heaven," says St. Paul, “preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." (Gal. i. 8, 9.) The point to be ascertained is, whether Dr. Temple has, in the volume of sermons now placed before the public, so cleared himself from the charge of false teaching-so vindicated his claim to orthodoxy by discourses which, we may assume, were not intended for publication when first written, but are published now by way of silent challenge to his accusers -that his complicity with the Oxford Essayists may fairly be regarded as a faux pas. We will waive for the moment the rule,

"Noscitur à sociis," and will judge him simply by what he says in the volume before us.

The first sermon in the volume is one for "Good Friday;" and what is its opening statement?

"This is not a day for difficult doctrines, but for the simplest and humblest feelings. The great work of this day is quite beyond the reach of our understanding. What it was that was done for us, we are not able to comprehend, nor why it was needed to be done." (p. 1.)

Now, here we must take exception at the very outset. To assert that "the great work of this day is quite beyond the reach of our understanding," is virtually to assert that no explanation is given of it in Scripture, or that, though the subject of revelation, it lies so entirely out of the range of our faculties, as to be an act on God's part without a reason comprehensible by his reasonable creatures. What is this but to make a reductio ad absurdum without perceiving it? The great characteristic of the Christian religion is, that it makes its appeal to our understanding. This is the basis on which it builds. Though the feelings, the conscience, and the imagination are all appealed to, and have each their correlative truths as well as the reason, yet the understanding is the fundamental faculty on which the truths of revelation all strike first, the pivot into which they turn, and from which they gain their force. Without it, they have no motive power; and that these three should concentre in one point in the understanding, is just one of those universalities requisite to, and which mark out, Christianity as a true religion. We are not to be "children in understanding, but in understanding to be men." (1 Cor. xiv. 20.) And how often did our Lord rebuke his disciples for their want of understanding? After his resurrection he "opened their understandings, that they might understand the Scriptures." (Luke xxii. 45.) And the special point which he enabled them to understand was, that it "behoved him to suffer, and to rise again the third day." All believers are to be "filled with spiritual understanding" (Col. ii. 9), "the eyes of their understanding being enlightened" (Eph. i. 18) by the power of the Spirit of God. Had Dr. Temple said only that there were some doctrines of the Christian religion which were beyond our comprehension, he would have said only what was perfectly true. But we may understand even where we cannot comprehend. And the doctrine which we are specially called upon to consider and understand is, why Christ died, and for what end he died; that is, what there was in our moral relation to our supreme moral Governor, and in our own moral condition, which rendered such an interposition as this on our behalf Without necessary. understanding of this, the crucifixion would be a mere tragic scene, to be viewed by Christians just as it was viewed by the Roman soldiers and other lookers-on. Without the aid, indeed,

some

of a spiritual understanding, there would be no difference between the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the crucifixion of any other innocent person. Religion, at the best, would be resolved into a tender sentiment, instead of being a "reasonable service;" and ignorance would be, what the church of Rome would make it, the true "mother of devotion." Surely Dr. Temple cannot mean to assert such a principle as this? And yet what less can he mean, when he states, "What it was that was done for us we are not able to comprehend, nor why it was needed to be done." We answer this by quoting these Scripture statements :- "Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor. xv. 3); "died for the ungodly" (Rom. v. 8); "died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God" (1 Pet. iii. 8); "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. v. 21); “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins" (Eph. i. 7).

This first paragraph in Dr. Temple's volume sounds the keynote to the whole. He is constantly telling his hearers that they cannot understand, and must not attempt to understand, the doctrines of Christianity. The obvious tendency, if not the intention of this is, to get rid of all dogmatic truth. Certain doctrines are offensive as they are usually stated, and so they are not to be stated at all. There is to be no distinct enunciation of the truths which the facts of Christianity contain, and which give to those facts the character of doctrines. Thus again, in the XXXIV. Sermon, he writes:

"The depth of the mystery of the Atonement who shall fathom? All that has been written upon the subject only leaves behind the sense of the wonder of the mystery, and every explanation that has been attempted is overthrown with an ease which warns us that explanation is impossible. Every statement of the doctrine which has ever yet been made always contains those self-contradictions, those manifest breaches of the plainest rules of logic which indicate that the human intellect is baffled ..... We cannot understand it, but we can be thrilled by it. We cannot say how or why we needed it, but we can feel our need of it." (p. 378.)

Those who are familiar with the ideas and the modus loquendi of the new School, will know perfectly well what these "breaches of the plainest rules of logic" mean; and what those "selfcontradictions, in the eyes of the party are, which render all avoidance of distinct dogmatic statements desirable. But it is this attempt to throw a mist over the plainest doctrines of Christianity, to involve its revealed truths in obscurity, so that no one shall be able to arrive at any positive belief, which renders their system so peculiarly dangerous. For twilight precedes and ushers in the denser darkness of the night. Once let men lose sight of the great verities of the Christian Faith, which now