There is an extreme reluctance amongst many who are very zealous supporters of the outward establishment of Christianity, to admitting its principles in the concerns of common life, in matters belonging to their own trade or profession, or above all, in the conduct of national affairs. They will not tolerate its spirit in their every day practice, but ridicule it as visionary and impracticable. Now if the language of sermons be vague and general; if it do not apply clearly and directly to our own times, our own ways of life, and habits of thought and action, men elude its hold upon their consciences with a wonderful dexterity; and keeping their common practice safe out of the reach of its influence, they deceive themselves by their willingness to liear it, and by their acquiescence, and even their delight in it. It appears to me that a sermon addressed to Englishmen in the nineteenth century should be very different from one addressed to Englishmen in the sixteenth, or even in the eighteenth; and still more unlike one addressed to Greeks or Asiatics in the third or in the first. It should differ according to the great difference of character and habits in the hearers of different ages and different countries : and if this seems no better than a truism, yet the truth which is almost self-evident in theory, has been by no means generally attended to in practice. On the contrary, one sort of phraseology has commonly been handed down in religious compositions from generation to generation; and their language, instead of assimilating itself as closely as possible to that in common use, has studiously preserved a character of its own.

But even with regard to the Scripture itself, it is surely the spirit of it, and not the language, which is of eternal application and efficacy; and that spirit will generally be most effectually conveyed in our writings, through a medium different from that which was originally chosen; because we and the first converts to Christianity are so different in climate, in national customs and feelings; in our trains of thought and modes of expression. My object, then, has been to bring the great principles of the Gospel home to the hearts and practices of my own countrymen in my own time; and particularly to those of my own station in society, with whose sentiments and language I am naturally most familiar. And for this purpose I have tried to write in such a style, as might be used in real life, in serious conversation with our friends, or with those who asked our advice; in the language in short of common life, and applied to the cases of common life; but ennobled and strengthened by those principles and feelings which are to be found only in the Gospel.

I have only further to observe, that the similarity between some passages in these sermons and parts of Dr. Whately’s Essays on the Peculiarities of Christianity, and on some of the Difficulties in the writings of St. Paul, may render it necessary for me to exculpate myself from this apparent plagiarism. The fact is, that the passages in question were written before I was aware that Dr. Whately had expressed the same sentiments more clearly and more forcibly; and it is a pleasure to me to reflect that we arrived by a separate process at the same conclusions in the first instance, although my views on these points, as on many others, have been confirmed and extended by the communication of his.

RUGBY, February 20, 1829.

PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

In presenting to the public a second edition of the following sermons, it may not be unfit to notice some remarks which have been made on particular passages in the volume; and, at the same time, to show my reasons for reprinting it, except in one instance, without any alteration.

With respect to its style, I was aware from the first that it was susceptible of improvement ;-but I am of opinion, that a composition once completed is rarely changed for the better by subsequent retouching; and that criticisms on an author's style are more capable of benefiting his future writings, than of correcting what he has already written.

In more important points, however, alteration of any thing that had seemed to me justly objectionable, would have been a duty, which, I trust, I should neither have been too proud nor too indolent to perform. Accordingly I have corrected a

passage in the sixteenth sermon, in which I had inadvertently limited too closely the meaning attached in the Scriptures to the expression, “ the Kingdom of God.” Feeling strongly the evils of exaggerating the benefits of a mere profession of Christianity, and believing that to be the extreme into which men are, and ever have been, too apt to fall, I have, perhaps, inclined too much to the opposite side; and in striving to enforce the high purity of the Gospel, I may not have sufficiently expressed that indulgent and comprehensive spirit for which it is no less admirable. And I am thankful to have been taught more fully, by this additional experience, the great difficulty of representing faithfully, and in its just proportions, the perfect picture of truth and goodness contained in the Scripture itself;—and how the slightest overcharging of any single feature alters that exact expression of the mind of the Spirit, whose likeness it should be our daily prayer and labour to be conformed to.

A doubt has been suggested to me as to the beneficial tendency of the seventh sermon. It has been said, that whatever be the abstract truth of the sentiments there expressed, they may needlessly encourage an excessive indifference as to variety of religious opinions, and too low an estimate of the advantages of agreement even in the outward forms of Christianity. If, indeed, I could be