Sermons and Addresses Delivered in America

INTRODUCTION.

THESE Sermons and Addresses of the Archdeacon of Westminster have the same qualities which have so long won for all that he has had to say an earnest and sympathetic hearing. They are the utterances of him. whom we have known so well as the author of the Life of Christ, the advocate of Temperance, and the preacher of Eternal Hope. They will appeal to and inspire the same love of God and Truth and Man, the same thoughtful interest in the things of the Spirit to which his other books have spoken.

But this volume will also possess a value and significance peculiarly its own. It is made up for the most part of sermons preached by an Englishman to Americans; that fact cannot fail to be felt by those who read it. Something of the feeling which was in the preacher's soul, as he stood in our pulpits and looked our congregations in the face, must still linger in the words of the discourses, now that they are printed.

The sense of likeness with the sense of difference-the sense that, being Christian men of the same race, we are living by the same standards and seeking the same ends; and the sense that, under our different conditions, our methods of life and ways of thought must of necessity be different-it is the combination of these two which

makes the peculiar interest of England for the American visitor or of America for the visitor from England. If they were entirely alike or if they were totally different, the two countries could not be to one another what they

are now.

And perhaps there is no kind of writing which more sensitively feels this double interest, of likeness and unlikeness, and more vividly displays it, than the sermon. The true sermon has always its general and special character harmoniously united. It is at once the most universal and the most personal of all forms of address. It must speak eternal truths— truths true for all men in all times-or it is too local and narrow. It must also speak directly to the men to whom it is addressed, or it becomes too vague.

Therefore, the utterances of a preacher who speaks. out of an earnest, sympathetic heart to Christians of another nation which yet is of close kindred to his own, will always have a value distinct from that which belongs to all his other writings. Such a preacher has come to America this autumn, and this volume comprises the Sermons he has preached.

Dr. Farrar has been for years no stranger to Americans. But they who have long counted him their friend and teacher, and who have now enjoyed the privilege of looking in his face and listening to his voice, will treasure these words which he has spoken especially to them, and will keep them as a valued memorial of his most welcome visit. P. B.

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