It may seem a hard saying, and such as some will think we ought not to affirm, but a respect for the Truth compels us to affirm it, that there is nothing in Dr. Stanley's sermons, with the one solitary exception of the recognition of Christ as the Son of God, which the most chronic Socinian teacher might not with perfect consistency deliver. We have, in former reviews, pointed out the vital defect in his doctrine of Sacrifice. This crops out on all occasions in his discourses. Whenever he has to speak of the death of Christ, he never speaks of it as a propitiation for men's sins. The sacrifice made is the submission of the martyr rather than the sin offering of the reconciler. Propitiation would imply, as its correlative, anger that needed to be appeased; and to speak of anger, or "wrath," in the Deity, would be to admit a doctrine that is repugnant, it is said, to our moral sense. In this way it is that our new teachers in theology would remove all the ancient landmarks.

At page 40 of the Sermons before us, the preacher has occasion to quote the words, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us;" upon which he thus comments:-"Not with the sacrifice and blood of struggling sheep, and the wild recitations of an ancient ritual, but with that only sacrifice which is really pleasing to God-the sacrifice of a perfect Life and perfect Death." This is all he has to tell the future heir of England's throne, who will be sworn to his belief in the Protestant faith, in regard to Christ our Saviour's sacrifice!

The next sermon that follows this (Sermon VI.) was preached on Good Friday; and here we might have expected the preacher would have expounded the doctrine of the Cross somewhat more fully. But no; here again, the Prince of Wales is told only that it proves "the universal love of God to His creatures"-that "He bears love to every one on this earth, however far they may seem to be removed from Him""It was for this that Christ died." Again; following up the same train of thought, this is the new interpretation given to us of the Collects for Good Friday :-" They pray for God's mercy to visit, not Christians merely, but all religions, however separate from ours, in the hope that they may all at last, here or hereafter, be one fold under one Shepherd"-"the One Good Shepherd, who laid down His life, not for the flock of one single fold only, but for the countless sheep scattered on the hills; not of the fold of the Jewish people, or of the Christian Church only, but of all mankind." (p. 44.) Here is the very comprehensiveness of charity! Who can but admire such largeness of sentiment? If they may be of one fold "hereafter," without becoming so here, it just occurs to us to ask, What need of the Christian Church at all?

Is there nothing said, then, about the end and effects of Christ's death, in these sermons before Royalty? Are we no

where told in what way we are benefited by Him? Alas, for the reader; he may ask the question, and get but the most meagre answer. Thus much we are told:-"Whatever be the evil habit, or the inveterate prejudice, which weighs upon us like a bondage, He (Christ) feels for us, and will do His utmost (sic) to set us free." (p. 46.) So far as respects the benefits of Christ's death to us as sinners-(Sinners! did we say? So ugly a word is hardly ever used throughout the whole volume of these Sermons)-this, we are told, is "the other lesson" which Good Friday teaches us-" that whatever good is to be done in the world, even though it is God Himself who does it, it cannot be done without an effort-a preparation-a Sacrifice. So it was especially in the death of Christ; so it was in His whole life.". (p. 47.)

And is this all that is set forth respecting that grand, awful, momentous event upon which were suspended the eternal destinies of all mankind? Yes, good Reader, this is all; and you may thank God that you were not born the heir to a throne, if such are their preachers!

"Itinerant preachers" is a description with which we are all familiar we have before us now what may not inappropriately be termed Itinerant Sermons. They take us on from place to place in Scripture history, and at each profess to tell us what we may learn.

Respecting the conversion of St. Paul, (we are now brought to Damascus,) how this was brought about, after mentioning two other means, our author informs us that it was effected "thirdly, by the appeal to the best part of his own heart." (p. 66.) The proof of this is the text," It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." We very much doubt if St. Paul himself could have told which was the best part of his own heart. But Dr. Stanley can find " sermons in stones, and good in every thing." As for Paul himself, he certainly says in one place "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." (Rom. vii.) But St. Paul's theology is one thing, and Dr. Stanley's is another.

We pass on. "It is always better, we are told (p. 72), if we can, to see what was the good element at the bottom of any character or institution; what there was in the thoughts that raised these solid foundations and these towering columns" (Dr. Stanley is speaking of the temple of Baalbec, erected for the worship of Baal or the Sun), "which we also may imitate for ourselves, without falling into those dark errors and sins with which they were once connected." What an advantage it must have been to travel with such a far-seeing instructor! "Those who lived in old time expressed, as we see, their gratitude and reverence for the gifts of nature by this magnificent temple. Let us express our gratitude and

reverence in the offering of pure hearts and good lives to Him who has thus graciously guided us so surely to the close of our pilgrimage." (p. 74.)

Dean Stanley, as we may now call him, seems to have felt deeply his own need of charity in judgment in respect to these Sermons of his; or rather, in respect to himself as the preacher of them. For he takes care, before he closes, to urge most emphatically the duty to "make the best of one another." This, he says, is the sum of St. John's teaching. "He did not say, as many Christians have said since, Agree with one another in doctrine.' (He must here have forgotten verse 10 of St. John's Second Epistle.) "He did not say, as many Christians have said, 'Hate one another, and kill one another.' He did not say, 'Flatter one another, indulge one another.' He did not even say, 'Teach one another, inform one another.' What he did say was that difficult but necessary grace, Love one another!' That is, love one another, in spite of your differences, in spite of your faults; do what you can to serve each other, to lighten each others' trials, and inconveniences, and burdens, above all, if we may turn the precept into its most practical form, 'Make the best of one another.'" (p. 97.)

Acting upon the principle which Dean Stanley here lays down, we are ready to acknowledge in him a rare combination of excellencies. He is a fine writer; a man evidently of a most amiable disposition, filled with the kindliest sympathies towards his fellow man, under every condition and aspect in which he may be found. He is moreover a scholar without his usual pedantry, and a priest without his blinding professional prejudices. But when we have said this, we have said all that we honestly can say. Viewed as a theologian, as the passages we have quoted from these Sermons will amply show, he is by no means to be trusted. Here he exhibits, we will not say the most pitiable ignorance, but the saddest perversion. His judgment is so warped by his feelings, that he sees good when he should see evil, and sees evil when he should see good. In one word, his grand defect is, that he wants the power of discerning things that differ. With a profound admiration for Christianity, he yet mistakes her robes for her essence, and would place her in a Pantheon, instead of upon a pillar, in the solitary grandeur of a sole supremacy. From such religious teachers may the Church of England ever be delivered.

It is a question of no light moment to the interests of Truth, what will be the effect of the new theology upon the Church? Will it leave any abiding impression? or will it, like other systems that have had their origin with man, pass away like a spring flood? We are not prophets. It is not given to us to look into the future. We can only judge by the rule of human

probability. Judging by this rule, we should say that the Neologian epidemic, like other epidemics, will have its run, and then die out. Many, we doubt not, will fall victims to it; because it is in the nature of corrupt man, restless and dissatisfied, under the influence of moral disorder within, to catch the infection of error, and to eat of forbidden fruit, because it is forbidden. It is a moral fact, to be witnessed daily, that the very warning which we are giving of the danger that lurks in such writings as those before us, will prompt, in the young especially, a curiosity to read them, to be followed by the ignorant wonder of inexperience, as to where the harm in them lies; since, by persons who read in such a state of mind, it is sure not to be discovered. What is negative must, in the very nature of the case, be intangible, though its effect will not be the less certain.

The philosophy of spiritual influences is very little understood, and still less attended to. Men in general will be careful to avoid physical infection, while they will totally disregard that which is mental. Yet the laws of the one are just as certain, though latent, as of the other. No one can be safe against the infection of error, who is not in some way protected against it. Where a physician might enter, and even handle without danger, another person shall expose himself to almost certain death. The office of the religious reviewer, when he has to ascertain and oppose latent error, is very much like that of the medical practitioner in regard to infectious and fatal disease. Though he may not be able to cure the infected, he must point out the danger there is in contact to the healthy.

It is an invidious task, and one which we could fain wish we had not to fulfil, to be obliged to speak in so condemnatory a tone of the works of one whom, as a man, we can sincerely esteem. But Dr. Stanley has put himself forward as the pioneer of a new system, which we believe to be destructive to the Gospel, in its one grand essential relation as God's method for man's salvation. It negatives by omission, if not by express denial, those doctrines which lie at the very basis of the Christian system, and give consistency and harmony to the whole by giving its rationale. It takes out the very core, the heart and life, of the Gospel as, what it is in truth, a remedial dispensation, and reduces it to a code of morals in effect, without giving to it even the form of a law.

What so much offends the Neologian in the Bible is just what offends the Socinian-namely, its revealed method of salvation by the shedding of blood; the substitution of the innocent for the guilty; the giving of life through the medium of death. This shocks his sophisticated moral sense; and so he will have none of it. Salvation by the Cross is a paradox, which, as it appears to be in the record, must be explained

away.

But those who would thus deal with it seem to forget the fact, that even in the physical economy God has appointed that one poison shall be the cure for another. In perfect consistency with this, sin is cured by a sin-offering, the foolishness of the Cross, when believed in, cures the folly there is in man's heart, in loving the world more than God,-one man's death is made another man's life. Does this sound strange in any one's ears? Then let him remember that the bite of the fiery flying serpents was healed, by Divine appointment, by the brasen serpent lifted up upon a pole-like curing like; and that it is written, "Even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him"-in a crucified man-"should not perish, but have eternal life." (John iii. 14, 15.)

In divinity, as in medicine, all depends upon the way in which the prescription is received. Where the truth, like a poisonous antidote to a poison, is not a "savour of life unto life," it will be a "savour of death unto death."

The great difficulty we have in dealing with error that lies scattered in small particles, and hid under a mass of good matter, is, that hardly any one will believe in the existence of the deleterious element at all, still less in its danger. Because a book, or a sermon, as a whole, looks Christian, people will persuade themselves that it is safe. They will even say that it is uncharitable to condemn a thing that on the whole is so excellent. Why not commend the good there is in it," will be their language, "instead of dwelling upon minute particles that may be, by themselves, as you say, evil?" Our reply is, that no one needs to be told that a loaf made of good wheaten flour is wholesome food; or that if ninety-nine parts of it are of such flour, it is so far good. But if the other hundredth part, which lies unperceived, be arsenic, surely then charity, as well as truth, demands that this should be shown. It is not the large amount of good, but the small portion of evil there is in a thing, that stamps its true character.

It is an ill omen for the truth, that such an unsound divine as Professor Stanley should be exalted to a high place of influence in the Church; because the great multitude of professing Christians, even in the face of their Lord's own history, will, like the world, believe in success. Of this world within the Church the Times newspaper is the true type. Success is the one sole object of its worship. It has been crying up Dr. Stanley's appointment to the deanery of Westminster as a credit to the Church, as in every way most suitable, on the very ground that he is a man of the world under the garb of a divine, and will know how to accommodate himself to all persons and to all opinions. How significant! How characteristic too! In this it truly represents the world, such as the world is, even under a Christian name. Men of business