J. Lamsmi.

ART. IV. ARNOLD'S SERMONS.*

It is not our purpose at present to enter into any extended examination of the two volumes of sermons by the late Oxford Professor of History, and our principal motive for noticing them at all is, to present our readers some extracts from the Introduction and Notes to one of the volumes, having reference to questions which are now deeply agitating the religious public in England, and are receiving some attention in our own country.

The volume, the title of which we have placed first, was published before the author's death, which took place, June 11, 1842. The second of these volumes is posthumous. The sermons contained in both were preached mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School, of which the writer was Head Master. They are plain, serious, practical discourses, written without any attempt at eloquence. They exhibit no remarkable intellectual power, yet the thought is always fresh and vigorous, and they breathe an earnest and Christian spirit. Their peculiar excellence, as it appears to us, is their strict adaptation—this is true of most of them at least to the condition and needs of the audience before which they were preached. They are not discourses on general subjects, which might be as well preached before one set of hearers as another. Many of them bear the form of direct addresses to the young, to children at school; and consist not in vague declamation, but in a discussion of some definite subject, some principle of conduct or duty, connected with the wants, dangers, and temptations of youth. Others are upon the general duties of the Christian life, its "course, its hindrances, and its helps," "its hopes, its fears, and its close." Yet these topics are not treated in any formal way, nor at all systematically, so as to form

* 1. Christian Life, its Course, its Hindrances, and its Helps. Sermons, preached mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School. By THOMAS ARNOLD,D. D., Head Master of Rugby School, and late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Second Edition. London: 1842. 8vo. pp. 492.

2. Christian Life, its Hopes, its Fears, and its Close. Sermons, preached mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School. By the late THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D., Head Master of Rugby School, and Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. London: 1842. 8vo. pp. 469.

one regular whole. This the author does not pretend, though the title of the volumes would lead one to expect. some such thing. Probably most persons who take up the volumes, allured by the title, will read them with a feeling of disappointment. Still we cannot but think, that the delivery of such sermons from Sabbath to Sabbath, marked, as they are, by a high moral and religious tone, and containing so much which was directly applicable, must have been attended with good, especially when we take into view the peculiar respect and affection, which, as we are told, Dr. Arnold had the happiness uniformly to inspire in his pupils. They certainly present a beautiful picture of the relation in which he stood to his pupils, not simply as their intellectual father, but a tender and faithful religious guide. Several of the sermons, however, have a direct reference to the principles and usages of his own Church, the Church of England, which will render them less acceptable elsewhere than at home and among the members of the Establishment.

We will give a single extract from the sermons, to illustrate what we have said of their directness and application. We might give many better passages, and some equally direct, but the following will show the author's manner and style, when he is most familiar. He is speaking of a school as a Christian society, as "in its idea and institution God's temple ;" and every one, he says, who is a member of it has a duty to perform in regard to it — he owes a duty to the school.

"I would say a few words to another class of persons among you, to those whose station in the school is high, but yet does not invest them with authority, while their age is often such as to give them really an influence equal to that of those above them, or it may be superior. I will not say that these exercise an influence for evil, for such a charge can only apply to particular persons; none exercise a direct influence for evil without being in some way evil themselves; but I am sure that, as a class, they have much to answer for in standing aloof, and not discouraging evil and encouraging good. They forget that if they have not authority, they have what really amounts to the same thing; they know that they are looked up to, - that what they say and do has its effect on others; they know, in short, that they are of some consequence and weight in the school. But being so, they cannot escape the responsibility of their

position. It matters nothing that the rules of the school confer on them no direct power. One far above any school authority has given them a power, and will call them to a strict account for its exercise. We may lay no official responsibility upon you, but God does. He has given you a talent which it is your sin to waste, or to lay by unimproved. And as it is most certain that you have an influence and power, and you well know it; so remember that where there is power, there is ever a duty attached to it; if you can influence others, as beyond all doubt you can, and do influence them daily, if you do not influence them against evil and for good, you are wasting the talent entrusted to you, and sinning against God.

'Again, I will speak to them who are yet younger, whose age and station in school confer on them, it may be, no general influence. But see whether you too have not your influence, and whether you also do not sin often by neglecting it or misusing it. By whom is it that new boys are for the most part corrupted? Not certainly by those much above them in school, but necessarily by their own immediate companions. By whom are they laughed at for their conscientiousness, or reviled and annoyed for their knowledge or their diligence? not certainly by those at or near the head of the school, but by those of their own age and form. To whose annoyance does many a new boy owe the wretchedness of his life here? To whose influence and example has he owed the corruption of his practice, and of his principles, his ruin here and forever? Is it not to those nearly of his own age, with whom he is most led to associate? And can boys say that they have no influence, when they influence so notoriously the comfort and character of their neighbors? At this moment particularly, when so many new boys are just come amongst us, the younger or middle-aged boys have an especial influence, and let them beware how they use it. I know not what greater sin can be committed, than the so talking, and so acting, to a new boy, as to make him ashamed of any thing good, or not ashamed of any thing evil. It matters very little what is the age of the boy who exercises an influence like theirs. He, too, has anticipated the power of more advanced years, and in like manner he has contracted their guilt, and is liable to their punishment."*

The Introduction and Notes, to which we have alluded, belong to the first volume named by us, and published by the author himself. They show us the magnitude of the loss sustained by the moderate party in the Church, by the

*Christian Life, its Hopes, Fears, and Close. - pp. 60- -62.

death of Professor Arnold, for he was an earnest, fearless man, well-informed on all points of the controversy, and disposed to give free utterance to his opinions. And he did so.

The Oxford movement is generally supposed to have commenced only ten or twelve years ago. Professor Arnold assigns to it an earlier origin. It has been called "a movement towards something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century." To this he does not object. He adds,

"It began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, and has ever since been working onwards, though for a long time slowly and secretly, and with no distinctly marked direction. But still, in philosophy and general literature, there have been sufficient proofs that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had been swinging one way, was now beginning to swing back again; and as its last oscillation brought it from the true centre, so it may be, that its present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on again, in after ages, another corresponding reaction." -P. iii.

Of Mr. Newman and his friends Dr. Arnold says,

"There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a light footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore they turned to what they called Christian antiquity. Had they judged of their own times, had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth century, as well as its evil, they would have looked for their remedy not to the second or third or fourth centuries, but the first; they would have tried to restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is most certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party in the ancient Church. They have endeavored to set those opinions and practices, under the name of Apostolical tradition, on a level with the authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate excitement has made them fail of doing even what they intended to do. It may be true that all their doctrines may be found in the writings of those whom they call the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its proportions are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other points and another spirit promi

nent in the writings of the earlier Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language of Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature." pp. xx xxii.

In preaching, as they do, "apostolical succession" and the power of the clergy, Professor Arnold says, Mr. Newman and his friends preach themselves, and not Christ. He proceeds,

:

'Again, the system which they hold up as 'better and deeper than satisfied the last century' is a remedy which has been tried once already and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which this remedy, if it be any, had at any rate been powerless to cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the clergy, the authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption alike of Christ's religion and Christ's church. So far were they from tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up to the measure of the stature of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's Church declined during their ascendancy more and more; - she fell alike from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached a less value to Church tradition and Church authority. I am greatly understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so: I will not say that Mr. Newman's favorite doctrines were the very Antichrist which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent its corruption, that when they were most exalted, Christian truth and Christian goodness were most depressed." - pp. xxviii, xxix.

In regard to the necessity of apostolical succession to give efficacy to the sacraments, he says, that there are no words of Jesus from which such a doctrine "66 can be deduced either probably or plausibly; none from which it could be even conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence."

The following is in a tone of great earnestness and benevolence, and shows the moral aspects under which the author was accustomed to view the Oxford assumptions, and the broad principles by which he judged of the truth or falsehood of a doctrine. There is a moral element which