Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON II. THE HOBAL INSTINCTS, WHICH LEAD MEN TO THE CONFESSIONAL. Preached on the same occasion as the former Sermon.
Bear pe one another’s burtons, ana so fulfil tlje Iato of ffifmat. ?Galatians vi. 2.
ffionfesa pour faults one to another, ana prap one for anotljer, tljat pe map 6e Ijealrti. ?James v. 16. We like to speak to you from this place of the current events of the day. Religion is not to be kept apart from our common interests, but to intermingle with them, to pervade them, to guide them into a right channel. And perhaps the reason why the pulpit exerts so very little influence upon the age and the general tone of society, may be, that by a mistaken conventionalism (meant to be reverent, but in point of fact formal) it stands aloof from those topics which, in the general ferment of mind, rise to the surface now and then, and occupy the thoughts, and are in the mouths of all. This conventionalism is very freezing, and one of its least evil effects is to make Sermons wanting in vivacity, and to associate them, as in many minds it is to be feared they are associated, with dulness and monotony. Recent circumstances, to which I need do no more than barely allude, have brought the subject of Confession before the public mind. It is a subject on which I spoke at large to you in a former discourse, endeavouring to point out the very clear and tangible difference of principle on this head, which separates the Church of England from that of Rome. And if any argumentative treatment of the subject were all that was required, I should consider that my say had been said. But so it is, that, especially to young and enthusiastic minds (which are the minds most open to danger on this side), nothing is less satisfying than a dry argument. It may be logical; it may …