a mass of ceremonial observances as fruitless, wearisome, and unspiritual as those of the Talmud. Not even the Pentecostal fires could transmute the baser metal into the pure gold, and it remained for the Christian religion to gradually develop a sacerdotal system more complex and tyrannical than any known to the ancient world."

66

DOES NOT CARE TO SURRENDER THE LIBERTY OF

SPEECH."

This, as a heading in the Daily Newspapers of this date, is so suggestive of nobility and courage—especially on the part of a clergyman—that it is deserving of permanent notice. The young, scholarly, and widely distinguished President of one of the oldest Universities of New England, who is also a Professor and a Pastor, resigns all these positions with their honors and emoluments rather than "surrender the liberty of speech" which his conservative trustees and other constituents demanded. Surely the heroic love of Truth and the spirit of self-surrender for Convictions' sake, which together constituted the crowning glory of Apostolic Christianity, are not yet entirely perished from the earth. An appropriate exhortation to many who, as yet, have not developed the courage of their convictions is, "Go thou and do likewise."

[See remarks by the Bishop of New York on one of the opening pages.]

A HOPEFUL INCIDENT.

"" DECLINED THE PROFFERED DEGREE OF d.d.

"[By telegraph to the Herald.]

"TORONTO, Ont., June 30, 1897.-The Rev. of this city has declined unreservedly to accept the degree of Doctor of Divinity." . . So rare an instance of modesty deserves a permanent as well as a telegraphic record. The degree of "D.D." has come to signify nothing at all as to essential scholarship or worth; and yet it is amusing, as well as sad, to observe how it is sought for and paraded. They love "to be called of men Doctor, Doctor!"

LXXV. SERMONS MADE TO ORDER.

(From the Boston Evening Transcript, July 17, 1897.)

"Seldom has there been a more glaring instance of a departure from the ethical standard of the pulpit than in a circular which comes from New York, offering to furnish clergymen with special typewritten sermons, prepared by ‘a clergyman recently connected with a large church,' prices to be dependent upon the nature and extent of the work required. That the authors of the circular recognize this fact themselves is apparent in their excuse that these sermons are for ministers 'who, in the sharp competition of modern times and the multiplicity of other duties, are not able to prepare for themselves the high

quality of work demanded in the pulpit.' The pitiful fact about the matter, however, is that there must be some demand for work of this sort, or there would be no one with the temerity to insult a clergyman by offering him a typewritten sermon to be passed off on his congregation as his own. Plagiarism in the pulpit is not unknown, and it may be remembered that a cultivated Englishman who visited Boston some years ago stooped to such work; but as a business, to be advertised by circular, this sermon-manufacturing is something new. The 'Outlook' has received one of these circulars, and commenting upon it at length, says:

***We know of no way of making such a business impossible except by the cultivation of a higher ethical sentiment among clergymen themselves.' A wolf in sheep's clothing, indeed, is the man who talks to his people about honesty and sincerity and then reads to them as his own a sermon which he has never prepared."

But it is an open secret that this is widely done. The manuscript sermon trade is an old one in European countries and, especially in the Churches of England, is seemingly accepted as legitimate. In the American Churches, too, of the more fashionable order, one rarely can hear a sermon with any first-handed life or point in it; so that whether it is or is not original is a matter of entire indifference. The less of it the better anyway; and if it is smooth, and short, and melodiously delivered no questions will be asked. Even when a fashionable "orthodox" Church on the Avenue is diverted with an Easter-day Sermonette, made up of fragments of an eloquent sermon from a volume of "heretical" sermons, and the imposition is publicly exposed, hardly a ripple of excitement and no condemnation at all is awakened thereby! In this condition of the "ethical sentiment " it is as well to use "typewritten sermons made to order" as to use those in manuscript imported from England or those in print stolen from books.

The sermon, anyway, among the fashionable Protestant sects is rapidly becoming what it has long been in the Roman Catholic sect-a matter of little or of no account. "How did you like the sermon?" asked one of another as they left the church. "I do not care for sermons anyway, and as that came as near to nothing as possible I liked it well," was the reply. To fill out the program and give a breathing-spell to the singers and reciters seems growingly

66

to be the main function of the sermon. The performance of a Ritual, or the short and quick discharge of a still reputable, but very distasteful, duty of "going to church" being a chief object of what is called Worship-quite naturally the increasing demand must be for short and quick sermons and as near to nothing as possible." The time has come when "itching ears" in the Churches "no longer endure sound instruction," nor instruction of any sort. The "tithings of mint, anise, and cummin "—the proprieties of ceremonies, forms, recitings, and other externalities-have widely taken the place of the "weightier matters of the Law." So that it is now old-fashioned and extremely unpopular to “preach the Gospel to every creature." Any modern Paul who should venture to "reason of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come" so pointedly as to make his aristocratic hearers "tremble" would quickly be remanded to the madhouse (especially should he "continue his speech till midnight") with words similar to those used of both Paul and his divine Master, "he is beside himself";-or, should he press home his Gospel so as to make it personal to his whole congregation, something would certainly transpire similar to that recorded in St. Luke's Gospel, 4th chapter, 28th and 29th verses: "And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath; and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill whereon their city was built; that they might cast him down headlong."

In this condition of the "ethical sentiment" it is well, for all who are not possessed of the martyr-spirit of genuine Christianity, to preach sermons that are "short and quick" and "as near to nothing as possible "—whether original, or purchased, or stolen.

What genuine Christianity is should be gathered from the brave, and bold, and self-forgetting voices and lives of the "noble army of martyrs " in connection with such fundamentally essential New Testament requirements as follows: "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with. . . . The servant is not above his lord, nor the disciple above his teacher; if they have called the ruler of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they so call them who are of his household.

If any man (and especially any minister) “will be my disciple let him deny himself, take his cross every day and follow me think not

that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves

if they have persecuted me they will also persecute you woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets-blessed are ye when man shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely-for so persecuted they the (true) prophets which were before you "—all of which, as fundamental self-surrender and selfcrucifixion, was accepted and experienced by every true minister of the Gospel and by every genuine Christian from the days of Peter and Paul to the days of Luther, Wesley, Channing, Robertson, Stanley and Phillips Brooks.

LXXVI.-TRADITIONALISM AS A MAIN CAUSE OF DEGENERATION.

IN the traditional Christian Church exactly the same thing has come to pass that existed in the Jewish Church at the beginning of the Christian era,-" making the Word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered-teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." The degenerate Jewish Church had come to esteem traditions concerning the Law as equal to, and even above, the Law itself. The Pharisees insisted that the written could only be understood through the oral; that the Church through its Sanhedrim, and the Sanhedrim through its Succession of Priests, had received the True Faith from Moses according to which the Law must be interpreted by all. "It was the fundamental principle of the Pharisees that by the side of the written law there was an oral law (tradition) to complete and to explain the written law. It was an article of faith that in the Pentateuch there was no precept, and no regulation, ceremonial, doctrinal, or legal, of which God had not given to Moses all explanations necessary for their application, with the order to transmit by word of mouth. The classical passage on this subject is the following: 'Moses received the Traditions from Sinai, and delivered them to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the priests, and the priests to the men of the Great Synagogue.'" In the end the Traditions became more sacred than the

Law, and practically superseded it. The Law was only read or heard in detached passages or "texts" just to furnish a starting point for the endless Traditions.

So now-endless Expositions, Commentaries or Sermons have taken the place of the Bible and practically superseded it. It is read or heard only as a “text," or as a starter for elaborate traditional interpretations. No longer is it “Hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches," but Hear what THE CHURCH says, or what POPES have commanded, or what SANHEDRIMS from the fourth century downward have decreed! The Mishna and the Targums-the Creeds and the Doctrines with their officially authorized elaborations are both the Law and the Gospel of "Orthodoxy" now, as they were of "Pharisaism" at the opening of the Christian Era. "Howbeit, they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children's children; as did their fathers, so do they unto this day." (See 2 Kings, chapter 17).

A sermon just published, as preached in one of the largest and most fashionable Roman Catholic Churches of New York to "a crowded congregation, many people being turned away from the High Mass," begins as follows. "At the outset God placed at the entrance of His temple an incomprehensible mystery. Those who will enter there must accept this mystery blindly. If they will accept this mystery on the strength of His Word, then there will never be a single difficulty in their belief. My lips are closed

by the commands of St. Paul. I can imagine his scowling countenance if I were about to explain this mystery to you." Just so! Let your eyes be put out, your brain stupefied and your reason stultified-then there will be no further trouble; after that there will never be a single difficulty in your belief.

66

Open your mouth and shut your eyes,

And I'll give you something to make you wise "

though an old rhyme is, after all, the summarized method