PREFACE.

THIS book treats mainly of the relations between Scripture and Science, and boldly applies natural law and the doctrine of evolution to secular and sacred history. But Evolution, as Mr. Dawson uses it, is more the Efficient Nature of Emerson than the Natural Selection of Darwin.

The discourses of the last volume-" THE AUTHENTIC GOSPEL"-set forth the Religion of Charity, and showed that salvation and religion are independent of views and opinions. The present volume has a different cast, and shows that Christ's religion, rightly understood, favours the growth of knowledge, and should lead the Christian to accept the results of historical and scientific investigation.

"THE AUTHENTIC GOSPEL" was comforting, and tended to breadth of charity. The present volume is enlightening, and tends to breadth of view.

These sermons also, like those last published, were mostly preached near the end of Mr. Dawson's life; and the marked difference between the two series is owing to the selection which has been made according to subject. The two series of discourses would have to be read together and made to interpenetrate one another, to afford a fair specimen of Mr. Dawson's teaching as his people listened to it.

It has not been thought desirable to cumber the pages with foot-note references to Scripture texts, where a Concordance will serve the purpose; and it would have been wrong to correct the language of quotations where the deviation from literalness is conscious and intended.

These discourses, like the last, are mostly printed from Miss Beauclerc's reports. There is only one exception, and that is the sermon on “Christ fulfils Moses," a valuable link in the series, for which the Editor is indebted to Mr. James Wright.

CHURCH OF THE SAVIOUR,

BIRMINGHAM,

August, 1882.

THE NEARNESS OF GOD, SCIENCE

NOTWITHSTANDING.

"No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us."- -I JOHN iv. II, 12.

THERE is a saying of Hazlitt's, bold, and at first seeming wondrous true: "In the days of Jacob there was a ladder between heaven and earth; but now the heavens have gone further off, and have become astronomical."

This may be taken as illustrating the belief of a large number of people, who imagine that, somehow or other, the earth in its youth was better off and nearer to God than it can possibly be with the larger, fuller, and more accurate scientific knowledge that it has now. There are times in our lives when we almost wish we could believe things, as we believed with the simple faith of our childhood. But this is rather a passing passion of the fancy,

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than a steadfast desire of the mind; and none of us really wish to believe the moon is only the size it looks, or that the sun moves round the earth.

As a symbol, Jacob's ladder has ever been beautiful to the minds of men, and we sometimes wonder whether there be a ladder answering in our age to the ladder of this dream, whereby we may climb to the heights of heaven, and come nearer to God. But now, if there be such a ladder, the angels all seem to go one way-upwards, to the heavens, and none descend. Hazlitt, then, sets

forth the conviction that true scientific knowledge leaves us further in spirit from the Creator. Scientific knowledge-knowledge of things as they are has nothing whatever to do with man's spiritual acceptance of any truth vital to the soul.

"The heavens have gone farther off." Yes, and why not? In the days when men believed that the blue firmament was near, and something to be palpably touched, if they could but get up to it, their sense of the nearness of the heavens was a small thing, and the loss of that sense of nearness is little to be mourned. You remember that before astronomy became a science, one said that the stars were but holes through which the heavenly glory streamed. It was the best astronomy he

had, or in those days could find; but is any man farther from God because he knows that every star is a mighty world, the handiwork of God? What has any distance or nearness of the heavens to do with the deep things of the human spirit, with the love of things divine and gracious, with the passion after holiness by which man grows near to God? Because, by a flash of lightning, I can speak to the other side of the world; because I live in a generation in which men gain the strength of giants, and can move mountains-am I farther from God? As if these things interfered with God's spirit; as if, because we have grown scientific, the heavens are farther off than they used to be!

This is the babble of the time, and speech more foolish was never spoken. Man's nearness to God, or distance from Him, arises from no scientific knowledge, nor from the want of it. Man grows near to God by likeness of soul. Let the "Iliad" of Homer, and the "Paradise Lost" of John Milton, tell how near to God man's soul may grow to be. Give us one glorious strain of music from Beethoven, that we may learn how divine the answering harmony of our own hearts may be. Let man's joy in the beauties of sun and mountain and blue sky, and the glories of his heroism, his