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Sermons "God's World"-"Association"-"On Books." 457

usually supposed. What lengths of utter materialism it is possible for commentators to reach, by the rejection of all that is spiritual and supersensuous as contranatural and incredible, may be seen in such writers as Paulus; while, on the other hand, the poet, whose dwelling has ever been figured to be on some Parnassus, or other heavenly mount, seems most at home when standing on the finite and visible he is reaching out into the invisible and the infinite.

The little volume of sermons which has given occasion to these observations, is, in several respects, one of the most remarkable we have met with for a long time. It will be found to possess the merits which by anticipation, in virtue of its parentage, we have ascribed to it, with other merits of a high order. Discarding utterly the tasteless conventional pulpit phraseology, which with us is only not universal, and has the unhappy effect of either obscuring thought or concealing the want of it; with a deep sense of the reality and awful import of the things about which he has to speak, and not forgetting that if he would speak with effect he must use terms within the comprehension of the humble and not over-intelligent Hampshire rustics, forming the bulk of his audience, Mr. Kingsley has been able to express Christian thoughts, which the highest will not find unworthy of notice, in the simplest, homeliest language; which is so predominantly Saxon, that in whole pages one could hardly find a few dozen words of Latin origin.

The titles of some of these sermons are suggestive. Such headings as "God's World," "Religion not Godliness," "Hell on Earth," "Association," "On Books," shew that the writer aims at something more than playing round a text. He grapples indeed very boldly with subjects, and with subjects of immediate practical interest, extorting a blessing often from the most unpromising; fighting not against "extinct Satans," but against the actual existing Satans, the terrible enough evils which are now at work all around us. Not content with the mere amplification of the words of Scripture, applicable immediately to a different social state, and to forms of evil different from the present, the author's endeavour is rather to dive into the heart of the Scripture text, and become possessed of its very life and spirit, which is for all time and for all circumstances. One of his great objects is to undo that huge work of an unbelieving age, through which the Idea of Nature has been disjoined from the Idea of God, for whom, in this relation, has been substituted some dim notion of a changeless self-subsisting law, so that the earth we tread on is hardly recognised as in very truth God's world. But we shall not here enter upon any examination of the theology which is taught (implicitly, for all technical theological terms, and the inculcation of

any theological system are studiously avoided) in this work, having introduced it to our readers for a different purpose; and now leaving them to judge of its spirit from the extracts which follow, we recommend the little volume to them in some of their thoughtful hours, as a remarkable phenomenon in the department of literature to which it belongs.

66 RELIGION NOT GODLINESS.

"Did you ever remark, my friends, that the Bible says hardly anything about religion-that it never praises religious people. This is very curious. Would to God we would all remember it! The Bible speaks of a religious man only once, and of religion only twice, except where it speaks of the Jews' religion to condemn it, and shews what an empty, blind, useless thing it was. What does the Bible talk of, then? It talks of God-not of religion, but of God. It tells us not to be religious but to be godly. And yet I believe we ought to think of it, and, by God's help, I will one day preach you a sermon, asking you all round this fair question :-If Jesus Christ came to you in the shape of a poor man, whom nobody knew, should you know him-should you admire him, fall at his feet and give yourself up to him, body and soul? I am afraid that I for one should not. I am afraid that too many of us here would not. That comes of us thinking more of religion than we do of godlinessin plain words, more of our own souls than we do of Jesus Christ. But you will want to know what is, after all, the difference between religion and godliness? Just the difference, my friends, that there is between always thinking of self and always forgetting self-between the terror of a slave and the affection of a child-between the fear of hell and the love of God. For, tell me, what you mean by being religious? Do you not mean, thinking a great deal about your own souls, and praying and reading about your own souls, and trying by all possible means to get your own souls saved? Is not that the meaning of religion? and yet I have never mentioned God's name in describing it! This sort of religion must have very little to do with God. Yes, indeed, what would heaven be worth without God? But how many people feel that the curse of this day is that most people have forgotten that? They are selfishly anxious enough about their own souls, but they have forgotten God. They are religious for fear of hell, but they are not godly, for they do not love God, or see God's hand in everything. They forget that they have a Father in heaven; that He sends rain and sunshine, and fruitful seasons; that He gives them all things richly to enjoy in spite of all their sins. His mercies are far above, out of their sight, and therefore His judgments are far away out of their sight too, and so they talk of the Visitation of God,' as if it was something very extraordinary, and happened very seldom, and when it came only brought evil, and harm, and sorrow. If a man lives on in health, they say he lives by the strength of his own constitution; if he drops down dead, they say he died by 'the visitation of God.' If the corn

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"Religion not Godliness"-" Life and Death."

459

crops go on all right and safe, they think that quite natural-the effect of the soil, and the weather, and their own skill in farming and gardening. But if there comes a hailstorm or a blight, and spoils it all, and brings on a famine, they call it at once a visitation of God.' My friends, do you think God visits' the earth or you only to harm you? I tell you, that every blade of grass grows by the 'visitation of God.' I tell you, that every healthy breath you ever drew, every cheerful hour you ever spent, every good crop you ever housed safely, came to you by the visitation of God.' I tell you, that every sensible thought or plan that ever came into your headsevery loving, honest, manly, womanly feeling that ever rose in your hearts, God visited' you to put it there. If God's Spirit had not given it you, you would never have got it of yourselves."-Pp. 13-18.

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"LIFE AND DEATH.

"The text tells us that he gives life, not only to us who have immortal souls, but to everything on the face of the earth; for the psalm has been talking all through not only of men but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and rocks, sun and moon. Now all these things have a life in them. Not a life like ours; but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say, 'That tree is alive, and that tree is dead. That running water is live water-it is sweet and fresh ; but if it is kept standing it begins to putrefy, its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, and makes it foul and unwholesome, and unfit to drink.' This is a deep matter, this, how there is a sort of life in everything, even to the stones under our feet. I do not mean, of course, that stones can think as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts' life makes them do, or even grow as the trees' life makes them do; but I mean that their life keeps them as they are, without changing or decaying. You hear miners and quarrymen talk very truly of the live rock. That stone, they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaning the rock as it is under ground, sound and hard-as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of time, unless it was taken out of the ground, out of the place where God's Spirit meant it to be, and brought up to the open air and the rain, in which it is not its nature to be; and then you will see that the life of the stone begins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels away, and in short decays, and is turned again to its dust. Its organization, as it is called, or life ends, and thenwhat? does the stone lie for ever useless? No! And there is the great blessed mystery of how God's Spirit is always bringing life out of death. When the stone is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, it makes soil. This very soil here, which you plough, is the decayed ruins of ancient hills; the clay which you dig up in the fields was once part of some slate or granite mountains, which were worn away by weather and water, that they might become fruitful earth. Wonderful! but any one who has studied these things can tell you they are true. Any one who has ever lived in mountainous countries ought to have seen the thing happen-ought to know that

the land in the mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich year by year by the washings from the hills above; and this is the reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. Then what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call them-go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. The corn stalks would never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil. So what a thousand years ago made part of a mountain, now makes part of a wheat plant; and in a year more the wheat grain will have been eaten, and the wheat straw perhaps eaten too, and they will have died-decayed in the bodies of the animals who have eaten them, and then they will begin a third new lifethey will be turned into parts of the animal's body-of a man's body. So what is now your bone and flesh may have been once a rock on some hill-side a hundred miles away."

The "Sermon" mentioned last at the head of this paper, which has reached us as we are going to press, and which has already gained some notoriety from the circumstances attending its delivery, relates to questions too delicate and difficult to be even referred to in the close of an Article. To enter upon any consideration of its doctrine or objects is obviously foreign to our present purpose; and having chronicled the fact of its publication, we must now take leave of Mr. Kingsley.

Character in Architecture.

461

ART. VII. The Stones of Venice.

Volume the First. The Foundations. By JOHN RUSKIN. London, 1851.

IN our Number for February 1850, we entered into a somewhat elaborate and novel investigation of the sources of appropriate character in the Egyptian and Greek Architectures, and we referred our readers for the only similar investigation of the Northern Gothic style, to an essay in another Journal. We stated and gave ample reasons for our belief that these three styles rank in the scale of integrity and merit conspicuously above all others. In this Article we shall carry on the task which we then commenced, by examining, with as little technicality as possible, the chief of the secondary and derived styles: and in doing this, we hope to arrive at useful practical results with regard to modern civil architecture, which, although it cannot be called a style, being an imitation of many styles, is yet sufficiently pretentious and expensive to justify a serious consideration of its defects and prospects.

We must set out by quoting our own words from the abovementioned Article. "If to the mind's eye we recall the various kinds of architecture that from the beginning have arisen, we shall remark three kinds which, in a peculiar manner, stand out from and above the rest. It is almost needless to name the architectures of Egypt, Greece, and Christian Europe, in the middle ages, as constituting this conspicuous triad. These architectures are distinguished from all others by a simplicity, definiteness, dignity, and appropriateness of effect, resulting from the general subordination in each style, not only of decoration, but of total form, to a particular thought or sentiment, intimately allied with and strongly suggestive of the character of the religion to which it is applied. The leading expressions of the three architectures are, moreover, very strikingly and simply related. The total forms become expressive, and even religiously symbolical, by a striking, and, in each case, a quite peculiar relativeness to the great law of gravitation. In fewest words, the general forms of Egyptian architecture are those of simple weight, and they express gloomy and everlasting material duration; those of Greek architecture convey the notion of weight competently supported, and are expressive of secure, conscious, and well-ordered power; finally, the prevailing forms of Gothic architecture shew weight annihilated-spire and tower, buttress, clerestory, and pinnacle, rise to heaven, and indicate the spirituality of the worship to which they are applied."

There are two other kinds of architecture, and only two, which

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