is waiting to receive you. Though you have forgotten that you are his son, he has not forgotten that he is your father. Our message is Christ's message to Zaccheus, to the paralytic, to the woman that was a sinner. It is the medicine of hope for the disease of despair.

And we believe this message has a power to quicken the lagging footsteps already turned toward the Father, and to turn toward the Father the feet of those now in the wilderness, such as no message of law and penalty and limited mercy and imperfect love ever has had or ever can have. And we willingly accept the test of the Master, "By their fruits ye shall know them," and leave the value of this liberal faith to be tested by its power to equip men for life's battle, to furnish them unto all righteousness, and make them worthy to be called the children of God.-The Christian Union.

HEARING CANON LIDDON AT ST.

PAUL'S.

The

When in London, two years ago, I was so fortunate as to hear on the same day the greatest preacher of the Established Church (generally so regarded), Canon Liddon, and the greatest preacher among the English dissenters, Spurgeon, -the one in St. Paul's Cathedral, under the great dome, and the other in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. death of Canon Liddon has added new interest to the recollections of the day, especially as the discourse to which I listened must have been among the very last that the distinguished orator delivered in the cathedral so long associated with his name and fame. I have thought that the readers of the Unitarian may like to accompany me to this service.

Where is St. Paul's? It is located perhaps a third of a mile north of the Thames, in the very heart of London, in almost the centre of the oldest, the most solidly built, the best known business section of the great metropolis. Straight east, a short mile away, are the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, and the Mansion House. A mile west are the Temple and the New Law Courts. A quarter of a mile north-east and north-west are the general post-office and Newgate Prison. Close by is

Paternoster Row, in the past as in the present the headquarters of the book-trade. The great thoroughfare,—the greatest in London, -running parallel with the river, from the Bank to Charing Cross and the Parliament Houses, goes past St. Paul's, or, rather, divides and goes both sides of it, being called, in its different sections, Cornhill, the Poultry, Cheapside, St. Paul's Churchyard, Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street, the Strand, and the West Strand, -all the same street, but bearing in its different parts these different names.

St. Paul's is badly shut in by buildings. To give the full effect to its magnitude and its noble architecture, it ought to stand by itself, in a broad, open space. In one way, however, this want of clear space around it is partly compensated for. The building is so lofty that it rises like a giant above everything else anywhere in its region, so that its great dome is a landmark visible from many parts of London, by means of which one can "orient" himself. It is almost as hard to get out of sight of the dome of St. Paul's as out of the sound of its ponderous bell, "Big Paul," which strikes the hours of day and night.

St. Paul's is the cathedral church of London, -St. Paul's, and not Westminster, though Westminster is quite as historic. St. Paul's has, also, the distinction of being the largest Protestant church in the world, and is exceeded among Catholic churches only by St. Peter's at Rome. Its length exceeds five hundred feet, and its breadth is half as great. Thus it would cover about two of our ordinary American city blocks. The height to the top of the cross above the dome is 370 feet. The glory of the building is its magnificent dome, which is generally considered the finest in the world. To me it seemed a work of perfect art. I should never tire of gazing on it. But I must confess it seemed to me somewhat to dwarf the rest of the church, vast as the proportions of the whole building are. The four structures that I saw in the Old World that perfectly met my expectation as architectural creations, that satisfied and filled all my desires, and sent me away from them awed, that expressed all that it seemed to me art at its finest ought to be capable of expressing of grandeur, power, beauty, and grace, -yes, and of mystery, too,-were the cathe

dral at Cologne, the interior of St. George's Church in Windsor Castle, the exterior of the Parliament Houses in London, and the dome of St. Paul's.

We arrive at the cathedral three-quarters of an hour too early for the service; but let us enter the great building. Early as it is, two or three thousand people are already present, and the number is swelled later to five or six thousand; for, when Canon Liddon preaches, which he does only about twelve times a year, it is a great event, and of course, in so famous a church and so large a city, the audience is sure always to be large.

The pulpit and most of the congregation are under the great dome. The seats are mainly chairs or other light, movable structures, as in all European cathedrals.

We have time to look around us before the service begins. We are struck immediately with the grand scale of everything. Think of columns forty feet in diameter, and eight of them to support the dome alone. Soon we notice that the interior of the cathedral is not finished,-a characteristic of many cathedrals of the Old World. As our eyes wander up toward the dome and along the vast walls and ceilings, we observe many spaces that are bare, which were evidently designed by the architect to be filled with paintings. Indeed, before several spaces scaffolds are suspended, and the work of painting is now actually in process.

Nothing about St. Paul's is more impressive than its monuments and memorials of the dead. Of course, as a mausoleum, it does not compare with Westminster; yet one must have a very unsusceptible nature who does not tread softly and with reverent feeling amid the memorials and over the ashes of so many of England's most illustrious

sons.

For myself I felt something of an inward protest that so large a proportion of those honored here were warriors: it seemed to me to indicate that even England, with all her boasted civilization and Christianity, is only a little way removed from barbarism. There are monuments to the Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, the three Napiers (the admiral and the two generals), and Gen. Gordon, and statues of Lord Cornwallis, who commanded the British forces at the close of our Revolutionary War, Sir John

Moore, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and many others who won fame in England's various wars by land and sea.

But more interesting than these are the monuments and statues that commemorate England's peace heroes. Conspicuous is a statue of John Howard, who immortalized himself and glorified our common humanity by a life of almost unparalleled devotion to the welfare of his wronged and suffering fellow-men. The statue represents him as holding in his hand a bunch of keys, symbolical of his opening prison-doors, and bringing justice and mercy and hope to those who were bound and in despair.

There are also statues or other memorials of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the literary autocrat of the last century, Sir William Jones, the learned Orientalist, Bishop Heber, the missionary and poet, Sir Astley Cooper, the great surgeon, Henry Hallam, the historian of the Middle Ages, Dean Milman, the historian of the Christian Church, the distinguished painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Barry, Opie, West, Fuseli, Lawrence, J. M. W. Turner, and others.

Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of the cathedral, as is fitting, lies buried here; and his is incomparably the noblest monument of all, for over the north door, in letters of gold, we read the inscription in Latin: "Subtus conditur hujus ecclesiae et urbis conditor Ch. Wren qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, non sibi sed bono publico. Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice": "Beneath is buried Christopher Wren, architect of this church and city, who lived for more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around."

But it is time for us to turn from the dead to the living. The great congregation, drawn together by the fame of Canon Liddon's name, has assembled, and the hour for the service has arrived. Every seat under the great dome is filled, and the throng extends far away toward the west door. The proportion of men is noticeably large. On the whole, the company is a most respectable one; but it is singularly conglomerate. There are Churchmen and Nonconformists. There are Londoners and people from all other parts of England. There are foreigners from many lands,

among them many Americans; for is not one of the great ecclesiastical lions of England and the world to be seen and heard to-day? The majority present, however, are Englishmen and good Churchmen, as we shall soon see by the way they will follow the service, and bow their heads when the name of Christ is uttered, as good Churchmen are taught to do. And, by the way, it strikes an outsider as very curious that men should think it necessary to make an obeisance at the name of Christ, but not at the name of God. Has the worship of Jesus with many Protestants, as the worship of Mary with many Catholics, become exalted above the worship of God? So it would

seem.

For some time before the service proper begins, we are treated to music on the organ. And, oh, such music as it is! The instrument is one of the largest and finest in the world; and, plainly, the player is a master! One is paid for coming just by this glorious music. What an instrument is the organ! As one sits here, held entranced by its marvellous power, he is tempted to ask if it was made on earth or if it came down out of heaven.

Never, until I heard the organ in its real home in the great cathedrals of the Old World, did I realize the range and wealth of its harmonies, the glory of its possibilities, the depth of its pathos. The organ and the cathedral, especially the Gothic cathedral, are made for each other. They are sisters: nay, they are mother and child. The Gothic cathedral has been called "frozen music." It should be called frozen organ music; for the music which, freezing, took those glorious forms of arch and buttress and pinnacle and spire and carving infinite, must have been the outbreathed soul of the organ. No other music on earth is rich enough.

The regular Church of England service, the same essentially as our Episcopal service here, was gone through, taking about an hour. The clergyman conducting it was not Liddon, but some one of less note. Instead of reading the prayers and liturgies, he intoned them, that is, rendered them in a high and strangely unnatural voice, a sort of falsetto, which was neither reading nor singing,-giving to the whole performance an artificial character. But the choir was a

fine one, and its responses were beautiful, which helped one to forget somewhat the distraction of the priest's intonings. Just as the long service drew to a close, a figure appeared in front and to the right, advanced rapidly to the pulpit steps, and ascended to the small pulpit. It was the preacher we had come to hear.

Before we go further, let us pause a moment to inquire, Who is Canon Liddon, and what is his place in the English Church?

A cathedral city is the city in which a bishop of a diocese has his "seat." A cathedral church is the church in which he has his "throne," or place from which he speaks ex cathedra, or with "ecclesiastical authority." Each cathedral in England is gov erned by a dean and several canons. To be a canon of a cathedral like St. Paul's is, of course, regarded as a high ecclesiastical dignity.

But Liddon is more than a canon of St. Paul's.

He was exactly sixty years old when I heard him. He graduated at Oxford forty years ago. Since his graduation, the University has conferred upon him her highest honors, the degrees of D.D. and D. C.L., in recognition of his scholarship, and especially of his ability as a preacher. For some years he preached at Oxford, in the Church of St. Mary's, the same church in which Newman preached with such power before he went over to Catholicism. And, since Newman's day, no preacher has had such popularity in that city as Liddon. For sev

eral years he held the Chair of Scripture Exegesis at Oxford. He published a number of books, the most popular of which was his Bampton Lectures on "The Divinity of Jesus Christ," delivered at Oxford in 1866.

Theologically, he was a conservative of the conservatives. Ecclesiastically, he was a High Churchman. The English Established Church is divided pretty definitely into three parties, called the High Church, the Broad, and the Low. The Low Church is evangelical; the Broad Church is liberal; the High Church is ritualistic, and devoted, above all things, to forms. Liddon, perhaps quite as much as any one, during the years of his later life, was the leader of the High Church party. He was especially op

posed to liberalism in all its forms, using his tongue and pen against it more than almost any other preacher of the English Church.

Such, then, is the man whom we have come to St. Paul's to hear. As he rises in his pulpit, we see he is of medium size and height, with a pale face, somewhat stooping shoulders, and not a particularly intellectual look. He has not spoken many sentences before we perceive that he has a clear, strong voice and an articulation that is remarkably perfect. We are so far away that we expect to hear little or nothing of what he says. But, to our agreeable surprise, we find we can hear everything. And we have reason to believe that he is heard by nearly or quite all the great throng; that is, by persons nearly twice as far away as ourselves. I think he can be heard quite as far as Spurgeon, though his voice is not nearly so pleasant and winning as Spurgeon's.

His text is those verses of the first chapter of Luke, known as the Magnificat, or the utterance of Mary in her interview with Elizabeth: "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his hand-maiden; for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." His subject is the exaltation of Mary (and, through her, of woman-kind) in the fact of her being chosen to be the mother of the incarnate God, the Saviour of the world.

Every unbiassed scholar knows that this text is to be classed among the most questionable parts of the Gospels. Around the birth of Jesus there arose by degrees, half a century or more after his death, a group of legends ascribing a miraculous character to that birth which at first was represented as natural and like other men's. But of all this Canon Liddon gives us not a hint. Every word of his text is treated as historical and unquestioned, the absolute utterance of Almighty God through the lips of Mary.

His sermon is more than an hour long, but it holds the audience perfectly to the end.

The preacher's style is elaborate and finished. It is as far as possible from the conversational style. He plunges almost at the beginning into a rushing tide of impassioned

speech, which he maintains to the end of the discourse. All is written out and read, but it is read well. Liddon is an orator of the old school; but he is an orator. He holds his audience with great power.

Yet how meagre and mediæval is his thought! His type of mind is that of a born advocate, a pleader, a partisan, an apologist. There is nothing of the judge in his nature. There is nothing of the spiritual seer, nothing of the prophet, the leader into paths of reform, the man who

"Dares to be

In the right with two or three.”

He

He opens no new springs of truth. draws all his thought from cisterns,-cisterns constructed long ago, according to patterns approved by the Church. He is a backward-looker, a man who has spent his life inculcating the observance of old forms in religion, and defending a system of doetrines that is passing away.

The service closes. We pass from the great church, glad to get once more into the sunshine and the sweet air, and out from under the shadow of views of God and man so cramping, so depressing, so little in harmony with nature or what is best in modern thought.

Canon Liddon's death occurred last autumn. We are told that the later years of his life were much shadowed by pain at the signs, everywhere appearing, of decline of faith in the old dogmas which to him were so dear, and the general advance of the thinking world toward larger and more reasonable views of religious truth. To him this change meant scepticism. He believed in no progress of religious doctrine. In other things we may seek for the new, but not in religion. Here the truth has been given to us once for all, and we should accept that without question. The newer Biblical scholarship, which shows that our Scriptures came into existence in purely human and natural ways, he fought with all his might. The doctrine of Evolution he antagonized at every step of its advance. On the subject of the origin of the world and of man he held that the one eternal authority is the book of Genesis: by this must all science be measured. Especially was he troubled by the appearance of the new religious thought (the new scepticism, as he

regarded it) in Oxford. His dear Oxford, the home of Newman and Pusey, the stronghold of High-Churchism, he had especially relied on as a bulwark against the new tendencies. But for many years before his end came he had been noting with pain that Oxford was loosening from her old moorings. BroadChurchism, scientific tendencies, the new Bible criticism, were all making their appearance there. She was hoisting anchor and spreading sail, and beginning unmistakably to move out toward the open sea of the freer and larger thought of the modern world.

No wonder, therefore, that his later life was saddened. He was fighting a losing battle.

The world moves: truth advances.

He who would not be left behind must ally himself with those who dare face the future and question the past and throw open all their windows to the light.

Ann Arbor, Mich.

J. T. SUNDerland.

PRESIDENT CONE'S NEW BOOK.

Dr.

The important work on "Gospel Criticism" which has just appeared from the pen of President Cone of Buchtel College is reviewed by a competent hand on another page. What is said there is perhaps enough; yet the book seems to us of so much value and significance that we cannot refrain from adding an editorial word. Cone's work treats of the most important questions of New Testament criticism, under the following heads: The Text; The Canon ; The Synoptic Problem; The Gospel according to Mark; The Gospel according to Matthew; The Gospel according to Luke; The Gospel according to John; The Eschatology of the Gospels; Dogmatic "Tendencies" in the Gospels; The Old Testament in the Gospels, or the Hermeneutics of the Evangelists; The Gospels as Histories; Criticism and Historical Christianity.

We know of no more candid and competent discussion of these themes within the same limits. The conclusions reached are generally those of the Tübingen School in its later developments,-pretty nearly those set forth briefly by Dr. Abbott in his article on the Gospels in the Encyclopædia Britannica; essentially those reached by Prof. Toy in his recent work on "Judaism and

Christianity"; essentially those admirably summarized by Martineau in his "Seat of Authority in Religion." To name a few points, Dr. Cone holds that those who formed the New Testament canon had no infallible divine guidance; that the Fourth Gospel was not written earlier than the second quarter of the second century; that its author was not John, but that it probably contains logia from John; that the motive which called it into being was dogmatic rather than historic; that for historic data concerning Jesus we must go to the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke); that these were written from forty to sixty years after the death of Christ; that they contain legendary elements; that they were written not wholly without a theological purpose, yet that there is in them an undeniable historical element which makes us sure of the general character and teaching of Jesus.

He sums up many of his conclusions in these words: "The results of the critical study of the synoptic problem and the synoptic Gospels go to show that these writings are precisely such attempts at historical composition as one would look for under the existing conditions, which were an original Gospel and a logia-document, an abundant and varying oral tradition, writers with different points of view, Messianic beliefs, tendencies, Apocalyptic expectations, a predilection for æsthetic and poetic representations, and a disinclination to critical and historical investigation. Writings so produced could not but present agreements and contradictions, correct statements and inaccuracies, historical and unhistorical elements, loose connections, transpositions, and a want of chronological arrangement. might also be expected to contain the essential historical facts of the tradition of the life and teaching of Jesus, if we assume, as we must, the sincerity, good sense, and earnest purpose of their writers."*

They

Further, he says: "Criticism appears on its own grounds and by its own methods to contribute to the confirmation of historical

Christianity, if to establish the general credibility of the synoptic Gospels as to the essential teachings and the character of Jesus be to do this. It must be acknowledged, however, that, if by historical Christianity * p. 347.