SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. B SERMON I THE GIFTS OF CIVILISATION Covet earnestly the best gifts and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.-1 COR. xii. 31. By these "best gifts "St. Paul meant the miraculous endowments which attended that outpouring of the Spirit in which Christianity as a distinct religion began. Nothing can be more astonishing, yet nothing more natural, than his picture of the feelings and behaviour of those who found themselves in possession of these spiritual powers. The gifts were novelties. The subject which received them and had to use them, and was influenced by the consciousness of their presence and the sight of their effects, was that human nature which had long formed its habits of dealing with whatever enlarged its capacities and its sphere of action, and whose deportment under this sudden change of condition might be predicted from an old and sure experience. What came to pass at Corinth, |