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from them without serious loss. And the difficulty of finding short and telling passages in the Sermons is increased by the circumstance, that, having been written for a congregation of country people, the leading thought of the Sermon is generally worked out in patient detail, and the style is necessarily, and rightly, diffuse. Nevertheless, such is the careful skill with which these extracts have been chosen, that there are very few, if any, the meaning of which is not sufficiently plain. The edges may be a little rough and jagged, but the portion of the pattern which it is proposed to give may be clearly traced. A few introductory words, or a change of expression here or there, might have made the passage more self-contained; but it was felt to be better to leave the original words in their incompleteness, and perhaps partial obscurity, than to venture to change them.

So much may be said by way of apology for the form in which some of the passages selected are presented to the reader.

As to the passages themselves, and the thoughts which they contain, it would seem to be almost impossible to over-estimate their value. Indeed, the chief impression, which a careful study of this little book has left, is that of the great responsibility which will rest on those who use it regularly. They will find a very high standard of thought and feeling and action set before them, and set before them with such a force of truth, with such a downright directness of personal application, and withal such a quiet undertone of tender persuasiveness, that a man must be very listless or very perverse, who declines to follow where his guide would lead him. The truth or duty which the writer seeks to impress upon him is so clear that it cannot be gainsayed, and at the same time of such grave importance that it cannot be set aside. The reader, therefore, who allows the book to have its natural weight with him—who opens his heart to receive the warning, or the counsel, or the encouragement, or the comfort, which is here provided for him-who listens

to his teacher with a desire to be taught, and to be led by him by the hand in the way of holiness, will undoubtedly find himself lifted up by degrees to a far higher level of devotion or holiness than that with which perhaps he was previously satisfied. He has been conversing with one who is not only transparently in earnest himself, but who is also as transparently anxious to make him in earnest too : and he will feel that he cannot resist his influence. He has been breathing an atmosphere of peculiar sanctity; and it has sent a thrill—of awe, indeed, and yet of mysterious hope and joy-through his whole soul. The thought of GOD has been brought closer to him; and the more he has realised the holiness and beauty of GOD, the more has he been oppressed with a sense of his own deformity. love of Christ, in all its various manifestations, small and great, secret and open, has become more of a reality to him. He has been taught to be on the look-out for Christ, and to see Him, not only at his prayers, and in the reading of the

The

Scriptures, and in the Holy Communion of His Body and Blood, but in all the circumstances of his daily life; in everything around him he has learnt to trace the impress of Christ's hand; at all times there have been brought home to him the tones of His secret Voice. He has been led, moreover, to lay down rules for his personal guidance, which have made religion and the practice of holiness the chief business of his life, instead of a mere by-play. The whole current of his life has been changed, and now flows more directly towards GOD and Heaven. Such, it may reasonably be hoped, will be the influence which the daily study of these extracts will have on any who sincerely desire to profit by them. They cannot fail to reader into something

mould the attentive, dutiful

of the likeness of his guide.

For it is the impress

of his own character, of his own habits of thought and rules of life, which gives such a charm, such a moving power, to Mr. Keble's Sermons. We see in them, especially, that strong, overpowering sense

of the constant Presence of GOD, which was perhaps the characteristic influence of his life. The Eye of GOD was ever upon him: this made him so watchful, so true, so humble, so patient, so considerate. But though he feared that Eye, he never, so to speak, was afraid of it, He meekly closed his own never desired to get away

eyes before it, but he from it, or shake it off. He delighted in it; he loved it; he rejoiced in it with joy unspeakable as "the thing that he longed for," as the Eye of his GOD, his Father, his Saviour, his unfailing Guide and Friend. If one may venture to say so, his daily life and demeanour were such as to recall what we may reverently suppose to have been our Saviour's life at Nazareth. That life, we know, was a life of great reserve, Perfectly pure and blameless, scrupulously exact in all His duties, He never, as it would seem, drew attention to Himself by any special religiousness of manner or conversation. There was unceasing communion with His Father amid the ordinary occupations

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