Welsh Journals

Miscellaneous. 539 Reviews. Dr. Arnold's School Sermons.—Having, for the sake of a young friend who extolled Arnold as the ne plus ultra, borrowed the above Sermons, I read with some care a score or more of the series, including one on Christmas day. That single discourse sets forth God's "inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, the means of grace, and the hope of glory;" with which exception, the rest of the Sermons omit to notice the subject, unless by remote allusions. The poor lads are shown up to their own consciences, with faithful and un¬ sparing severity, so that there was no sentimental blinking of human depravity to account for withholding the remedy of the fall. He knew well what boys were, and he told them plainly what they were. Nor are they supposed too familiar with the subject to need reminding of it. He most particu¬ larly accuses them of gross neglect, as well as gross igno¬ rance, of the Scriptures. And yet these young people, who are avowedly considered as not only dead in trespasses and sins, but as loving darkness rather than light, whose consciences are awakened by most stirring appeals, and whose subterfuges are laid bare with withering sarcasm, are never told (except on the one day appointed to com¬ memorate the nativity of the Saviour,) never, I say, told of a way to escape the wrath to come. I say advisedly a way, not the way: for I mean to say not only that he does not preach the gospel after the model of this or that school of theology, but that he does not, in those terribly accusing sermons, point out any remedy whatever to the evil which he denounces so searchingly and vividly. How are we to account for this most extraordinary omission by one who believed in Heaven and Hell, and (as evidenced by that Christmas sermon) in the efficacy of the Atonement ? My