e charitable
theory which this writer revives. They said that there was a double
purpose in those plain addresses of mine, and that my sermons were
never so artful as when they seemed common-place; that there were
sentences which redeemed their apparent simplicity and quietness. So
they watched during the delivery of a sermon, which to them was too
practical to be useful, for the concealed point of it, which they
could at least imagine, if they could not discover. "Men used to
suspect Dr. Newman," he says, "of writing a _whole_ Sermon, _not_ for
the sake of _the text or of the matter_, but for the sake of ...
_one_ phrase, _one_ epithet, _one_ little barbed arrow, which, as he
_swept magnificently_ past on the stream of his calm eloquence,
_seemingly_ unconscious of all presences, save those unseen, he
delivered unheeded," etc. p. 14. To all appearance, he says, I was
"unconscious of all presences;" so this kind writer supplies the true
interpretation of this unconsciousness. He is not able to deny that
"the _whole_ Sermon" had the _appearance_ of being "_for the sake_ of
the text and matter;" therefore he suggests that perhaps it wasn't.
And then he emptily talks of the "magnificent sweep of my eloquence,"
and my "oratoric power." Did he forget that the sermon of which he
thus speaks can be read by others as well as him? Now, the sentences
are as short as Aristotle's, and as grave as Bishop Butler's. It is
written almost in the condensed style of Tract 90. Eloquence there is
none. I put this down as Blot _ten_.

2. And now as to the subject of the sermon. The series of which the
volume consists are such sermons as are, more or less, exceptions to
the rule which I ordinarily observed, as to the subjects which I
introduced into the pulpit of St. Mary's. They are not purely ethical
or doctrinal. They were for the most part caused by circumstances of
the day or of the time, and they belong to various years. One was
written in 1832, two in 1836, two in 1838, five in 1840, five in
1841, four in 1842, seven in 1843. Many of them are engaged on one
subject, viz. in viewing the Church in its relation to the world. By
the world was meant, not simply those multitudes which were not in
the Church, but the existing body of human society, whether in the
Church or not, whether Catholics, Protestants, Greeks, or Mahometans,
theists or idolaters, as being ruled by principles, maxims, and
instincts of their own, that is, of an unrege