[32]
Parochial and Plain Sermons. By John Henry Newman, B.D., formerly1
Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford2. Edited by W.J. Copeland, B.D. Saturday
Review, 5th June 1869.
Dr. Newman's Sermons stand by themselves in modern English literature; it might be said, in English literature generally. There have been equally great masterpieces of English writing in this form of composition, and there have been preachers whose theological depth, acquaintance with the heart, earnestness, tenderness, and power have not been inferior to his. But the great writers do not touch, pierce, and get hold of minds as he does, and those who are famous for the power and results of their preaching do not write as he does. His sermons have done more perhaps than any one thing to mould and quicken and brace3 the religious temper of our time; they have acted with equal force on those who were nearest and on those who were farthest from him in theological opinion. They have altered the whole manner of feeling towards religious subjects. We know now that they were the beginning, the signal and first heave, of a vast change that was to come over the subject; of a demand from religion of a thoroughgoing reality of meaning and fulfilment, which is familiar to us, but was new when it was first made. And, being this, these sermons are also among the very finest examples of what the English language of our day has done in the hands of a master. Sermons of such intense conviction and directness of purpose, combined with such originality4 and perfection on their purely5 literary side, are rare everywhere. Remarkable6 instances, of course, will occur to every one of the occasional exhibition of this combination, but not in so sustained and varied7 and unfailing a way. Between Dr. Newman and the great French school there is this difference—that they are orators9, and he is as far as anything can be in a great preacher from an orator8. Those who remember the tones and the voice in which the sermons were heard at St. Mary's—we may refer to Professor Shairp's striking account in his volume on Keble, and to a recent article in the Dublin Review—can remember how utterly10 unlike an orator in all outward ways was the speaker who so strangely moved them. The notion of judging of Dr. Newman as an orator never crossed their minds. And this puts a difference between him and a remarkable person whose name has sometimes been joined with his—Mr. F. Robertson. Mr. Robertson was a great preacher, but he was not a writer.
It is difficult to realise at present the effect produced originally by these sermons. The first feeling was that of their difference in manner from the customary sermon. People knew what an eloquent11 sermon was, or a learned sermon, or a philosophical12 sermon, or a sermon full of doctrine13 or pious14 unction. Chalmers and Edward Irving and Robert Hall were familiar names; the University pulpit and some of the London churches had produced examples of forcible argument and severe and finished composition; and of course instances were abundant everywhere of the good, sensible, commonplace discourse15; of all that was heavy, dull, and dry, and of all that was ignorant, wild, fanatical, and irrational16. But no one seemed to be able, or to be expected, unless he avowedly17 took the buffoonery line which some of the Evangelical preachers affected18, to speak in the pulpit with the directness and straightforward19 unconventionality with which men speak on the practical business of life. With all the thought and vigour20 and many beauties which were in the best sermons, there was always something forced, formal, artificial about them; something akin21 to that mild pomp which usually attended their delivery, with beadles in gowns ushering22 the preacher to the carpeted pulpit steps, with velvet23 cushions, and with the rustle24 and fulness of his robes. No one seemed to think of writing a sermon as he would write an earnest letter. A preacher must approach his subject in a kind of roundabout make-believe of preliminary and preparatory steps, as if he was introducing his hearers to what they had never heard of; make-believe difficulties and objections were overthrown25 by make-believe answers; an unnatural26 position both in speaker and hearers, an unreal state of feeling and view of facts, a systematic27 conventional exaggeration, seemed almost impossible to be avoided; and those who tried to escape being laboured and grandiloquent28 only escaped it, for the most part, by being vulgar or slovenly29. The strong severe thinkers, jealous for accuracy, and loathing30 clap-trap as they loathed31 loose argument, addressed and influenced intelligence; but sermons are meant for heart and souls as well as minds, and to the heart, with its trials and its burdens, men like Whately never found their way. Those who remember the preaching of those days, before it began to be influenced by the sermons at St. Mary's, will call to mind much that was interesting, much that was ingenious, much correction of inaccurate32 and confused views, much manly33 encouragement to high principle and duty, much of refined and scholarlike writing. But for soul and warmth, and the imaginative and poetical34 side of the religious life, you had to go where thought and good sense were not likely to be satisfied.
The contrast of Mr. Newman's preaching was not obvious at first. The outside form and look was very much that of the regular best Oxford type—calm, clear, and lucid35 in expression, strong in its grasp, measured in statement, and far too serious to think of rhetorical ornament36. But by degrees much more opened. The range of experience from which the preacher drew his materials, and to which he appealed, was something wider, subtler, and more delicate than had been commonly dealt with in sermons. With his strong, easy, exact, elastic37 language, the instrument of a powerful and argumentative mind, he plunged38 into the deep realities of the inmost spiritual life, of which cultivated preachers had been shy. He preached so that he made you feel without doubt that it was the most real of worlds to him; he made you feel in time, in spite of yourself, that it was a real world with which you too had concern. He made you feel that he knew what he was speaking about; that his reasonings and appeals, whether you agreed with them or not, were not the language of that heated enthusiasm with which the world is so familiar; that he was speaking words which were the result of intellectual scrutiny39, balancings, and decisions, as well as of moral trials, of conflicts and suffering within; words of the utmost soberness belonging to deeply gauged40 and earnestly formed purposes. The effect of his sermons, as compared with the common run at the time, was something like what happens when in a company you have a number of people giving their views and answers about some question before them. You have opinions given of various worth and expressed with varying power, precision, and distinctness, some clever enough, some clumsy enough, but all more or less imperfect and unattractive in tone, and more or less falling short of their aim; and then, after it all, comes a voice, very grave, very sweet, very sure and clear, under whose words the discussion springs up at once to a higher level, and in which we recognise at once a mind, face to face with realities, and able to seize them and hold them fast.
The first notable feature in the external form of this preaching was its terse41 unceremonious directness. Putting aside the verbiage42 and dulled circumlocution43 and stiff hazy44 phraseology of pulpit etiquette45 and dignity, it went straight to its point. There was no waste of time about customary formalities. The preacher had something to say, and with a kind of austere46 severity he proceeded to say it. This, for instance, is the sort of way in which a sermon would begin:—
Hypocrisy47 is a serious word. We are accustomed to consider the hypocrite as a hateful, despicable character, and an uncommon48 one. How is it, then, that our Blessed Lord, when surrounded by an innumerable multitude, began, first of all, to warn His disciples49 against hypocrisy, as though they were in especial danger of becoming like those base deceivers the Pharisees? Thus an instructive subject is opened to our consideration, which I will now pursue.—Vol. I. Serm. X.
The next thing was that, instead of rambling50 and straggling over a large subject, each sermon seized a single thought, or definite view, or real difficulty or objection, and kept closely and distinctly to it; and at the same time treated it with a largeness and grasp and ease which only a full command over much beyond it could give. Every sermon had a purpose and an end which no one could misunderstand. Singularly devoid51 of anything like excitement—calm, even, self-controlled—there was something in the preacher's resolute52 concentrated way of getting hold of a single defined object which reminded you of the rapid spring or unerring swoop53 of some strong-limbed or swift-winged creature on its quarry54. Whatever you might think that he did with it, or even if it seemed to escape from him, you could have no doubt what he sought to do; there was no wavering, confused, uncertain bungling55 in that powerful and steady hand. Another feature was the character of the writer's English. We have learned to look upon Dr. Newman as one of the half-dozen or so of the innumerable good writers of the time who have fairly left their mark as masters on the language. Little, assuredly, as the writer originally thought of such a result, the sermons have proved a permanent gift to our literature, of the purest English, full of spring, clearness, and force. A hasty reader would perhaps at first only notice a very light, strong, easy touch, and might think, too, that it was a negligent56 one. But it was not negligence57; real negligence means at bottom bad work, and bad work will not stand the trial of time. There are two great styles—the self-conscious, like that of Gibbon or Macaulay, where great success in expression is accompanied by an unceasing and manifest vigilance that expression shall succeed, and where you see at each step that there is or has been much care and work in the mind, if not on the paper; and the unconscious, like that of Pascal or Swift or Hume, where nothing suggests at the moment that the writer is thinking of anything but his subject, and where the power of being able to say just what he wants to say seems to come at the writer's command, without effort, and without his troubling himself more about it than about the way in which he holds his pen. But both are equally the fruit of hard labour and honest persevering58 self-correction; and it is soon found out whether the apparent negligence comes of loose and slovenly habits of mind, or whether it marks the confidence of one who has mastered his instrument, and can forget himself and let himself go in using it. The free unconstrained movement of Dr. Newman's style tells any one who knows what writing is of a very keen and exact knowledge of the subtle and refined secrets of language. With all that uncared-for play and simplicity59, there was a fulness, a richness, a curious delicate music, quite instinctive60 and unsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression which people soon began to find were not within the power of most of those who tried to use language. Such English, graceful61 with the grace of nerve, flexibility62, and power, must always have attracted attention; but it had also an ethical63 element which was almost inseparable from its literary characteristics. Two things powerfully determined64 the style of these sermons. One was the intense hold which the vast realities of religion had gained on the writer's mind, and the perfect truth with which his personality sank and faded away before their overwhelming presence; the other was the strong instinctive shrinking, which was one of the most remarkable and certain marks of the beginners of the Oxford movement, from anything like personal display, any conscious aiming at the ornamental65 and brilliant, any show of gifts or courting of popular applause. Morbid66 and excessive or not, there can be no doubt of the stern self-containing severity which made them turn away, not only with fear, but with distaste and repugnance67, from all that implied distinction or seemed to lead to honour; and the control of this austere spirit is visible, in language as well as matter, in every page of Dr. Newman's sermons.
Indeed, form and matter are closely connected in the sermons, and depend one on another, as they probably do in all work of a high order. The matter makes and shapes the form with which it clothes itself. The obvious thing which presents itself in reading them is that, from first to last, they are a great systematic attempt to raise the whole level of religious thought and religious life. They carry in them the evidence of a great reaction and a scornful indignant rising up against what were going about and were currently received as adequate ideas of religion. The dryness and primness68 and meagreness of the common Church preaching, correct as it was in its outlines of doctrine, and sober and temperate69 in tone, struck cold on a mind which had caught sight, in the New Testament70, of the spirit and life of its words. The recoil71 was even stronger from the shallowness and pretentiousness72 and self-display of what was popularly accepted as earnest religion; morally the preacher was revolted at its unctuous73 boasts and pitiful performance, and intellectually by its narrowness and meanness of thought and its thinness of colour in all its pictures of the spiritual life. From first to last, in all manner of ways, the sermons are a protest, first against coldness, but even still more against meanness, in religion. With coldness they have no sympathy, yet coldness may be broad and large and lofty in its aspects; but they have no tolerance74 for what makes religion little and poor and superficial, for what contracts its horizon and dwarfs76 its infinite greatness and vulgarises its mystery. Open the sermons where we will, different readers will rise from them with very different results; there will be among many the strongest and most decisive disagreement; there may be impatience77 at dogmatic harshness, indignation at what seems overstatement and injustice78, rejection79 of arguments and conclusions; but there will always be the sense of an unfailing nobleness in the way in which the writer thinks and speaks. It is not only that he is in earnest; it is that he has something which really is worth being in earnest for. He placed the heights of religion very high. If you have a religion like Christianity—this is the pervading81 note—think of it, and have it, worthily82. People will differ from the preacher endlessly as to how this is to be secured. But that they will learn this lesson from the sermons, with a force with which few other writers have taught it, and that this lesson has produced its effect in our time, there can be no doubt. The only reason why it may not perhaps seem so striking to readers of this day is that the sermons have done their work, and we do not feel what they had to counteract83, because they have succeeded in great measure in counteracting84 it. It is not too much to say that they have done more than anything else to revolutionise the whole idea of preaching in the English Church. Mr. Robertson, in spite of himself, was as much the pupil of their school as Mr. Liddon, though both are so widely different from their master.
The theology of these sermons is a remarkable feature about them. It is remarkable in this way, that, coming from a teacher like Dr. Newman, it is nevertheless a theology which most religious readers, except the Evangelicals and some of the more extreme Liberal thinkers, can either accept heartily86 or be content with, as they would be content with St. Augustine or Thomas à Kempis—content, not because they go along with it always, but because it is large and untechnical, just and well-measured in the proportions and relative importance of its parts. People of very different opinions turn to them, as being on the whole the fullest, deepest, most comprehensive approximation they can find to representing Christianity in a practical form. Their theology is nothing new; nor does it essentially87 change, though one may observe differences, and some important ones, in the course of the volumes, which embrace a period from 1825 to 1842. It is curious, indeed, to observe how early the general character of the sermons was determined, and how in the main it continues the same. Some of the first in point of date are among the "Plain Sermons"; and though they may have been subsequently retouched, yet there the keynote is plainly struck of that severe and solemn minor88 which reigns89 throughout. Their theology is throughout the accepted English theology of the Prayer-book and the great Church divines—a theology fundamentally dogmatic and sacramental, but jealously keeping the balance between obedience90 and faith; learned, exact, and measured, but definite and decided91. The novelty was in the application of it, in the new life breathed into it, in the profound and intense feelings called forth92 by its ideas and objects, in the air of vastness and awe93 thrown about it, in the unexpected connection of its creeds94 and mysteries with practical life, in the new meaning given to the old and familiar, in the acceptance in thorough earnest, and with keen purpose to call it into action, of what had been guarded and laid by with dull reverence95. Dr. Newman can hardly be called in these sermons an innovator96 on the understood and recognised standard of Anglican doctrine; he accepted its outlines as Bishop97 Wilson, for instance, might have traced them. What he did was first to call forth from it what it really meant, the awful heights and depths of its current words and forms; and next, to put beside them human character and its trials, not as they were conventionally represented and written about, but as a piercing eye and sympathising spirit saw them in the light of our nineteenth century, and in the contradictory98 and complicated movements, the efforts and failures, of real life. He took theology for granted, as a Christian80 preacher has a right to do; he does not prove it, and only occasionally meets difficulties, or explains; but, taking it for granted, he took it at its word, in its relation to the world of actual experience.
Utterly dissatisfied with what he found current as religion, Dr. Newman sought, without leaving the old paths, to put before people a strong and energetic religion based, not on feeling or custom, but on reason and conscience, and answering, in the vastness of its range, to the mysteries of human nature, and in its power to man's capacities and aims. The Liberal religion of that day, with its ideas of natural theology or of a cold critical Unitarianism, was a very shallow one; the Evangelical, trusting to excitement, had worn out its excitement and had reached the stage when its formulas, poor ones at the best, had become words without meaning. Such views might do in quiet, easy-going times, if religion were an exercise at will of imagination or thought, an indulgence, an ornament, an understanding, a fashion; not if it corresponded to such a state of things as is implied in the Bible, or to man's many-sided nature as it is shown in Shakspeare. The sermons reflect with merciless force the popular, superficial, comfortable thing called religion which the writer saw before him wherever he looked, and from which his mind recoiled99. Such sermons as those on the "Self-wise Enquirer100" and the "Religion of the Day," with its famous passage about the age not being sufficiently101 "gloomy and fierce in its religion," have the one-sided and unmeasured exaggeration which seems inseparable from all strong expressions of conviction, and from all deep and vehement102 protests against general faults; but, qualify and limit them as we may, their pictures were not imaginary ones, and there was, and is, but too much to justify103 them. From all this trifling104 with religion the sermons called on men to look into themselves. They appealed to conscience; and they appealed equally to reason and thought, to recognise what conscience is, and to deal honestly with it. They viewed religion as if projected on a background of natural and moral mystery, and surrounded by it—an infinite scene, in which our knowledge is like the Andes and Himalayas in comparison with the mass of the earth, and in which conscience is our final guide and arbiter105. No one ever brought out so impressively the sense of the impenetrable and tremendous vastness of that amid which man plays his part. In such sermons as those on the "Intermediate State," the "Invisible World," the "Greatness and Littleness of Human Life," the "Individuality of the Soul," the "Mysteriousness of our Present Being," we may see exemplified the enormous irruption into the world of modern thought of the unknown and the unknowable, as much as in the writers who, with far different objects, set against it the clearness and certainty of what we do know. But, beyond all, the sermons appealed to men to go back into their own thoughts and feelings, and there challenged them; were not the preacher's words the echoes and interpreting images of their own deepest, possibly most perplexing and baffling, experience? From first to last this was his great engine and power; from first to last he boldly used it. He claimed to read their hearts; and people felt that he did read them, their follies106 and their aspirations107, the blended and tangled108 web of earnestness and dishonesty, of wishes for the best and truest, and acquiescence109 in makeshifts; understating what ordinary preachers make much of, bringing into prominence110 what they pass by without being able to see or to speak of it; keeping before his hearers the risk of mismanaging their hearts, of "all kinds of unlawful treatment of the soul." What a contrast to ordinary ways of speaking on a familiar theological doctrine is this way of bringing it into immediate111 relation to real feeling:—
It is easy to speak of human nature as corrupt112 in the general, to admit it in the general, and then get quit of the subject; as if, the doctrine being once admitted, there was nothing more to be done with it. But, in truth, we can have no real apprehension113 of the doctrine of our corruption114 till we view the structure of our minds, part by part; and dwell upon and draw out the signs of our weakness, inconsistency, and ungodliness, which are such as can arise from nothing but some strange original defect in our original nature…. We are in the dark about ourselves. When we act, we are groping in the dark, and may meet with a fall any moment. Here and there, perhaps, we see a little; or in our attempts to influence and move our minds, we are making experiments (as it were) with some delicate and dangerous instrument, which works we do not know how, and may produce unexpected and disastrous115 effects. The management of our hearts is quite above us. Under these circumstances it becomes our comfort to look up to God. "Thou, God, seest me." Such was the consolation116 of the forlorn Hagar in the wilderness117. He knoweth whereof we are made, and He alone can uphold us. He sees with most appalling118 distinctness all our sins, all the windings119 and recesses120 of evil within us; yet it is our only comfort to know this, and to trust Him for help against ourselves.—Vol. I. Serm. XIII.
The preacher contemplates122 human nature, not in the stiff formal language in which it had become conventional with divines to set out its shortcomings and dangers, but as a great novelist contemplates and tries to describe it; taking in all its real contradictions and anomalies, its subtle and delicate shades; fixing upon the things which strike us in ourselves or our neighbours as ways of acting85 and marks of character; following it through its wide and varying range, its diversified123 and hidden folds and subtle self-involving realities of feeling and shiftiness; touching124 it in all its complex sensibilities, anticipating its dim consciousnesses, half-raising veils which hide what it instinctively125 shrinks from, sending through it unexpected thrills and shocks; large-hearted in indulgence, yet exacting126; most tender, yet most severe. And against all this real play of nature he sets in their full force and depth the great ideas of God, of sin, and of the Cross; and, appealing not to the intelligence of an aristocracy of choice natures, but to the needs and troubles and longings127 which make all men one, he claimed men's common sympathy for the heroic in purpose and standard. He warned them against being fastidious, where they should be hardy128. He spoke129 in a way that all could understand of brave ventures, of resolutely130 committing themselves to truth and duty.
The most practical of sermons, the most real and natural in their way of dealing131 with life and conduct, they are also intensely dogmatic. The writer's whole teaching presupposes, as we all know, a dogmatic religion; and these sermons are perhaps the best vindication132 of it which our time, disposed to think of dogmas with suspicion, has seen. For they show, on a large scale and in actual working instances, how what is noblest, most elevated, most poetical, most free and searching in a thinker's way of regarding the wonderful scene of life, falls in naturally, and without strain, with a great dogmatic system like that of the Church. Such an example does not prove that system to be true, but it proves that a dogmatic system, as such, is not the cast-iron, arbitrary, artificial thing which it is often assumed to be. It is, indeed, the most shallow of all commonplaces, intelligible133 in ordinary minds, but unaccountable in those of high power and range, whether they believe or not, that a dogmatic religion is of course a hard, dry, narrow, unreal religion, without any affinities134 to poetry or the truth of things, or to the deeper and more sacred and powerful of human thoughts. If dogmas are not true, that is another matter; but it is the fashion to imply that dogmas are worthless, mere135 things of the past, without sense or substance or interest, because they are dogmas. As if Dante was not dogmatic in form and essence; as if the grandest and worthiest136 religious prose in the English language was not that of Hooker, nourished up amid the subtleties137, but also amid the vast horizons and solemn heights, of scholastic138 divinity. A dogmatic system is hard in hard hands, and shallow in shallow minds, and barren in dull ones, and unreal and empty to preoccupied139 and unsympathising ones; we dwarf75 and distort ideas that we do not like, and when we have put them in our own shapes and in our own connection, we call them unmeaning or impossible. Dogmas are but expedients140, common to all great departments of human thought, and felt in all to be necessary, for representing what are believed as truths, for exhibiting their order and consequences, for expressing the meaning of terms, and the relations of thought. If they are wrong, they are, like everything else in the world, open to be proved wrong; if they are inadequate141, they are open to correction; but it is idle to sneer142 at them for being what they must be, if religious facts and truths are to be followed out by the thoughts and expressed by the language of man. And what dogmas are in unfriendly and incapable143 hands is no proof of what they may be when they are approached as things instinct with truth and life; it is no measure of the way in which they may be inextricably interwoven with the most unquestionably living thought and feeling, as in these sermons. Jealous, too, as the preacher is for Church doctrines144 as the springs of Christian life, no writer of our time perhaps has so emphatically and impressively recalled the narrow limits within which human language can represent Divine realities. No one that we know of shows that he has before his mind with such intense force and distinctness the idea of God; and in proportion as a mind takes in and submits itself to the impression of that awful vision, the gulf145 widens between all possible human words and that which they attempt to express:—
When we have deduced what we deduce by our reason from the study of visible nature, and then read what we read in His inspired word, and find the two apparently146 discordant147, this is the feeling I think we ought to have on our minds;—not an impatience to do what is beyond our powers, to weigh evidence, sum up, balance, decide, reconcile, to arbitrate between the two voices of God,—but a sense of the utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate121 things as they really are; a perception of our emptiness before the great Vision of God; of our "comeliness148 being turned into corruption, and our retaining no strength"; a conviction that what is put before us, whether in nature or in grace, is but an intimation, useful for particular purposes, useful for practice, useful in its department, "until the day break and the shadows flee away"; useful in such a way that both the one and the other representation may at once be used, as two languages, as two separate approximations towards the Awful Unknown Truth, such as will not mislead us in their respective provinces.—Vol. II. Serm. XVIII.
"I cannot persuade myself," he says, commenting on a mysterious text of Scripture149, "thus to dismiss so solemn a passage" (i.e. by saying that it is "all figurative"). "It seems a presumption150 to say of dim notices about the unseen world, 'they only mean this or that,' as if one had ascended151 into the third heaven, or had stood before the throne of God. No; I see herein a deep mystery, a hidden truth, which I cannot handle or define, shining 'as jewels at the bottom of the great deep,' darkly and tremulously, yet really there. And for this very reason, while it is neither pious nor thankful to explain away the words which convey it, while it is a duty to use them, not less a duty is it to use them humbly152, diffidently, and teachably, with the thought of God before us, and of our own nothingness."—Vol. III. Serm. XXV.
There are two great requisites153 for treating properly the momentous154 questions and issues which have been brought before our generation. The first is accuracy—accuracy of facts, of terms, of reasoning; plain close dealing with questions in their real and actual conditions; clear, simple, honest, measured statements about things as we find them. The other is elevation155, breadth, range of thought; a due sense of what these questions mean and involve; a power of looking at things from a height; a sufficient taking into account of possibilities, of our ignorance, of the real proportions of things. We have plenty of the first; we are for the most part lamentably156 deficient157 in the second. And of this, these sermons are, to those who have studied them, almost unequalled examples. Many people, no doubt, would rise from their perusal158 profoundly disagreeing with their teaching; but no one, it seems to us, could rise from them—with their strong effortless freedom, their lofty purpose, their generous standard, their deep and governing appreciation159 of divine things, their thoroughness, their unselfishness, their purity, their austere yet piercing sympathy—and not feel his whole ways of thinking about religion permanently160 enlarged and raised. He will feel that he has been with one who "told him what he knew about himself and what he did not know; has read to him his wants or feelings, and comforted him by the very reading; has made him feel that there was a higher life than this life, and a brighter world than we can see; has encouraged him, or sobered him, or opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed161 the perplexed162." They show a man who saw very deeply into the thought of his time, and who, if he partly recoiled from it and put it back, at least equally shared it. Dr. Newman has been accused of being out of sympathy with his age, and of disparaging163 it. In reality, no one has proved himself more keenly sensitive to its greatness and its wonders; only he believed that he saw something greater still. We are not of those who can accept the solution which he has accepted of the great problems which haunt our society; but he saw better than most men what those problems demand, and the variety of their often conflicting conditions. Other men, perhaps, have succeeded better in what they aimed at; but no one has attempted more, with powers and disinterestedness164 which justified165 him in attempting it. The movement which he led, and of which these sermons are the characteristic monument, is said to be a failure; but there are failures, and even mistakes, which are worth many successes of other sorts, and which are more fruitful and permanent in their effects.
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formerly
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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remarkable
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varied
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orator
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orators
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utterly
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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doctrine
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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avowedly
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| adv.公然地 | |
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18
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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19
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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20
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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21
akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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ushering
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的现在分词 ) | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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24
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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25
overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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26
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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27
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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28
grandiloquent
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| adj.夸张的 | |
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29
slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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30
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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31
loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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32
inaccurate
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| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
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33
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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34
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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35
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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36
ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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37
elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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38
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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39
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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40
gauged
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| adj.校准的；标准的；量规的；量计的v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的过去式和过去分词 )；估计；计量；划分 | |
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41
terse
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| adj.(说话，文笔)精炼的，简明的 | |
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42
verbiage
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| n.冗词；冗长 | |
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43
circumlocution
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| n. 绕圈子的话，迂回累赘的陈述 | |
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44
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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45
etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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46
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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47
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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48
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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49
disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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50
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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51
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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52
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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53
swoop
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| n.俯冲，攫取；v.抓取，突然袭击 | |
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54
quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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55
bungling
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| adj.笨拙的，粗劣的v.搞糟，完不成( bungle的现在分词 )；笨手笨脚地做；失败；完不成 | |
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56
negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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57
negligence
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| n.疏忽，玩忽，粗心大意 | |
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58
persevering
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| a.坚忍不拔的 | |
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59
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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60
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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61
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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62
flexibility
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| n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性 | |
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63
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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64
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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65
ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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66
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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67
repugnance
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| n.嫌恶 | |
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68
primness
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| n.循规蹈矩，整洁 | |
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69
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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70
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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71
recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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72
pretentiousness
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| n.矫饰；炫耀；自负；狂妄 | |
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73
unctuous
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| adj.油腔滑调的，大胆的 | |
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74
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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75
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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76
dwarfs
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| n.侏儒，矮子（dwarf的复数形式）vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的第三人称单数形式） | |
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77
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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78
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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79
rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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80
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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81
pervading
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的现在分词 ) | |
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82
worthily
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| 重要地，可敬地，正当地 | |
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83
counteract
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|
| vt.对…起反作用，对抗，抵消 | |
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84
counteracting
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| 对抗，抵消( counteract的现在分词 ) | |
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85
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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86
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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87
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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88
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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89
reigns
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| n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 )；君主统治时期；任期；当政期 | |
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90
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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91
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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92
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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93
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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94
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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95
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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96
innovator
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| n.改革者；创新者 | |
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97
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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98
contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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99
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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100
enquirer
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| 寻问者，追究者 | |
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101
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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102
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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103
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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104
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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105
arbiter
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| n.仲裁人，公断人 | |
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106
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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107
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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108
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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109
acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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110
prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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111
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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112
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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113
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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114
corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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115
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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116
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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117
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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118
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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119
windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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120
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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121
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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122
contemplates
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的第三人称单数 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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123
diversified
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| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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124
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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125
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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126
exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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127
longings
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| 渴望，盼望( longing的名词复数 ) | |
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128
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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129
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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130
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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131
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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132
vindication
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| n.洗冤，证实 | |
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133
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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134
affinities
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| n.密切关系( affinity的名词复数 )；亲近；（生性）喜爱；类同 | |
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135
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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136
worthiest
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| 应得某事物( worthy的最高级 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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137
subtleties
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| 细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等 | |
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138
scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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139
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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140
expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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142
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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143
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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144
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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145
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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146
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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147
discordant
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| adj.不调和的 | |
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148
comeliness
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| n. 清秀, 美丽, 合宜 | |
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149
scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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150
presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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151
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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152
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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153
requisites
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| n.必要的事物( requisite的名词复数 ) | |
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154
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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155
elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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156
lamentably
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| adv.哀伤地，拙劣地 | |
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157
deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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158
perusal
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| n.细读，熟读；目测 | |
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159
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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160
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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161
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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162
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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163
disparaging
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| adj.轻蔑的，毁谤的v.轻视( disparage的现在分词 )；贬低；批评；非难 | |
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164
disinterestedness
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165
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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