PREBENDARY OF ST. PAUL'S, CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF Oxford, AND ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S CHAPLAINS IN ORDINARY. NEW EDITION. RIVINGTONS, London, Oxford, and Cambridge. 1866. D. TO WILLIAM GIBBS, ESQ., OF TYNTESFIELD, THE KIND FRIEND OF THE POOR, THE MUNIFICENT PATRON OF ALL GOOD WORKS, AND A LOYAL SON OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH, THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED WITH REVERENCE, GRATITUDE, AND AFFECTION. MY DEAR MR. GIBBS, 21, Sussex Gardens, Hyde Park, October 17, 1861. You have kindly permitted me to inscribe to you this little treatise on the Christian Life. Most heartily do I wish that I had some worthier tribute of respect and affection for one, who has shown me such unceasing kindness, and has been the instrument of such incalculable blessings to my flock. But I know you will believe that my acknowledgment of all that I owe to you is, if not of any great value, at any rate sincere. We have laboured much and happily together in the cause of the New Church, which your munificence has enabled us to complete and to endow. Perhaps this little book may serve as a memorial of the happy hours so spent in one another's company,-hours which, I can assure you, have been some of the pleasantest of my life. The leading thoughts of my treatise are so well expressed by a passage from a work which you gave me, that I should like to adopt it as my motto: "The oftener I read Jeremy Taylor, the more I am satisfied of the excellence of his method of recommending holiness to the heart and imagination, as well as to the understanding of frail man by dwelling on the infinite love and condescension of our gracious Father in taking so much pains to make it attainable, if not easy; and by mixing it up with every act and duty of ordinary life, so as to make every hour spent in the world, as well as in the closet, when sanctified by its motive, an act of religion and obedience. I have often wished to hear Christianity inculcated from the pulpit on this principle."-Sir John Richardson, as quoted in the Life of Mr. Joshua Watson. Vol. ii. p. 10. You will, I think, see that these three thoughts,—the power of attaining, under God's grace, a real, though gradual, growth in sanctity; the possibility of making the homeliest acts of common life contribute to this growth; and the expediency of giving to such topics as these much more room than they generally occupy in Christian Teaching, have been more |