PREFACE THE most notable fact as to Jowett's doctrinal position is that he lays very little stress on the Church system, either the system of worship or that of dogma. From this it has been concluded that he held lightly by Christianity itself and was content with a vague theism, in which Plato counted for as much as Christ Himself. The readers of these Sermons will hardly think that his theism was vague. Metaphysically, they will find that he shrank neither from the assertion of the divine personality, though conscious of the limitations attendant upon the transfer of that expression from man to God, nor from speaking of Christ as 'our Saviour,' and as the expression of the divine nature in a human form; and that God and immortality were all in all to him. Morally, they will find that the image of Christ is dominant in the preacher's thoughts. It may be admitted that he was naturally of a sceptical turn of mind. But he combated this tendency in all practical matters. No one was more decided than he in all that concerned moral character or educational discipline; and, though he would criticize a proposal which aimed at some good object, yet, when convinced, he would support it steadily. 'I think enthusiasm so much more valuable a quality than criticism,' he would say. But there were several causes which increased his natural tendency to shrink from sharp definitions on matters of deep importance. His love of truth was fastidious, and an over-statement of the side of a case with which he sympathized was positively painful to him. He was also habitually reticent. His early evangelical associations, and the Tractarian controversy in his youth at Oxford, had resulted in a strong sense of the evils of much talk about religion. He regretted at the close of his life that religion should be put aside in conversation; but, only occasionally, and with intimate friends, would he speak of it at all freely. I remember, when I was his pupil, his closing a discussion in which I had tried to engage him, by saying, ' We are tired in Oxford of talk about such things.' To an undergraduate, at a much later time, who had undergone a very sudden conversion, and told him that he had ' found Jesus,' he said, laying his hand on his shoulder, 'I am very glad of it, my dear boy, but don't talk about it.' To this fear of exaggeration was added in his early manhood a conviction that the statements in which theological opinion was commonly expressed were inadequate. I recall a saying of his in the beginning of 1853, that, if we could make a tour of the world, getting to understand the faith of each country, our religious beliefs would probably be very different from what they are. I do not think this implied any essential scepticism, but merely the doubt whether Christian freedom of thought had as yet been allowed its full scope: and this feeling will be found in many of the sermons in this volume. His attitude was well indicated in a few words which I heard from him in 1857, when I was reading theology in Oxford: 'The criticisms of the present day will at first be felt as a blow to faith, but they will issue in its fuller establishment; all that is important will survive.' The method of exposition followed in his book on St. Paul's Epistles (published in 1855) also throws light on it. He was never satisfied with such an interpretation as would commit the Apostle to an exact logical system, but sought to bring out the 'streams of tendency' which combined in each phrase, and to make it point to a truth larger than any which our theological systems have expressed. The reception, however, which was given to this work, the misrepresentation of it as an attack upon Christian truth, and the personal injustice of which he was the object, made him shrink into himself. He published a second edition, in which the Essays were rehandled, the doctrinal utterances of the first edition were explained, and a positive statement was substituted for a negative one: for instance, in the Essay on the Atonement, where the first edition had not the sacrifice, not the satisfaction, but the greatest moral act ever done in the world,' the second edition explains how the moral act is the true sacrifice and satisfaction. But these explanations were not accepted by those who had prejudged the case. He published his treatise on the Interpretation of Scripture in the 'Essays and Reviews' in 1860, and had it in contemplation as late as 1870 to contribute to a second series of essays on the same lines; but, partly, the new duties and responsibilities of the Mastership, partly, the growing doubt whether the time was come for the profitable discussion of such subjects in England, made him feel it undesirable to proceed. In his illness in 1891, when he thought of asking me to be co-editor with Professor Campbell of a new issue of his work on St. Paul's Epistles (a task which he afterwards felt it better to entrust to Professor Campbell alone), he said to me: The chief interest of the book and the essays contained in it is that they came a little before their time.' Some of his friends urged him, when the termination of his tenure of the Vice-Chancellorship at Oxford in 1886 left him with somewhat more leisure, to undertake some definite theological work. But, though not absolutely declining, he said that he doubted whether he could then write such a work as would live. His energy, which was then exhausted by four years of incessant official |