DEAN STANLEY ON BURNS ANDCALVIN.

Clutha Leader, Volume IV, Issue 193, 22 March 1878, Page 7

DEAN STANLEY ON BURNS ANDCALVIN.

*■*-*, Dean Stanley, who is at present the guest of the Rev. Dr Stow, preached iv the Parish Church ot Koseneath/ The Church was crowded, The Dean preached from the parable of the publican and sinner, and in the course of his sermon remarked :—lt is sometimes said by foreigners in speaking of this country that the interest and feeling of the Scottish nation are strangely divided beween the sway of two great names, two well-knowu characters long since gone to their account, the reformer Calvin and the poet Burns. God fordid that I should exalt the dissolute, reckless manners of the way-ward genius above the unblemished purity ofthe high-minded pastor, yet still it may be that many and many a secret sin of pride, of intolerance, and untruthfulness has sprung up under the cloak ofthe professedly religious man and the stern, unbending divine, as hateful in the sight of God as the wild pxcess of which the other was so mournful an example. Who can doubt that there are lessons of evangelical truth to be derived from the. genial Avit and wisdom and generosity ofthe poor outcast, that we should vainly look for from the stern predestinarian teaching ofthe pope' of Geneva 1 But it is not' a question of Calvin and Burns only. It is a question of the whole race and generation of our country. You who have beeu in the house of God always—you who have never fallen—you who may well thank God, not proudly, bnt in all sincerity - and humility, from the bottom of your hearts that 'you are not as other men are—you who, by the grace of God, by God's" friends, by happy homes,' by gentle influences of ali kinds, have been kept from grosser sins—remember that it may be your special danger to be haunted by sins of temper, "sins of vanity, sins of untruthfulness, and sins of cowardice, sins of harsh .judgment, and sins of frivolity j and remember that it is these very sins which your wilder, rougher companions see with a keenness ; inconceivable to you It is these sins which provoke them into opposite courses. It is these sins which disgust' them with a pure religious life which else they would honour. It is by the unexpected faults ofthe good, by the unexpected follies ofthe wise, as much as by the open sins of the wicked and the flagrant follies of the fool, that the evil is kept up and the good kept down in this mixed Avorld. What, then,'is the result of all this? There are three gvneral conclusions. First, that each man, and each estate of man, should strive to see his own secret tailings as in the sight of God. For this no priest or confessor is needed, or if he needs advice and counsel let it he that one. best friend—our father, or brother or wife, or sister—who knows us more than any one else as we really are. They are our only spiritual counsellors ; they are our only true spiritual absolvers. * Secondly, each man, and each estate of man should strive to live justly to. one another, remembering that in the judg-j ment of our Master even the first shall often be tbe last and the last first, and the vain head which is exalted shall lie abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. "God has given to every man," says an ancient proverb, «one mouth to speak the truth, the single truth, but he has also given two ears to hear both sides of the great problems of human existence." Thirdly, each of us, saint or sinner, Churchmatf

or statesman, believer or sceptic, sage or fool should offer up that one prayer,

wuicnisat once enough and not too much for every one of us—"God be merciful to me a sinner." That is the litany of the universial Church—«-bat should he the prayei of all mankind, "•"■•"■■"■