We think it not unlikely that the sermon has been
toned down a good deal before publication, in anticipation
of severe criticism. Some passages which were
very effective when delivered, hate probably been
modified so as to bring them more thoroughly within
the limits of severe good taste. We think Mr.
Caird has deserved the honours done him by royalty;
and we willingly accord him his meed, as a man of
no small force of intellect, of great power of illustration
by happy analogies, of sincere piety, and of much
earnestness to do good. He is still young—we
believe considerably under forty—and much
may be expected of him.
But we have rambled on into an unduly long gossip
about Scotch preaching, and must abruptly conclude.
We confess that it would please us to see, especially
in the pulpits of our country churches, a little infusion
of its warmth, rejecting anything of its extravagance.
Concerning future years.
Does it ever come across you, my friend, with something
of a start, that things cannot always go on in your
lot as they are going now? Does not a sudden
thought sometimes flash upon you, a hasty, vivid glimpse,
of what you will be long hereafter, if you are spared
in this world? Our common way is too much to
think that things will always go on as they are going.
Not that we clearly think so: not that we ever
put that opinion in a definite shape, and avow to
ourselves that we hold it: but we live very much
under that vague, general impression. We can
hardly help it. When a man of middle age inherits
a pretty country seat, and makes up his mind that he
cannot yet afford to give up business and go to live
at it, but concludes that in six or eight years he
will be able with justice to his children to do so,
do you think he brings plainly before him the changes
which must be wrought on himself and those around
him by these years? I do not speak of the greatest
change of all, which may come to any of us so very
soon: I do not think of what may be done by unlooked-for
accident: I think merely of what must be done
by the passing on of time. I think of possible
changes in taste and feeling, of possible loss of
liking for that mode of life. I think of lungs
that will play less freely, and of limbs that will
suggest shortened walks, and dissuade from climbing
hills. I think how the children will have outgrown
daisy-chains, or even got beyond the season of climbing
trees. The middle-aged man enjoys the prospect
of the time when he shall go to his country house;
and the vague, undefined belief surrounds him, like
an atmosphere, that he and his children, his views
and likings, will be then just such as they are now.
He cannot bring it home to him at how many points
change will be cutting into him, and hedging him in,
and paring him down. And we all live very much
under that vague impression. Yet it is in many
ways good for us to feel that we are going on—passing
from the things which surround us—advancing
into the undefined future, into the unknown land.
And I think that sometimes we all have vivid flashes
of such a conviction. I dare say, my friend,
you have seen an old man, frail, soured, and shabby,
and you have thought, with a start, Perhaps there
is Myself of Future Years.
