PREFACE. THE following Sermons have been collected from among those preached between the years 1832 and 1840; and have been chosen with a view to the illustration of Scripture, "either by explaining certain passages or portions of the sacred volume, or by stating some general rules of interpretation which may apply to the whole of it." The present volume will thus, in some measure, fulfil the intention expressed by my husband in the Introduction to the third volume of his Sermons. Having been mostly preached in the chapel at Rugby, these Sermons must necessarily be of a practical character; but it will be found that they all bear more or less upon Interpretation-with the exception of three or four, which seemed to demand insertion from their peculiar subjects. The order followed has been generally that of the texts in one or two instances this has been for obvious reasons disregarded. Of the Sermon on "Death and Salvation," it may be necessary to explain, that it was preached on the occasion of the death of a pupil, whose last illness is the subject of several letters in July, September, and October 1835, in the first volume of the "Life and Correspondence." It is not, of course, possible, that sermons preached often at long intervals of time, and upon no preconceived plan, should present his views as a whole, or on every part of Scripture in due proportion. In some instances, also, this want of proportion has been accidentally increased. For instance, several Sermons on Prophecy, which I have reason to think he had selected for future publication, are missing: and the two printed Sermons on Prophecy, which would otherwise have appeared here in their proper place, have been accidentally reprinted in the fourth edition of the first volume of Sermons. The Note on Prophecy, which appears at the end of the volume, is extracted from the original work on that subject, of which the general substance was published in the notes of the two Sermons just mentioned, and may be read with interest in connexion with them, as more fully illustrating the principles there laid down. The seven Sermons on the Epistle to the Romans, which follow, were preached at Laleham in 1827. The difference of style, and, in some respects, of thought, from the later Sermons, seemed to require their transference to another part of the volume. But I have ventured to publish them, both in fulfilment of an intention which was once expressed by my husband himself, and as the most continuous exposition of any large portion of the Scriptures which remains among his writings. MARY ARNOLD. Fox How, January 14th, 1845. |