Notes of a Sermon Preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Church, Tientsin, on Sunday evening November 26
St. Matthew XVIII. 21-23.
"T hen came Peter and said to_him, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times seven? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, seven times; but until seventy times seven."
It ought to be of great interest to see the teaching of our. Lord through the eves of one of the famous men of the last century; a man not officially connected with the church, which makes his views all the more valuable. This is the late Sir John Robert Seeley, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. We first became known in connexion with a famous examination in the "Pickwick Papers." When he was a student they were at the height of their fame. The poet Calverley, iberi also a student at Cambridge, set a paper on them. Mr. Seeley stood first. He wrote "The Expansion of England," which was very influential. But his most famous book, and the ablest was "Zcce Homo," published in 1865. Its absolute freshness, its style, its reference made a big impression. must have read it about 1876, and it was the first book on religion, not technically theological, that I had read. What it did for me was to cast new light on old truths and make me see what extraordinary new elements came into the world with Jesus, also (and this is very important), how, even if a truth was not absolutely new, that is, unknown before He came, He put such emphasis on it, and threw such light on it, that it was as far as practical application goes, new truth.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.