The Captivity of Thought

Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.—2 Corinthians 10:5.

These words form part of a highly-figurative description of the Apostle’s employment as a minister of Christ. He compares himself to a warrior attacking some strongly fortified place, overcoming all opposition, making captives of all who were in it, and enforcing their obedience to the commander under whom he fought. The stronghold which he represents himself as attacking is the mind of man, which is naturally strong in error and prejudice and full of hostility to God. The weapons which the Apostle tells us he employed in this warfare were not carnal. The nature of the enemy shows that they could not be such as soldiers commonly use, neither were they such as men are apt to rely on who seek to convince and persuade—not winning manners or eloquence or philosophy; but, since the Apostle represents them as “mighty before God to the casting down of strong holds”; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” these weapons must be spiritual, owing all their efficiency to the Spirit of God. The completeness of their success is marked by the wonderful result described in the text; every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

It has been urged that the recent history of Cilicia itself may have well suggested this language to St. Paul. The Apostle’s native country had been the scene of some very fierce struggles in the wars against Mithridates and the pirates; and we are told that the latter war was ended, not sixty years before the Apostle’s birth, only by the reduction of one hundred and twenty strong-holds and the capture of more than ten thousand prisoners. The dismantled ruins may have easily and naturally impressed the boyish imagination of Saul of Tarsus with a vivid sense of the destructive energy of the military power of Rome; but the Apostle of the nations remembers these earlier impressions only to give them a spiritual application. The weapons of his warfare are not carnal; the standard under which he fights is a more sacred sign than that of the Cæsar; the operations which he projects are to be carried out in a territory more difficult of conquest than any which kept the conquerors of the world at bay. He is invading the region of human thought, and as he fights for God, he is sternly resolved upon conquest.1 [Note: H. P. Liddon.]

I

The Power of Thought

1. Thought is the distinctive mark of man. “On earth there’s nothing great but man; in man there’s nothing great but mind”; and the great function of mind is to think. The ability to think is man’s great distinction. If other creatures think, it is not for their thought that they are distinguished; but, man without thought is destitute of the great human characteristic. By the exercise of thought—transferring what is without within—we can carry the “world in our hearts.” And by thought we can also outwardly embody the creations of our minds, and thus give a soul to the material, and a body to things spiritual; by thought we can recall the past and live in it again, anticipate the future, and inhabit it as our home; by thought we can walk as seeing the invisible, and dwell in a world which transcends the senses; by thought we can ascend to heaven and God, and also descend to him who, as antitheos, sets himself against God.

In the human world, we find thought expressing itself in a thousand ways, visible and invisible—in stone and wood and iron, in colours and sounds, in laws and institutions. It is the thought of the constructor that makes the iron vessel float upon the water; it is the thought of the general that wins the battle. In all these cases, too, the thought precedes the expression, the materialization, as well as giving to the latter its value. Just as the human world, with its roads and cultivated fields, its streets and buildings, its machines and engines, its pictures and statuary, its colleges and hospitals, its libraries, and orchestras, is the expression of the thought of man, so the vast universe, with its numberless worlds obedient to one law, and its countless forms of life, is the expression of the thought of God; and, just as in every case where human thought has expressed itself, the conception preceded the embodiment—as, for instance, the plan preceded the building, or the battle—so the thought of God must have preceded the creation of the universe. Thought is, in fact, necessarily the prius of a universe which is permeated, penetrated, by thought—which is built up on thought. And that the universe we know is built up on thought is proved every day by the discovery of new laws of nature. It is because the universe is permeated by thought that man can hope to understand it, to interpret it, by the light of reason; were it not intelligible, the work of the scientist—of the astronomer, the chemist, the geologist—would be idle.1 [Note: James Hutchison Stirling, 163.]

(1) Thought is in a sense the material with which we work.—All work is the working out and working up of thought. The actual amount of this material present in the world, at any given time, defies calculation. Yet, that which exists is as nothing in comparison with what, at any moment, might be called into existence. Thought is capable of indefinite multiplication. To what extent is it not multiplied in seasons of excitement and hours of inspiration? What is the amount of thought produced in a community impassioned by some event which awakens their depths? The critical periods of history discover mines of inexhaustible wealth, unsuspected in ordinary times, and reveal in men powers of vast and indefinite expansion. If we sometimes hear men talk of being used-up, of the need of travel, of fresh scenes to replenish their exhausted resources, is it not because they forget to use themselves? “He who would bring home the Indies must carry them out.” Some of those whose thoughts continue to sow the world with ceaseless harvests never wandered from the site that gave them birth. He alone can be used-up who has not learnt to use himself.

Which of us feels, or knows, that he wants peace? There are two ways of getting it, if you do want it. The first is wholly in your own power; to make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea indeed, but safe beyond all others; only they need much art in the building. None of us yet know, for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought—proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us—houses built without hands, for our souls to live in.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Eagle’s Nest, 205 (Works, xxii. 262).]

(2) Our thoughts are the raw material out of which character is formed.—What a man thinks determines not only what he says, does and sees, but also what he is. “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Our whole character gradually takes on the hue and complexion of our inward thinking. Naturalists affirm that the size of the fish found in Central Africa is subtly influenced by the dimensions of the lake in which they live, the same species being larger or smaller in proportion to the scale of their habitat. Whether that is a fact or not, it is certainly true that if we live in the environment of sordid, petty, and grovelling thoughts, our character becomes correspondingly small, shrivelled and emaciated; whereas, if we rise up into the region of noble and spacious conceptions of life and truth, our character will inevitably expand in proportion to the dimensions of its mental environment. Character derives its substance and form from the influence distilled from the mental processes. Noble thinking, then, ought by rights to result in noble living. This is what is in St. Peter’s mind when he bids us arm ourselves with the mind of Christ. He knew very well that the shortest and safest way for a man to reproduce Christ’s character was to try to put on His mind.

The soul is dyed the colour of its thoughts.2 [Note: Marcus Aurelius.]

Nothing is lost; even unwritten thoughts do their work. Good thoughts, like breezes from the mountains, purify the moral atmosphere, and the resulting actions. Evil thoughts shape the character, and spread disastrous consequences, for they are positively infectious. We are thus all of us fearfully responsible.3 [Note: George Frederic Watts, iii. 325.]

When thoughts have sown man’s pathway with happiness and peace they go on to determine character and futurity. Each life memorable for goodness and nobility has for its motive power some noble thought. Each hero has climbed up to immortality upon those golden rounds called good thoughts. Here is that cathedral spirit, John Milton. In his loneliness and blindness his mind was his kingdom. He loved to think of things true and pure and of good report. Oft at midnight upon the poet’s ear there fell the sound of celestial music, which he afterwards transposed into his “Paradise Regained.” Dying, it was given him to proudly say: “I am not one of those who have disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, nor the maxims of the free-man by the actions of the slave, but by the grace of God, I have kept my soul unsullied.”1 [Note: N. D. Hillis, A Man’s Value to Society, 114.]

(3) Thoughts are the most potent weapons in the world.—The carnal weapon may subdue, but it cannot convince. Rome may make a desolation and call it peace, but it has only driven the fever of revolt inward. So long as thought is unsubdued, despotism is in peril. The only real conquest of man is the conquest of his thought; and the long and bloody catalogue of religious wars, martyrdoms, and persecutions, proves, or ought to prove, to us conclusively the folly of all carnal weapons when directed against the souls of men. So, then, the truth that St. Paul teaches is that the world is to be won for Christ only by the conquest which the ideas and thoughts of Christ make over the souls of men.

All the great changes in the life of one man or in the life of the whole of humanity begin and are achieved in thought only. No matter what external changes may take place in the lives of men, no matter how men may preach the necessity of changing their sentiments and acts, the lives of men will not change, unless a change takes place in their thoughts. But let a change take place in thought, and sooner or later, according to the importance of the change, it will take place in the feelings and actions and lives of men, and just as inevitably as the ship changes its direction after the turn of the rudder.2 [Note: Tolstoy, Miscellaneous Letters and Essays (Works, xxiii. 57).]

2. Thought has the rare power of exercising control over the inferior powers. A man of rightly-directed thought cannot well be a low, bad man—a man given to excess. He who is habitually familiar with thought’s pale face of just-proportioned beauty will observe the limits and measurements of truth, and be a man known for his temperance and moderation in all things. Earnest and well-chosen occupation of mind disengages the body from every excess, and disqualifies it for low pursuits. Well-directed activity of mind not only preserves the body in manly health, but acquires wisdom, which is the health of the soul; “she is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.”

(1) Thought generates feeling.—Out of thought there comes feeling, just as fragrance is born of a rose, and a noisome stench of a cesspool. Our sentiments are the exhalations of our thoughts. The heart is the vessel in which are garnered all the odours which steal from the thoughts in the mind. Every thought tends to create a feeling. There are no thoughts devoid of influence. From every thought there proceeds an influence which goes to the making of a disposition. The fragrance of a single rose in a large room may be imperceptible, but, perceptible or not, the sweet influence is there, surely diffusing itself throughout the atmosphere. Bring a score of such roses together, and what was imperceptible in the one becomes a strong and grateful incense in them all. A single thought in the mind may exhale an almost imperceptible influence. But the influence is there, and steals like an intensely subtle odour into the heart. Let the thoughts be multiplied, and the delicate odours unite to form an intensely powerful influence which we call a feeling, a sentiment, a disposition. But suppose the thought is not like a sweet rose, but like a poisonous nightshade. Here again the influence of a single thought may be too subtle for our detection, but let the thoughts be multiplied, and the poisonous exhalations will unite to form a sentiment of most destructive strength.

(2) Each thought creates its own feeling, and always of one kind.—There are certain thoughts which, if we will take them into our minds, will inevitably create the feeling of envy. Take other thoughts into our mind and from them will be born the sentiment of jealousy. Take other thoughts into the mind and the heart will speedily swell with pride. Fill the mind with another kind of thought and in the heart will gather the sweet and tender sentiment of pity. Each thought creates its own sentiment, and we cannot help it. If we choose the rose we must take the fragrance with it. If we choose the nightshade we must take the stench with it. Take the thought and we must of necessity take the sentiment which the thought creates.

(3) The thinking part of us is closely connected with the will.—The prime minister of individual conduct and character is the will. We never do anything without first of all willing to do it. But before the will determines upon any action it consults its advisers, the soul’s cabinet, which is composed in the main of three ministers—feelings, conscience, thoughts. It is usually upon the advice of these three counsellors that the will Acts 1 [Note: M. G. Archibald.]

Do no violence to yourself, respect in yourself the oscillations of feeling. They are your life and your nature; One wiser than you ordained them. Do not abandon yourself altogether either to instinct or to will. Instinct is a siren, will a despot. Be neither the slave of your impulses and sensations of the moment, nor of an abstract and general plan; be open to what life brings from within and without, and welcome the unforeseen; but give to your life unity, and bring the unforeseen within the lines of your plan. Let what is natural in you raise itself to the level of the spiritual, and let the spiritual become once more natural. Thus will your development be harmonious, and the peace of heaven will shine upon your brow;—always on condition that your peace is made, and that you have climbed your Calvary.2 [Note: Amiel’s Journal (trans. by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 22.]

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain,

Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain.

Awake but one, and lo! what myriads rise!

Each stamps its image as the other flies!

Each, as the various avenues of sense

Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense,

Frightens or fades; yet all, with magic art,

Control the latent fibres of the heart.3 [Note: Samuel Rogers.]

II

The Mastery of Thought

1. Our thoughts need to be mastered and disciplined. “Casting down imaginations,” that is, reasonings, “and every high thing,” every lofty edifice, “which is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” St. Paul’s stoutest enemy in Corinth was intellectual pride. The pride of reason infected the spirit of the whole Christian society in Corinth. In minor matters of taste it would select its ministers, and divide the Church into followers of favourite preachers; in the graver matters of faith, it stumbled at a miracle, many of the members denying the resurrection of the dead and, by implication, the rising again of Christ; in the fellowship meetings and social walks of the congregation, the educated classes ridiculed the sensitive scruples and simplicity of their more ignorant brethren.

The Apostle wished these Corinthians to cast down anything that was fictitious in their Christian faith, anything that was merely the creation of men’s ingenious reasonings, and that exalted itself against Divine revelation. They were, on the one hand, to cast aside human imaginations, and, on the other hand, they were to bring all their thoughts to the mastery of Christ’s Spirit. If it was necessary for Christian converts so early to put away imaginations, we may be sure that the effort to return to the real Christ will repeatedly be required in Christian history. The generations of believers will need time and time again to cast aside fictions, and to bring their thoughts into captivity to the true Christ. The world will be always prone to lose the real Christ, and He will need to be found again many times in the thought and the life of the world.

(1) If a man does not master his thoughts, some other power will, some power of the world, of the flesh, or of the devil, or all these powers combined. Now, the central character of the power of our thoughts makes it a first necessity that we should lead them if we are to remain in possession of ourselves. Thought awakens feeling, inflames the passions, subdues the will and commands action. Therefore thoughts unled will be to a man what winds and waves are to a ship under canvas but without a rudder, or what steam is to a locomotive without the guiding rail—a driving and destructive power.

Thoughts often come into the mind like a shadow, and then everything is dark and sad looking, or they come stealing along like sunbeams over the cornfield, and everything is brighter and better for them. Some thoughts come like a song, but you cannot see the bird that is singing, and some drip, drip, like the plashing of drops in a dark well. Thoughts? Why, they are the most difficult things in the world to get hold of, and yet we are to bring them into captivity.1 [Note: J. R. Howatt, The Children’s Pulpit, 246.]

The one moral point you mention I should urge you to take vigorously in hand, with all courage and hope—I mean the persisting temptation of evil thoughts. You must not be too much surprised, or disheartened, at this. With some saintly persons it continues, at intervals, for many years. The main thing is to determine with yourself that you will accept no compromise in the matter. It is fatal if you think you must give way. You may be beaten again and again, but always renew the attack with the determination to obtain an absolute victory. It is marvellous what God’s grace can do. Guard your sight strictly in what you read, in newspapers and books, pictures, photographs, persons—be very strict with yourself in this—all depends on crushing an evil thought at the beginning and instantly slaying it.1 [Note: Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 230.]

(2) A reverential mind is necessary for the reception of truth. The mind that has no effective sense of the mysterious never enters into the full and fruitful possession of truth. We are fitted and qualified to receive revelations only when we are solemnly sensible of the great secret which shrouds itself behind the veil. There is, therefore, need that men who are setting out in quest of truth should heed the counsel of the days of old, and take their shoes from off their feet. Surely in this counsel there is significance for every age. We must take the shoes from off our feet. We must tread softly, as it were on tiptoe, with a hushed expectancy, that we may not miss the smallest Voice that speaks out of the secret place. We must step reverently and quietly up to the most familiar bush if, perchance, it may unveil to us some secret Presence of the Lord.

“I have a plant called reverence,” says the beloved and genial Autocrat, “and it needs constant watering.” Yes, and it is possible for us to water the plant every day. We need not wait for some mighty and phenomenal contingency to cultivate our sense of reverence and of awe. It is best and most safely trained by smaller cultures, by the influence of the apparent trifle. Let us seek to train it while standing before the commonplace. Let us take the shoes from off our feet when we approach a familiar bush. Let us bow in low obeisance when God presents Himself to us in the guise of a common carpenter. When we take a crust of bread into our hands let us contemplate it with a reverence which will turn the common meal into a sacramental feast. Let us cultivate a reverent, lowly mind, and even the least of God’s creations will be greatly significant with the mystic presence of the King.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, From Strength to Strength, 117.]

Reverence for God, and, in general, reverence for anything that is high and great, is a matter needing very special attention at the present time. Wordsworth told us that “we live by admiration”; but a century of scientific and industrial and commercial progress has tended to an immense increase in man’s belief in himself, his efficiency, and his will, and to a corresponding decline of the habit of veneration. It is striking that in modern books on Theosophy the ancient doctrine is being repeated with as much insistence as ever. The first stage in the initiation of theosophic disciples is the laying aside of the exercise of criticism, and leaving the soul open to receive and venerate great thoughts and the memories of great men.2 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, ii. 163.]

2. The only captivity which thought endures is the captivity of the ideal. Every man has some ideal, and his ideal is the governing factor in his thought. We must remember that thoughts are not random and elusive, as we often suppose them to be, but that they fall as truly under the laws of cause and effect as the blossom on the bough, the fruit on the tree; or, to use a more correct figure, we may say that they have centres and orbits; they cohere toward the master-thought as steel filings to the magnetic bar; they move in fixed courses as the stars move on measurable and mathematic roads.

Thought may be led, but cannot be forced. To lead our thoughts, we must observe the nature of the mind, which is susceptible of influence but not of force. Our leading, therefore, must not be arbitrary, but in accordance with law and order—truth and justice. There is nothing more repugnant to the mind than the tyranny of wilfulness; but the appeal of law and order, truth and righteousness, accords with its nature, and awakens their own deep-laid echoes in answering assent. No man is able to respect the arbitrary dicta of his own will, but the authority of truth and goodness commends itself. While wilfulness is an unnatural crime against the will, and arouses the whole force of nature against it, the sublime authority of truth calls forth the homage of all our powers as being accordant with them, and capable of awakening their pre-established harmonies, and thus creating, as it were, their response to the sphere of their satisfied life. No other authority than that which commends itself to the mind can be sustained; for, though it may have outward support, it is destitute of inward, and its centre of gravity, if one may so express it, falling without itself, constantly tends to overthrow what has been arbitrarily set up.

We have all heard that curious story of recent astronomy regarding the fortunes of Algol, which has been called the Demon star, because of the inexplicable variations in its brilliancy. At last those eccentricities have been explained and have resolved themselves into a starry order; for we know now that Algol revolves round a centre we cannot see, and all its movements are regulated by this unseen and unsuspected centre. So we may say, find the centre of a man’s thoughts, and you have the explication of his life. The orbit of his life is absolutely ruled by his central ideal, and is held to it by an invincible moral gravitation.1 [Note: W. J. Dawson, The Comrade-Christ, 217.]

(1) Christ captures our thought by the subduing charm of His own personality. No sooner is He “lifted up” than our whole nature submits to Him. Our affections are won by His charms, our will gladly submits to His will, and our thoughts become free in His captivation. With His reign set up in the heart, submission becomes a devotion, obedience a worship, and the whole life moves in charmed circles of rectitude and peace. The powers of His life, His light, His love are, therefore, the “weapons” of a warfare which are “mighty before God to the casting down of strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”

There is one power, and only one, that can draw after it all the multitudinous heaped waters of the weltering ocean, and that is the quiet silver moon in the heavens, which pulls the tidal wave, into which melt and merge all currents and small breakers, and rolls it round the whole earth. And so Christ, shining down lambent and gentle, but changeless, from the darkest of our skies, will draw, in one great surge of harmonized motion, all the else contradictory currents of our stormy souls. “My peace I give unto you.”2 [Note: A. Maclaren, The Holy of Holies, 17.]

It was said of Greece, when made captive by the power of Rome, that, by her charms, she turned vanquishment to victory, and conquered her conquerors. And He who is the Master of all charms, when He suffered Himself to be imprisoned in the under-world, returned triumphant, leading captivity captive. He is the heavenly magnet which, from amid the ruins of our nature, will gather together every fragment, adjust part to part, and restore every vestige of His long-lost image. He is the Sun which will make and govern the day of our reconstituted life. He is the spring of all our powers, and will regulate our activity and secure our rest. He is our life-fountain, whose streams will preserve health, and impart vigour to our whole nature.1 [Note: W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons, 42.]

(2) We must accept the yoke of Christ; we must bring our thoughts to the obedience of Christ. A man says “I cannot help my thoughts”: so far as deeds go, he may be moral and reputable enough; but in his thoughts, malignity, or passion, or avarice, or impurity riots unchecked. He assumes that, so long as he does not commit murder, he may think it; so long as he keeps within the bounds of morality, he may imagine immoralities. Men will cherish the most violent animosities, and think that it does not matter so long as they do not act upon them. They will read the most vile books, and suppose that no blame attaches to them so long as their actual conduct remains pure. Or, if they admit that they are tortured by such thoughts and imaginations, that they come unsolicited and are hated and dreaded by them, yet they will repeat that they cannot control them, and therefore cannot help them. The simple fact remains that thought can be controlled.

Do not we remember how in those vanished days of school-life the thought seemed resolute to elude us, and flew off everywhere on wings of its own, and defied recapture? Did we not hear the bird singing in the tree outside the schoolhouse window, and the leaves talking to the breeze, and instantly our thought and fancy vanished into blue distances, and the dry facts of the book that lay before us were utterly forgotten? But gradually we discovered the art of fixing our thought on our task, and knew that there was no learning for us in any other way. Moreover, we discovered, too, that the blue sky was all the bluer, and the green fields all the fresher to us, after the successful effort to master the duty that met us at our desk. We brought our thought into captivity to the obedience of knowledge, and so we grew in wisdom. We must bring our thought into captivity to Christ, and so also shall we grow in grace. Discipline is the very pulse of progress, and to win the battle of goodness, of self-mastery, of character, demands a harder training than any other battle-field to which this life can call us.

Professor Huxley once defined genius as a mind under perfect control—a servant always at heel, ready at any call to do its duty, and quick to respond to any demand that the will can legitimately make upon it. The process of education itself is nothing more or less than the art of controlling and disciplining the thought. We need to learn on what subjects to fix our thought, within what limits to confine it, how best to render it available; and education affords us precisely this discipline. And so it is in the Christian life: we must begin by the discipline of the thought. We must steadfastly refuse to think evil, and must set our minds by resolute effort toward good. We must gather up each delicate fibre of imagination and fancy, and weave it into the fabric of our religion, and we can do so only by the most sedulous and unwearying vigilance.1 [Note: W. J. Dawson, The Comrade-Christ, 215.]

What is a true musician? Surely one who in that department is obedient to the thought of God. He is simply an interpreter of God’s laws of harmony. No man created those laws which hold in music; no man can alter them by one hair’s breadth. All he can do is to discover, interpret, and obey. Some of the great musicians have not been noted as religious men—i.e. they have not been noted as obedient to God’s moral and spiritual law. So much the worse for them; but inasmuch as they were great in music, it was so by the strictness of their obedience to God’s mind in that one department of it. They excelled their fellow-men herein because they were quicker to discern God’s thought there, and quicker to obey it.2 [Note: J. Brierley.]

Just as I shape the purport of my thought,

Lord of the Universe, shape Thou my lot.

Let each ill thought that in my heart may be,

Mould circumstance and bring ill luck to me.

Until I weed the garden of my mind

From all that is unworthy and unkind,

Am I not master of my mind, dear Lord?

Then as I think, so must be my reward.

Who sows in weakness, cannot reap in strength,

That which we plant, we gather in at length.

Great God of Justice, be Thou just to me,

And as my thoughts, so let my future be.1 [Note: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Experience, 4.]

The Captivity of Thought

Literature

Archibald (M. G.), Sundays at the Royal Military College, 171.

Banks (L. A.), The Great Promises of the Bible, 172.

Dawson (W. J.), The Comrade-Christ, 207.

Howatt (J. R.), The Children’s Pulpit, 246.

Illingworth (J. R.), University and Cathedral Sermons, 144.

Jenkins (E. E.), Life and Christ, 17.

Jowett (J. H.), From Strength to Strength, 99.

Liddon (H. P.), University Sermons, 165.

Little (W. J. K.), The Outlook of the Soul, 70.

Rutherford (S.), Quaint Sermons, 323.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxv. (1879), No. 1473.

Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 207.

Christian World Pulpit, xvii. 282 (W. J. Woods); xxxii. 348 (J. Brierley); xliv. 245 (N. Smyth); lxvii. 122 (C. S. Horne).

Church of England Magazine, lxii. 40 (C. Jenkyns).

Homiletic Review, New Ser., xliv. 128 (D. Gregg).

National Preacher, xvii. 1 (R. Anderson); xxiv. 173 (S. M. Worcester).