Swing's Sermons [pp. 512-532]

SWING'S SERMONS.,
ART. VI.-SWING'S SERMONS.*
THESE discourses have a certain classic neatness and felicity
of diction and illustration, which are likely to please a large
class of hearers and readers. This alone, however, would not
secure a tithe of the attention they are now receiving. They
have acquired an adventitious importance, which gains thousands of readers, from the ecclesiastical proceedings prompted
by some, and prompting others of them. Thus they and their
author have been litted for the time into a prominence and importance not otherwise belonging to them. Hence, the principles they inculcate, always more important than any mere accessories of style, are in the present case preeminently so. The
great question then is, not what are the attractions, linguistic
or poetic, in which they are arrayed, but what do they teach?
And this underlies and determines all other questions concerning them and growing out of them, whether more or less immninent and portentous, with which the Christian, and especially
the great Presbyterian public, are concerned. Compared with
this, the mere factions and persons embroiled in the local
strifes growing out of this and former causes, are insignificant.
Their miscarriages and blunders even, if such there have been,
are, though far from unimportant, of slight moment in comparison with this supreme question-what does Prof. Swing teach?
This we shall therefore undertake to answer as adequately as
possible in the space and time at command.
We begin at the foundation-his views as to the possibility of
any certainty of religious or Christian doctrine or faith. He
says: "When it comes to a search for perfect assurance, there
we soon ruin the moral world, for there is no perfect assurance
in it, or any part of it, and hence the logic which seeks that
assurance can cnly destroy. It must come back each evening,
saying,'There is no virtue, no sin, no mind, no God.' Perfect
assurance is just as impossible to a free religionist or Atheist as
* David Swin'g's Sermons. Chicago: W. B. Keen, Cooke & Co. 1874.
Truths of To-day, spoken in the Past Winter. By David Swing, Pastor Fourth
Presbyterian Church. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co. 1874.
512
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