TO THE READER.

THIS book was intended to issue forth with a simple title-page and the sanction of the Bishop. Probably there would have been a few prefatory words,* referring to its connection with the former work called "DAILY BREAD."

Now, alas! since the good Father has been called to his rest before he could complete the loving, but all too arduous, task which he had set before him, it falls to another to say something about the work,-explaining its object, and the circumstances under which it is made public; and to add a few details of the remarkable life of its venerable author.

I-Its object. Mr. Sibthorp being, by reason of the infirmities of old age, shut out from much of active public duty, thought to render his life profitable to the Church by the use of his pen. He wished to improve on the idea of the former book which he published in 1876, with the same title. His own wordsalways devout, and generally with a spice of quaintness-will best explain his object. In writing to an old friend at Ryde, in December, 1876, he says: "Through God's great mercy I am yet sustained in moderate health and strength for my years; and I am working hard at another enlarged edition of the "DAILY BREAD," in which little book I hope you and yours found, or find, some nourishment. I am now, D.V., extending it to each day in the year, with a few verses attached to each, as a pat of butter to a slice of dry bread."

The meditations, or sermonettes (as he called them), have for their aim-and that aim is realized in a very unusual degree-to set forth the conditions of the inner, spiritual life; the soul's sicknesses and the cure; its sorrows and its joys; its struggles and its victories; and also the necessity of that inner life being consistently expressed in the Christian's daily intercourse with the world. In doing so, the author (as was once said of his public teaching) "discourses his whole soul to you :" you have the fruits of ripe wisdom, the spoils of much conflict, the utterances

The author writes to the publishers, under date May 7, 1878, alluding to "a very short Introduction of one page perhaps."

of a contrite and humble spirit seeking after daily increase of living union and communion with the Holy Spirit of God.

If, therefore, any reader comes to this book in a critical spirit, he may probably find many faults (of which no one was more conscious than the saintly author); but he may also learn, if he will, that the most profitable kind of criticism may, after all, be the unravelling of the tangled skein of our own unworthy and corrupt motives. If, again, any one expects to find here much display of literary excellence, or even of theological learning, he too may be disappointed. Yet will even such an one be rewarded, not merely by occasional passages of rare quaintness and originality, of highly poetical conception, as well as of profound knowledge of Holy Scripture, and the relations of man to God; he will also find one after another of these meditations to be real gems of very unusual beauty; astonishing him by the seemingly endless variety of the spiritual lights which they emit, and by the calm beautiful grace with which they all combine to the glory of God. But if any reader desires to obtain real help towards leading a godly life, he will read here much for which he will bless God. If he is sick of useless controversy, and strifes that are unprofitable and vain, he will find the author himself to be such an one; who will tell him that all is vanity save God and Christ, and life in Him. If he longs to see more of his own sinfulness, and of the Great Atonement for sin; of the corruption of his own heart, and the workings of the Indwelling Spirit; of filial dutifulness, and the love of our Father in heaven; he will realise in these sermons the teaching of one who had sounded many depths, and ascended many heights, of the spiritual life; and who, as he taught by his example-O how touchingly and powerfully while he lived!-the need of profoundest penitence, lowliest humility, united with the loving trustfulness of adopted sonship; so now, "being dead, yet speaketh" in these devout papers, of reconciliation to God by the Cross, and our access by the Spirit to the Father.

II. The circumstances. Would that we could have spoken of the book as a finished work! Alas! it was not God's will that it should ever be completed. The letters of the good Father for the last two years, both to his friends and his publishers, contain touching evidence of the heroic way in which the old man girded himself up to the unequal conflict of composing, and writing, and passing through the press, three hundred and sixty-five fresh discourses, (no two of which cover exactly the same ground as to subject and treatment); and that during the last two years of a life reaching to eighty-seven years. It was a marvellous grace