Fremantle, W. H. The Gospel of the Secular Life: Sermons Preached at Oxford; With a Prefatory Essay. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1883. [6963]
Red cloth, backstrip faded with chip at top, 5 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, presentation bookplate (Linlithgo Reformed Church, Livingston, NY), 256 clean pp., publisher's catalogue, tight. Good. Hardcover.
The Hon. and Rev. William Henry Fremantle, born 1831 in Buckinhamshire; educated at Eton, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where graduated first class Lit. Hum., 1853. Among his many posts are Fellow of All Souls College, 1854-64; ordained 1855; vicar of Lerknor 1857-65; chaplain to Archbishop Tait 1851-82; rector of St. Mary’s, Bryanston Square, London, 1866-83; and in 1882 became canon of Canterbury and Fellow of Balliol College. – from Allibone.
Fremantle was accused of secularizing the Gospel in this book, although that is not his stated intention. "In his generous desire to be just to secularists he misrepresents his own fellow-believers, and in his energetic zeal to Christianize secular life he succeeds only in secularizing Christianity." - Spectator.
"It is not necessary to disparage the ordinary work of the Church. We may rather believe that that work would gain in width and in vigour from the direction of thought which is here proposed. If Christianity were felt to be intimately concerned with the general, common, and secular life, its worship would be much more real, as responding to the wants of all." - from the Prefatory Essay.
The Sermons are: Unity through a Moral Faith; Religion without a Temple; The Supremacy of Christ over the Secular Life; Election and Privilege in Religion; Critical Thought and Practical Ministry; The Universal Priesthood of Believers; God Immanent in Man and Nature; Intellectual Pursuits and the Higher Life; “Progress”