ALL SAINTS, April 2nd, (privately.) Frederick John, son of John and Elizabeth Wedlock. 12th. William, son of James and Ann Davis. ST. JOHN'S, WOODLEY, April 5th. Margaret, daughter of William and Maria Hunt. Albert Richard, son of John and Mary Jane Jewell. Alice Martha Annie, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Fanny Marcham. 12th. 19th. Sarah Ann, daughter of George and Rhoda Eggleton. Emily Elizabeth, daughter of Henry and Mary Wellman. MARRIAGE. SONNING, Charles Albert Clarke, to Sarah Burt, both of Woodley. SONNING, BURIALS. March 25th. Louisa Allom, aged 5 months. We are sure that the inhabitants of this parish have received with pleasure the news that the Venerable Alfred Pott, Archdeacon of Berks, Vicar of Clifton Hampden, has been appointed to the living of Sonning. All will welcome one who is so well known, and so much respected in this diocese, and who was an old and valued friend of their late beloved Vicar. We trust he may be spared to live many years amongst us. By the kind permission of the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, we print the following Sermon, which was preached in Sonning Church on Sunday, April 23rd. Acts 13, 36. "DAVID, AFTER HE HAD SERVED HIS OWN GENERATION, BY THE WILL OF GOD, FELL ON SLEEP." These words come home to us, because they are so simple and free from exaggeration. They might be the epitaph of a great king; they might also be written over the graves of some whom we have known, both rich and poor. They are a noble expression of man's better life in this world. It is a service to his generation; a service which lasts all his days, very long in one point of view, but limited to his own place and time. For every one has his little spot of earth and his allotted years which he cannot exceed; the days of his years come to an end, and another rises up in his stead. One man's influence may extend further than another's, but not far in comparison with the whole. One man's fame may be spread abroad for a few months or years; another, not less happy, or less accounted of in the sight of God, rests in an unknown burial place. But this service of a generation,' though it does not imply earthly greatness and may be hidden from the eye of the world, is not the ordinary life of man. It does not mean that we buy and sell and supply the wants of mankind; that we make money and bring up a family creditably in our own station; or that we successfully follow some higher calling, such as that of a clergyman or of a lawyer; or that we hold office in a parish, or even in a kingdom. It means much more than this-it is the service of man, which is also the service of God. He who in the ordinary business of life finds a higher business; who to honesty and punctuality adds disinterestedness and public spirit; who, in his calling or out of his calling, has done what good he can; who has set things right which were going wrong; who has lived for others and not for himself; who has freely given his time and his money and his thoughts to some cause or institution, who has trained young children, has built churches, has improved a neighbourhood-such an one may be truly said to have served his generation.' Whether consciously or unconsciously to himself, he has been working together with God; he has been fulfilling the task which he came into the world to perform. And the small affairs of human life, and the things which we hardly name in connection with religion, if they are done in a true and simple manner, partake of this higher, this divine character. The duties of a servant, for example, may be performed "as unto the Lord and not to men." Such persons when they die may be said to have "served their generation." In this parish or in any other, if a tradesman or a farmer is taken away, it is easy to find some one else who will occupy his land and follow his calling. But when one of these true servants of God and man is missed from his accustomed place, we look around sadly; it seems as if the blank could never be filled up. And what shall we say of their work? does that end here, or does it follow them into another state of being? The transitoriness and imperfection of this world naturally carries our thoughts to a life beyond. There are many questions which we should like to ask about a future life, if they could only be answered. The innumerable souls of men who have once lived and toiled upon the earth, where are they, and what are they doing? Have they any form or character conceivable or distinguishable by us? Is their dwelling place any house of God, like this church, or do they rest in some innocent or happy seat, like the garden of Eden, or have they their habitation in the stars as men have sometimes fancied? And do they see and know one another, and converse about the things which happened to them on earth? And how are they affected by time? Are they always at the same point of life, while we are drifting onwards? Is there neither youth nor age, but all renewed and equal in the light of His presence? And may we suppose them to be going on to perfection, to be passing through new stages of education, rising to higher spheres of knowledge in the course of ages, just as this world has epochs and makes a kind of progress according to the laws which God has prescribed for it? He of whom we are all thinking to-day would have bid us put aside these questions. He would not have given us any false comfort by drawing pictures of another life, or pretending to a greater knowledge of things unseen than is really granted to us. He would have acknowledged that questions like these are unanswerable; for that no one has ever returned to tell. But still He would have bid us follow Christ in the "valley of the shadow of death, and fear no evil.” He would have said that neither did Christ answer the question of the Sadducees, "Whose wife is she in the resurrection?" He would have taught us that the struggle of good against evil in this world, that the effort which anyone of us may make against sin, is a better witness than books of evidences can supply for the reality of a life to come. He would have argued that the very attempt to grasp at certainty has been detrimental to a deeper faith. He would have reminded us that the language of all good and great men, or of all but a few of them, has gone beyond this world; and that in our own age, when conventionalities are crumbling away, it is only by living |