“Many who admire elegant phraseology, and the other now rarely exhibited constituents of pulpit eloquence, will be glad to have in a convenient shape a judicious selection of Canon Melvill’s sermons. Mr. Melvill was one of the few really successful preachers of our day.”—Examiner.
“The sermons of the lamented Melvill are too well known to require any commendation from us. We have here all the power of rhetoric, and the grace and beauty of style, for which the author has been distinguished, and which have contributed to render him a model to preachers, and given him a representative position in the history of the English pulpit.”—Weekly Review.
“Polished, classical, and winning, these sermons bear the marks of literary labour. A study of them will aid the modern preacher to refine and polish his discourses, and to add to the vigour which is now the fashion the graces of chastened eloquence and winning rhetoric.”—English Churchman.
SELECTION FROM THE SERMONS PREACHED DURING THE LATTER YEARS OF HIS LIFE, IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF BARNES, AND IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PAUL’S. By Henry Melvill, B.D., late Canon of St. Paul’s, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. Two vols. Crown 8vo. 5s. each.
“Melvill’s chief characteristic was humility, that truest mark of real nobility of soul and of genuine genius; and his sole actuating principle in life was devotion to duty—duty to God and duty to man, and never were the two more beautifully blended together than in him. ‘While the pure truths of the Gospel,’ observes his biographer in the memoir prefixed to these sermons, ‘flowed so persuasively from his lips, the pure spirit of Christianity ever reigned in his heart, and the purest charity influenced his every thought and every action.’... The style of Canon Melvill’s sermons is rather Ciceronian than Demosthenic, rather splendid and measured than impetuous and fervid.”—Standard.
“Two other volumes of the late Canon Melvill’s sermons contain forty discourses preached by him in his later years, and they are prefaced by a short memoir of one of the worthiest and most impressive preachers of recent times.”—Examiner.
“These outlines contain probably the last specimens of the work of a great master in the art of preaching the Gospel. In the sermons of Henry Melvill there are a certain dignity and elevation of style and handling which belong rather to the past than to the present.... There are in the sermons before us all Melvill’s wonted grace of diction, strength of reasoning, and aptness of illustration.”—Weekly Review.
SERMONS. By Henry Melvill, B.D., late Canon of St. Paul’s, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. New Edition. Two vols. Crown 8vo. 5s. each. Sold separately.
“Messrs. Rivington have published very opportunely, at a time when Churchmen are thinking with satisfaction of the new blood infused into the Chapter of St. Paul’s, sermons by Henry Melvill, who in his day was as celebrated as a preacher as is Canon Liddon now. The sermons are not only couched in elegant language, but are replete with matter which the younger clergy would do well to study.”—John Bull.
“Henry Melvill’s intellect was large, his imagination brilliant, his ardour intense, and his style strong, fervid, and picturesque. Often he seemed to glow with the inspiration of a prophet.”—American Quarterly Church Review.