Transcribed from the 1868 Bell and Daldy edition by David Price. _PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND_. A SERMON PREACHED IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF DONCASTER, ON SUNDAY EVENING, AUGUST 30, 1868, ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST OFFERTORY IN LIEU OF A CHURCH-RATE. * * * * * BY C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D. VICAR OF DONCASTER. * * * * * _Published by Request_. * * * * * LONDON: BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1868. PREFACE. THIS Sermon was preached in the common course of the Sunday Services, and without any idea of its being noticed beyond the circle of its hearers. As, however, the interest of the subject, far more, certainly, than anything in its treatment, has called some attention to the Sermon since its delivery, I have thought it right to comply with the request of some respected members of the Congregation, and commit it to the chances of publication. In so doing, I have made no attempt to supply its many deficiencies, nor have I even removed from its opening sentences an allusion to other Sermons of which it formed the continuation. DONCASTER, _September_ 4, 1868. A SERMON. Why repair ye not the breaches of the house? 2 _Kings_ xii. 7. THE House is the Temple. We have travelled, therefore, from the north to the south of Palestine, from the capital of Israel to the capital of Judah. As soon as the two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, are no more, the interest of the story centres no longer in the kingdom of the ten tribes: it reverts to the stock of David, and finds its latest gleam of beauty and glory in the national reformations and personal pieties of Hezekiah and Josiah. Elisha is not yet dead: but he has ceased to occupy the sacred page after the anointing of Jehu, until he appears once more, and finally, in the striking incidents of his death-bed and his grave. Meanwhile that Baal-worship which Jehu has extirpated in the north, has found refuge in the southern realm, under the fostering patronage of a daughter of the house of Ahab. Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, had married a second Jezebel, in the person of her daughter Athaliah. Jehoram reigned eight years, and was succeeded by his son Ahaziah, who perished, as we read last Sunday, with his uncle Jehoram, son of Ahab, king of Israel, under the hand of the avenging Jehu, the scourge of God.