The Sermon in Tristram Shandy

Abstract

In his sermons, Laurence Sterne developed a consistent moral philosophy which is well represented by The Abuses of Conscience Considered, the sermon he introduced into Tristram Shandy. It has not been previously recognized how this pleasant and deceptively simple sermon is typical of Sterne's ethic as a whole. In fact, despite sporadic, if profitable, dippings into the sermons, no scholar has found in them a structured moral philosophy. Wilbur Cross and Lansing Hammond, discovering that Sterne had little of interest to say about religion, gave up altogether on his ideas, as such.' But Sterne's moral theory is much more imaginative than his orthodox religion and far more complete as a philosophy. Its implications for his fiction are provocative. Sterne's moral system becomes especially meaningful when seen in relation to other ethical writings of his age. Although Sterne appears to have been affected by several contemporary moralists, he does not belong to any single mid-century school. He has some affinity with the earlier Latitude-Men, with Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Norris, and Clarke, from whom he borrowed so liberally. But the modern spirit of psychological probing in his sermons is not typical of their writings, and I rather think their influence is primarily indirect. The most immediate and powerful influence upon Sterne's moral thought is that of John Locke, whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding was to Sterne, as he had Tristram say, a historybook, Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man's own mind