# The Persian Mystics: Jami

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-18 — 1 clipping.*

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> Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
> 
> TOWN AND COUNTRY SERMONS
> 
> SERMON I.  HOW TO KEEP PASSION WEEK
> 
> (Preached before the Queen.)
> 
> Philippians ii. 5-11.   Let this mind be in you, which was also in
> Christ Jesus:  who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery
> to be equal with God:  but made himself of no reputation, and took
> upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
> and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became
> obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.  Wherefore God
> also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above
> every name:  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
> things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
> and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
> the glory of God the Father.
> 
> This the first day of Passion Week; and this text is the key-note of
> Passion Week.  It tells us of the obedience of Christ; of the
> unselfishness of Christ; and, therefore, of the true glory of
> Christ.
> 
> It tells us of One who was in the form of God; the Co-equal and Co-
> eternal Son; the brightness of his Father's glory, the express image
> of his Father's person:  but who showed forth his Father's glory,
> and proved that he was the express likeness of his Father's
> character, by the very opposite means to those which man takes, when
> he wishes to show forth his own glory.
> 
> He was in the form of God.  But he did not (so the text seems to
> mean) think that the bliss of God was a thing to be seized on
> greedily for himself.  He did not think fit merely to glorify
> himself; to enjoy himself.  He was not like the false gods of whom
> the heathen dreamed, who sat aloft in heaven and enjoyed themselves,
> careless of mankind.
> 
> No.  He obeyed his Father utterly, and at all costs.  He emptied
> himself (says St. Paul).  He took on him the form of a slave.  He
> humbled himself.  He became obedient; obedient to death; and that
> death the shameful and dreadful death of the cross.
> 
> Therefore God has highly exalted him; has declared him to be
> perfectly good, worthy of all praise, honour, glory, power, and
> dominion; and has given him a name above all names, the name of
> Jesus--Saviour.  One who saved others, and cared not to save
> himself.
> 
> And therefore, too, God has given him that dominion of which he is
> worthy, and has proclaimed him Lord and Creator of all beings and
> all worlds, past, present, and to come.
> 
> It is of him; of his obedience; of his unselfishness, that Passion
> Week speaks to us.  It tell us of the mind of Christ, and says, 'Let
> this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.'
> 
> How, then, shall we keep his Passion Week?  There are several ways
> of keeping it, and all more or less good.  Wisdom is justified of
> all her children.
> 
> But no way will be safe for us, unless we keep in mind the mind of
> Christ--obedience and self-sacrifice.
> 
> Some, for instance, are careful this week to attend church as often
> as possible; and who will blame them?
> 
> But unless they keep in mind the mind of Christ, they are apt to
> fall into the mistake of using vain repetitions, as the heathen do;
> and of fancying, like them, that they shall be heard for their much
> speaking, forgetting their Father in heaven knows what they have
> need of, before they ask him.  And that is not like the mind of
> Christ.  It is not like the mind of Christ to fancy that God dwells
> in temples made with hands; or that he can be worshipped with men's
> hands, as though he needed anything; seeing he giveth to all life,
> and breath, and all things.  For in him we live, and move, and have
> our being; and (as even the heathen poet knew), are the offspring,
> the children, of God.
> 
> It is _not_ according to the mind of Christ, to worship God as the
> heathen do, in order to win him to do our will.  It _is_ according
> to the mind of Christ to worship God, in order that we may do his
> will; to believe that God's will is a good will, good in itself, and
> good for us, and for all things and beings; and, therefore, to ask
> for strength to do God's will, whatever it may cost us.  That is the
> mind of Christ, who came not to do his own will, but the will of him
> who sent him; who taught us to pray, as the greatest blessing for
> which we can ask, 'Father, thy will be done on earth, as it is in
> heaven;' who himself, in his utter agony, cried, 'Father, not my
> will, but thine, be done.'
> 
> Therefore, it is good to go to church; and good, for some at least,
> to go as often as possible:  but only if we remember why we go, and
> whom we go to worship--a Father, who asks of us to worship him in
> spirit and in truth.  A Father who has told us what that worship is
> like.
> 
> 'Is this (God asked the Jews of old) the fast which I have chosen?
> Is it a day for a man to afflict his soul, and bow down his head
> like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him (playing
> at being sad, while God has not made him sad)?  Wilt thou call this
> a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?'
> 
> 'Is not this the fast which I have chosen? to loose the bands of
> wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go
> free, and that ye break every yoke?  Is it not to deal thy bread to
> the hungry, and to bring the poor that are cast out to thine house;
> when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide
> not thyself from thine own flesh.'
> 
> This is that pure worship and undefined before God and the Father,
> of which St. James tells us; and says that it consists in this--'to
> visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction; and to keep
> ourselves unspotted from the world.'
> 
> In a word, this worship in the spirit, and in truth, is nought else
> but the mind of Christ.  To believe in, to adore the Father's
> perfect goodness; to long and try to copy that goodness here on
> earth.  That is what Christ did utterly and perfectly, that is what
> we have to do, each according to our powers; and without it, without
> the spirit of obedience, all our church-going is of little worth in
> the eyes of our heavenly Father.
> 
> Others, again, go into retirement for this week, and spend it in
> examining themselves, and thinking over the sufferings of Christ.
> And who, again, will blame them, provided they do not neglect their
> daily duty meanwhile?
> 
> But they, too, need to keep in mind the mind of Christ, if they mean
> to keep Passion Week aright.
> 
> They need it, indeed.  And such a man, before he shuts himself up,
> and begins to examine himself, would do well _to examine himself as
> to why he is going to examine himself_, and to ask, Why am I going
> to do this?  Because it is my interest?  Because I think I shall
> gain more safety for my soul?  Because I hope it will give me more
> chance of pleasure and glory in the next world?  But, if so; have I
> the mind of Christ?  For he did _not_ think of his own interest, his
> own gain, his own pleasure, his own glory.  How is this, then?  I
> confess that the root of all my faults is selfishness.  Shall I
> examine into my own selfishness for a selfish end--to get safety and
> pleasure by it hereafter?  I confess that the very glory of Christ
> is, that there is no selfishness in him.  Shall I think over the
> sufferings of the unselfish Christ for a selfish end--to get
> something by it after I die?  I am too apt already to make myself
> the centre, round which all the world must turn:  to care for
> everything only as far as it does _me_ good or harm.  Shall I make
> myself the centre round which heaven is to turn?  Shall I think of
> God and of Christ only as far as it will profit _me_?  And this
> week, too, of all weeks in the year?  God forgive me!  Into what a
> contradiction I am running unawares!
> 
> No.  If I do shut myself up from my fellowmen, it shall be only to
> think how I may do my duty better to my fellowmen.  If I do think
> over Christ's sufferings, it shall be only that I may learn from him
> how to suffer, if need be, at the call of duty; at least, to stir up
> in me obedience, usefulness, generosity, that I may go back to my
> work cheerfully, willingly, careless what reward I get, provided
> only I can do good in my station.
> 
> But, after all, will not the text tell us best how to keep Passion
> Week?  Will not our Lord's own example tell us?  Can we go wrong, if
> we keep our Passion Week as Christ kept his?
> 
> And how did he keep it?  Certainly not by shutting himself up apart.
> Certainly not by mere thinking over the glory of self-sacrifice.  He
> taught daily, we read, in the temple.  Instead of giving up his work
> for a while, he seems to have worked more earnestly than ever.  As
> the terrible end drew near; and his soul was troubled; and he was
> straitened as he looked forward to his baptism of fire; and the
> struggle in him grew fiercer (for the Bible tells us that there was
> a struggle) between the Man's natural desire to save his life, and
> the God's heavenly desire to lay down his life, he threw himself
> more and more into the work which he had to do.  We hear more,
> perhaps, of our Lord's saying and doings during this week, up to the
> very moment before he was betrayed to death, than we do of the whole
> three years of his public life.  His teaching was never, it seems,
> so continual; his appeals to the nation which he was trying to save
> were never so pathetic as at the very last; his warnings to the
> bigots who were destroying his nation never so terrible; his
> contempt for personal danger never so clear.  The Bible seems to
> picture him to us as gathering up all his strength for one last
> effort, if by any means he might save that doomed city of Jerusalem,
> and in his divine spirit, courting death the more, the more his
> human flesh shrank from it.
> 
> This--the pattern of perfect obedience, perfect unselfishness,
> perfect generosity, perfect self-sacrificing love--is what we are to
> look at in Passion Week.  This, I believe, is what we are meant to
> copy in Passion Week; that we may learn the habit of copying it all
> our lives long.
> 
> Why should not we, then, keep Passion Week somewhat as our Lord kept
> it before us?  Not by merely hiding in our closets to meditate, even
> about _him_:  but by going about our work, each in his place,
> dutifully, bravely, as he went?  By doing the duty which lies
> nearest us, and trying to draw our lesson out of it.
> 
> Thus we may keep Passion Week in spirit and in truth; though some of
> us may hardly have time to enter a church, hardly have time for an
> hour's private thought about religion.
> 
> Amid the bustle of daily duties; amid the buzz of petty cares; amid
> the anxieties of great labours; amid the roar of the busy world,
> which cannot stop (and which ought not to stop), for our
> convenience; we may keep Passion Week in spirit and in truth, if we
> will do the duty which lies nearest us, and try to draw our lesson
> out of it.
> 
> For practice--and, I believe, practice alone--will teach us to
> restrain ourselves, and conquer ourselves.  Experience--and, I
> believe, experience alone--will show us our own faults and
> weaknesses.
> 
> Every man--every human spirit on God's earth has spiritual enemies--
> habits and principles within him--if not other spirits without him,
> which hinder him, more or less, from being all that God meant him to
> be.  And we must find out those enemies, and measure their strength,
> not merely by reading of them in books; not merely by fancying them
> in our own minds; but by the hard blows, and sudden falls, which
> they too often give us in the actual battle of daily life.
> 
> And how can we find them out?
> 
> This at least we can do.
> 
> We can ask ourselves at every turn,--For what end am I doing this,
> and this?  For what end am I living at all?  For myself, or for
> others?
> 
> Am I living for ambition? for fame? for show? for money? for
> pleasure?  If so, I have not the mind of Christ.  I have not found
> out the golden secret.  I have not seen what true glory is; what the
> glory of Christ is--to live for the sake of doing my duty--for the
> sake of doing good.
> 
> And am I--I surely shall be if I am living for myself--straggling,
> envying, casting an evil eye on those more fortunate than I; perhaps
> letting loose against them a cruel tongue?  If I am doing thus, God
> forgive me.  What have I of the mind of Christ?  What likeness
> between me and him who emptied himself of self, who humbled himself,
> gave himself up utterly, even to death?  Is this the mind of Christ?
> Is this the spirit whose name is Love?
> 
> And yet there should be a likeness.  A likeness between Christ and
> us.  A likeness between God and us.  For Christ is the likeness of
> his Father; and not only of his Father, but of our Father, The
> Father in heaven.  And what should a child be, but like his father?
> What should man be, but like God?
> 
> But how shall we get that likeness?  How shall we get the mind of
> Christ which is the Spirit of God?
> 
> This at least we know.  That the father will surely hear the child,
> when the child cries to him.  Perhaps will hear him all the more
> tenderly, the more utterly the child has strayed away.
> 
> Our highest reason, the instincts of our own hearts, tell us so.
> Christ himself has told us so; and said to the Jews of old:  'If ye,
> being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
> more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who
> ask _him_?'
> 
> Shall give?  Yes; and has given already.  From that Spirit of God
> have come, and will always come, all our purest, highest, best
> thoughts and feelings.
> 
> From him comes all which raises us above the animals, and makes us
> really and truly men and women.  All sense of duty, obedience,
> order, justice, law; all tenderness, pity, generosity, honour,
> modesty; all this, if you will receive it, is that Christ in us of
> whom St. Paul tells us, and tells us that he is our hope of glory.
> 
> Yes, these feelings in us, which, just as far as we obey them, make
> us respect ourselves, and make us blessings to our fellow-men; what
> are they but the Spirit of Christ, the likeness of Christ, the mind
> of Christ in us; the hope of our glory; because, if we obey them, we
> shall attain to something of the true glory, the glory with which
> Christ himself is glorious.
> 
> Then let us pray to God, now in this Passion Week, to stir up in us
> that generous spirit; to deepen in us that fair likeness; to fill us
> with that noble mind.  Let us ask God to quench in us all which is
> selfish, idle, mean; to quicken to life in us all which is godlike,
> and from God; that so we may attain, at last, to the true glory, the
> glory which comes not from selfish ambition; not from selfish pride;
> not from selfish ease; but from getting rid of selfishness, in all
> its shapes.  The glory which Christ alone has in perfection.  The
> glory before which every knee will one day bow, whether in earth or
> heaven.  Even the glory of doing our duty, regardless of what it
> costs us in the station to which each of us has been called by his
> Father in heaven.  Amen.
> 
> SERMON II.  THE DIVINE HUNGER AND THIRST
> 
> (Preached before the Queen.)
> 
> Psalm xxxvi. 7, 8, 9.  How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God!
> therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of
> thy wings.  They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of
> thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy
> pleasures.  For with thee is the fountain of life:  in thy light
> shall we see light.
> 
> This is a great saying.  So great that we shall never know,
> certainly never in this life, how much it means.
> 
> It speaks of being satisfied; of what alone can satisfy a man.  It
> speaks of man as a creature who is, or rather ought to be, always
> hungering and thirsting after something better than he has, as it is
> written:  'Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after
> righteousness; for they shall be filled.'  So says David, also, in
> this Psalm.
> 
> I say man ought to be always hungering and thirsting for something
> better.  I do not mean by that that he ought to be discontented.
> Nothing less.  For just in as far as a man hungers and thirsts after
> righteousness and truth, he will hunger and thirst after nothing
> else.  As long as a man does not care for righteousness, does not
> care to be a better man himself, and to see the world better round
> him, so long will he go longing after this fine thing and that,
> tormenting himself with lusts and passions, greediness and
> covetousness of divers sorts; and little satisfaction will he get
> from them.  But, when he begins to hunger and thirst after
> righteousness, that heavenly and spiritual hunger destroys the old
> carnal hunger in him.  He cares less and less to ask, What shall I
> eat and drink, wherewithal shall I be clothed?--Or how shall I win
> for myself admiration, station, and all the fine things of this
> world?--What he thinks of more and more is,--How can I become better
> and more righteous?  How can I make my neighbours better likewise?
> How the world?  As for the good things of this life, if they will
> make me a better man, let them come.  If not, why should I care so
> much about them?  What I want is, to be righteous like God,
> beneficent and good-doing like God.
> 
> That is the man of whom it is written, that he shall be satisfied
> with the plenteousness of God's house, God's kingdom; for with God
> is the fountain of life.
> 
> Again, as long as a man has no hunger and thirst after truth, he is
> easily enough interested, though he is not satisfied.  He reads,
> perhaps, and amuses his fancy, but he does no more.  He reads again,
> really to instruct his mind, and learns about this and that:  but he
> does not learn the causes of things; the reasons of the chances and
> changes of this world; and so he is not satisfied; he takes up
> doctrines, true ones, perhaps, at secondhand out of books and out of
> sermons:, without having had any personal experience of them; and
> so, when sickness or sorrow, doubt or dread, come, they do not
> satisfy him.  Then he longs--he ought at least to long--for truth.
> He thirsts for truth.  O that I could know the truth about myself;
> about my fellow-creatures; about this world.  What am I really?
> What are they?  Where am I?  What can I know?  What ought I to do?
> I do not want secondhand names and notions.  I want to be sure.
> 
> That is the divine thirst after truth, which will surely be
> satisfied.  He will drink of the pleasure of true knowledge, as out
> of an overflowing river; and the more he knows, the more he will be
> glad to know, and the more he will find he can know, if only he
> loves truth for truth's own sake; for, as it is written, in God's
> light shall that man see light.
> 
> With God is the well of life; and in his light we shall see light.
> The first is the answer to man's hunger after righteousness, the
> second answers to his thirst after truth.
> 
> With God is the well of life.  There is the answer.  Thou wishest to
> be a good man; to live a good life; to live as a good son, good
> husband, good father, good in all the relations of humanity; as it
> is written, 'And Noah was a just man, and perfect in his
> generations; and Noah walked with God.'  Then do thou walk with God.
> For in him is the life thou wishest for.  He alone can quicken thee,
> and give thee spirit and power to fulfil thy duty in thy generation.
> Is not his Spirit the Lord and Giver of life--the only fount and
> eternal spring of life?  From him life flows out unto the smallest
> blade of grass beneath thy feet, the smallest gnat which dances in
> the sun, that it may live the life which God intends for it.  How
> much more to thee, who hast an altogether boundless power of life;
> whom God has made in his own likeness, that thou mayest be called
> his son, and live his life, and do, as Christ did, what thou seest
> thy heavenly Father do.
> 
> Thou feelest, perhaps, how poor and paltry thine own life is,
> compared with what it might have been.  Thou feelest that thou hast
> never done thy best.  When the world is praising thee most, thou art
> most ashamed of thyself.  Thou art ready to cry all day long, 'I
> have left undone that which I ought to have done;' till, at times,
> thou longest that all was over, and thou wert beginning again in
> some freer, fuller, nobler, holier life, to do and to be what thou
> hast never done nor been here; and criest with the poet--
> 
> 'Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant;
> 'Tis life, not death, for which I pant;
> More life, and fuller, that I want.
> 
> Then have patience.  With God is the fount of life.  He will refresh
> and strengthen thee; and raise thee up day by day to that new life
> for which thou longest.  Is not Holy communion his own pledge that
> he will do so?  Is not that God's own sign to thee, that though thou
> canst not feed and strengthen thine own soul, he can and will feed
> and strengthen it; and feed it--mystery of mysteries--with himself;
> that God may dwell in thee, and thou in God.  And if God and Christ
> live in thee, and work in thee to will and to do of their own good
> pleasure, that shall be enough for thee, and thou shall be
> satisfied.
> 
> And just so, again, with that same thirst after truth.  That, too,
> can only be satisfied by God, and in God.  Not by the reading of
> books, however true; not by listening to sermons, however clever;
> can we see light:  but only in the light of God.  Know God.  Know
> that he is justice itself, order itself, love itself, patience
> itself, pity itself.  In the light of that, all things will become
> light and bright to thee.  Matters which seemed to have nothing to
> do with God, the thought of God will explain to thee, if thou
> thinkest aright concerning God; and the true knowledge of him will
> be the key to all other true knowledge in heaven and earth.  For the
> fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and a good
> understanding have all they that do thereafter.  Must it not be so?
> How can it be otherwise?  For in God all live and move and have
> their being; and all things which he has made are rays from off his
> glory, and patterns of his perfect mind.  As the Maker is, so is his
> work; if, therefore, thou wouldest judge rightly of the work,
> acquaint thyself with the Maker of it, and know first, and know for
> ever, that his name is Love.
> 
> Thus, sooner or later, in God the Father's good time, will thy
> thirst for truth be satisfied, and thou shalt see the light of God.
> He may keep thee long waiting for full truth.  He may send thee by
> strange and crooked paths.  He may exercise and strain thy reason by
> doubts, mistakes, and failures; but sooner or later, if thou dost
> not faint and grow weary, he will show to thee the thing which thou
> knewest not; for he is thy Father, and wills that all his children,
> each according to their powers, should share not only in his
> goodness, but in his wisdom also.
> 
> Do any of you say, 'These are words too deep for us; they are for
> learned people, clever, great saints?'  I think not.
> 
> I have seen poor people, ignorant people, sick people, poor old
> souls on parish pay, satisfied with the plenteousness of God's
> house, and drinking so freely of God's pleasure, that they knew no
> thirst, fretted not, never were discontented.  All vain longings
> after this and that were gone from their hearts.  They had very
> little; but it seemed to be enough.  They had nothing indeed, which
> we could call pleasure in this world; but somehow what they had
> satisfied them, because it came from God.  They had a hidden
> pleasure, joy, content, and peace.
> 
> They had found out that with God was the well of life; that in God
> they lived and moved, and had their being.  And as long as their
> souls lived in God, full of the eternal life and goodness, obeying
> his laws, loving the thing which he commanded, and desiring what he
> promised, they could trust him for their poor worn-out dying bodies,
> that he would not let them perish, but raise them up again at the
> last day.  They knew very little; but what they did know was full of
> light.  Cheerful and hopeful they were always; for they saw all
> things in the light of God.  They knew that God was light, and God
> was love; that his love was shining down on them and on all around
> them, warming, cheering, quickening into life all things which he
> had made; so that when the world should have looked most dark to
> them, it looked most bright, because they saw it lightened up by the
> smile of their Father in heaven.
> 
> O may God bring us all to such an old age, that, as our mortal
> bodies decay, our souls may be renewed day by day; that as the life
> of our bodies grows cold and feeble, the life of our souls may grow
> richer, warmer, stronger, more useful to all around us, for ever and
> ever; that as the light of this life fades, the light of our souls
> may grow brighter, fuller, deeper; till all is clear to us in the
> everlasting light of God, in that perfect day for which St. Paul
> thirsted through so many weary years; when he should no more see
> through a glass darkly, or prophesy in part, and talk as a child,
> but see face to face, and know even as he was known.
> 
> SERMON III.  THE TRANSFIGURATION
> 
> (Preached before the Queen.)
> 
> Matthew xvii. 2 and 9.  And he was transfigured before them. . . .
> And he charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the
> Son of Man be risen again from the dead.
> 
> Any one who will consider the gospels, will see that there is a
> peculiar calm, a soberness and modesty about them, very different
> from what we should have expected to find in them.  Speaking, as
> they do, of the grandest person who ever trod this earth, of the
> grandest events which ever happened upon this earth--of the events,
> indeed, which settled the future of this earth for ever,--one would
> not be surprised at their using grand words--the grandest they could
> find.  If they had gone off into beautiful poetry; if they had
> filled pages with words of astonishment, admiration, delight; if
> they had told us their own thoughts and feelings at the sight of our
> Lord; if they had given us long and full descriptions of our Lord's
> face and figure, even (as forged documents have pretended to do) to
> the very colour of his hair, we should have thought it but natural.
> 
> But there is nothing of the kind in either of the four gospels, even
> when speaking of the most awful matters.  Their words are as quiet
> and simple and modest as if they were written of things which might
> be seen every day.  When they tell of our Lord's crucifixion, for
> instance, how easy, natural, harmless, right, as far as we can see,
> it would have been to have poured out their own feelings about the
> most pitiable and shameful crime ever committed upon earth; to have
> spoken out all their own pity, terror, grief, indignation; and to
> have stirred up ours thereby.  And yet all they say is,--'And they
> crucified him.'  They feel that is enough.  The deed is too dark to
> talk about.  Let it tell its own story to all human hearts.
> 
> So with this account of the Lord's transfiguration.  'And he took
> Peter, and James, and John, his brother, up into a high mountain,
> apart, and was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as
> the sun; and his raiment was white as the light; . . . and while he
> yet spake a bright cloud overshadowed them; and, behold, a voice out
> of the cloud, which said:  This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
> pleased.  Hear ye him.'
> 
> How soberly, simply, modestly, they tell this strange story.  How
> differently they might have told it.  A man might write whole poems,
> whole books of philosophy, about that transfiguration, and yet never
> reach the full depth of its beauty and of its meaning.  But the
> evangelists do not even try to do that.  As with the crucifixion, as
> with all the most wonderful passages of our Lord's life, they simply
> say what happened, and let the story bring its own message home to
> our hearts.
> 
> What may we suppose is the reason of this great stillness and
> soberness of the gospels?  I believe that it may be explained thus.
> The men who wrote them were too much _awed_ by our Lord, to make
> more words about him than they absolutely needed.
> 
> Our Lord was too utterly _beyond_ them.  They felt that they could
> not understand him; could not give a worthy picture of him.  He was
> too noble, too awful, in spite of all his tenderness, for any words
> of theirs, however fine.  We all know that the holiest things, the
> deepest feelings, the most beautiful sights, are those about which
> we talk least, and least like to hear others talk.  Putting them
> into words seems impertinent, profane.  No one needs to gild gold,
> or paint the lily.  When we see a glorious sunset; when we hear the
> rolling of the thunder-storm; we do not _talk_ about them; we do not
> begin to cry, How awful, how magnificent; we admire them in silence,
> and let them tell their own story.  Who that ever truly loved his
> wife talked about his love to her?  Who that ever came to Holy
> Communion in spirit and in truth, tried to put into words what he
> felt as he knelt before Christ's altar?  When God speaks, man had
> best keep silence.
> 
> So it was, I suppose, with the writers of the gospels.  They had
> been in too grand company for them to speak freely of what they felt
> there.  They had seen such sights, and heard such words, that they
> were inclined to be silent, and think over it all, and only wrote
> because they must write.  They felt that our Lord, as I say, was
> utterly beyond them, too unlike any one whom they had ever met
> before; too perfect, too noble, for them to talk about him.  So they
> simply set down his words as he spoke them, and his works as he did
> them, as far as they could recollect, and left them to tell their
> own story.  Even St. John, who was our Lord's beloved friend, who
> seems to have caught and copied exactly his way of speaking, seems
> to feel that there was infinitely more in our Lord than he could put
> into words, and ends with confessing,--'And there are also many more
> things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every
> one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the
> books that should be written.'
> 
> The first reason then, I suppose, for the evangelists' modesty, was
> their awe and astonishment at our Lord.  The next, I think, may have
> been that they wished to copy him, and so to please him.  It surely
> must have been so, if, as all good Christians believe, they were
> inspired to write our Lord's life.  The Lord would inspire them to
> write as he would like his life to be written, as he would have
> written it (if it be reverent to speak of such a thing) himself.
> They were inspired by Christ's Spirit; and, therefore, they wrote
> according to the Spirit of Christ, soberly, humbly, modestly,
> copying the character of Christ.
> 
> Think upon that word _modestly_.  I am not sure that it is the best;
> I only know that it is the best which I can find, to express one
> excellence which we see in our Lord, which is like what we call
> modesty in common human beings.
> 
> We all know how beautiful and noble modesty is; how we all admire
> it; how it raises a man in our eyes to see him afraid of boasting;
> never showing off; never requiring people to admire him; never
> pushing himself forward; or, if his business forces him to go into
> public, not going for the sake of display, but simply because the
> thing has to be done; and then quietly withdrawing himself when the
> thing is done, content that none should be staring at him or
> thinking of him.  This is modesty; and we admire it not only in
> young people, or those who have little cause to be proud:  we admire
> it much more in the greatest, the wisest, and the best; in those who
> have, humanly speaking, most cause to be proud.  Whenever, on the
> other hand, we see in wise and good men any vanity, boasting,
> pompousness of any kind, we call it a weakness in them, and are
> sorry to see them lowering themselves by the least want of divine
> modesty.
> 
> Now, this great grace and noble virtue should surely be in our Lord,
> from whom all graces and virtues come; and I think we need not look
> far through the gospels to find it.
> 
> See how he refused to cast himself down from the temple, and make
> himself a sign and a wonder to the Jews.  How he refused to show the
> Pharisees a sign.  How, in this very text, when it seemed good to
> him to show his glory, he takes only three favourite apostles, and
> commands them to tell no man till he be risen again.  See, again,
> how when the Jews wanted to take him by force, and make him a king,
> he escaped out of their hands.  How when He had been preaching to,
> or healing the multitude, so that they crowded on him, and became
> excited about him, he more than once immediately left them, and
> retired into a desert place to pray.
> 
> See, again, how when he did tell the Jews who he was, in words most
> awfully unmistakeable, the confession was, as it were, drawn from
> him, at the end of a long argument, when he was forced to speak out
> for truth's sake.  And, even then, how simple, how modest (if I dare
> so speak), are his words.  'Before Abraham was, I am.'  The most
> awful words ever spoken on earth; and yet most divine in their very
> simplicity.  The Maker of the world telling his creatures that he is
> their God!  What might he _not_ have said at such a moment?  What
> might we not fancy his saying?  What words, grand enough, awful
> enough, might not the evangelists have put into his mouth, if they
> had not been men full of the spirit of truth?  And yet what does the
> Lord say?  'Before Abraham was, I am.'   Could he say more?  If you
> think of the matter, No.  But could he say less?  If you think of
> the manner, No, likewise.
> 
> Truly, 'never man spake as he spake:' because never man was like
> him.  Perfect strength, wisdom, determination, endurance; and yet
> perfect meekness, simplicity, sobriety.  Zeal and modesty.  They are
> the last two virtues which go together most seldom.  In him they
> went together utterly; and were one, as he was one in spirit.
> 
> Him some of the evangelists saw, and by him all were inspired; and,
> therefore, they toned their account of him to his likeness, and, as
> it were, took their key-note from him, and made the very manner and
> language of their gospels a pattern of his manners and his life.
> 
> And, if we wanted a fresh proof (as, thank God, needs not) that the
> gospels are true, I think we might find it in this.  For when a man
> is inventing a wonderful story out of his own head, he is certain to
> dress it up in fine words, fancies, shrewd reflections of his own,
> in order to make people see, as he goes on, how wonderful it all is.
> Whereas, no books on earth which describe wonderful events, true or
> false, are so sober and simple as the gospels, which describe the
> most wonderful of all events.  And this is to me a plain proof (as I
> hope it will be to you) that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not
> inventing but telling a plain and true story, and dared not alter it
> in the least; and, again, a story so strange and beautiful, that
> they dared not try to make it more strange, or more beautiful, by
> any words of their own.
> 
> They had seen a person, to describe whom passed all their powers of
> thought and memory, much more their power of words.  A person of
> whom even St. Paul could only say, 'that he was the brightness of
> his Father's glory, and the express image of his person.'
> 
> Words in which to write of him failed them; for no words could
> suffice.  But the temper of mind in which to write of him did not
> fail them; for, by gazing on the face of the Lord, they had been
> changed, more or less, into the likeness of his glory; into that
> temper, simplicity, sobriety, gentleness, modesty, which shone forth
> in him, and shines forth still in their immortal words about him.
> God grant that it may shine forth in us.  God grant it truly.  May
> we read their words till their spirit passes into us.  May we (as
> St. Paul expresses it) looking on the face of the Lord, as into a
> glass, be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory.  May he
> who inspired them to write, inspire us to think and work, like our
> Lord, soberly, quietly, simply.  May God take out of us all pride
> and vanity, boasting and forwardness; and give us the true courage
> which shows itself by gentleness; the true wisdom which show itself
> by simplicity; and the true power which show itself by modesty.
> Amen.
> 
> SERMON IV.  A SOLDIER'S TRAINING
> 
> Luke vii. 2-9.  And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto
> him, was sick, and ready to die.  And when he heard of Jesus, he
> sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would
> come and heal his servant.  And when they came to Jesus, they
> besought him instantly, saying, That he was worthy for whom he
> should do this:  For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a
> synagogue.  Then Jesus went with them.  And when he was now not far
> from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him,
> Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldest
> enter under my roof:  Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to
> come unto thee:  but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.
> For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers,
> and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
> cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.  When Jesus
> heard these things he marvelled at him, and turned him about, and
> said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not
> found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
> 
> There is something puzzling in this speech of the centurion's.  One
> must think twice, and more than twice, to understand clearly what he
> had in his mind.  _I_, indeed, am not quite sure that I altogether
> understand it.  But I may, perhaps, help you to understand it, by
> telling you what this centurion was.
> 
> He was not a Jew.  He was a Roman, and a heathen; a man of our race,
> very likely.  And he was a centurion, a captain in the army; and
> one, mind, who had risen from the ranks, by good conduct, and good
> service.  Before he got his vine-stock, which was the mark of his
> authority over a hundred men, he had, no doubt, marched many a weary
> mile under a heavy load, and fought, probably, many a bloody battle
> in foreign parts.  That had been his education, his training,
> namely, discipline, and hard work.  And because he had learned to
> obey, he was fit to rule.  He was helping now to keep in order those
> treacherous, unruly Jews, and their worthless puppet-kings, like
> Herod; much as our soldiers in India are keeping in order the
> Hindoos, and their worthless puppet-kings.
> 
> Whether the Romans had any _right_ to conquer and keep down the Jews
> as they did, is no concern of ours just now.  But we have proof that
> what this centurion did, he did wisely and kindly.  The elders of
> the Jews said of him, that he loved the Jews, and had built them a
> synagogue, a church.  I suppose that what he had heard from them
> about a one living God, who had made all things in heaven and earth,
> and given them a law, which cannot be broken, so that all things
> obey him to this day--I suppose, I say, that this pleased him better
> than the Roman stories of many gods, who were capricious, and
> fretful, and quarrelled with each other in a fashion which ought to
> have been shocking to the conscience and reason of a disciplined
> soldier.
> 
> There was a great deal, besides, in the Old Testament, which would,
> surely, come home to a soldier's heart, when it told him of a God of
> law, and order, and justice, and might, who defended the right in
> battle, and inspired the old Jews to conquer the heathen, and to
> fight for their own liberty.  For what was it, which had enabled the
> Romans to conquer so many great nations?  What was it which enabled
> them to keep them in order, and, on the whole, make them happier,
> more peaceable, more prosperous, than they had ever been?  What was
> it which had made him, the poor common soldier, an officer, and a
> wealthy man, governing, by his little garrison of a hundred
> soldiers, this town of Capernaum, and the country round?
> 
> It was this.  Discipline; drill; obedience to authority.  That Roman
> army was the most admirably disciplined which the world till then
> had ever seen.  So, indeed, was the whole Roman Government.  Every
> man knew his place, and knew his work.  Every man had been trained
> to obey orders; if he was told to go, to go; if he was told to do,
> to do, or to die in trying to do, what he was bidden.
> 
> This was the great and true thought which had filled this good man's
> mind--duty, order, and obedience.  And by thinking of order, and
> seeing how strength, and safety, and success lie in order, and by
> giving himself up to obey orders, body and soul, like a good
> soldier, had that plain man (who had certainly no scholarship,
> perhaps could barely read or write) caught sight of a higher, wider,
> deeper order than even that of a Roman army.  He had caught sight of
> that divine and wonderful order, by which God has constituted the
> services of men, and angels, and all created things; that divine and
> wonderful order by which sun and stars, fire and hail, wind and
> vapour, cattle and creeping things fulfil his word.
> 
> Fulfil God's word.  That was the thought, surely, which was in the
> good soldier's mind, and which he was trying to speak out; clumsily,
> perhaps, but truly enough.  I suppose, then, that he thought in his
> own mind somewhat in this way.  'There is a word of command among us
> soldiers.  Has God, then, no word of command likewise?  And that
> word of command is enough.  Is not God's word of command enough
> likewise?  I merely speak, and I am obeyed.  I am merely spoken to,
> and I obey.  Shall not God merely speak, and be obeyed likewise?
> There is discipline and order among men, because it is necessary.
> An Army cannot be manoeuvred, a Government cannot be carried on,
> without it.  Is there not a discipline and order in all heaven and
> earth?  And that discipline is carried out by simple word of
> command.  A word from me will make a man rush upon certain death.  A
> word from certain other men will make me rush on certain death.  For
> I am a man under authority.  I have my tribune (colonel, as we
> should say) over me; and he, again, the perfect (general of brigade)
> over him.  Their word is enough for me.  If they want me to do a
> thing, they do not need to come under my roof, to argue with me, to
> persuade me, much less to thrust me about, and make me obey them by
> force.  They say to me, 'Go,' and I go; and I say to those under me,
> 'Go,' and they go likewise.
> 
> And if I can work by a word, cannot this Jesus work by a word
> likewise?  He is a messenger of God, with commission and authority
> from God, to work his will on his creatures.  Are not God's
> creatures as well ordered, disciplined, obedient, as we soldiers
> are?  Are they not a hundred times better ordered?  A messenger from
> God?  Is he not a God himself; a God in goodness and mercy; a God in
> miraculous power?  Cannot he do his work by a word, far more
> certainly than I can do mine?  If my word can send a man to death,
> cannot his word bring a man back to life?  Surely it can.  'Lord,
> thou needest not to come under my roof; speak the word only, and my
> servant shall be healed.'
> 
> By some such thoughts as these, I suppose, had this good soldier
> gained his great faith; his faith that all God's creatures were in a
> divine, and wonderful order, obedient to the will of God who made
> them; and that Jesus Christ was God's viceroy and lieutenant (I
> speak so, because I suppose that is what he, as a soldier, would
> have thought), to carry out God's commands on earth.
> 
> Now remember that he was the first heathen man of whom we read, that
> he acknowledged Christ.  Remember, too, that the next heathen of
> whom we read, that he acknowledged Christ, was also a Roman
> centurion, he whom the old legends call Longinus, who, when he saw
> our Lord upon the cross, said, 'Truly this _was_ the Son of God.'
> Remember, again, that the next heathen of whom we read as having
> acknowledged Christ, he to whom St. Peter was sent, at Joppa, who is
> often called the first fruits of the heathen, was a Roman centurion
> likewise.
> 
> Surely, there must have been a reason for this.  There must be a
> lesson in this; and this, I think, is the lesson.  That the
> soldierlike habit of mind is one which makes a man ready to receive
> the truth of Christ.  And why?  Because the good soldier's first and
> last thought is Duty.  To do his duty by those who are set over him,
> and to learn to do his duty to those who are set under him.  To turn
> his whole mind and soul to doing, not just what he fancies, but to
> what must be done, because it is his duty.  This is the character
> which makes a good soldier, and a good Christian likewise.  If we be
> undisciplined and undutiful, and unruly; if we be fanciful, self-
> willed, disobedient; then we shall not understand Christ, or
> Christ's rule on earth and in heaven.  If there be no order within
> us, we shall not see his divine and wonderful order all around us.
> If there be no discipline and obedience within us, we shall never
> believe really that Christ disciplines all things, and that all
> things obey him.  If there be no sense of duty in us, governing our
> whole lives and actions, we shall never perceive the true beauty and
> glory of Christ's character, who sacrificed himself for his duty,
> which was to do his Father's will.
> 
> I tell you, my friends, that nothing prevents a man from gaining
> either right doctrines or right practice, so much as the undutiful,
> unruly, self-conceited heart.  We may be full of religious
> knowledge, of devout sentiments, of heavenly aspirations:  but in
> spite of them all, we shall never get beyond false doctrine, and
> loose practice, unless we have learned to obey; to rule our own
> minds, and hearts, and tempers, soberly and patiently; to conform to
> the laws, and to all reasonable rules of society, to believe that
> God has called us to our station in life, whatever it may be; and to
> do our duty therein, as faithful soldiers and servants of Christ.
> For, if you will receive it, the beginning and the middle, and the
> end of all true religion is simply this.  To do the will of God on
> earth, as it is done in heaven.
> 
> SERMON V.  CHRIST'S SHEEP
> 
> Mark vi. 34.  And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was
> moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not
> having a shepherd:  and he began to teach them many things.
> 
> This is a text full of comfort, if we will but remember one thing:
> that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and,
> therefore, what he did when he was upon earth, he is doing now, and
> will do till the end of the world.  If we will believe this, and
> look at our Lord's doings upon earth as patterns and specimens, as
> it were, of his eternal life and character, then every verse in the
> gospels will teach us something, and be precious to us.
> 
> The people came to hear Jesus in a desert place; a wild forest
> country, among the hills on the east side of the Lake of Gennesaret.
> 'And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with
> compassion toward them, because they were as sheep having no
> shepherd:  and he taught them many things.'
> 
> And, what kind of people were these, who so moved our Lord's pity?
> The text tells us, that they were like sheep.  Now, in what way were
> they like sheep?
> 
> A sheep is simple, and harmless, and tractable, and so, I suppose,
> were these people.  They may not have been very clever and shrewd;
> not good scholars.  No doubt they were a poor, wild, ignorant, set
> of people; but they were tractable; they were willing to come and
> learn; they felt their own ignorance, and wanted to be taught.  They
> were not proud and self-sufficient, not fierce or bloodthirsty.  The
> text does not say that they were like wild beasts having no keeper:
> but like sheep having no shepherd.  And therefore Christ pitied
> them, because they were teachable, willing to be taught, and worth
> teaching; and yet had no one to teach them.
> 
> The Scribes and Pharisees, it seems, taught them nothing.  They may
> have taught the people in Jerusalem, and in the great towns,
> something:  but they seem, from all the gospels, to have cared
> little or nothing for the poor folk out in the wild mountain
> country.  They liked to live in pride and comfort in the towns, with
> their comfortable congregations round them, admiring them; but they
> had no fancy to go out into the deserts, to seek and to save those
> who were lost.  They were bad shepherds, greedy shepherds, who were
> glad enough to shear God's flock, and keep the wool themselves:  but
> they did not care to feed the flock of God.  It was too much
> trouble; and they could get no honour and no money by it.  And most
> likely they did not understand these poor people; could not speak,
> hardly understand, their country language; for these Galileans spoke
> a rough dialect, different from that of the upper classes.
> 
> So the Scribes and Pharisees looked down on them as a bad, wild, low
> set of people, with whom nothing could be done; and said, 'This
> people who knoweth not the law, is accursed.'
> 
> But what they would not do, God himself would.  God in Christ had
> come to feed his own flock, and to seek the lost sheep, and bring
> them gently home to God's fold.  He could feel for these poor wild
> foresters and mountain shepherds; he could understand what was in
> their hearts; for he knew the heart of man; and, therefore, he could
> make them understand him.  And it was for this very reason, one
> might suppose, that our Lord was willing to be brought up at
> Nazareth, that he might learn the country speech, and country ways,
> and that the people might grow to look on him as one of themselves.
> Those Scribes and Pharisees, one may suppose, were just the people
> whom they could not understand; fine, rich scholars, proud people
> talking very learnedly about deep doctrines.  The country folk must
> have looked at them as if they belonged to some other world, and
> said,--Those Pharisees cannot understand us, any more than we can
> them, with their hard rules about this and that.  Easy enough for
> rich men like them to make rules for poor ones.  Indeed our Lord
> said the very same of them--'Binding heavy burdens, and grievous to
> be borne, and laying them on men's shoulders; while they themselves
> would not touch them with one of their fingers.'
> 
> Then the Lord himself came and preached to these poor wild folk, and
> they heard him gladly.  And why?  Because his speech was too deep
> for them?  Because he scolded and threatened them?  No.
> 
> We never find that our Lord spoke harshly to them.  They had plenty
> of sins, and he knew it:  but it is most remarkable that the
> Evangelists never tell us what he said about those sins.  What they
> do tell us is, that he spoke to them of the common things around
> them, of the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, of sowing
> and reaping, and feeding sheep; and taught them by parables, taken
> from the common country life which they lived, and the common
> country things which they saw; and shewed them how the kingdom of
> God was like unto this and that which they had seen from their
> childhood, and how earth was a pattern of heaven.  And they could
> understand that.  Not all of it perhaps:  but still they heard him
> gladly.  His preaching made them understand themselves, and their
> own souls, and what God felt for them, and what was right and wrong,
> and what would become of them, as they never felt before.  It is
> plain and certain that the country people could understand Christ's
> parables, when the Scribes and Pharisees could not.  The Scribes and
> Pharisees, in spite of all their learning, were those who were
> without (as our Lord said); who had eyes and could not see, and ears
> and could not hear, for their hearts were grown fat and gross.  With
> all their learning, they were not wise enough to understand the
> message which God sends in every flower and every sunbeam; the
> message which Christ preached to the poor, and the poor heard him
> gladly; the message which he confirmed to them by his miracles.  For
> what were his miracles like?  Did he call down lightning to strike
> sinners dead, or call up earthquakes, to swallow them?  No; he went
> about healing the sick, cleansing the leper, feeding the hungry in
> the wilderness; that therefore they might see by his example, the
> glory of their Father in heaven, and understand that God is a God of
> Love, of mercy, a deliverer, a Saviour, and not, as the Scribes and
> Pharisees made him out, a hard taskmaster, keeping his anger for
> ever, and extreme to mark what was done amiss.
> 
> Ah that, be sure, was what made the Scribes and Pharisees more mad
> than anything else against Christ, that he spoke to the poor
> ignorant people of their Father in heaven.  It made them envious
> enough to see the poor people listening to Christ, when they would
> not listen to them; but when he told these poor folk, whom they
> called 'accursed and lost sinners,' that God in heaven was their
> Father, then no name was too bad for our Lord; and they called him
> the worst name which they could think of--a friend of publicans and
> sinners.  That was the worst name, in their eyes:  and yet, in
> reality, it was the highest honour.  But they never forgave him.
> How could they?  They felt that if he was doing God's work, they
> were doing the devil's, that either he or they must be utterly
> wrong:  and they never rested till they crucified him, and stopped
> him for ever, as they fancied, from telling poor ignorant people
> laden with sins to consider the flowers of the field how they grow,
> and learn from them that they have a Father in heaven who knoweth
> what they have need of before they ask him.
> 
> But they did not stop Christ:  and, what is more, they will never
> stop him.  He has said it, and it remains true for ever; for he is
> saying it over and over again, in a thousand ways, to his sheep,
> when they are wandering without a shepherd.
> 
> Only let them be Christ's sheep, and he will have compassion on
> them, and teach them many things.  Many may neglect them:  but
> Christ will not.  Whoever you may be, however simple you are,
> however ignorant, however lonely, still, if you are one of Christ's
> sheep, if you are harmless and teachable, willing and wishing to
> learn what is right, then Christ will surely teach you in his good
> time.  There never was a soul on earth, I believe, who really wished
> for God's light, but what God's light came to it at last, as it will
> to you, if you be Christ's sheep.  If you are proud and conceited,
> you will learn nothing.  If you are fierce and headstrong, you will
> learn nothing.  If you are patient and gentle, you will learn all
> that you need to know; for Christ will teach you.  He has many ways
> of teaching you.  By his ministers; by the Bible; by books; by good
> friends; by sorrows and troubles; by blessings and comforts; by
> stirring up your mind to think over the common things which lie all
> around you in your daily work.  But what need for me to go on
> counting by how many ways Christ will lead you, when he has more
> ways than man ever dreamed of?  Who hath known the mind of the Lord;
> or who shall be his counsellor?  Only be sure that he will teach
> you, if you wish to learn; and be sure that this is what he will
> teach you--to know the glory of his Father and your Father, whose
> name is Love.
> 
> SERMON VI.  THE HEARING EAR AND THE SEEING EYE
> 
> Proverbs xx. 12.  The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath
> made even both of them.
> 
> This saying may seem at first a very simple one; and some may ask,
> What need to tell us that?  We know it already.  God, who made all
> things, made the ear and the eye likewise.
> 
> True, my friends:  but the simplest texts are often the deepest; and
> that, just because they speak to us of the most common things.  For
> the most common things are often the most wonderful, and deep, and
> difficult to understand.
> 
> The hearing of the ear, and the seeing of the eye.--Every one hears
> and sees all day long, so perpetually that we never think about our
> hearing or sight, unless we find them fail us.  And yet, how
> wonderful are hearing and sight.  How we hear, how we see, no man
> knows, and perhaps ever will know.
> 
> When the ear is dissected and examined, it is found to be a piece of
> machinery infinitely beyond the skill of mortal man to make.  The
> tiny drum of the ear, which quivers with every sound which strikes
> it, puts to shame with its divine workmanship all the clumsy
> workmanship of man.  But recollect that _it_ is not all the wonder,
> but only the beginning of it.  The ear is wonderful:  but still more
> wonderful is it how the ear _hears_.  It is wonderful, I mean, how
> the ear should be so made, that each different sound sets it in
> motion in a different way:  but still more wonderful, how that sound
> should pass up from the ear to the nerves and brain, so that we
> _hear_.  Therein is a mystery which no mortal man can explain.
> 
> So of the eye.  All the telescopes and microscopes which man makes,
> curiously and cunningly as they are made, are clumsy things compared
> with the divine workmanship of the eye.  I cannot describe it to
> you; nor, if I could, is this altogether a fit place to do so.  But
> if any one wishes to see the greatness and the glory of God, and be
> overwhelmed with the sense of his own ignorance, and of God's
> wisdom, let him read any book which describes to him the eye of man,
> or even of beast, and then say with the psalmist, 'I am fearfully
> and wonderfully made.  Marvellous are thy works, O Lord, and that my
> soul knoweth right well.'
> 
> And remember, that as with the ear, so with the eye, the mere
> workmanship of it is only the beginning of the wonder.  It is very
> wonderful that the eye should be able to take a picture of each
> thing in front of it; that on the tiny black curtain at the back of
> the eye, each thing outside should be printed, as it were,
> instantly, exact in shape and colour.  But that is not sight.  Sight
> is a greater wonder, over and above that.  Seeing is this, that the
> picture which is printed on the back of the eye, is also printed on
> our brain, so that we _see_ it.  There is the wonder of wonders.
> 
> Do some of you not understand me?  Then look at it thus.  If you
> took out the eye of an animal, and held it up to anything, a man or
> a tree, a perfect picture of that man or that tree would be printed
> on the back of the dead eye:  but the eye would not _see_ it.  And
> why?  Because it is cut off from the live brain of the animal to
> which it belonged; and therefore, though the picture is still in the
> eye, it sends no message about itself up to the brain, and is not
> seen.
> 
> And how does the picture on the eye send its message about itself to
> the brain, so that the brain sees it?  And how, again--for here is a
> third wonder, greater still--do _we_ ourselves see what our brain
> sees?
> 
> That no man knows, and, perhaps, never will know in this world.  For
> science, as it is called, that is, the understanding of this world,
> and what goes on therein, can only tell us as yet what happens, what
> God does:  but of how God does it, it can tell us little or nothing;
> and of why God does it, nothing at all; and all we can say is, at
> every turn, "God is great."
> 
> Mind, again, that these are not all the wonders which are in the ear
> and in the eye.  It is wonderful enough, that our brains should hear
> through our ears, and see through our eyes:  but it is more
> wonderful still, that they should be able to recollect what they
> have heard and seen.  That you and I should be able to call up in
> our minds a sound which we heard yesterday, or even a minute ago, is
> to me one of the most utterly astonishing things I know of.  And so
> of ordinary recollection.  What is it that we call remembering a
> place, remembering a person's face?  That place, or that face, was
> actually printed, as it were, through our eye upon our brain.  We
> have a picture of it somewhere; we know not where, inside us.  But
> that we should be able to call that picture up again, and look at it
> with what we rightly call our mind's eye, whenever we choose; and
> not merely that one picture only, but thousands of such;--that is a
> wonder, indeed, which passes understanding.  Consider the hundreds
> of human faces, the hundreds of different things and places, which
> you can recollect; and then consider that all those different
> pictures are lying, as it were, over each other in hundreds in that
> small place, your brain, for the most part without interfering with,
> or rubbing out each other, each ready to be called up, recollected,
> and used in its turn.
> 
> If this is not wonderful, what is?  So wonderful, that no man knows,
> or, I think, ever will know, how it comes to pass.  How the eye
> tells the brain of the picture which is drawn upon the back of the
> eve--how the brain calls up that picture when it likes--these are
> two mysteries beyond all man's wisdom to explain.  These are two
> proofs of the wisdom and the power of God, which ought to sink
> deeper into our hearts than all signs and wonders;--greater proofs
> of God's power and wisdom, than if yon fir-trees burst into flame of
> themselves, or yon ground opened, and a fountain of water sprung
> out.  Most people think much of signs and wonders.  Just in
> proportion as they have no real faith in God, just in proportion as
> they forget God, and will not see that he is about their path, and
> about their bed, and spying out all their ways, they are like those
> godless Scribes and Pharisees of old, who must have signs and
> wonders before they would believe.  So it is:  the commonest things
> are as wonderful, more wonderful, than the uncommon; and yet, people
> will hanker after the uncommon, as if they belonged to God more
> immediately than the commonest matters.
> 
> If yon trees burst out in flame; if yon hill opened, and a fountain
> sprang up, how many would cry, 'How awful!  How wonderful!  Here is
> a sign that God is near us!  It is time to think about our souls
> now!  Perhaps the end of the world is at hand!'  And all the while
> they would be blind to that far more awful proof of God's presence,
> that all around them, all day long, all over the world, millions of
> human ears are hearing, millions of human eyes are seeing, God alone
> knows how; millions of human brains are recollecting, God alone
> knows how.  That is not faith, my friends, to see God only in what
> is strange and rare:  but this is faith, to see God in what is most
> common and simple; to know God's greatness not so much from
> disorder, as from order; not so much from those strange sights in
> which God seems (but only seems) to break his laws, as from those
> common ones in which he fulfils his laws.
> 
> I know it is very difficult to believe that.  It has been always
> difficult; and for this reason.  Our souls and minds are disorderly;
> and therefore order does not look to us what it is, the likeness and
> glory of God.  I will explain.  If God, at any moment, should create
> a full-grown plant with stalk, leaves, and flowers, all perfect, all
> would say, There is the hand of God!  How great is God!  There is,
> indeed, a miracle!--Just because it would seem not to be according
> to order.  But the tiny seed sown in the ground, springing up into
> root-leaf, stalk, rough leaf, flower, seed, which will again be sown
> and spring up into leaf, flower, and seed;--in that perpetual
> miracle, people see no miracle:  just because it is according to
> order:  because it comes to pass by regular and natural laws.  And
> why?  Because, such as we are, such we fancy God to be.  And we are
> all of us more or less disorderly:  fanciful; changeable; fond of
> doing not what we ought, but what we like; fond of showing our
> power, not by keeping rules, but by breaking rules; and we fancy too
> often that God is like ourselves, and make him in our image, after
> our own likeness, which is disorder, and self-will, and
> changeableness; instead of trying to be conformed to his image and
> his likeness, which is order and law eternal:  and, therefore,
> whenever God seems (for he only _seems_ to our ignorance) to be
> making things suddenly, as we make, or working arbitrarily as we
> work, then we acknowledge his greatness and wisdom.  Whereas his
> greatness, his wisdom, are rather shown in not making as we make,
> not working as we work:  but in this is the greatness of God
> manifest, in that he has ordained laws which must work of
> themselves, and with which he need never interfere:  laws by which
> the tiny seed, made up only (as far as we can see) of a little
> water, and air, and earth, must grow up into plant, leaf, and
> flower, utterly unlike itself, and must produce seeds which have the
> truly miraculous power of growing up in their turn, into plants
> exactly like that from which they sprung, and no other.  Ah, my
> friends, herein is the glory of God:  and he who will consider the
> lilies of the field, how they grow, that man will see at last that
> the highest, and therefore the truest, notion of God is, not that
> the universe is continually going wrong, so that he has to interfere
> and right it:  but that the universe is continually going right,
> because he hath given it a law which cannot be broken.
> 
> And when a man sees that, there will arise within his soul a clear
> light, and an awful joy, and an abiding peace, and a sure hope; and
> a faith as of a little child.
> 
> Then will that man crave no more for signs and wonders, with the
> superstitious and the unbelieving, who have eyes, and see not; ears,
> and cannot hear; whose hearts are waxen gross, so that they cannot
> consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:  but all his cry
> will be to the Lord of Order, to make him orderly; to the Lord of
> Law, to make him loyal; to the Lord in whom is nothing arbitrary, to
> take out of him all that is unreasonable and self-willed; and make
> him content, like his Master Christ before him, to do the will of
> his Father in heaven, who has sent him into this noble world.  He
> will no longer fancy that God is an absent God, who only comes down
> now and then to visit the earth in signs and wonders:  but he will
> know that God is everywhere, and over all things, from the greatest
> to the least; for in God, he, and all things created, live and move
> and have their being.  And therefore, knowing that he is always in
> the presence of God, he will pray to be taught how to use all his
> powers aright, because all of them are the powers of God; pray to be
> taught how to see, and how to hear; pray that when he is called to
> account for the use of this wonderful body which God has bestowed on
> him, he may not be brought to shame by the thought that he has used
> it merely for his own profit or his own pleasure, much less by the
> thought that he has weakened and diseased it by misuse and neglect:
> but comforted by the thought that he has done with it what the Lord
> Jesus did with his body--made it the useful servant, and not the
> brutal master, of his immortal soul.
> 
> And he will do that, I believe, just as far as he keeps in mind what
> a wonderful and useful thing his body is; what a perpetual token and
> witness to him of the unspeakable greatness and wisdom of God; just
> in proportion as he says day by day, with the Psalmist, 'Thou hast
> fashioned me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.  Such
> knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me; I cannot attain
> unto it.  Whither shall I go, then, from thy Spirit; or whither
> shall I go from thy presence?  If I climb up into heaven, thou art
> there.  If I go down to hell, thou art there also.  If I take the
> wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea,
> even there also shall thy hand lead me, thy right hand shall hold
> me.'
> 
> Just in proportion as he recollects that, will he utter from his
> heart the prayer which follows, 'Try me, O God, and seek the ground
> of my heart; prove me, and examine my thoughts.  Look well if there
> be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'
> 
> SERMON VII.  THE VICTORY OF FAITH
> 
> (First Sunday after Easter.)
> 
> 1 John v. 4, 5.  Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world:
> and this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.
> Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that
> Jesus is the Son of God?
> 
> What is the meaning of 'overcoming the world?'  What is there about
> the world which we have to overcome? lest it should overcome us, and
> make worse men of us than we ought to be.  Let us think awhile.
> 
> 1.  In the world all seems full of chance and change.  One man
> rises, and another falls, one hardly knows why:  they hardly know
> themselves.  A very slight accident may turn the future of a man's
> whole life, perhaps of a whole nation.  Chance and change--there
> seems to us, at times, to be little else than chance and change.  Is
> not the world full of chance?  Are not people daily crushed in
> railways, burnt to death, shot with their own guns, poisoned by
> mistake, without any reason that we can see, why one should be
> taken, and another left?  Why should not an accident happen to us,
> as well as to others?  Why should not we have the thing we love best
> snatched from us this day?  Why not, indeed?  What, then, will help
> us to overcome the fear of chances and accidents?  How shall we keep
> from being fearful, fretful, full of melancholy forebodings!  Where
> shall we find something abiding and eternal, a refuge sure and
> steadfast, in which we may trust, amid all the chances and changes
> of this mortal life?  St. John tells us--In that within you which is
> born of God.
> 
> 2.  In the world so much seems to go by fixed law and rule.  That is
> even more terrible to our minds and hearts--to find that all around
> us, in the pettiest matters of life, there are laws and rules ready
> made for us, which we cannot break; laws of trade; laws of
> prosperity and adversity; laws of health and sickness; laws of
> weather and storms; laws by which not merely we, but whole nations,
> grow, and decay, and die.--All around us, laws, iron laws, which we
> do not make, and which we dare not try to break, lest they go on
> their way, and grind us to powder.
> 
> Then comes the awful question, Are we at the mercy of these laws?
> Is the world a great machine, which goes grinding on its own way
> without any mercy to us or to anything; and are we each of us parts
> of the machine, and forced of necessity to do all we do?  Is it
> true, that our fate is fixed for us from the cradle to the grave,
> and perhaps beyond the grave?  How shall we prevent the world from
> overcoming us in this?  How shall we escape the temptation to sit
> down and fold our hands in sloth and despair, crying, What we are,
> we must be; and what will come, must come; whether it be for our
> happiness or misery, our life or death?  Where shall we find
> something to trust in, something to give us confidence and hope that
> we can mend ourselves, that self-improvement is of use, that working
> is of use, that prudence is of use, for God will reward every man
> according to his work?  St. John tells us--In that within you which
> is born of God.
> 
> 3.  Then, again, in the world how much seems to go by selfishness.
> Let every man take care of himself, help himself, fight for himself
> against all around him, seems to be the way of the world, and the
> only way to get on in the world.  But is it really to be so?  Are we
> to thrive only by thinking of ourselves?  Something in our hearts
> tells us, No.  Something in our hearts tells us that this would be a
> very miserable world if every man shifted for himself; and that even
> if we got this world's good things by selfishness, they would not be
> worth having after all, if we had no one but ourselves to enjoy them
> with.  What is that?  St. John answers--That in you which is born of
> God.  It will enable you to overcome the world's deceits, and to see
> that selfishness is _not_ the way to prosper.
> 
> 4.  Once, again; in the world how much seems to go by mere custom
> and fashion.  Because one person does a thing right or wrong,
> everybody round fancies himself bound to do likewise.  Because one
> man thinks a thing, hundreds and thousands begin to think the same
> from mere hearsay, without examining and judging for themselves.
> There is no silliness, no cruelty, no crime into which people have
> not fallen, and may still fall, for mere fashion's sake, from
> blindly following the example of those round him.  'Everybody does
> so; and I must.  Why should I be singular?'  Or, 'Everybody does so;
> what harm can there be in my doing so?'
> 
> But there is something in each of us which tells us that that is not
> right; that each man should act according to his own conscience, and
> not blindly follow his neighbour, not knowing whither, like sheep
> over a hedge; that a man is directly responsible at first for his
> own conduct to God, and that 'my neighbours did so' will be no
> excuse in God's sight.  What is it which tells us this?  St. John
> answers, That in you which is born of God; and it, if you will
> listen to it, will enable you to overcome the world's deceit, and
> its vain fashions, and foolish hearsays, and blind party-cries; and
> not to follow after a multitude to do evil.
> 
> What, then, is this thing?  St. John tells us that it is born of
> God; and that it is our faith.  _Faith_ will enable us to overcome
> the world.  We shall overcome by believing and trusting in something
> which we do not see.  But in what?  Are we to believe and trust that
> we are going to heaven?  St. John does not say so; he was far too
> wise, my friends, to say so:  for a man's trusting that he is going
> to heaven, if that is all the faith he has, is more likely to make
> the world overcome him, than him overcome the world.  For it will
> make him but too ready to say, 'If I am sure to be saved after I
> die, it matters not so very much what I do before I die.  I may
> follow the way of the world here, in money-making and meanness, and
> selfishness; and then die in peace, and go to heaven after all.'
> 
> This is no fancy.  There are hundreds, nay thousands, I fear, in
> England now, who let the world and its wicked ways utterly overcome
> them, just because their faith is a faith in their own salvation,
> and not the faith of which St. John speaks--Believing that Jesus is
> the Son of God.
> 
> But some may ask, 'How will believing that Jesus is the Son of God
> help us more than believing the other?  For, after all, we do
> believe it.  We all believe that Jesus is the Son of God:  but as
> for overcoming the world, we dare not say too much of that.  We fear
> we are letting the world overcome us; we are living too much in
> continual fear of the chances and changes of this mortal life.  We
> are letting things go too much their own way.  We are trying too
> much each to get what he can by his own selfish wits, without
> considering his neighbours.  We are following too much the ways and
> fashions of the day, and doing and saying and thinking anything that
> comes uppermost, just because others do so round us.'
> 
> Is it so, my friends?  But do you really believe that Jesus is the
> Son of God?  For sure I am, that if you did, and I did, really and
> fully believe that, we could all lead much better lives than we are
> leading, manful and godly, useful and honourable, truly independent
> and yet truly humble; fearing God and fearing nothing else.  But do
> you believe it?  Have you ever thought of all that those great words
> mean, 'Jesus is the Son of God'?--That he who died on the cross, and
> rose again for us, now sits at God's right hand, having all power
> given to him in heaven and earth?  For, think, if we really believed
> that, what power it would give us to overcome the world, and all its
> chances and changes; all its seemingly iron laws; all its selfish
> struggling; all its hearsays and fashions.
> 
> 1.  Those chances and changes of mortal life of which I spoke first.
> We should not be afraid of them, then, even if they came.  For we
> should believe that they were not chances and changes at all, but
> the loving providence of our Lord and Saviour, a man of the
> substance of his mother, born in the world, who therefore can be
> touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and knows our necessities
> before we ask, and our ignorance in asking, and orders all things
> for good to those who love him, and desire to copy his likeness.
> 
> 2.  Those stern laws and rules by which the world moves, and will
> move as long as it lasts--we should not be afraid of them either, as
> if we were mere parts of a machine forced by fate to do this thing
> and that, without a will of our own.  For we should believe that
> these laws were the laws of the Lord Jesus Christ; that he had
> ordained them for the good of man, of man whom he so loved that he
> poured out his most precious blood upon the cross for us; and
> therefore we should not fear them; we should only wish to learn
> them, that we might obey them, sure that they are the laws of life;
> of health and wealth, peace and safety, honour and glory in this
> world and in the world to come; and we should thank God whenever men
> of science, philosophers, clergymen, or any persons whatsoever,
> found out more of the laws of that good God, in whom we and all
> created things live and move and have our being.
> 
> 3.  If we believe really that Jesus was the Son of God, we should
> never believe that selfishness was to be the rule of our lives.  One
> sight of Christ upon his cross would tell us that not selfishness,
> but love, was the likeness of God, that not selfishness, but love,
> which gives up all that it may do good, was the path to honour and
> glory, happiness and peace.
> 
> 4.  If we really believe this, we should never believe that custom
> and fashion ought to rule us.  For we should live by the example of
> some one else:  but by the example of only one--of Jesus himself.
> We should set him before us as the rule of all our actions, and try
> to keep our conscience pure, not merely in the sight of men who may
> mistake, and do mistake, but in the sight of Jesus, the Word of God,
> who pierces the very thoughts and intents of the heart; and we
> should say daily with St. Paul, 'It is a small thing for me to be
> judged by you, or any man's judgment, for he that judges me is the
> Lord.'
> 
> And so we should overcome the world.  Our hearts and spirits would
> rise above the false shows of things, to God who has made all
> things; above fear and melancholy; above laziness and despair; above
> selfishness and covetousness, above custom and fashion; up to the
> everlasting truth and order, which is the mind of God; that so we
> might live joyfully and freely in the faith and trust that Christ is
> our king, Christ is our Saviour, Christ is our example, Christ is
> our judge; and that as long as we are loyal to him, all will be well
> with us in this world, and in all worlds to come.--Amen.
> 
> SERMON VIII.  TURNING-POINTS
> 
> Luke xix. 41, 42.  And when Jesus was come near, he beheld the city,
> and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least
> in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now
> they are hid from thine eyes.
> 
> My dear friends, here is a solemn lesson to be learnt from this
> text.  What is true of whole nations, and of whole churches, is very
> often true of single persons--of each of us.
> 
> To most men--to all baptized Christian men, perhaps--there comes a
> day of visitation, a crisis, or turning-point in our lives.  A day
> when Christ sets before us, as he did to those Jews, good and evil,
> light and darkness, right and wrong, and says, Choose!  Choose at
> once, and choose for ever; for by what you choose this day, by that
> you must abide till death.  If you make a mistake now, you will rue
> it to the last.  If you take the downward road now, you will fall
> lower and lower upon it henceforth.  If you shut your eyes now to
> the things which belong to your peace, they will be hid from your
> eyes for ever; and nothing but darkness, ignorance, and confusion
> will be before you henceforth.
> 
> What will become of the man's soul after he dies, I cannot say.
> Christ is his judge, and not I.  He may be saved, yet so as by fire,
> as St. Paul says.  Repentance is open to all men, and forgiveness
> for those who repent.  But from that day, if he chooses wrongly,
> true repentance will grow harder and harder to him--perhaps
> impossible at last.  He has made his bed, and he must lie on it.  He
> has chosen the evil, and refused the good; and now the evil must go
> on getting more and more power over him.  He has sold his soul, and
> now he must pay the price.  Again, I say, he may be saved at last.
> Who am I, to say that God's mercy is not boundless, when the Bible
> says it is?  But one may well say of that man, 'God help him,' for
> he will not be able to help himself henceforth.
> 
> It is an awful thing, my friends, to think that we may fix our own
> fate in this world, perhaps in the world to come, by one act of
> wilful folly or sin:  but so it is.  Just as a man may do one tricky
> thing about money, which will force him to do another to hide it,
> and another after that, till he becomes a confirmed rogue in spite
> of himself.  Just as a man may run into debt once, so that he never
> gets out of debt again; just as a man may take to drink once, and
> the bad habit grow on him till he is a confirmed drunkard to his
> dying day.  Just as a man may mix in bad company once, and so become
> entangled as in a net, till he cannot escape his evil companions,
> and lowers himself to their level day by day, till he becomes as bad
> as they.  Just as a man may be unfaithful to his wife once, and so
> blunt his conscience till he becomes a thorough profligate, breaking
> her heart, and ruining his own soul.  Just as--but why should I go
> on, mentioning ugly examples, which we all know too well, if we will
> open our own eyes and see the world and mankind as they are?  I will
> say no more, lest I should set you on judging other people, and
> saying 'There is no hope for them.  They are lost.'  No; let us
> rather judge ourselves, as any man can, and will, who dares face
> fact, and look steadily at what he is, and what he might become.  Do
> we not know that we could, any one of us, sell our own souls, once
> and for all, if we choose?  I know that I could.  I know that there
> are things which I might do, which if I did from that moment forth,
> I should have no hope, but only a fearful looking forward to
> judgment and fiery indignation.  And have you never felt, when you
> were tempted to do wrong:  'I dare not do it for my own sake; for if
> I did this one wickedness, I feel sure that I never should be an
> honest man again?'  If you have felt that, thank God, indeed; for
> then you have seen the things which belong to your peace; you have
> known the day of your visitation; and you will be a better man as
> long as you live, for having fought against that one temptation, and
> chosen the good, and refused the evil, when God put them
> unmistakeably before you.
> 
> No; the real danger is, lest a man should be as those Jews, and not
> know the day of his visitation.  Ah, that is ruinous indeed, when a
> man's eyes are blinded as those Jews' eyes were; when a great
> temptation comes on him, and he thinks it no temptation at all; when
> hell is opening beneath him, with the devils trying to pluck him
> down, and heaven opening above him, with God's saints and martyrs
> beckoning him up, looking with eyes of unutterable pity and anxiety
> and love on a poor soul; and that poor soul sees neither heaven nor
> hell, nor anything but his own selfish interest, selfish pleasure,
> or selfish pride, and snaps at the devil's bait as easily as a silly
> fish; while the devil, instead of striking to frighten him, lets him
> play with the bait, and gorge it in peace, fancying that he is well
> off, when really he is fast hooked for ever, led captive thenceforth
> from bad to worse by the snare of the devil.  Oh miserable
> blindness, which comes over men sometimes, and keeps them asleep at
> the very moment that they ought to be most wide awake!
> 
> And what throws men into that sleep?  What makes them do in one
> minute something which curses all their lives afterwards?  Love of
> pleasure?  Yes:  that is a common curse enough, as we all know.  But
> a worse snare than even that is pride and self-conceit.  That was
> what ruined those old Jews.  That was what blinded their eyes.  They
> had made up their minds that they saw; therefore they were blind:
> that they could not go wrong; therefore they went utterly and
> horribly wrong thenceforth:  that they alone of all people knew and
> kept God's law; therefore they crucified the Son of God himself for
> fulfilling their law.  They were taken unawares, because they were
> asleep in vain security.
> 
> And so with us.  By conceit and carelessness, we may ruin ourselves
> in a moment, once and for all.  When a man has made up his mind that
> he is quite worldly-wise; that no one can take him in; that he
> thoroughly understands his own interest; then is that man ripe and
> ready to commit some enormous folly, which may bring him to ruin.
> 
> When a man has made up his mind that he knows all doctrines, and is
> fully instructed in religion, and can afford to look down on all who
> differ from him; then is that man ripe and ready for doing something
> plainly wrong and wicked, which will blunt his conscience from that
> day forth, and teach him to call evil good, and good evil more and
> more; till, in the midst of all his fine religious professions, he
> knows not plain right from plain wrong--full of the form of
> godliness, but denying the power of it in scandal of his every-day
> life.
> 
> Yes, my friends, our only safeguard is humility.  Be not high-
> minded, but fear.  Avoid every appearance of evil.  Believe that in
> every temptation heaven and hell may be at stake:  and that the only
> way to be safe is to do nothing wilfully wrong at all, for you never
> know how far downward one wilful sin may lead you.  The devil is not
> simple enough to let you see the bottom of his pitfall:  but it is
> so deep, nevertheless, that he who falls in, may never get out
> again.
> 
> And do not say in your hearts about this thing and that, 'Well, it
> is wrong:  but it is such a little matter.'  A little draught may
> give a great cold; and a great cold grow to a deadly decline.  A
> little sin may grow to a great bad habit; and a great bad habit may
> kill both body and soul in hell.  A little bait may take a great
> fish; and the devil fishes with a very fine line, and is not going
> to let you see his hook.  The only way to be safe is to avoid all
> appearance of evil, lest when you fancy yourself most completely
> your own master, you find yourself the slave of sin.
> 
> Oh, may God give us all the spirit of watchfulness and godly fear!
> Of watchfulness, lest sin overtake us unawares; and of godly fear,
> that we may have strength to say with Joseph, 'How can I do this
> great wickedness, and sin against God?'  Of watchfulness, too, not
> only against sin, but for God; of godly fear, not only fear of God's
> anger, but fear of God's love.
> 
> Do you ask what I mean?  This, my friends; that as we cannot tell at
> any moment what danger may be coming on us, so we cannot tell at any
> moment what blessing from God may be coming on us.  Those Jews, in
> the day of their visitation, were blind, and they rejected Christ:
> but recollect, that it was _Christ_ whom they rejected; that Christ
> was there, not in anger, but in love; not to judge, but to save;
> that the power of the Lord was present, not to destroy, but to heal
> them.  They would have none of him.  True; but they might have had
> him if they had chosen.  They denied him; but he could not deny
> himself.  He was there to teach and to save, as he comes to teach
> and to save every man.
> 
> Therefore, I say, be watchful.  Believe that Christ is looking for
> you always, and expect to meet him at any moment.  I do not mean in
> visible form, in vision or apparition.  No.  He comes, not by
> observation, that a man may say, 'Lo, here; and lo, there;' but he
> comes within you, to your hearts, with the still, small voice, which
> softens a man and sobers him for a moment, and makes him yearn after
> good, and say in his heart, 'Ah, that I were as when I was a child
> upon my mother's knee.'  Oh! listen to that softening, sobering
> voice.  Through very small things it may speak to you:  but it is
> Christ himself who speaks.  Whenever your heart is softened to
> affection toward parent, or child, or your fellowman, then Christ is
> speaking to you, and showing you the things which belong to your
> peace.  Whenever the feeling of justice, and righteous horror of all
> meanness rises strong in you, then Christ is speaking to you.
> Whenever your heart burns within you with admiration of some noble
> action, then Christ is speaking to you.  Whenever a chance word in
> sermons or in books touches your conscience, and reproves you, then
> Christ is speaking to you.  Oh turn not a deaf ear to those
> instincts.  They may be the very turning-points of your lives.  One
> such godly motion, one such pure inspiration of the Spirit of God
> listened to humbly, and obeyed heartily, may be the means of putting
> you into the right path thenceforward, that you may go on and grow
> in strength and wisdom, and favour with God and man; till you become
> again, in the world to come, what you were when you were carried
> home from the baptismal font, a little child, pure from all spot of
> sin.
> 
> SERMON IX.  OBADIAH
> 
> 1 Kings, xviii. 3, 4.  And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the
> governor of his house.  (Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly:  for
> it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that
> Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave,
> and fed them with bread and water.)
> 
> This is the first and last time throughout the Bible, that we find
> this Obadiah mentioned.  We find the same name elsewhere, but not
> the same person.  It is a common Jewish name, Obadiah, and means, I
> believe, the servant of the Lord.
> 
> All we know of the man is contained in this chapter.  We do not read
> what became of him afterwards.  He vanishes out of the story as
> quickly as he came into it, and, as we go on through the chapter and
> read of that grand judgment at Carmel between Elijah and the priests
> of Baal, and the fire of God which came down from heaven, to shew
> that the Lord was God, we forget Obadiah, and care to hear of him no
> more.
> 
> And yet Obadiah was a great man in his day.  He was, it seems, King
> Ahab's vizier, or prime minister; the second man in the country
> after the king; and a prime minister in those eastern kingdoms had,
> and has now, far greater power than he has in a free country like
> this.  Yes, Obadiah was a great man in his day, I doubt not; and
> people bowed before him when he went out, and looked up to him, in
> that lawless country, for life or death, for ruin or prosperity.
> Their money, and their land, their very lives might depend on his
> taking a liking toward them, or a spite against them.  And he had
> wealth, no doubt, and his fair and great house there among the
> beautiful hills of Samaria, ceiled with cedar and painted with
> vermilion, with its olive groves and vineyards, and rich gardens
> full of gay flowers and sweet spices, figs and peaches, and
> pomegranates, and all the lovely vegetation which makes those
> Eastern gardens like Paradise itself.  And he had his great
> household of slaves, men-servants and maidservants, guards and
> footmen, singing men and singing women--perhaps a hundred souls and
> more eating and drinking in his house day by day for many a year.  A
> great man; full of wealth, and pomp, and power.  We know that it
> must have been so, because we know well in what luxury those great
> men in the East lived.  But where is it now?
> 
> Where is it now?  Vanished and forgotten.  Be not thou afraid,
> though one be made rich, or if the glory of his house be increased.
> For he shall carry nothing away with him when he dieth; neither
> shall his pomp follow him.
> 
> See--of all Obadiah's wealth and glory, the Bible does not say one
> word.  It is actually not worth mentioning.  People admired Obadiah,
> I doubt not, while he was alive; envied him too, tried to thrust him
> out of his place, slander him to King Ahab, drive him out of favour,
> and step into his place, that they might enjoy his wealth and his
> power instead of him.  The fine outside of Obadiah was what they
> saw, and coveted, and envied--as we are tempted now to say in our
> hearts, 'Ah, if I was rich like that man.  Ah, if I could buy what I
> liked, go where I liked, do what I liked, like that great Lord!'--
> and yet, that is but the outside, the shell, the gay clothing, not
> the persons themselves.  The day must come, when they must put off
> all that; when nothing shall remain but themselves; and they
> themselves, naked as they were born, shall appear before the
> judgment-seat of God.
> 
> And did Obadiah, then, carry away nothing with him when he died?
> Yes; and yet again, No.  His wealth and his power he left behind
> him:  but one thing he took with him into the grave, better than all
> wealth and power; and he keeps it now, and will keep it for ever;
> and that is, a good, and just, and merciful action--concerning which
> it is written, 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; for they
> rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.'  Yes,
> though a man's wealth will not follow him beyond the grave, his
> works will; and so Obadiah's one good deed has followed him.  'He
> feared the Lord greatly, and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of
> the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in
> a cave, and fed them with bread and water.'
> 
> That has followed Obadiah; for by it we know him, now two thousand
> years and more after his death, here in a distant land of the name
> of which he never heard.  By that good deed he lives.  He lives in
> the pages of the Holy Bible; he lives in our minds and memories; and
> more than all, by that good deed he lives for ever in God's sight;
> he is rewarded for it, and the happier for it, doubt it not, at this
> very moment, and will be the happier for it for ever.
> 
> Oh blessed thought! that there is something of which death cannot
> rob us!  That when we have to leave this pleasant world, wife and
> child, home and business, and all that has grown up round us here on
> earth, till it has become like a part of ourselves, yet still we are
> not destitute.  We can turn round on death and say--'Though I die,
> yet canst thou not take my righteousness from me!'  Blessed thought!
> that we cannot do a good deed, not even give a cup of cold water in
> Christ's name, but what it shall rise again, like a guardian angel,
> to smooth our death-bed pillow, and make our bed for us in our
> sickness, and follow us into the next world, to bless us for ever
> and ever!
> 
> And blessed thought, too, that what you do well and lovingly, for
> God's sake, will bless you here in this world before you die!  Yes,
> my friends, in the dark day of sorrow and loneliness, and fear and
> perplexity, you will find old good deeds, which you perhaps have
> forgotten, coming to look after you, as it were, and help you in the
> hour of need.  Those whom you have helped, will help you in return:
> and if they will not, God will; for he is not unrighteous, to forget
> any work and labour of love, which you have showed for his name's
> sake, in ministering to his saints.  So found Obadiah in that sad
> day, when he met Elijah.
> 
> For he was in evil case that day, as were all souls, rich and poor,
> throughout that hapless land.  For three weary years, there had been
> no drop of rain:  the earth beneath their feet had been like iron,
> and the heavens above them brass; and Obadiah had found poverty,
> want, and misery, come on him in the midst of all his riches:  he
> had seen his fair gardens wither, and his olives and his vines burnt
> up with drought;--his cattle had perished on the hills, and his
> servants, too, perhaps, in his house.  Perhaps his children at home
> were even then crying for food and water, and crying in vain, in
> spite of all their father's greatness.
> 
> What was the use of wealth?  He could not eat gold, nor drink
> jewels.  What was the use of his power?  He could not command the
> smallest cloud to rise up off the sea, and pour down one drop of
> water to quench their thirst.  Yes, Obadiah was in bitter misery
> that day, no doubt; and all the more, because he felt that all was
> God's judgment on the people's sins.  They had served Baalim and
> Ashtaroth, the sun and moon and stars, and prayed to them for rain
> and fruitful seasons, as if they were the rulers of the weather and
> the soil, instead of serving the true God who made heaven and earth,
> and all therein:  and now God had _judged_ them:  he had given his
> sentence and verdict about that matter, and told them, by a sign
> which could not be mistaken, that he, and not the sun and moon, was
> master of the sky and the sea, and the rain and the soil.  They had
> prayed to the sun and moon; and this was the fruit of their prayers--
> that their prayers had not been heard:  but instead of rain and
> plenty, was drought and barrenness;--carcasses of cattle scattered
> over the pastures--every village full of living skeletons, too weak
> to work (though what use in working, when the ground would yield no
> crop?)--crawling about, their tongues cleaving to the roof of their
> mouths, in vain searching after a drop of water.  Fearful and
> sickening sights must Obadiah have seen that day, as he rode wearily
> on upon his pitiful errand.  And the thought of what a pitiful
> errand he was going on, and what a pitiful king he served, must have
> made him all the more miserable; for, instead of turning and
> repenting, and going back to the true God, which was the plain and
> the only way of escaping out of that misery, that wretched King Ahab
> seems to have cared for nothing but his horses.
> 
> We do not read that he tried to save one of his wretched people
> alive.  All his cry was, 'Go into the land, to all fountains of
> water and all brooks; perhaps we shall find grass enough to save the
> horses and mules alive:  that we lose not all the beasts.'  The
> horses were what he cared for more than the human beings, as many of
> those bad kings of Israel did.  Moses had expressly commanded them
> not to multiply horses to themselves; but they persisted always in
> doing so, nevertheless.  And why?  Because they wanted horses to
> mount their guards; to keep up a strong force of cavalry and
> chariots, in order to oppress the poor country people, whom they had
> brought down to slavery, from having been free yeomen, as they were
> in the days of Moses and Joshua.  And what hope could he have for
> his wretched country?  The people shewed no signs of coming to their
> senses; the king still less.  His wicked Queen Jezebel was as
> devoted as ever to her idols; the false prophets of Baal were four
> hundred and fifty men, and the prophets of the groves (where the
> stars were worshipped) four hundred; and these cheats contrived (as
> such false teachers generally do) to take good care of themselves,
> and to eat at Jezebel's table, while all the rest of the people were
> perishing.  What could be before the country, and him, too, but
> utter starvation, and hopeless ruin?  And all this while his life
> was in the hands of a weak and capricious tyrant, who might murder
> him any moment, and of a wicked and spiteful queen, who certainly
> would murder him, if she found out that he had helped and saved the
> prophets of the Lord.  Who so miserable as he?  But on that day,
> Obadiah found that his alms and prayers had gone up before God, and
> were safe with God, and not to be forgotten for ever.  When he fell
> on his face before Elijah, in fear for his life, he found that he
> was safe in God's hands; that God would not betray him or forsake
> him.  Elijah promised him, with a solemn oath, that he would keep
> his word with him; he kept it, and before many days were past,
> Obadiah had an answer to all his prayers, and a relief from all his
> fears; and the Lord sent a gracious rain on his inheritance, and
> refreshed it when it was weary.  Yes, my friends, though well-doing
> seems for a while not to profit you, persevere:  in due time you
> shall reap, if you faint not.  Though the Lord sometimes waits to be
> gracious, he only waits, he does not forget; and it is to be
> _gracious_ that he waits, not ungracious.  Cast, therefore, thy
> bread upon the waters, and thou shall find it after many days.  Give
> a portion to seven, and also to eight, for thou knowest not what
> evil shall be upon the earth.  Do thy diligence to give of what thou
> hast; for so gatherest thou thyself in the day of necessity, in
> which, with what measure you have measured to others, God will
> measure to you again.
> 
> This is true, for the Scripture says so; this _must_ be true, for
> reason and conscience--the voice of God within us--tell us that God
> is just; that God must be true, though every man be a liar.  'Hear,'
> says our Lord, 'what the _unjust_ judge says:  And shall not God
> (the just judge), avenge his own elect, who cry day and night to
> him, though he bear long with them?'  Yes, my friends, God's promise
> stands sure, now and for ever.  'Trust in the Lord, and do good; so
> shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.'
> 
> But now comes in a doubt--and it ought to come in--What are our
> works at best?  What have we which is fit to offer to God?  Full of
> selfishness, vanity, self-conceit, the best of them; and not half
> done either.  What have we ever done right, but what we might have
> done more rightly, and done more of it, also?  Bad in quality our
> good works are, and bad in quantity, too.  How shall we have courage
> to carry them in our hand to that God who charges his very angels
> with folly; and the very heavens are not clean in his sight?
> 
> Too true, if we had to offer our own works to God.  But, thanks be
> to his holy name, we have not to offer them ourselves; for there is
> one who offers them for us--Jesus Christ the Lord.  He it is who
> takes these imperfect, clumsy works of ours, all soiled and stained
> with our sin and selfishness, and washes them clean in his most
> precious blood, which was shed to take away the sin of the world:
> he it is who, in some wonderful and unspeakable way, cleanses our
> works from sin, by the merit of his death and sufferings, so that
> nothing may be left in them but what is the fruit of God's own
> spirit; and that God may see in them only the good which he himself
> put into them, and not the stains and soils which they get from our
> foolish and sinful hearts.
> 
> Oh, my friends, bear this in mind.  Whensoever you do a thing which
> you know to be right and good, instead of priding yourself on it, as
> if the good in it came from you, offer it up to the Lord Jesus
> Christ, and to your Heavenly Father, from whom all good things come,
> and say, 'Oh Lord, the good in this is thine, and not mine; the bad
> in it is mine, and not thine.  I thank thee for having made me do
> right, for without thy help I should have done nothing but wrong;
> for mine is the laziness, and the weakness, and the selfishness, and
> the self-conceit; and thine is the kingdom, for thou rulest all
> things; and the power, for thou doest all things; and the glory, for
> thou doest all things well, for ever and ever.  Amen.'
> 
> SERMON X.  RELIGIOUS DANGERS
> 
> (Preached at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1861, for the London
> Diocesan Board of Education.)
> 
> St. Mark viii. 4, 5, 8.  And the disciples answered him, From whence
> can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? . . .
> How many loaves have ye?  And they said, Seven. . . . so they did
> eat and were filled; and they took up of the broken meat that was
> left seven baskets.
> 
> I think that I can take no better text for the subject on which I am
> about to preach, than that which the Gospel for this day gives me.
> 
> For is not such a great city as this London, at least in its present
> amorphous, unorganised state, having grown up, and growing still,
> any how and any whither, by the accidental necessities of private
> commerce, private speculation, private luxury--is it not, I say,
> literally a wilderness?
> 
> I do not mean a wilderness in the sense of a place of want and
> misery; on the contrary, it is a place of plenty and of comfort.  I
> think that we clergymen, and those good people who help our labours,
> are too apt exclusively to forget London labour, in our first and
> necessary attention to the London poor; to fix our eyes and minds on
> London want and misery, till we almost ignore the fact of London
> wealth and comfort.  We must remember, if we are to be just to God,
> and just to our great nation, that there is not only more wealth in
> London, but that that wealth is more equitably and generally
> diffused through all classes, from the highest to the lowest, than
> ever has been the case in any city in the world.  We must remember
> that there is collected together here a greater number of free human
> beings than were ever settled on the same space of earth, earning an
> honest, independent, and sufficient livelihood, and enjoying the
> fruits of their labour in health and cheapness, freedom and
> security, such as the world never saw before.  There is want and
> misery.  I know it too well.  There are great confusions to be
> organised, great anomalies to be suppressed.  But remember, that if
> want and misery, confusion and anomaly were _the rule_ of London,
> and not (as they are) the exception, then London, instead of
> increasing at its present extraordinary pace, would decay; London
> work, instead of being better and better done, would be worse and
> worse done, till it stopped short in some such fearful convulsion as
> that of Paris in 1793.  No, my friends; compare London with any city
> on the Continent; compare her with the old Greek and Roman cities;
> with Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, with that Imperial Rome
> itself, which was like London in nothing but its size, and then
> thank God for England, for freedom, and for the Church of Christ.
> 
> And yet I have called London a wilderness.  I have.  There is a
> wilderness of want; but there is a wilderness of wealth likewise.
> And the latter is far more dangerous to human nature than the former
> one.  It is not in the waste and howling wilderness of rock, and
> sand and shingle, with its scanty acacia copses, and groups of date
> trees round the lonely well, that nature shews herself too strong
> for man, and crushes him down to the likeness of the ape.  There the
> wild Arab, struggling to exist, and yet not finding the struggle
> altogether too hard for him, can gain and keep, if not spiritual
> life, virtue and godliness, yet still something of manhood;
> something of--
> 
> The reason firm, the temperate will,
> Endurance, foresight, thought, and skill.
> 
> No; if you would see how low man can fall, you must go to the tropic
> jungle, where geniality of climate, plenty and variety of food, are
> in themselves a cause of degradation to the soul, as long as the
> Spirit of Christ is absent from it.  Not in the barren desert, but
> in the rich forest, wanders the true savage, eating and eating all
> day long, like the ape in the trees above his head; and (I had
> almost said), like the ape, too, with no thoughts save what his
> pampered senses can suggest.  I had almost said it.  Thank God, I
> dare not say it altogether; for, after all, the savage is a man, and
> not an ape.  Yes, to the lowest savage in the forests of the Amazon,
> comes a hunger of the soul, and whispers from the unseen world, to
> remind him of what he might have been, and still may be.  In the
> dreams of the night they come; in vague terrors of the unseen, vague
> feelings of guilt and shame, vague dread of the powers of nature;
> driving him to unmeaning ceremonies, to superstitious panics, to
> horrible and bloody rites--as they might drive, to-morrow, my
> friends, an outwardly civilized population, debauched by mere peace
> and plenty, entangled and imprisoned in the wilderness of a great
> city.
> 
> I can imagine--imagine?--Have we not seen again and again human
> souls so entangled and opprest by this vast labyrinth of brick and
> mortar, as never to care to stir outside it and expand their souls
> with the sight of God's works as long as their brute wants are
> supplied, just as the savage never cares to leave his accustomed
> forest haunt, and hew himself a path into the open air through the
> tangled underwood.  I can imagine--nay, have we not seen that, too?--
> and can we not see it any day in the street?--human souls so
> dazzled and stupefied, instead of being quickened, by the numberless
> objects of skill and beauty, which they see in their walks through
> the streets, that they care no more for the wonders of man's making,
> than the savage does for the wonders of God's making, which he sees
> around him in every insect, bird, and flower.  The man who walks the
> streets every day, is the very man who will see least in the
> streets.  The man who works in a factory, repeating a thousand times
> a day some one dull mechanical operation, or even casting up day
> after day the accounts of it, is the man who will think least of the
> real wonderfulness of that factory; of the amount of prudence,
> skill, and science, which it expresses; of its real value to himself
> and to his class; of its usefulness to far nations beyond the seas.
> He is like a savage who looks up at some glorious tree, capable, in
> the hands of civilized man, of a hundred uses, and teeming to him
> with a hundred scientific facts; and thinks all the while of nothing
> but his chance of finding a few grubs beneath its bark.
> 
> Think over, I beseech you, this fact of the stupefying effect of
> mere material civilization; and remember that plenty and comfort do
> not diminish but increase that stupefaction; that Hebrew prophets
> knew it, and have told us, again and again, that, by fulness of
> bread the heart waxeth gross; that Greek sages knew it, and have
> told us, again and again, that need, and not satiety, was the
> quickener of the human intellect.  Believe that man requires another
> bread than the bread of the body; that sometimes the want of the
> bodily bread will awaken the hunger for that bread of the soul.
> Bear in mind that the period during which the middle and lower
> classes of England were most brutalized, was that of their greatest
> material prosperity, the latter half of the eighteenth century.
> Remember that with the distress which came upon them, at the end of
> the French war, their spiritual hunger awakened--often in forms
> diseased enough:  but growing healthier, as well as keener, year by
> year; and that if they are not brutalized once more by their present
> unexampled prosperity, it will be mainly owing to the spiritual life
> which was awakened in those sad and terrible years.  Remember that
> the present carelessness of the masses about either religious or
> political agitation, though it may be a very comfortable sign to
> those who believe that a man's life consists in the abundance of the
> things which he possesses, is a very ominous sign to some who study
> history, and to some also who study their Bibles:  and ask
> yourselves earnestly the question, 'From where shall a man find food
> for these men in this wilderness, not of want, but of wealth?'  For,
> believe me, that spiritual hunger, though stopped awhile by physical
> comfort, will surely reawaken.  Any severe and sudden depression in
> trade--the stoppage of the cotton crop, for instance, will awaken in
> the minds of hundreds of thousands deep questions--for which we, if
> we are wise, shall have an explicit answer ready.
> 
> For it is a very serious moment, my friends, when large masses have
> had enough to eat and drink, and have been saying, 'Let us eat and
> drink, for to-morrow we die;' and then, suddenly, by _not_ having
> enough to eat and drink, and yet finding themselves still alive, are
> awakened to the sense that there is more in them than the mere
> capacity for eating and drinking.  Then begin once more the world-
> old questions, Why are we thus?  Who put us here?  Who made us?
> God?  Is there a God? and if there be, what is he like?  What is his
> will toward us, good or evil?  Is it hate or love?
> 
> My friends, those are questions which have been asked often enough
> in the world's history, by vast masses at once.  And they may be
> answered in more ways than one.
> 
> They may be answered as the weavers of a certain country (thank God,
> not England) answered them in the potato famine with their mad song,
> 'We looked to the earth, and the earth deceived us.  We looked to
> the kings, and the kings deceived us.  We looked to God, and God
> deceived us.  Let us lie down and die.'
> 
> Or they may answer them--they will be more likely to answer them in
> England just now, because there are those who will teach them so to
> answer--in another, but a scarcely less terrible tone.  'Yes, there
> is a God; and he is angry with us.  And why?  Because there is
> something, or some one, in the nation which he abhors--heretics,
> papists'--what not--any man, or class of men, on whom cowardly and
> terrified ignorance may happen to fix as a scapegoat, and cry,
> 'These are the guilty!  We have allowed these men, indulged them;
> the accursed thing is among us, therefore the face of the Lord is
> turned from us.  We will serve him truly henceforth--and hate those
> whom he hates.  We will be orthodox henceforth--and prove our
> orthodoxy by persecuting the heretic.'
> 
> Does this seem to you extravagant, impossible?  Remember, my
> friends, that within the last century Lord George Gordon's riots
> convulsed London.  Can you give me any reason why Lord George
> Gordon's riots cannot occur again?  Believe me, the more you study
> history, the more you study human nature, the more possible it will
> seem to you.  It is not, I believe, infidelity, but fanaticism,
> which England has to fear just now.  The infidelity of England is
> one of mere doubt and denial, a scepticism; which is in itself weak
> and self-destructive.  The infidelity of France in 1793 was strong
> enough, but just because it was no scepticism, but a faith; a
> positive creed concerning human reason, and the rights of man, which
> men could formulize, and believe in, and fight for, and persecute
> for, and, if need was, die for.  But no such exists in England now.
> And what we have most to fear in England under the pressure of some
> sudden distress, is a superstitious panic, and the wickedness which
> is certain to accompany that panic; mean and unjust, cruel and
> abominable things, done in the name of orthodoxy:  though meanwhile,
> whether what the masses and their spiritual demagogues will mean by
> orthodoxy, will be the same that we and the Church of England mean
> thereby, is a question which I leave for your most solemn
> consideration.  That, however, rather than any proclamation of the
> abstract rights of man, or installations of a goddess of Reason, is
> the form which spiritual hunger is most likely to take in England
> now.  Alas! are there not tokens enough around us now, whereby we
> may discern the signs of this time?
> 
> I say, the spiritual hunger will reawaken; and woe to us who really
> understand and love the Church of England; woe to us who are really
> true to her principles, honestly subscribe her formulas, if we
> cannot appease it in that day.
> 
> But wherewith?  We may look, my friends, appalled at the danger and
> the need.  We may cry to our Lord, 'From whence can a man satisfy
> these men with bread in the wilderness?'  But his answer will be, as
> far as I dare to predict it, the same as to his apostles of old on
> another and a similar occasion, 'Give ye them to eat.  They need not
> depart.'
> 
> I am not going to draw any far-fetched analogy between the miracle
> recorded in the gospel, and the subject on which I am speaking.  I
> am not going to put any mystical and mediaeval interpretation on the
> seven loaves, or the two small fishes.  I only ask you to accept the
> plain moral practical lesson which the words convey.--
> 
> Use the means which you have already, however few and weak they
> seem.  If Christ be among you, as he is indeed, he will bless them,
> and multiply them you know not how.
> 
> Use the means which you have; though they may seem to you
> inadequate, though they may seem to the world antiquated, and
> decrepit, try them.  They need not depart from us, these masses, to
> seek spiritual food, they know not where, if we have but faith.  Let
> us give them what we have; the organization of the Church of
> England, and the teaching of the Church of England.
> 
> The organization of the Church.  Not merely its Parochial system,
> but its Diocesan system.  In London, more than in any part of
> England, the Diocesan system is valuable.  A London parish is not
> like a country one, a self-dependent, corporate body, made up of
> residents of every rank, capable of providing for the physical and
> spiritual wants of its own stationary population.  In London,
> population fluctuates rapidly, sometimes rolling away from one
> quarter, always developing itself in fresh quarters; in London all
> ranks do not dwell side by side within sight and sound of each
> other:  but the rich and the poor, the employed and the unemployed,
> dwell apart, work apart, and are but too often out of sight, out of
> mind.  These, and many other reasons, make it impossible for the
> mere parochial system to bring out the zeal and the liberality of
> London Churchmen.  If they are to realize their unity and their
> strength, they must do so not as members of a Parish, but of a
> Diocese; their Bishop must be to them the sign that they are one
> body; their good works must be organized more and more under him,
> and round him.  This is no new theory of mine; it is a historic law.
> The Priest for the village, the Bishop for the city, has been the
> natural and necessary organization of the Church in every age; and
> it was in strict accordance with this historic law, that the London
> Diocesan Board of Education was founded in 1846, not to override the
> parochial system, but to do for it what it cannot, in a great city,
> do for itself; to establish elementary schools (and now I am happy
> to say, evening schools also) in parishes which were too poor to
> furnish them for themselves.  I, as the son of a London Rector, can
> bear my testimony to the excellent working of that Board; and it is
> with grief I hear that, in spite of the vast work which it has done
> since 1846, and which it is still doing, on an income which is now
> not 300 pounds a year--proving thereby how cheaply and easily your
> work may be done when it is done in the right way--it is with grief,
> I say, that I hear that it is more and more neglected by the
> religious public.
> 
> With grief:  but not with surprise.  For the religious public, even
> the Church portion of it, has of late been more and more inclined to
> undervalue the organization and the teaching of the Church of
> England, and to supply its place with nostrums, borrowed from those
> denominations who disagree with the Church, alike in their doctrines
> of what man should be, and of what God is.  How have their energies,
> their zeal, their money (for zealous they are, and generous too)
> been frittered away!  But I will not particularize, lest I hurt the
> feelings of better people than myself, by holding up their good
> works to the ridicule of those who do us no good works at all.  But
> I entreat them to look at their own work; to look at the vastness of
> its expense, compared with the smallness of its results; and then to
> ask themselves, whether the one cause of their failure--for failures
> I must call too many of the religious movements of this day, in
> spite of their own loud self-laudations--whether, I say, one cause
> of these failures may not be, that the religious world is throwing
> itself into anything and everything novel and exciting, rather than
> into the simple and unobtrusive work of teaching little children
> their Catechism, that they may go home as angels of God and
> missionaries of Christ, teaching their parents in turn as they have
> been taught themselves, and so awakening that sacred family life,
> without which there can be no sound Christianity.  I know well that
> there has been much work done in the right direction; but when I
> look at the ugly fact, that the population of London is increasing
> far faster than its schools; that in 25 of the poorest parishes
> thereof there are now nearly 60,000 children who go to no school at
> all; and that the proportion of scholars to the population is lower
> in Middlesex than in almost any county in England, while the
> proportion of crime is highest; I cannot but sigh over the thousands
> which I see squandered yearly on rash novelties by really pious and
> generous souls, and cry, Ah, that one-fourth, one-tenth of it all
> had been spent in the plain work of helping elementary schools; I
> cannot but call on all London churchmen of the plain old school, to
> stand by the organization and the doctrines of the Church to which
> they belong; to rally in this matter round their bishop; and work
> for him, and with him.
> 
> And now, there may be some here who will ask, scornfully enough, And
> do you talk of nostrums? and then, after confessing that the masses
> are hungering for the bread of life, offer them nothing but your own
> nostrum, the Catechism?
> 
> Yes, my friends, I do.  I know that the Church Catechism is not the
> bread of life.  Neither, I beg you to remember, is any other
> Catechism, or doctrine, or tract, or sermon, or book or anything
> else whatsoever.  Christ is the Bread of Life.  But how shall they
> know Christ, unless they be taught what Christ is; and how can they
> be taught what Christ is, unless the conception of him which is
> offered them be true?
> 
> And, I say, that the Catechism does give a true conception of
> Christ; and more, a far truer one--I had almost said, an infinitely
> truer--than any which I have yet seen in these realms:  that from
> the Catechism a child may learn who God is, who Christ is, who he
> himself is, what are his relation and duty to God, what are his
> relation and duty to his neighbours, to his country, and to the
> whole human race, far better than from any document of the kind of
> which I am aware.
> 
> I know well the substitutes for the Catechism which are becoming
> more and more fashionable; the limitations, the explainings away,
> the non-natural and dishonest interpretations, which are more and
> more applied to it when it is used; and I warn you, that those
> substitutes for, and those defacements of, the Catechism, will be no
> barrier against an outburst of fanaticism, did one arise; nay, that
> many of them would directly excite it; and prove, when too late,
> that instead of feeding the masses with the bread of life, which
> should preserve them, soul and body, some persons had been feeding
> them with poison, which had maddened them, soul and body.  But I see
> no such danger in the Catechism.  I see in the Catechism; in its
> freedom alike from sentimental horror and sentimental raptures; its
> freedom alike from slavish terror, and from Pharisaic assurance; a
> guarantee that those who learn it will learn something of that sound
> religion, sober, trusty, cheerful, manful, which may be seen still,
> thank God, in country Church folk of the good old school; and which
> will, in the day of trial, be proof against the phantoms of a
> diseased conscience, and the ravings of spiritual demagogues.
> 
> And therefore I preach gladly for this institution; therefore I urge
> strongly its claims on you, whom I am bound to suppose honest
> Churchmen, because the fact of its being a Diocesan Board of
> Education is, at least in this diocese, a guarantee that the schools
> which it supports will teach their children, honestly and literally,
> the Catechism of the Church of England, which may God preserve!
> 
> Not that I expect it to teach only that.  I take for granted, that
> that will be its primary object, the guarantee that all the rest is
> well done:  but I know that much more than that must be done; that
> much more will be done, even unintentionally.
> 
> For, shall I--I trust that I shall not--make a too fanciful
> application of the last fact recorded of this great miracle, if I
> bid you find in it a fresh source of hope in your work?
> 
> 'And they took up of the fragments which were left seven baskets
> full.'
> 
> The plain historic fact is, that not only do the seven loaves feed
> 4,000, but that what they leave, and are about to throw away, far
> exceeds the original supply.
> 
> I believe the fact:  I ask you to consider why it was recorded?
> Surely, like all facts in the gospels, to teach us more of the
> character of Christ, which (a fact too often forgotten in these
> days) is the character of God.  To teach us that he is an utterly
> bountiful God.  That as in him there is no weakness, nor difficulty,
> so in him is no grudging, no parsimony.  That he is not only able,
> but willing, to give exceeding abundantly, beyond all that we can
> ask or think.  That there is a magnificence in God and in God's
> workings, which ought to fill us with boundless hope, if we are but
> fellow-workers with God.
> 
> You see that magnificence in the seeming prodigality of nature; in
> the prodigality which creates a thousand beautiful species of
> butterfly, where a single plain one would have sufficed; in the
> prodigality which creates a thousand acorns, only one of which is
> destined to grow into an oak.  Everywhere in the kingdom of nature
> it shows itself; believe that it exists as richly in the higher
> kingdom of grace.  Yes.  Believe, that whenever you begin to work
> according to God's law and God's will, let your means seem as
> inadequate as they may, not only will your work multiply, as by
> miracle, under your hands; but the very fragments of it, which you
> are inclined to neglect and overlook, will form in time a heap of
> unexpected treasure.  Plans which you have thrown aside, because
> they seemed to fail, details which seemed to encumber you, accessory
> work which formed no part of your original plan, all will be of use
> to some one, somehow, somewhere.
> 
> You began, for instance, by wishing to educate the masses of London;
> you are educating over and above, indirectly, thousands who never
> saw London.  You began by wishing to teach them spiritual truth; you
> have been drawn on to give them an excellent secular education
> besides.  You intended to make them live as good Christians here at
> home.  But since you began, the interpenetration of town and country
> by railroads, and the rush of emigrants to our colonies, have
> widened infinitely the sphere of your influence; and you are now
> teaching them also to live as useful men in the farthest corners of
> these isles, and in far lands beyond the seas, to become educated
> emigrants, loyal colonists; to raise, by their example, rude
> settlers, and ruder savages; and so, the very fragments of your good
> work, without your will or intent, will bless thousands of whom you
> never heard, and help to sow the seeds of civilization and
> Christianity, wherever the English flag commands Justice, and the
> English Church preaches Love.
> 
> SERMON XI.  BLESSING AND CURSING
> 
> (Preached at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, Ash Wednesday, 1860.)
> 
> Deuteronomy xxviii. 15.  It shall come to pass, if thou wilt not
> hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his
> commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that
> all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.
> 
> Many good people are pained by the Commination Service which we have
> just heard read.  They dislike to listen to it.  They cannot say
> 'Amen' to its awful words.  It seems to them to curse men; and their
> conscience forbids them to join in curses.  To imprecate evil on any
> living being seems to them unchristian, barbarous, a relic of dark
> ages and dark superstitions.
> 
> But does the Commination Service curse men?  Are these good people
> (who are certainly right in their horror of cursing) right in the
> accusations which they bring against it?  Or have they fallen into a
> mistake as to the meaning of the service, owing, it may be supposed,
> to that carelessness about the exact use of words, that want of
> accurate and critical habits of mind, which is but too common among
> religious people at the present day?
> 
> I cannot but think that they mistake, when they say that the
> Commination Service curses men.  For to curse a man, is to pray and
> wish that God may become angry with him, and may vent his anger on
> the man by punishing him.  But I find no such prayer and wish in any
> word of the Commination Service.  Its form is not, 'Cursed _be_ he
> that doeth such and such things,' but 'Cursed _is_ he that doeth
> them.'
> 
> Does this seem to you a small difference?  A fine-drawn question of
> words?  Is it, then, a small difference whether I say to my fellow-
> man, I hope and pray that you may be stricken with disease, or
> whether I say, You are stricken with disease, whether you know it or
> not.  I warn you of it, and I warn you to go to the physician?  For
> so great, and no less, is the difference.
> 
> And if any one shall say, that it is very probable that the authors
> of the Liturgy were not conscious of this distinction; but that they
> meant by cursing what priests in most ages have meant by it; I must
> answer, that it is dealing them most hard and unfair measure, to
> take for granted that they were as careless about words as we are;
> that they were (like some of us) so ignorant of grammar as not to
> know the difference between the indicative and the imperative mood;
> and to assume this, in order to make them say exactly what they do
> _not_ say, and to impute to them a ferocity of which no hint is
> given in their Commination Service.
> 
> But some will say, Granted that the authors of the Commination
> Service did not wish evil to sinners--granted that they did not long
> to pray, with bell, book, and candle, that they might be tormented
> for ever in Gehenna--granted that they did not desire to burn their
> bodies on earth; those words are still dark and unchristian.  They
> could only be written by men who believed that God hates sinners,
> that his will is to destroy them on earth, and torture them for ever
> after death.
> 
> We may impute, alas! what motives and thoughts we choose, in the
> face of our Lord's own words, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.
> But we shall not be fair and honest in imputing, unless we first
> settle what these men meant, in the words which they have actually
> written.  What did they mean by 'cursed' is the question.  And that
> we can only answer by the context of the Commination Service.  And
> that again we can only answer by seeing what it means in the Bible,
> which the Reformers profess to follow in all their writings.
> 
> Now, what does the Bible mean by a curse, and cursing?--For we are
> bound to believe, in all fairness, that the Reformers meant the
> same, and neither more nor less.  The text, I think, tells us
> plainly enough.  We know that its words came true.  We know that the
> Jews _did_ perish out of their native land, as the Author of this
> book foretold, in consequence of doing that against which Moses
> warned them.  We know also that they did not perish by any
> miraculous intervention of Providence:  but simply as any other
> nation would have perished; by profligacy, internal weakness, civil
> war, and, at last, by foreign conquest.
> 
> We know that their destruction was the natural consequence of their
> own folly.  Why are we to suppose that the prophet meant anything
> but that?  He foretells the result.  Why are we to suppose that he
> did not foresee the means by which that result would happen?  Why
> are we, in the name of all justice, to impute to him an expectation
> of miraculous interferences, about which he says no word?  The curse
> which he foretold was the natural consequence of the sins of the
> nation.  Why are we not to believe that he considered it as such?
> Why are we not to believe that the Bible meaning of a curse, is
> simply the natural ill-consequence of men's own ill-actions?  I
> believe that if you will apply the same rule to other places of
> Scripture, you will have reason to reverence the letter and the
> Spirit of Scripture more and more, and will free your minds from
> many a superstitious and magical fancy, which will prevent you alike
> from understanding the Bible and the Commination Service.
> 
> The Book of Deuteronomy, like the rest of Moses' laws, says nothing
> whatever about the life to come.  It says, that sin is to be
> punished, and virtue rewarded, in this life; and the Commination
> Service, when it quotes the Book of Deuteronomy, means so, so I
> presume, likewise.  Indeed, if we look at the very remarkable, and
> most invaluable address which the Commination Service contains, we
> shall find its author saying the same thing, in the very passages
> which are to some minds most offensive.
> 
> For even in this life the door of mercy may be shut, and we may cry
> in vain for mercy, when it is the time for justice.  This is not
> merely a doctrine:  it is a fact; a common, patent fact.  Men do
> wrong, and escape, again and again, the just punishment of their
> deeds; but how often there are cases in which a man does not escape;
> when he is filled with the fruit of his own devices, and left to the
> misery which he has earned; when the covetous and dishonest man
> ruins himself past all recovery; when the profligate is left in a
> shameful old age, with worn-out body and defiled mind, to rot into
> an unhonoured grave; when the hypocrite who has tampered with his
> conscience is left without any conscience at all.
> 
> They have chosen the curse, and the curse is come upon them to the
> uttermost.  So it is.  Is the Commination service uncharitable, is
> the preacher uncharitable, when they tell men so?  No more so, than
> the physician is uncharitable, when he says,--'If you go on misusing
> thus your lungs, or your digestion, you will ruin them past all
> cure.'  Is God to be blamed because this is a fact?  Why then
> because the other is a fact likewise?
> 
> Now if this be, as I believe, the doctrine of the commination
> service; if this be, as I believe, the message of Ash-Wednesday, it
> is one which is quite free from superstition or cruelty:  but it is
> a message more disagreeable, and more terrible too, than any magical
> imprecations of harm to the sinner could bring.  More disagreeable.
> For which is more galling to human pride, to be told,--Sin is
> certainly a clever, and politic, and successful trade, as far as
> this world is concerned.  It is only in the next world, or in the
> case of rare and peculiar visitations and judgments in this world,
> that it will harm you?  Or to be told,--Sin is no more clever,
> politic, or successful here, than hereafter.  The wrong-doing which
> looks to you so prudent is folly.  You, man of the world as you may
> think yourself, are simply, as often as you do wrong, blind,
> ignorant, suicidal.  You are your own curse; your acts are their own
> curse.  The injury to your own character and spirit, the injury to
> your fellow-creatures, which will again re-act on you,--these are
> the curses of God, which you will feel some day too heavy to be
> borne.  And which is more terrible?  To tell a man, that God will
> judge and curse him by unexpected afflictions, or at least by
> casting him into Gehenna in the world to come:  or to tell him, 'You
> are judged already.  The curse is on you already?'
> 
> The first threat he may get rid of, by denying the fact; by saying
> that God does not generally interfere to punish bad men in this
> life; that he does not strike them dead, swallow them up; and he may
> even quote Scripture on his side, and call on Solomon to bear
> witness how as dieth the fool, so dieth wise man; and that there is
> one event to the righteous and the wicked.
> 
> As for the fear of Gehenna, again, after he dies:  that is too dim
> and distant; too unlike anything which he has seen in this life (now
> that the tortures and Autos da fe of the middle age have
> disappeared) to frighten him very severely, except in rare moments,
> when his imagination is highly excited.  And even then, he can--in
> practice he does--look forward to 'making his peace with God' as it
> is called, at last, and fulfilling Baalam's wish of dying the death
> of the righteous, after living the life of the wicked.  He knows
> well, too, that when that day comes, he can find--alas! that it
> should be so--priests and preachers in plenty, of some communion or
> other, who will give him his viaticum, and bid him depart in peace
> to that God, who has said that there is no peace to the wicked.
> 
> But terrible, truly terrible and heart searching for the wrongdoer
> is the message--God does not curse thee:  thou hast cursed thyself.
> God will not go out of his way to punish thee:  thou hast gone out
> of his way, and thereby thou art punishing thyself, just as, by
> abusing thy body, thou bringest a curse upon it; so by abusing thy
> soul.  God does not break his laws to punish drunkenness or
> gluttony.  The laws themselves, the laws of nature, the beneficent
> laws of life, nutrition, growth, and health, they punish thee; and
> kill by the very same means by which they make alive.  And so with
> thy soul, thy character, thy humanity.  God does not break his laws
> to punish its sins.  The laws themselves punish; every fresh wrong
> deed, and wrong thought, and wrong desire of thine sets thee more
> and more out of tune with those immutable and eternal laws of the
> Moral Universe, which have their root in the absolute and necessary
> character of God himself.  All things that he has ordained; the laws
> of the human body, the laws of the human soul, the laws of society,
> the laws of all heaven and earth are arrayed against thee; for thou
> hast arrayed thyself against them.  They have not excommunicated
> thee:  thou hast, single-handed, excommunicated thyself.  In thine
> own self-will, thou hast set thyself to try thy strength against God
> and his whole universe.  Dost thou fancy that he needs to interfere
> with the working of that universe, to punish such a worm as thee?
> No more than the great mill engine need stop, and the overseer of it
> interfere with the machinery, if the drunken or careless workman
> should entangle himself among the wheels.  The wheels move on, doing
> their duty, spinning cloth for the use of man:  but the workman who
> should have worked with them, is entangled among them.  He is out of
> his place; and slowly, but irresistibly, they are grinding him to
> powder, as the whole universe is grinding thee.  Heart-searching,
> indeed, is such a message; for it will come home, not merely to that
> very rare character, the absolutely wicked man, the ideal sinner, at
> whom the preacher too often aims ideal arrows, which vanish in the
> air:  not to him merely will it come home, but to ourselves, to us
> average human beings, inconsistent, half-formed, struggling lamely
> and confusedly between good and evil.  Oh let us take home with us
> to-day this belief, the only belief in this matter possible in an
> age of science, which is daily revealing more and more that God is a
> God, not of disorder, but of order.  Let us take home, I say, the
> awful belief, that every wrong act of ours does of itself sow the
> seeds of its own punishment; and that those seeds will assuredly
> bear fruit, now, here in this life.  Let us believe that God's
> judgments, though they will culminate, no doubt, hereafter in one
> great day, and "one divine far-off event, to which the whole
> creation moves," are yet about our path and about our bed, now,
> here, in this life.  Let us believe, that if we are to prepare to
> meet our God, we must do it now, here in this life, yea and all day
> long; for he is not far off from any one of us, seeing that in him
> we live, and move, and have our being; and can never go from his
> presence, never flee from his spirit.  Let us believe that God's
> good laws, and God's good order, are in themselves and of
> themselves, the curse and punishment of every sin of ours; and that
> Ash-Wednesday, returning year after year, whether we be glad or
> sorry, good or evil, bears witness to that most awful and yet most
> blessed fact.
> 
> My friends, this is the preacher's Ash-Wednesday's message:  but,
> thanks be to God, it is not all.  It is written--'If thou, Lord,
> wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss:  Oh Lord, who may abide
> it?  For there is mercy with thee; therefore shalt thou be feared.'
> 
> It is written--'On whomsoever this stone shall fall, it shall grind
> him to powder:' but it is written too--'Whosoever shall fall on this
> stone shall be broken;' and again, 'The broken and the contrite
> heart, O God, thou shall not despise.'  There is such a thing as
> pardon; pardon full and free, for the sake of the precious blood of
> Christ.  Lent may be a time of awe and of shame:  but it is not a
> time of despair.  Meanwhile remember this; that God has set before
> you blessing and cursing, and that you may turn your life and God's
> whole universe, as you will, either into that blessing or into that
> curse.
> 
> SERMON XII.  WORK
> 
> (Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Proverbs xiv. 23.  In all labour there is profit.
> 
> I fear there are more lessons in the Book of Proverbs than most of
> us care to learn.  There is a lesson in every verse of it, and a
> shrewd one.  Certain I am, that for a practical, business man, who
> has to do his duty and to make his way in this world, there is no
> guide so safe as these same Proverbs of Solomon.  In _this_ world, I
> say; for they say little about the world to come.  Their doctrine
> is, that what is good for the next world, is good for this; that he
> who wishes to go out of this world happily, must first go through
> this world wisely; and more, that he who wishes to go through this
> world happily, must likewise go through it wisely.
> 
> The righteous, says Solomon, shall be recompensed in the earth, and
> not merely at the end of judgment hereafter:  much more the wicked
> and the sinner.
> 
> That is the doctrine of the Proverbs; that men do, to a very great
> extent, earn for themselves their good or their evil fortunes, and
> are filled with the fruit of their own devices; and it is that
> doctrine which makes them the best of text-books for the practical
> man.
> 
> For the Proverbs do not look on religion as a thing to be kept out
> of our daily dealings, and thought of only on Sundays:  they look on
> true religion, which is to obey God, as a thing which mixes itself
> up with all the cares and business of this mortal life, this work-
> day world; and, therefore, they are written in work-day language; in
> homely words taken from the common doings of this mortal life, as
> our Lord's parables are.  And, like the most simple of those
> parables, the most simple of the proverbs have often the very
> deepest meaning.
> 
> 'In all labour there is profit.'  Whatsoever is worth doing, is
> worth doing well.  It is always worth while to take pains.  In
> another proverb, homely enough--but if it be in the Bible, it is not
> too homely for us--'Where no oxen are, the crib is clean,' Solomon
> says the same thing as in the text.  He says, 'Where no oxen are,
> the farmer is saved trouble; the clearing away of dirt and refuse;
> and all the labour required to keep his cattle in condition:  but
> all that trouble,' Solomon says, if a man will but undergo it, will
> repay itself; 'for much increase is in the strength of the ox.'  For
> the ox, in that country, as in most parts of the world now, is the
> beast used for ploughing, and for all the work of the farm.
> 
> Now, herein, I think, Solomon gives us a lesson which holds good
> through all matters of life.  That it is a short-sighted mistake to
> avoid taking trouble; for God has so well ordered this world, that
> industry will always repay itself.  No doubt it is much easier and
> pleasanter for the savage to scratch the seed into the ground with
> some rude wooden tool, and sit idle till the grain ripens:  much
> easier and pleasanter, than to breed and break in beasts, and to
> labour all the year round at the different duties of a well-ordered
> farm:  but here is the mighty difference; that the savage, growing
> only enough for himself, is in continual danger of famine, he and
> all his tribe; while the civilized farmer, producing many times more
> than he needs for himself, gains food, comfort, and safety, not only
> for himself, but for many other human beings.  The savage has an
> easy life enough, if that be any gain:  but it is a life of poverty,
> uncertainty, danger of starvation.  The civilized man works hard and
> heavily, using body and mind more in one month than the savage does
> in the whole year:  but he gains in return a life of safety,
> comfort, and continually increasing prosperity.
> 
> This is Solomon's lesson:  and be sure it holds good, not only of
> tilling the ground, but of all other labours, all other duties, to
> which God may call us.  'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,' says
> Solomon, 'do it with all thy might.'  God has set thee thy work;
> then fulfil it.  Fill it full.  Throw thy whole heart and soul into
> it.  Do it carefully, accurately, completely.  It will be better for
> thee, and for thy children after thee.  All neglect, carelessness,
> slurring over work, is a sin; a sin against God, who has called us
> to our work; a sin against our country and our neighbours, who ought
> to profit by our work; and a sin against ourselves also, for we (as
> I shall shew you soon) ought to be made wiser and better men by our
> work.
> 
> Oh, if there is one rule above another which I should like to bring
> home to young men and women setting out in life, it is this--_Take
> pains_.  Take trouble.  Whatever you do, do thoroughly.  Whatever
> you begin, finish.  It may not seem to be worth your while at the
> moment, to be so very painstaking, so very exact.  In after years,
> you will find that it was worth your while; that it has _paid_ you,
> by training your character and soul; paid you, by giving you success
> in life; paid you, by giving you the respect and trust of your
> fellowmen; paid you, by helping you towards a good conscience, and
> enabling you in old age to look back, and say, I have been of use
> upon the earth; I leave this world, according to my small powers,
> somewhat better than I found it:  instead of having to look back, as
> too many have, upon opportunities thrown away, plans never carried
> out, talents wasted, a whole life a failure, for want of taking
> pains.
> 
> Why do I say these things to you?  To persuade you to work?  Thank
> God, there is no need of that, for you are Englishmen; and it has
> pleased God to put into the hearts of Englishmen a love of work, and
> a power of work, which has helped to make this little island one of
> the greatest nations upon earth.  No, thanks be to God, I say, there
> is no need to bid you work.  What I ask you to do, is to look upon
> your work as an honourable calling, and as a blessing to yourselves,
> not merely as a hard necessity, a burden which must be borne merely
> to keep you from starvation.  It is not that, my friends, but far
> more than that.  For what is more honourable than to be of use?  And
> in all labour, as Solomon says, there is profit; it is all of use.
> And all trade, manufacture, tillage, even of the smallest, all
> management and ordering, whether of an estate, a parish, or even of
> the pettiest office in it, all is honourable, because all is of use;
> all helping forward, more or less, the well-being of God's human
> creatures, and of the whole world.
> 
> And therefore all is worth taking trouble over, worth doing as
> diligently and honestly as possible, in sure trust that it will
> bring its reward with it.  Why not?  Almsgiving is blessed in God's
> sight, and charity to the poor; and God will repay it:  but is not
> useful labour blessed in his sight also? and shall he not repay it?
> Will he not say of it, as well as of almsgiving, 'Inasmuch as ye
> have done it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye have
> done it unto me?'  We may trust so, my friends; indeed, I may say
> more than, 'We may trust.'  We can see; see that industry has its
> reward.  By increasing the well-being of others, and the safety of
> others, you increase your own.  So it is, and so it should be; for
> God has knit us all together as brethren, members of one family of
> God; and the well-being of each makes up the well-being of all, so
> that sooner or later, if one member rejoice, all the others rejoice
> with it.
> 
> But more.  And here I speak to young people; for their elders, I
> doubt not, have found it out long since for themselves.  Work, hard
> work, is a blessing to the soul and character of the man who works.
> Young men may not think so.  They may say, What more pleasant than
> to have one's fortune made for one, and have nothing before one than
> to enjoy life?  What more pleasant than to be idle:  or, at least,
> to do only what one likes, and no more than one likes?  But they
> would find themselves mistaken.  They would find that idleness makes
> a man restless, discontented, greedy, the slave of his own lusts and
> passions, and see too late, that no man is more to be pitied than
> the man who has nothing to do.  Yes; thank God every morning, when
> you get up, that you have something to do that day which must be
> done, whether you like or not.  Being forced to work, and forced to
> do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control,
> diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content and a
> hundred virtues which the idle man will never know.  The monks in
> old time found it so.  When they shut themselves up from the world
> to worship God in prayers and hymns, they found that, without
> working, without hard work either of head or hands, they could not
> even be good men.  The devil came and tempted them, they said, as
> often as they were idle.  An idle monk's soul was lost, they used to
> say; and they spoke truly.  Though they gave up a large portion of
> every day, and of every night also, to prayer and worship, yet they
> found they could not pray aright without work.  And 'working is
> praying,' said one of the holiest of them that ever lived; and he
> spoke truth, if a man will but do his work for the sake of duty,
> which is for the sake of God.  And so they worked, and worked hard,
> not only at teaching the children of the poor, but at tilling the
> ground, clearing the forests, building noble churches, which stand
> unto this day; none among them were idle at first; and as long as
> they worked, they were good men, and blessings to all around them,
> and to this land of England, which they brought out of heathendom to
> the knowledge of Christ and of God; and it was not till they became
> rich and idle, and made other people work for them and till their
> great estates, that they sank into sin and shame, and became
> despised and hated, and at last swept off the face of the land.
> Lastly, my friends, if you wish to see how noble a calling Work is,
> consider God himself; who, although he is perfect, and does not
> need, as we do, the training which comes by work, yet works for ever
> with and through his Son, Jesus Christ, who said, 'My Father worketh
> hitherto, and I work.'  Yes; think of God, who, though he needs
> nothing, and therefore need not work to benefit himself, yet does
> work, simply because, though he needs nothing, all things need him.
> Think of God as a king working for ever for the good of his
> subjects, a Father working for ever for the good of his children,
> for ever sending forth light and life and happiness to all created
> things, and ordering all things in heaven and earth by a providence
> so perfect, that not a sparrow falls to the ground without his
> knowledge, and the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
> 
> And then think of yourselves, called to copy God, each in his
> station, and to be fellow-workers with God for the good of each
> other and of yourselves.  Called to work, because you are made in
> God's image, and redeemed to be the children of God.  Not like the
> brutes, who cannot work, and can therefore never improve themselves,
> or the earth around them; but like children of God, whom he has
> called to the high honour of subduing and replenishing this earth
> which he has given you, and of handing down by your labour blessings
> without number to generations yet unborn.  And when you go back, one
> to his farm, another to his shop, another to his daily labour, say
> to yourselves, This, too, as well as my prayers in church, is my
> heavenly Father's command; in doing this my daily duty honestly and
> well, I can do Christ's will, copy Christ, approve myself to Christ;
> single-eyed and single-handed, doing my work as unto God, and not
> unto men; and so hear, I may hope at last, Christ's voice saying to
> me, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.  I set thee not to
> govern kingdoms, to lead senates, to command armies, to preach the
> gospel, to build churches, to give large charities, to write learned
> books, to do any great work in the eyes of men.  I set thee simply
> to buy and sell, to plough and reap like a Christian man, and to
> bring up thy family thereby, in the fear of God and in the faith of
> Christ.  And thou hast done thy duty more or less; and, in doing thy
> duty, has taught thyself deeper and sounder lessons about thy life,
> character, and immortal soul, than all books could teach thee.  And
> now thou hast thy reward.  Thou hast been faithful over a few
> things:  I will make thee ruler over many things.  Enter thou into
> the joy of thy Lord.'
> 
> SERMON XIII.  FALSE PROPHETS
> 
> (Eighth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Matthew vii. 16.  Ye shall know them by their fruits.
> 
> People are apt to overlook, I think, the real meaning of these
> words.  They do so, because they part them from the words which go
> just before them, about false prophets.
> 
> They consider that 'fruit' means only a man's conduct,--that a man
> is known by his conduct.  That professions are worth nothing, and
> practice worth everything.  That the good man, after all, is the man
> who does right; and the bad man, the man who does wrong.  Excellent
> doctrine; and always needed.  God grant that we may never forget it.
> 
> But the text surely does not quite mean that.  'Fruit' here does not
> mean a man's own conduct, but the conduct of those whom he teaches.
> For see,--our Lord is talking of prophets; that is preachers, who
> set up to preach the Word of God, in the name of God.  'Beware,' he
> says, 'of false prophets.  By their fruits ye shall know them.  By
> what you gather from them,' he says.  'For do men gather grapes off
> thorns, or figs off thistles?'
> 
> Now what is a preacher's fruit?  Surely the fruit of his preaching;
> and that is, not what he does himself, but what he makes you do.
> His fruit is what you gather from him; and what you gather from him
> is, not merely the notions and doctrines which he puts into your
> head, but the way of life in which he makes you live.  What he makes
> you do, is the fruit which you get from him.  Does he make you a
> better man, or does he not? that is the question.  That is the test
> whether he is a false prophet, or a true one; whether he is
> preaching to you the eternal truth of God, or man's inventions and
> devil's lies.
> 
> Does he make you a better man?  Not--Does he make you feel better?
> but--Does he make you behave better?  There is too much preaching in
> the world which makes men _feel_ better--so much better, indeed,
> that they go about like the Pharisee, thanking God that they are not
> as other men, before they have any sound reason to believe that they
> are _not_ as other men; because they live just such lives as other
> men do, as far as respectability, and the fear of hurting their
> custom or their character, allow them to do.  They have their
> prophets, their preachers who teach them; and by their fruits in
> these men, the preachers may be known, by those who have eyes to
> see, and hearts to understand.
> 
> Therefore beware of false prophets.  There are too many of them in
> the world now, as there were in our Lord's time; men who go about
> with the name of God on their lips, and the Bible in their hands, in
> sheep's clothing outwardly; but inwardly ravening wolves.  In
> sheep's clothing, truly, smooth and sanctimonious, meek, and sleek.
> But wolves at heart; wolves in cunning and slyness, as you will
> find, if you have to deal with them; wolves in fierceness and
> cruelty, as you will find if you have to differ from them; wolves in
> greediness and covetousness, and care of their own interest and
> their own pockets.  And wolves, too, in hardness of heart; in the
> hard, dark, horrible, unjust doctrines, which they preach with a
> smile upon their lips, not merely in sermons, but in books and
> tracts innumerable, making out the Heavenly Father, the God whose
> name is Love and Justice, to be even such a one as themselves.
> Wolves, too, in their habit of hunting in packs, each keeping up his
> courage by listening to the howl of his fellows.  They may come in
> the name of God.  They may tell you that they preach the Gospel;
> that no one but they preach the Gospel.  But by their fruits ye
> shall know them.
> 
> Will they make you better men?  Is it not written, 'The disciple is
> not above his master?'  What will you learn from them, but to be
> like them?  And the more you take in their doctrines, the more like
> them you will be; for is it not written, 'He that is perfect shall
> be as his master.'  Can they lead you to eternal life?  Is it not
> written, 'If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the
> ditch?'
> 
> But by their fruits ye shall know them.  By their fruits in the
> world at large, if you have eyes to see it.  By their fruits in your
> own lives, if you give yourselves up to listen to their false
> doctrines, for you will surely find, that, in the first place, they
> will not make you honest men.  They will not teach you to be just
> and true in all your dealings.  They will not teach you common
> morality.  No, my friends, it is most sad to see, how much preaching
> and tract-writing there is in England now, which talks loud about
> Protestant doctrine, and Gospel truths, while all the fruit of it
> seems to be, to teach men to abuse the Pope, and to fancy that every
> one is going to hell, who does not agree with their opinions; while
> their own lives, their own conduct, their own morality, seems not
> improved one whit by all this preaching.  And yet men like such
> preaching, and run to hear it.  Of course they do; for it leaves
> them to behave all the week as if there was no Law of God, if only
> they will go on Sundays, and listen to what is called, I fear most
> untruly, the Gospel of God; leaves them, on condition of belonging
> to some particular party, and listening to some favourite preacher,
> free to give way to their passions, their spite, their meanness; to
> grind their servants, cheat their masters, trick their customers,
> adulterate their goods, and behave in money-matters as if all was
> fair in business, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ had nothing to do
> with common honesty; and all the while,
> 
> Compound for sins they are inclined to.
> By damning those they have no mind to.
> 
> My friends, these things ought not so to be.  There is a Gospel of
> God, which preaches full forgiveness for the sake of Jesus Christ,
> to all who turn from their sins.  But there is a Law of God,
> likewise, which executes sure vengeance against all who do _not_
> turn from their sins; be their professions as high, or their
> doctrines as correct as they may.  A law which is in the Gospel
> itself, and says, by the mouth of the Apostle St. John, 'Little
> children, let no man deceive you:  he that _doeth_ righteousness is
> righteous, even as God is righteous'--he--and not he who expects to
> be saved by listening to some false preacher who teaches his
> congregation how to go to heaven without having thought one heavenly
> thought, or done one heavenly-deed.
> 
> Yes.  There is an eternal law of God, which people are forgetting, I
> often fear, more and more, in England just now.  I sometimes dread,
> lest we should be sinking into that hideous state of which the old
> Hebrew prophet speaks--'The prophets prophesy falsely, and the
> priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so:
> and what will ye do in the end thereof?'  What, indeed; if people
> are to be taught more and more, that religion is a matter merely of
> doctrines and fancies and feelings, and has nothing to do with
> common morality, and common honesty, and common self-control and
> improvement of character and conduct?
> 
> My friends, in these dangerous days, for dangerous they truly are--
> like those of the Scribes and Pharisees of old; days in which
> bigotry and hardness of heart, hypocrisy and lip-profession stalk
> triumphant; days, in which men, like the Scribes and Pharisees of
> old, boast of the Bible, worship the Bible, think they have eternal
> life in the Bible, spend vast sums every year in spreading the
> Bible; and yet will neither read the Bible honestly, nor obey its
> plain commands--In such days as these, what prophet shall we fall
> back upon?  What preacher shall we trust?
> 
> We can at least trust our Bible.  We can read it honestly, if only
> there be in us the honest and good heart; we can obey its plain
> commands, if only we hunger and thirst after righteousness, and
> desire really to become good men.  Read your Bibles for yourselves
> with a single eye, and with a pure heart which longs to know God's
> will because it longs to _do_ God's will; and you will need no false
> prophets, under pretence of explaining it to you, to draw you away
> from the Holy Catholic faith into which you were baptized.
> 
> But if you must have a commentary on the Bible; if you must have
> some book to give you a general notion of what the Bible teaches
> you, and what it expects of you; go to the prayer-book.  Go to the
> good old Catechism which you learnt at school.  There, though not
> from the popular preachers, you will learn that God is just and
> true, loving and merciful, and no respecter of persons.  There you
> will learn, that Christ died not for a few elect, but for the sins
> of the whole world.  There you will learn that in baptism, by God's
> free grace, and not by any experiences or feelings of your own, you
> were made children of God, members of Christ, and inheritors of the
> kingdom of heaven.  There you will learn, that the elect whom the
> Holy Spirit sanctifies, are not merely a favoured few, but _you_--
> every baptized man, woman, and child.  That the Holy Spirit is with
> you, every one of you, to sanctify you, if you will open your hearts
> to his gracious inspirations.  And there you will learn what
> sanctification really means.  Not a few fancies and feelings about
> which any man can deceive himself, and any man, also, deceive his
> neighbours.  No, that sanctification means being made holy,
> righteous, virtuous, good.  That sanctification means 'To love your
> neighbour as yourself, and to do to all men as they should do unto
> you--to love, honour, and succour your father and mother'--Shall I
> go on?  Or do you all know the plain old duty to your neighbours,
> which stands in the Church Catechism.  If you do, thank God that you
> were taught it in your youth.  Read it over and over again.  Think
> over it.  Pray to God to give you grace to act upon it, and to shew
> the fruit of it in your lives.  And then, 'By its fruits you shall
> know it.'  By its fruits you shall know the virtue of the Catechism,
> and of the great and good men, true prophets of God, who wrote that
> Catechism.  Yes.  Cling to that Catechism, even if it convinces you
> of many sins, and makes you sadly ashamed of yourselves again and
> again; for, believe me, it will prove your best safeguard in
> doctrine, your best teacher in practice, in these dangerous days--
> days in which every man who believes that right is right, and wrong
> is wrong, has need to pray with all his heart--'From all false
> doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart, and contempt
> of thy word and commandments; good Lord, deliver us!'
> 
> SERMON XIV.  THE ROCK OF AGES
> 
> (Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> 1 Corinthians x. 4.  They drank of that Spiritual Rock which
> followed them; and that Rock was Christ.
> 
> St. Paul has been speaking to the Corinthians about the Holy
> Communion.
> 
> In this text, St. Paul is warning the Corinthians about it.  He
> says, 'You may be Christian men; you may have the means of grace;
> you may come to the Communion and use the means of grace; and yet
> you may become castaways.'  St. Paul himself says, in the very verse
> before, 'I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection:  lest .
> . . .  I myself should be a castaway.'  Look, he says then, 'at the
> old Jews in the wilderness.  They all partook of God's grace:  but
> they were not all saved.  They were all baptized to Moses in the
> cloud and in the sea.  They all ate the same spiritual meat, the
> manna from heaven.  They all drank the same spiritual drink, the
> water out of the rock in Horeb.  And yet with many of them God was
> not well pleased;' for they were overthrown--their corpses were
> scattered far and wide--in the wilderness.  The spiritual meat and
> the spiritual drink could not keep them alive, if they sinned, and
> deserved death.  'So,' says St. Paul, 'with you.  You are members of
> Christ's body.  The cup of blessing which we bless, is the communion
> of the blood of Christ; the bread which we break, is the communion
> of the body of Christ:' but beware, they will not save you, if you
> sin.  Nothing will save you, if you sin.  If you lust after evil
> things, as those old Jews did; if you are idolaters, as they were;
> if you are profligates, as they were; if you tempt Christ, as they
> did; if you murmur against God, as they murmured, you will be
> destroyed like them.
> 
> Note here two things.  First, that St. Paul says that we really
> receive Christ in the Holy Communion.  He does _not_ say, as some
> do, that the Communion is merely a remembrance of Christ's death.
> He says that the faithful verily and indeed receive Christ's body
> and blood in the Sacrament.  He says so, distinctly, plainly,
> literally; and if that be not true, his whole argument goes for
> nothing, and will not stand.  The Jews, he says, drank of the
> spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ; and so
> he says to you.  But that did not save them from the punishment of
> their sins, when they went and sinned afresh:  neither will it save
> you.
> 
> But now--What are these strange words which St. Paul uses?  These
> old Jews drank of the spiritual Rock which followed them, and that
> Rock was Christ?  Where in the Old Testament do we read of the Rock
> following them?  We read of Moses striking the rock in Horeb, at the
> beginning of their wanderings in the wilderness; but not of its
> following them afterwards.
> 
> St. Paul is here using a beautiful old tradition of the Rabbis, that
> the rock which Moses struck in Horeb followed the Jews through all
> their forty years' wanderings, and that on every Sabbath day when
> they stopped, it stopped also, and the elders called to it, 'Flow
> out, O fountain,' and the water flowed.  A beautiful old story,
> which St. Paul turns into an allegory, to teach, as by a picture,
> the deepest and the highest truth.  Whether that rock followed them
> or not, he says, there was One who did follow them, from whom flowed
> living water; and that Rock is Christ.  Christ followed them.
> Christ the creator, the preserver, the inspirer, the light, the
> life, the guide of men, and of all the universe.  It was to Christ
> they owed their deliverance from Egypt; to Christ they owed their
> knowledge of God, and of the law of God, to Christ they owed
> whatever reason, justice, righteousness, good government, there was
> among them.  And to Christ we owe the same.
> 
> The rock was a type of him from whom flows living water.  As he
> himself said on earth, 'Whosoever drinketh of the water which I
> shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water which I shall give
> him shall be in him a well of water, springing up to everlasting
> life.'  Just as the manna also was a type of him, as he himself
> declared, when the Jews talked to him of the manna; 'Our fathers did
> eat manna in the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from
> heaven to eat.'  Then Jesus said to them, 'Verily, verily, I say
> unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven.'  No:  but only
> a type and picture of it.  'My Father giveth you the true bread from
> heaven.  For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven,
> and giveth life unto the world. . . . I am that bread of life.'
> 
> My friends, herein is a great mystery.  Something of what it means,
> however, we may learn from that wise and good Jew, Philo, who was
> St. Paul's teacher according to the flesh, before he became a
> Christian; and who himself was so near to the kingdom of God, that
> St. Paul often in his epistles uses Philo's very words, putting into
> them a Christian meaning.  And what says he concerning the Rock of
> living waters?
> 
> The soul, he says, falls in with a scorpion in the wilderness; and
> then thirst, which is the thirst of the passions--of the lusts which
> war in our members--seizes on it; till God sends forth on it the
> stream of his own perfect wisdom, and causes the changed soul to
> drink of unchangeable health.  For the steep rock is the wisdom of
> God (by whom he means the Word of God, whom Philo knew not in the
> flesh, but whom we know, as the Lord Jesus Christ), which, being
> both sublime and the first of all things; he quarried out of his own
> powers; and of it he gives drink to the souls which love God; and
> they, when they have drunk, are filled with the most universal
> manna.
> 
> So says Philo, the good Jew, who knew not Christ; and therefore he
> says only a part of the truth.  If you wish to learn the whole
> truth, you must read St. John's Gospel, and St. Paul's Epistles,
> especially this very text; and again, the opening of the Epistle to
> the Ephesians; and again, that most royal passage in the opening of
> the Colossians, where he speaks of the Everlasting Being of Christ,
> who is before all things, and by whom all things consist--in whom
> dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in whom are hid
> all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
> 
> Therefore he is rightly called the Rock, the Rock of Ages, the
> Eternal Rock; because on him all things rest, and have rested since
> the foundation of the world, being made, and kept together, and
> ruled, and inspired by him alone.  Therefore he is rightly called
> the Rock of living waters; for in him are hid all the treasures of
> wisdom and knowledge, and from him they flow forth freely to all who
> cry to him in their thirst after truth and holiness.  Yes, my
> friends, by Christ all things live; and therefore, most of all, by
> Christ our souls live.  To be parted from Christ is death.  To be
> joined to Christ and the body of Christ is life.
> 
> But what life?  The life of the soul.  And what is the life of the
> soul?  Holiness, righteousness, sanctification, virtue,--call it
> what pleases you best.  I shall call it goodness.  That is the only
> life of the soul.  And why?  Because it is the life of Christ.  That
> is the only wisdom of the soul.  And why?  Because it is the mind of
> Christ.  That is the living water.  And why?  Because it flows
> eternally from Christ.
> 
> For who is Christ, but the likeness of God, and the glory of God?
> And what is the likeness of God, but goodness; and what is the glory
> of God, but goodness?  Therefore Christ is goodness itself, as it is
> written, 'Now the Lord is that Spirit.'  Yes, if you will believe
> it, Christ, the only-begotten Son, co-equal and co-eternal, is the
> very and essential goodness of the Father, coming out everlastingly
> in action and in life, in himself, and in his people, who are his
> mystical body, filled with the Spirit of him and his Father; who is
> the Holy Spirit, the spirit of goodness.  From Christ, and not from
> any created being, comes all goodness in man or angel.  Comes from
> Christ?  It were more right, and more according to St. Paul's own
> words, to say, that all goodness _is_ Christ; Christ dwelling in a
> man, Christ forming himself in a man, little by little, step by
> step, as he grows in grace, in purity, in self-control, in
> experience, in knowledge, in wisdom, in strength, in patience, in
> love, in charity; till he comes to the stature of a perfect man, to
> the measure of the fulness of Christ.
> 
> Meanwhile, let the good which a man does be much, or be it little,
> he must say, 'The good which I do, _I_ do not, but Christ who
> dwelleth in me.'
> 
> For in every age of man, it is Christ who is awakening in him the
> hunger and thirst after righteousness, and then satisfying it with
> the only thing which can satisfy them, namely, his most blessed
> self.
> 
> Yes, believe it.  It is Christ in the child which makes it speak the
> truth; Christ in the child which makes it shrink from whatever it
> has been told is wrong.  It is Christ in the young man, which fills
> him with lofty aspirations, hopes of bettering the world around him,
> hopes of training his soul to be all that it can be, and of putting
> forth all his powers in the service of Christ.  It is Christ in the
> middle-aged man, which makes him strong in good works, labouring
> patiently, wisely, and sturdily; so that having drunk of the living
> waters himself, they may flow out of him again to others in good
> deeds; a fountain springing up in him to an eternal life of
> goodness.  It is Christ in the old man, which makes him look on with
> calm content while his own body and mind decay, knowing that the
> kingdom of God cannot decay; for Christ is ruling it in
> righteousness; and all will be well with him, and with his children
> after him, and with all mankind, and all heaven and earth, if they
> themselves only will it, long after he has been gathered to his
> fathers.
> 
> Yes, such a man knows in whom he has believed.  He knows that the
> spiritual Rock has been following him through all his wanderings in
> this weary world; and that that Rock is Christ.  He can recollect
> how, again and again, at his Sabbath haltings in his life's journey,
> it was to him in the Holy Communion as to the Israelites of old in
> their haltings in the wilderness, when the priests of Jehovah cried
> to the mystic rock, 'Flow forth, O fountain,' and the waters flowed.
> So can he recollect how, in Holy Communion, there flowed into his
> soul streams of living water, the water of life, quenching that
> thirst of his soul, which no created thing could slake; the water of
> life; of Christ's life, which is the light of men, shewing them what
> they ought to be and do; the life which is the light; the life which
> is according to the eternal and divine reason; the life of wisdom;
> which is the life of love; which is the life of justice; which is
> the life of Christ; which is the life of God.
> 
> But if these things are so--and so they are, for Christ has said it,
> St. Paul has said it, St. John has said it--but if these things are
> so, will they not teach us much about Holy Communion, how we may
> receive it worthily, and how unworthily?
> 
> If what we receive in the Communion be Christ himself, the good
> Christ who is to make us good; then how can we receive it worthily,
> if we do not hunger and thirst after goodness?  If we do not come
> thither, longing to be made good, and sanctified, then we come for
> the wrong thing, to the wrong place.  We are like those Corinthians
> who came to the Lord's supper not to be made good men, but to exalt
> their own spiritual self-conceit; and so only ate and drank their
> own damnation, not discerning the Lord's body, that it was a holy
> body, a body of righteousness and goodness.
> 
> But if we come hungering and thirsting to be made good men, then we
> come for the right thing, to the right place.  Then we need not stay
> away, because we feel ourselves intolerably burdened with many sins;
> that will be our very reason for coming, that we may be cleansed
> from our sins--cleansed not only from their guilt, but from their
> power; and cry, in spirit and in truth, as we kneel at that holy
> table--
> 
> Rock of ages, cleft for me,
> Let me hide myself in thee;
> By the water and the blood,
> From thy riven side which flowed,
> Be of sin the double cure,
> Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
> 
> Yes, from its guilt and from its power also.  Let us all pray, each
> in his own fashion:--
> 
> Oh Lamb eternal, beyond all place and time!  Oh Lamb slain
> eternally, before the foundation of the world!  Oh Lamb, which liest
> slain eternally, in the midst of the throne of God!  Let the blood
> of life, which flows from thee, procure me pardon for the past; let
> the water of life, which flows from thee, give me strength for the
> future.  I come to cast away my own life, my life of self and
> selfishness, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, that
> I may live it no more; and to receive thy life, which is created
> after the likeness of God, in righteousness and true holiness, that
> I may live it for ever and ever, and find it a well of life
> springing up in me to everlasting life.  Eternal Goodness, make me
> good like thee.  Eternal Wisdom, make me wise like thee.  Eternal
> Justice, make me just like thee.  Eternal Love, make me loving like
> thee.  Then I shall hunger no more, and thirst no more; for
> 
> Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
> More than all in thee I find;
> Raise me, fallen; cheer me, faint;
> Heal me, sick; and lead me, blind.
> Thou of life the fountain art;
> Freely let me take of thee;
> Spring thou up within my heart;
> Rise to all eternity.
> 
> Oh come to Holy Communion with the words of that glorious hymn not
> merely on your lips, but in your hearts; and you will never come
> amiss.
> 
> SERMON XV.  ANTIPATHIES
> 
> (Tenth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> 1 Cor. xii. 3, 4, 5, 6.  Wherefore, I give you to understand, that
> no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed:  and
> that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
> Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.  And there
> are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.  And there
> are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh
> all in all.
> 
> We are to come to the Communion this day in love and charity with
> all men.  But are we in love and charity with all men?
> 
> I do not mean, are there any persons whom we hate; against whom we
> bear a spite; whom we should be glad to see in trouble or shame?
> God forbid, my friends, God forbid.  There are, indeed, devil's
> tempers.  And yet more easy for us to keep in the bottom of our
> hearts, and more difficult to root them out, than we fancy.
> 
> It is easy enough for us to forgive (in words at least) a man who
> has injured us.  Easy enough to make up our minds that we will not
> revenge ourselves.  Easy enough to determine, even, that we will
> return good for evil to him, and do him a kindness when we have a
> chance.  Yes, we would not hurt him for the world:  but what if God
> hurt him?  What if he hurt himself?  What if he lost his money?
> What if his children turned out ill?  What if he made a fool of
> himself, and came to shame?  What if he were found out and exposed,
> as we fancy that he deserves?  Should we be so very sorry?  We
> should not punish him ourselves.  No.  But do we never catch
> ourselves thinking whether God may not punish him; thinking of that
> with a base secret satisfaction; almost hoping for it, at last?  Oh
> if we ever do, God forgive us!  If we ever find those devil's
> thoughts rising in us, let us flee from them as from an adder; flee
> to the foot of Christ's Cross, to the cross of him who prayed for
> his murderers, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;
> and there cry aloud for the blood of life, which shall cleanse us
> from the guilt of those wicked thoughts, and for the water of life,
> which shall cleanse us from the power of them:  lest they get the
> dominion over us, and spring up in us, and spread over our whole
> hearts; not a well of life, but a well of poison, springing up in us
> to everlasting damnation.  Oh let us pray to him to give us truth in
> our inward parts; that we may forgive and love, not in word only,
> but in deed and in truth.
> 
> I could not help saying this in passing.  But it is not what the
> text is speaking of; not what I want to speak of myself to-day.  I
> want to speak of a matter which is smaller, and not by any means so
> sinful:  and which yet in practice is often more tormenting to a
> truly tender conscience, because it is more common and more
> continual.
> 
> How often, when one examines oneself, whether one be in love and
> charity with all men, one must recollect that there are many people
> whom one does not like.  I do not mean that one hates them.  Not in
> the least:  but they do not suit one.  There is something in them
> which we cannot get on with, as the saying is.  Something in their
> opinions, manners, ways of talking; even--God forgive us--merely in
> their voice, or their looks, or their dress, which frets us, and
> gives us what is called an antipathy to them.  And one dislikes
> them; though they never have harmed us, or we them; and we know
> them, perhaps, to be better people than ourselves.  Now, are we in
> love and charity with these people?  I am afraid not.
> 
> I know one is tempted to answer; but I am afraid the answer is worth
> very little--Why not?  We cannot help it.  You cannot expect us to
> like people who do not suit us:  any more than you can expect us to
> like a beetle or a spider.  We know the beetle or the spider will
> not harm us.  We know that they are good in their places, and do
> good, as all God's creatures are and do; and there is room enough in
> the world for them and us:  but we have a natural dislike to them,
> and cannot help it; and so with these people.  We mean no harm in
> disliking them.  It is natural to us; and why blame us for it.
> 
> Now what is the mistake here?  Saying that it is _natural_ to us.
> We are not meant to live according to nature, but according to
> grace; and grace must conquer nature, my friends, if we wish to save
> our souls alive.  It is nature, brute nature, which makes some dogs
> fly at every strange dog they meet.  It is nature, brute nature,
> which makes a savage consider every strange savage as his enemy, and
> try to kill him.  But unless nature be conquered in that savage, it
> will end, where following brute nature always ends, in death; and
> the savages will (as all savages are apt to do) destroy each other
> off the face of the earth, by continual war and murder.  It is brute
> nature which makes low and ignorant persons hate foreign people,
> because their dress and language seem strange.  But unless that
> natural feeling had been in most of us conquered by the grace of
> God, which is the spirit of justice and of love, then England would
> have remained alone in conceit and ignorance, hated by all the
> nations; instead of being what, thank God! she is--the Sanctuary of
> the world; to which all the oppressed of the earth may flee; and
> find a welcome, and safety, and freedom, and justice, and peace.
> 
> And so with us, my friends.  It is natural, and according to the
> brute nature of the old Adam, to dislike this person and that, just
> because they do not suit us.  But it is according to grace, and the
> new Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, to honour all men; to love
> the brotherhood; to throw away our own private fancies and personal
> antipathies; and, like the Lord Jesus Christ, copy the all-embracing
> charity of God.  And no one has a right to answer, 'But I must draw
> the line somewhere.'  Thou must not.  I am afraid that thou _wilt_,
> and that I shall, too, God forgive us both! because we are sinful
> human beings.  We may, but we _must_ not, draw a line as to whom we
> shall endure in charity.  For Christ draws no line.  Is it not
> written, 'No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy
> Ghost.'  Is not the Spirit of Christ in a Christian man, unless he
> be a reprobate? and who is reprobate, we know not, and dare not try
> to know; for it is written, 'Judge not, and ye shall not be judged:
> condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned.'
> 
> But what has the text to do with all this?
> 
> My friends, is not this just what the text is telling us?  I said
> this moment, that the Spirit of Christ was in a Christian man,
> unless he be a reprobate.  And the text says further, that there are
> diversities of gifts in Christian men:  but the same spirit in all
> of them.
> 
> Yes:  people _will_ be different one from another.  There are
> diversities of gifts.  Differences in talents, in powers, in
> character, in kinds of virtue and piety; so that you shall find no
> two good men, no two useful men, like each other.  But there is the
> same Spirit.  The same Spirit of God is in each, though bearing
> different fruit in each.  And there are differences of
> administrations, of offices, in God's kingdom.  God sets one man to
> do one work, and another to do another:  but it is the same Lord who
> puts each man in his place, and shows him his work, and gives him
> power to do it.  And there are diversities of operations, that is,
> of ways of working; so that if you put any two men to do the same
> thing, they will most probably do it each in a different way, and
> yet both do it well.  But it is the same God, who is working in them
> both; the God who works all in all, and has his work done by a
> thousand different hands, by a thousand different ways.
> 
> And it is right and good that people should be so different from
> each other.  'For the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every
> man to profit withal.'  To profit, to be of use.  If all men were
> alike, no one could learn from his neighbour.  If all mankind were
> as like each other as a flock of sheep, there would be no more work,
> no more progress, no more improvement in mankind, than there is in a
> flock of sheep.  Now each man can bring his own little share of
> knowledge or usefulness into the common stock.  Each man has, or
> ought to have, something to teach his neighbour.  Each man can learn
> something from his neighbour:  at least he can learn this--to have
> patience with his neighbour.  To live and let live.  To bear with
> what in him seems odd and disagreeable, trusting that God may have
> put it there; that God has need of it; that God will make use of it.
> God makes use of many things which look to us ugly and disagreeable.
> He makes use of the spider and of the beetle.  How much more of our
> brethren, members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the
> kingdom of heaven.  Shall they be to us, even if they be odd or
> disagreeable in some things--shall they be to us as the beetle or
> the spider, or any other merely natural things?  They are men and
> women, in whom is the Spirit of the living God.  And my friends, if
> they are good enough for God, they are good enough for us.  Think
> but one moment.  God the Father adopts a man as his child, God the
> Son dies for that man, God the Holy Ghost inspires that man; and
> shall we be more dainty than God?  If, in spite of the man's little
> weaknesses and oddities, God shall condescend to come down and dwell
> in that man, making him more or less a good man, doing good work;
> shall we pretend that we cannot endure what God endures?  Shall we
> be more dainty, I ask again, than the holy and perfect God?  Oh my
> friends, let us pray to him to take out of our hearts all
> selfishness, fancifulness, fastidiousness, and hasty respect of
> persons, of all which there is none in God.  Let us ask for his
> Spirit, the Spirit of Charity, which sees God in all, and all in
> God, and therefore sees good in all, and sees all in love.
> 
> Then we shall see how much more there is in our neighbours to like,
> than to dislike.  Then all these little differences will seem to us
> trifles not to be thought of, before the broad fact of a man's
> being, after all, a man, an Englishman, a Christian, and a good
> Christian, doing good work where God has put him.  Then we shall be
> ashamed of our old narrowness of heart; ashamed of having looked so
> much at the little evil in our neighbours, and not at the great good
> in them.  Then we shall go about the world cheerfully; and our
> neighbour's faces will seem to us full of light:  instead of seeming
> full of darkness, because our own eyes and minds are dark for want
> of charity.  Then we shall come to the Communion, not with hearts
> narrowed and shut up, perhaps, from the very person who kneels next
> to us:  but truly open-hearted; with hearts as wide--ah God, that it
> were possible!--as the sacred heart of Christ, in which is room for
> all mankind.  And so receiving his body, which is the blessed
> company of all faithful people, we shall receive Christ, who
> dwelleth in them, and they in him.
> 
> SERMON XVI.  ST. PAUL
> 
> (Eleventh Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> 1 Cor. xv. 8.  Last of all he was seen of me, also, as of one born
> out of due time.  For I am the least of the Apostles, that am not
> meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of
> God.
> 
> You heard in this text (part of the epistle for this day) St. Paul's
> opinion of himself.  You heard, also, in the Second Lesson for this
> day, the ninth chapter of Acts, the extraordinary story of his
> conversion.
> 
> And what may we learn from that story?  We may learn many lessons;
> lessons without number.
> 
> We may learn, first; not to be astonished, if we have to change our
> opinions as we grow older.  When we are young, we are very positive
> about this thing and that, as St. Paul was; violent in favour of our
> own opinions; ready to quarrel with any one who differs from us, as
> St. Paul was.  But let ten years, twenty years, roll over our heads,
> and we may find our opinions utterly changed, as St. Paul did, and
> look back with astonishment on ourselves, for having been foolish
> enough to believe what we did, as St. Paul looked back; and with
> shame, as did St. Paul likewise, at having said so many violent and
> unjust things against people, who, we now see, were in the right
> after all.
> 
> Next; we may learn not to be ashamed of changing our minds:  but if
> we find ourselves in the wrong, to confess it boldly and honestly,
> as St. Paul did.  What a fearful wrench to his mind and his heart;
> what a humiliation to his self-conceit, to have to change his mind
> once for all on all matters in heaven and earth.  What must it not
> have cost him to throw up at once all his friends and relations; to
> part himself from all whom he loved and respected on earth, to feel
> that henceforth they must look upon him as a madman, an infidel, an
> enemy.  To an affectionate man, and St. Paul was an extremely
> affectionate man, what a bitter struggle that must have cost him.
> But he faced that struggle, and conquered in it, like a brave and
> honest man.  And the consequence was, that he had, in time, and
> after many lonely years, many Christian friends for each Jewish
> friend that he had lost; and to him was fulfilled (as it will be to
> all men) our Lord's great saying, 'There is no man that hath left
> house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or
> children, or lands for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall
> receive an hundredfold now in this time, . . . and in the world to
> come eternal life.'
> 
> Next; we may take comfort, in the hope that God will not impute to
> us these early follies and mistakes of ours; if only there be in us,
> as there was in St. Paul, the honest and good heart; that is, the
> heart which longs to know what is true and right, and bravely acts
> up to what it knows.  St. Paul did so.  God, when he set him apart,
> as he says, from his very birth, gave him a great grace, even the
> honest and good heart; and he was true to it, and used it.  He tried
> to learn his best, and do his best.  He profited in the Jews'
> religion, beyond all his fellows.  He was, touching the
> righteousness which was in the law, blameless.  He was so zealous
> for what he thought right, that he persecuted the Church of Christ,
> as the Pharisees, his teachers, had taught him to do.  In all
> things, whether right or wrong in each particular case, he was an
> honest, earnest seeker after truth and righteousness.  And therefore
> Christ, instead of punishing him, fulfilled to him his own great
> saying,--'To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have
> abundance.'  He had not yet, as he himself says, again and again,
> the grace of Christ, which is love to his fellow-men; and therefore
> his works were not pleasing to God, and had, as the article says,
> the nature of sin.  His empty forms and ceremonies could not please
> God.  His persecuting the Church had plainly the nature of sin.  But
> there was something which God had put in him, and which God would
> not lose sight of, or suffer to be lost; and that was, the honest
> and good heart, of which our Lord speaks in the parable of the
> sower.  In that Christ sowed the word of God, even himself, and his
> grace and Holy Spirit; and, behold, it sprang up and bore fruit a
> hundredfold, over all Christian nations to this day.
> 
> Keep, therefore, if you have it, the honest and good heart.  If you
> have it not, pray for it earnestly.  Determine to learn what is
> true, whatever be the trouble; and to do what is right, whatever be
> the cost; and then, though you may make many mistakes, and have more
> than once, perhaps, to change your mind in shame and confusion, yet
> all will come right at last, for the grace of Christ, sooner or
> later, will lead you into all truth which you require for this world
> and all worlds to come.
> 
> Again, we may learn from St. Paul this lesson.  That though God has
> forgiven a man, that is no reason that he should forgive himself.
> That may seem a startling saying just now.  For the common teaching
> now is, that if a man finds, or fancies, that God has forgiven him,
> he may forgive himself at once; that if he gets assurance that his
> sins are washed away in Christ's blood, he may go swaggering and
> boasting about the world (I can call it no less), as if he had never
> sinned at all; that he may be (as you see in these revivals, from
> which God defend us!) one moment in the deepest agonies of
> conscience, and dread of hell-fire, and the next moment in raptures
> of joy, declaring himself to be in heaven.  Alas, alas! such people
> forget that sin leaves behind it wounds, which even the grace of
> Christ takes a long time in healing, and which then remain as ugly,
> but wholesome scars, to remind us of the fools which we have been.
> They are like a man who is in great bodily agony, and gets sudden
> relief from a dose of laudanum.  The pain stops; and he feels
> himself, as he says, in heaven for the time:  but he is too apt to
> forget that the cause of the pain is still in his body, and that if
> he commits the least imprudence, he will bring it back again; just
> as happens, I hear, in too many of these hasty and noisy conversions
> now-a-days.
> 
> That is one extreme.  The opposite extreme is that of many old Roman
> Catholic saints and hermits who could not forgive themselves at all,
> but passed their whole lives in fasting, poverty, and misery,
> bewailing their sins till their dying day.  That was a mistake.  It
> sprang out of mistaken doctrines, of which I shall not speak here:
> but it did not spring entirely from them.  There was in them a seed
> of good, for which I shall always love and honour them, even though
> I differ from them; and that was, a noble hatred of sin.  They felt
> the sinfulness of sin; and they hated themselves for having sinned.
> The mercy of God made them only the more ashamed of themselves for
> having rebelled against him.  Their longing after holiness only made
> them loathe the more their past unholiness.  They carried that
> feeling too far:  but they were noble people, men and women of God;
> and we may say of them, that, 'Wisdom is justified of all her
> children.'
> 
> But I wish you to run into neither extreme.  I only ask you to look
> at your past lives, if you have ever been open sinners, as St. Paul
> looked at his.  There is no sentimental melancholy in him; no
> pretending to be miserable; no trying to make himself miserable.  He
> is saved, and he knows it.  He is an apostle, and he stands boldly
> on his dignity.  He is cheerful, hopeful, joyful:  but whenever he
> speaks of his past life (and he speaks of it often), it is with
> noble shame and sorrow.  Then he looks to himself the chief of
> sinners, not worthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted
> the Church of Christ.  What he is, he will not deny.  What he was,
> he will not forget, he dare not forget, lest he should forget that
> the good which he does, _he_ does not--for in him (that is, in his
> flesh, his own natural character), dwelleth no good thing--but
> Christ, who dwells in him; lest he should grow puffed up, careless,
> self-indulgent; lest he should neglect to subdue his evil passions;
> and so, after having preached to others, himself become a castaway.
> 
> So let us do, my friends.  Let us not be too hasty in forgiving
> ourselves.  Let us thank God cheerfully for the present.  Let us
> look on hopefully to the future; let us not look back too much at
> the past, or rake up old follies which have been pardoned and done
> away.  But let us thank God whenever he thinks fit to shew us the
> past, and bring our sin to our remembrance.  Let us thank him, when
> meeting an old acquaintance, passing by an old haunt, looking over
> an old letter, reminds us what fools we were ten, twenty, thirty
> years ago.  Let us thank him for those nightly dreams, in which old
> tempers, old meannesses, old sins, rise up again in us into ugly
> life, and frighten us by making us in our sleep, what we were once,
> God forgive us! when broad awake.  I am not superstitious.  I know
> that those dreams are bred merely of our brain and of our blood.
> But I know that they are none the less messages from God.  They tell
> us unmistakeably that we are the same persons that we were twenty
> years ago.  They tell us that there is the same infection of nature,
> the same capability of sin, in us, that there was of old.  That in
> our flesh dwells no good thing:  that by the grace of God alone we
> are what we are:  and that did his grace leave us, we might be once
> more as utter fools as we were in the wild days of youth.  Yes:  let
> us thank God for everything which reminds us of what we once were.
> Let us humble ourselves before him whenever those memories return to
> us; and let us learn from them what St. Paul learnt.  To be
> charitable to all who have not yet learnt the wisdom which God (as
> we may trust) has taught to us; to feel for them, feel with them, be
> sure that they are our brothers, men of like passions with
> ourselves, who will be tried by the same standard as we; whom
> therefore we must not judge, lest we be judged in turn:  and let us
> have, as St. Paul had, hope for them all; hope that God who has
> forgiven us, will forgive them; that God who has raised us from the
> death of sin, to something of the life of righteousness, will raise
> them up likewise, in his own good time.
> 
> Amen.
> 
> SERMON XVII.  THE BROKEN AND CONTRITE HEART
> 
> Isaiah, lvii. 15-21.  For thus saith the high and lofty One that
> inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and
> holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,
> to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the
> contrite ones.  For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be
> always wroth:  for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls
> which I have made.  For the iniquity of his covetousness was I
> wroth, and smote him:  I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on
> frowardly in the way of his heart.  I have seen his ways, and will
> heal him:  I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and
> to his mourners.  I create the fruit of the lips:  Peace, peace to
> him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord; and I
> will heal him.  But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it
> cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.  There is no peace,
> saith my God, to the wicked.
> 
> This is part of Isaiah's prophecy.  He is telling the Jews that they
> should come back safe at last to their own land.  He tells them why
> God had driven them out, and why God was going to bring them back.
> 
> He had driven them out for their sins.  But he was not going to
> bring them back for their righteousness.  He was going to bring them
> back out of his own free grace, his own pure love and mercy, which
> was wider, deeper, and higher, than all their sins, or than the sins
> of the whole world.  He had sworn to Abraham to be the friend of
> those foolish rebellious Jews, and he would keep his promise for
> ever.  Their wickedness could not conquer his goodness, or their
> denying him make him deny himself.
> 
> But one thing he did require of them.  Not that they should turn and
> do right all at once.  That must come afterwards.  But that they
> should open their eyes, and see that they had done wrong.  He wanted
> to produce in them the humble and the contrite heart.
> 
> Now, as I told you last Sunday, a contrite heart does not merely
> mean a broken heart; it means more.  It means literally a heart
> crushed; a heart ground to powder.  You can have no stronger word.
> 
> It was this heart which God wished to breed in these rebellious
> Jews.  A heart like Isaiah's heart, when he said, after having seen
> God's glory, 'Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell
> among a people of unclean lips.'  A heart like Jeremiah's heart,
> when he said, 'Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a
> fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of
> the daughter of my people.'  A heart like Daniel's heart, when he
> confessed before God that, to him and all his people belonged shame
> and confusion of face.
> 
> Why do I mention these three men?  They were not bad men, but good
> men.  What need had they of a contrite heart?
> 
> I mention them, because they were good men.  And why were they good
> men?  For any good works of their own?  Not in the least.  What made
> them good men was, just the having the humble and the contrite
> heart; just feeling that in themselves they were as bad as the
> sinners round them; that the only thing which kept them out of the
> idolatry and profligacy of their neighbours was confessing their own
> weakness, and clinging fast to God by faith; confessing that their
> own righteousness was as filthy rags, and that God must clothe them
> with his righteousness.
> 
> Do you suppose that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel would have been
> good men, if they had said to themselves, 'We are prophets; we are
> inspired; we know God's law:  and therefore we are righteous; we are
> safe:  but these people--these idolaters, these drunkards, these
> covetous, tyrannous, profligate people round, to whom we preach, and
> who know not the law--they are accursed.'  If they had, they would
> have said just what the Pharisees said afterwards.  And what came of
> their saying so?  Instead of knowing the Lord Christ, when he came
> they crucified him, showing that they were really worse at heart
> than the ignorant common people, instead of better.
> 
> No, my friends, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Daniel, were, better men
> than those round them, just because they had the humble and contrite
> heart; because they confessed that the root of sin was in them too,
> as much as in their fellow-country men; because they took their
> share of the public blame, their share of the public burden.
> 
> And their work and wish was, to breed in their fellow-countrymen the
> same humble and contrite heart which they had; to make them confess
> that their only hope lay in turning back to God, and doing right.
> But they could not succeed.  Sin was too strong for them.  So as
> Isaiah had warned the Jews, God did the work himself.  God took the
> matter into his own hands, and arose out of his place to punish
> those Jews, and to make short work with them, by famine, and
> pestilence, and earthquake, and foreign invasion, till they were all
> carried away captive to Babylon:  to see if that would teach them to
> know that God was the Lord; to see if that would breed in them the
> humble and contrite heart.
> 
> But God says to these poor Jews, Do not fancy that I have taken a
> spite against you.  Not so.  I will not contend for ever.  I will
> not be always angry; for then the spirit would fail before me, and
> the souls which I have made.  I have made you, God says; and I love
> you.  I wish to save you, and not to destroy you.  If God really
> hated any man, do you suppose that he would endure that man for a
> moment in his universe?  Do you suppose that he would not sweep that
> man away, as easily and as quickly as we do a buzzing gnat when it
> torments us?  Do you fancy that God lets you, or me, or any man, or
> any creature live one single instant, except in the hope of saving
> him, and of making him better than he is; of making him of some use,
> somewhere, some day or other?  Do you suppose, I say, that God
> endures sinners one moment, save because he loves sinners, and
> willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted
> and live?  No.  'God our Saviour,' says St. Paul to Timothy,
> 'willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of
> the truth;' and therefore if they are not saved it must be their own
> fault, and not God's; it must be they who will not be saved, though
> God wills that they should be, as Isaiah goes on to show.  For he
> says--God cries to men, Peace!  I create the fruit of the lips; that
> is, I give men cause to thank me.  I create it.  I make it without
> their help.  I do not sell them my mercy.  I give it them freely.  I
> say, Peace, peace, to them all, To him who is near, and him who is
> afar off; peace to all mankind; peace on earth, and goodwill to men.
> God is everlastingly at peace with himself, and at peace with all
> his creatures, and with all his works; and he wills, in his
> boundless love, to bring them all into his peace, the peace which
> passeth understanding; that they may be at peace with him; and,
> therefore at peace with themselves, and at peace with each other.
> 
> But how can they be at peace, when there is no peace in them?  If
> they will do wrong; if they will quarrel; if they will defraud each
> other; if they will give way to the lusts and passions which war
> within them:  how can they be at peace?  They are like a troubled
> sea, says Isaiah, when it cannot rest, which casts up mire and dirt;
> and there is no peace to them.  It is not God who casts up the mire
> and dirt.  It is they who cast it up.  God has not made them
> restless:  but they themselves, with their pride, selfishness,
> violent passions, longings after this and that.  God has not made
> them foul and dirty, but they themselves, with their own foul words
> and foul deeds, which keep them from being at peace with themselves,
> because they are ashamed of them all the while; which keep them from
> being at peace with their neighbours; which make them hate and fear
> their neighbours, because they know that their neighbours do not
> respect them, or are afraid of their neighbours finding them out.
> 
> What says brave, plain-spoken St. James?--'Let no man say when he is
> tempted, I am tempted of God:  for God cannot be tempted with evil,
> neither tempteth he any man.'  'From whence come wars and fightings
> among you?  Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your
> members?  Ye lust, and have not:  ye kill, and desire to have, and
> cannot obtain:  ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask
> not.'
> 
> But as for God, he says, from him comes nothing but good.  Do not
> fancy anything else.  'Do not err, my beloved brethren.  Every good
> gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the
> Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of
> turning.  Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that
> we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.'
> 
> My friends, all these things were written for our examples.  God
> grant that we may lay the lesson to heart.  A dark night may come to
> any one of us, a night of darkness upon darkness, and sorrow upon
> sorrow, and bad luck upon bad luck; till we know not what is going
> to happen next; and are ready to say with David--'All thy waves and
> thy billows are gone over me;' and with Hezekiah--'I reckoned till
> morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones:  from day
> even to night wilt thou make an end of me.'
> 
> God grant, that before that day comes, we may have so learnt to know
> God, as to know that the billows are God's billows, and the storms
> his storms; and, after a while, not to be afraid, though all earthly
> hope and help seem swept away.  God grant that when trouble comes
> after trouble, we may be able to see that our Father in heaven is
> only dealing with us as he dealt with those poor Jews; that he is
> all the while saying 'Peace!' to us, whether we be near him, or far
> off from him; and is ready to heal us, the moment that he has worked
> in us the broken and contrite heart.  And we may trust him that he
> will do it.  With him one day is as a thousand years.  And in one
> day of bitter misery he can teach us lessons, which we could not
> teach ourselves in a thousand years of reading and studying, or even
> of praying.  But our prayers, we shall find, have not been in vain.
> He has not forgotten one of them; and there is the answer, in that
> very sorrow.  In sorrow, he is making short work with our spirits.
> In one terrible and searching trial our souls may be, as the Poet
> says--
> 
> Heated hot with burning fears,
> And bathed in baths of hissing tears;
> And battered by the strokes of doom.
> To shape and use.
> 
> Yes.  He will make short work at times with men's spirits.  He
> grinds hearts to powder, that they may be broken and contrite before
> him:  but only that he may heal them; that out of the broken
> fragments of the hard, proud, self-deceiving heart of stone, he may
> create a new and harder heart of flesh, human and gentle, humble and
> simple.  And then he will return and have mercy.  He will show that
> he will not contend for ever.  He will show that he does not wish
> our spirits to fail before him, but to grow and flourish before him
> to everlasting life.  He will create the fruit of the lips, and give
> us cause to thank him in spirit and in truth.  He will show us that
> he was nearest when he seemed furthest off; and that just because he
> is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is
> Holy, who dwelleth in the high and holy place, for that very reason
> he dwells also with the humble and the contrite heart; because that
> heart alone can confess his height and its own lowliness, confess
> its own sin and his holiness; and so can cling to his majesty by
> faith, and partake of his holiness by the inspiration of his Holy
> Spirit.
> 
> God grant that we may all so humble ourselves under his mighty hand,
> whenever that hand lies heavy upon us, that he may raise us up in
> due time, changed into his divine likeness, from glory to glory;
> till we come to the measure of Christ, and to the stature of perfect
> men, renewed into the image of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our
> Lord!  Amen.
> 
> SERMON XVIII.  ST. PETER
> 
> Matt. xvi. 18.  Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my
> Church.
> 
> This is St. Peter's day.  It will be well worth our while to think a
> little over St. Peter, and what kind of man he was.  For St. Peter
> was certainly one of the most important and most famous men who ever
> lived in the whole world.  You just heard what our Lord said to him
> in the text.  And certainly, from those words, and from many other
> things which are told of St. Peter, he was the chief of the
> apostles--at least till St. Paul arose.
> 
> St. Paul says himself, that he had as much authority as St. Peter,
> and that he was not a whit behind the very chiefest of the apostles:
> but St. Peter, for some time after our Lord's death, seems to have
> been looked up to, by the rest of the apostles and the disciples, as
> their leader, the man of most weight and authority among them.  It
> was to St. Peter especially that our Lord looked to strengthen the
> other apostles, after he had been converted himself.  It was to St.
> Peter that our Lord first revealed that great gospel, that the
> Gentiles were fellow-heirs with the Jews in all God's promises.  The
> same thing was afterwards revealed to St. Paul too, and far more
> fully:  but it was St. Peter who had the great honour of baptizing
> the first heathen; and of using, as our Lord had bid him do, the
> keys of the kingdom of heaven, to open its doors to all the nations
> upon earth.
> 
> Now, what sort of a man was this on whom the Lord Jesus Christ put
> so great an honour?  If we say that St. Peter was nothing in
> himself; that all the goodness and worth in him was given him by
> Jesus Christ, then we must ask, what sort of goodness, what sort of
> worth, did the Lord give St. Peter to make him fit for so great an
> office?  And how did he use Christ's gifts?  For, mind, he might
> have used them wrongly, as well as rightly; and the greater gifts he
> had, the more harm he would have done if he had used them ill.  We
> shall see, presently, how he did use them ill, more than once; and
> how our Lord had to reprove him, and say very stern and terrible
> words to him, to bring him to his senses.
> 
> But this we may see, that St. Peter was always a frank, brave,
> honest, high-spirited man; who, if he thought that a thing ought to
> be done, would do it at once.
> 
> The first thing we hear of him is, how Jesus, walking by the Lake of
> Galilee, saw Peter with his brother, casting a net into the sea, for
> they were fishers.  And he said unto them, 'Follow me, and I will
> make you fishers of men.  And they straightway left their nets, and
> followed him.'  This was most likely not the first time that St.
> Peter had seen our Lord, or heard him speak.  Living in the same
> part of the country, he must have known all his miracles:  but still
> it was a great struggle, no doubt, for him (and doubly so because he
> was a married man), to throw up his employment, and go wandering
> after one who had not where to lay his head:  yet he did it, and did
> it at once.  And you may see that he did it for a much higher and
> nobler reason than if he had only gone to wonder at our Lord's
> miracles, as the multitude did, or even to be able to work miracles
> himself.  Jesus did not say to him, Follow me, and I will give you
> the power of working miracles, and being admired, and wondered at;
> all he says is, I will make you fishers of men; I will make you able
> to get a hold on men's hearts, and teach them, and make them happier
> and better.  And for that St. Peter followed him.  It seems as if
> from the first his wish was to do good to his fellow-creatures.
> 
> And, gradually, he seems to have become the spokesman for the other
> apostles.  When they wished to ask our Lord anything, we generally
> find St. Peter asking; and when (as in the gospel for to-day), our
> Lord asks them a question, St. Peter answers for them all.  Whom say
> ye that I am?  And Peter answered and said, 'Thou art the Christ,
> the Son of the Living God.'
> 
> This is what St. Peter had learnt; because he had kept his eyes and
> his ears open, and his heart ready and teachable, that he might see
> God's truth when it should please God to show it him; and God did
> show it him:  and taught him something which his own eyes and ears
> could not teach him; which all his thinking could not have taught
> him; which no _man_ could have taught him; flesh and blood could not
> reveal to him that Jesus was the Son of God; flesh and blood could
> not draw aside the veil of flesh and blood, and make him see in that
> poor man of Nazareth, who was called the carpenter's son, the only-
> begotten of the Father, God made man.  No.  God the Father only
> could teach him that, by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit:  but do
> you think that God would have taught St. Peter that, or that St.
> Peter could have learnt it, if his mind had been merely full of
> thoughts about himself, and what honour he was to get for himself,
> or what profit he was to get for himself, out of the Lord Jesus
> Christ?
> 
> No:  St. Peter loved the Lord Jesus; loved him with his whole heart.
> When afterwards our Lord asked him, 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest
> thou me?'  He answered, 'Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.'  And
> because he loved him, he saw how beautiful and glorious the Lord's
> character was; and his eyes were opened to see that the Lord was too
> beautiful, too glorious, to be merely a mortal man; and, at last, to
> see that he was the brightness of God's glory, and the express image
> of his Father's person.
> 
> But, as I said just now, St. Peter's great and excellent gifts might
> have made him only the more dangerous man, if he used them ill.  And
> this seems to have been his danger.  He was plainly a very bold and
> determined man, who knew his own power, and was ready to use it
> fearlessly:  and what would he be tempted to do!  To fancy that his
> power belonged to him, and not to Christ; that his wisdom belonged
> to himself; that his faith belonged to himself; his authority
> belonged to himself; and that, therefore, he could use his excellent
> gifts as he liked, and not merely as Christ liked.  He was liable,
> as we say in homely English, to 'have his head turned' by his honour
> and his power.
> 
> For instance, immediately after our Lord had put this great honour
> on him, 'I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' we
> find Peter mistaking his power, and, therefore, misusing it.  'From
> that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he
> must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and
> chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the
> third day.  Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be
> it far from Thee, Lord:  this shall not be unto thee.  But he
> turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan:  thou art an
> offence unto me:  for thou savourest not the things that be of God,
> but those that be of men.'  St. Peter's words, in the Greek tongue,
> really seem to mean that St. Peter fancied that _he_ could protect
> our Lord; that he had the power of delivering him, by binding his
> enemies the Jews, and loosing the Lord himself.  That seems to have
> been the way in which he took our Lord's words:  but what does our
> Lord answer?  As stern words as man could hear.  'Get thee behind
> me, Satan; for thou art an offence unto me.'  Or, rather, thou art
> my stumbling-block.  So that St. Peter, while he fancied himself
> near to the angels, found out, to his shame, that he was behaving
> like a devil, and had to be called Satan to his face; and that while
> he thought he could save the Lord Jesus, he found that he was doing
> all he could to harm and ruin his master; trying to do the very work
> which the Devil tried to do, when he tempted the Lord Jesus in the
> wilderness.  So near beside each other do heaven and hell lie.  So
> easy is it to give place to the Devil, and fall into the worst of
> sin, just when we are puffed up with spiritual pride.
> 
> And more than once afterwards, St. Peter had to learn that same
> lesson; when, for instance, he leaped boldly overboard from the
> boat, and came walking towards Jesus on the sea.  That was noble:
> worthy of St. Peter:  but he fancied himself a braver man than he
> was.  He became afraid; and the moment that he became afraid, he
> began to sink.  Jesus saved him, and then told him why he had become
> afraid:  because his faith had failed him.  He had ceased trusting
> in Christ's power to keep him up; and became helpless at once.
> 
> That should have been a lesson to St. Peter, that he was not to be
> so very sure of his own faith and his own courage; that without his
> Lord he might become cowardly and helpless any moment:  but he did
> not take that gentle lesson; so he had to learn it once and for all
> by a very terrible trial.  We all know how he fell;--one day
> protesting vehemently to his Lord, 'Though I die with thee, I will
> not deny thee;' the next, declaring, with oaths and curses, 'I know
> not the man.'  No wonder that when Jesus turned and looked on him,
> Peter went out and wept bitterly, as bitter tears of shame as ever
> were shed on earth.  For he knew, he was sure, that he loved his
> Lord all along:  and now he had denied him.  He who was so bold and
> confident, to fall thus! and into the very sins most contrary to his
> nature! the very sins in which he would have expected least of all
> to fall!  He, so frank and honest and brave--He to turn coward.  He
> to tell a base lie!  I dare say, that for the moment he could hardly
> believe himself to be himself.
> 
> But so it is, my friends.  If we forget that all which is good and
> strong in us comes from God, and not from ourselves; if we are
> conceited, and confident in ourselves; then we cut ourselves off
> from God's grace, and give place to Satan the Devil, that he may
> sift us like wheat, as he did St. Peter; and then in some shameful
> hour, we may find ourselves saying and doing things which we would
> never have believed we could have done.  God grant, that if ever we
> fall into such unexpected sin, it may happen to us as it did to St.
> Peter.  For Satan gained little by sifting St. Peter.  He sifted out
> the chaff:  but the wheat was left behind safe for God's garner.
> The chaff was St. Peter's rashness and self-conceit, which came from
> his own sinful nature; and that went, and St. Peter was rid of it
> for ever.  The wheat was St. Peter's courage, and faith, and honour,
> which came from God; and that remained, and St. Peter kept them for
> ever.  That, we read, was St. Peter's conversion; that worked the
> thorough and complete change in his character, and made him a new
> man from that day forth.  And then, after that terrible and fiery
> trial, St. Peter was ready to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,
> which gave him courage with fervent zeal to preach the gospel of his
> Crucified Lord, and at last to be crucified himself for that Lord's
> sake; and so fulfil the Lord's words to him.  'When thou wast young,
> thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest:  but when
> thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another
> shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.'  By that
> our Lord seems to have meant, 'You were strong and proud and self-
> willed enough in your youth.  The day will come when you will be
> tamed down, ready and willing to suffer patiently, even agony from
> which your flesh and blood may shrink;' and the Lord's words came
> true.  For, say the old stories, when St. Peter was led to be
> crucified, he refused to be crucified upright, as the Lord Jesus had
> been, saying, 'That it was too great an honour for him, who had once
> denied his Lord, to die the same death as his Lord died.'  So he was
> crucified, they say, with his head downward; and ended a glorious
> life in a humble martyrdom.
> 
> And what may we learn from St. Peter's character?  I think we may
> learn this.  Frankness, boldness, a high spirit, a stout will, and
> an affectionate heart; these are all God's gifts, and they are
> pleasant in his eyes, and ought to be a blessing to the man who has
> them.  Ought to be a blessing to him, because they are the stuff out
> of which a good, and noble, and useful Christian man may be made.
> But they need not be a blessing to a man; they are _excellent_
> gifts:  but they will not of themselves make a man an _excellent_
> man, who _excels_; that is, surpasses others in goodness.  We may
> see that ourselves, from experience.  We see too many brave men,
> free-spoken men, affectionate men, who come to shame and ruin.
> 
> How then can we become excellent men, like St. Peter?  By being
> baptised, as St. Peter was, with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
> 
> Baptized with the Holy Ghost, to put into our hearts good desires;
> to make us see what is good, and love what is good, long to do good:
> but baptized with fire also.  'He shall baptize you,' John the
> Baptist said, 'with the Holy Ghost and with fire.'
> 
> Does that seem a hard saying?  Do not some at least of you know what
> that means?  Some know, I believe.  All will know one day; for it is
> true for all.  To all, sooner or later, Christ comes to baptise them
> with fire; with the bitter searching affliction which opens the very
> secrets of their hearts, and shows them what their souls are really
> like, and parts the good from the evil in them, the gold from the
> rubbish, the wheat from the chaff.  'And he shall gather the wheat
> into his garner, but the chaff he shall burn up with unquenchable
> fire.'  God grant to each of you, that when that day comes to you,
> there may be something in you which will stand the fire; something
> worthy to be treasured up in God's garner, unto everlasting life.
> 
> But do not think that the baptism of fire comes only once for all to
> a man, in some terrible affliction, some one awful conviction of his
> own sinfulness and nothingness.  No; with many--and those, perhaps,
> the best people--it goes on month after month, year after year:  by
> secret trials, chastenings which none but they and God can
> understand, the Lord is cleansing them from their secret faults, and
> making them to understand wisdom secretly; burning out of them the
> chaff of self-will and self-conceit and vanity, and leaving only the
> pure gold of his righteousness.  How many sweet and holy souls look
> cheerful enough before the eyes of man, because they are too humble
> and too considerate to intrude their secret sorrows upon the world.
> And yet they have their secret sorrows.  They carry their cross
> unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night:  and they
> will carry it for years and years, and to their graves, and to the
> Throne of Christ, before they lay it down:  and none but they and
> Christ will ever know what it was; what was the secret chastisement
> which he sent to make that soul better, which seemed to us to be
> already too good for earth.  So does the Lord watch his people, and
> tries them with fire, as the refiner of silver sits by his furnace,
> watching the melted metal, till he knows that it is purged from all
> its dross, by seeing the image of his own face reflected in it.  God
> grant that our afflictions may so cleanse our hearts, that at the
> last Christ may behold himself in us, and us in himself; that so we
> may be fit to be with him where he is, and behold the glory which
> his Father gave him before the foundation of the world.
> 
> SERMON XIX.  ELIJAH
> 
> (Tenth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> 1 Kings xxi. 19, 20.  And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus
> saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? and
> thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place
> where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood,
> even thine.  And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine
> enemy?  And he answered, I have found thee:  because thou hast sold
> thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.
> 
> Of all the grand personages in the Old Testament, there are few or
> none, I think, grander than the prophet Elijah.  Consider his
> strange and wild life, wandering about in forests and mountains,
> suddenly appearing, and suddenly disappearing again, so that no man
> knew where to find him; and, as Obadiah said when he met him, 'If I
> tell my Lord, Behold, Elijah is here; then, as soon as I am gone
> from thee, the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know
> not.'  Consider, again, his strange activity and strength, as when
> he goes, forty days and forty nights, far away out of Judea, over
> the waste wilderness, to Horeb the mount of God; or, as again, when
> he girds up his loins, and runs before Ahab's chariot for many miles
> to the entrance of Jezreel.  One can fancy him from what the Bible
> tells us of him, clearly enough; as a man mysterious and terrible,
> not merely in the eyes of women and children, but of soldiers and of
> kings.
> 
> He seems to have been especially a countryman; a mountaineer; born
> and bred in Gilead, among the lofty mountains and vast forests, full
> of wild beasts, lions and bears, wild bulls and deer, which stretch
> for many miles along the further side of the river Jordan, with the
> waste desert of rocks and sand beyond them.  A wild man, bred up in
> a wild country, he had learnt to fear no man, and no thing, but God
> alone.  We do not know what his youth was like; we do not know
> whether he had wife, or children, or any human being who loved him.
> Most likely not.  He seems to have lived a lonely life, in sad and
> bad times.  He seems to have had but one thought, that his country
> was going to ruin, from idolatry, tyranny, false and covetous ways;
> and one determination; to say so; to speak the truth, whatever it
> cost him.  He had found out that the Lord was God, and not Baal, or
> any of the idols; and he would follow the Lord; and tell all Israel
> what his own heart had told him, 'The Lord, he is God,' was the one
> thing which he had to say; and he said it, till it became his name;
> whether given him by his parents, or by the people, his name was
> Elijah, 'The Lord is God.'  'How long halt ye between two opinions?'
> he cries, upon the greatest day of his life.  'If the Lord be God,
> then follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.'  How grand he is, on
> Carmel, throughout that noble chapter which we read last Sunday.
> There is no fear in him, no doubt in him.  The poor wild peasant out
> of the savage mountains stands up before all Israel, before king,
> priests, nobles, and people, and speaks and acts as if he, too, were
> a king; because the Spirit of God is in him:  and he is right, and
> he knows that he is right.  And they obey him as if he were a king.
> Even before the fire comes down from heaven, and shows that God is
> on his side, from the first they obey him.  King Ahab himself obeys
> him, trembles before him--'And it came to pass, when Ahab saw
> Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?
> And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy
> father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the
> Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim.  Now therefore send, and gather
> to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four
> hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred,
> which eat at Jezebel's table.  So Ahab sent unto all the children of
> Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.'  The
> tyrant's guilty conscience makes a coward of him:  and he quails
> before the wild man out of the mountains, who has not where to lay
> his head, who stands alone against all the people, though Baal's
> prophets are four hundred and fifty men, and the prophets of the
> groves four hundred, and they eat at the queen's table; and he only
> is left and they seek his life:--yet no man dare touch him, not even
> the king himself.  Such power is there, such strength is there, in
> being an honest and a God-fearing man.
> 
> Yes, my friends, this was the secret of Elijah's power.  This is the
> lesson which Elijah has to teach us.  Not to halt between two
> opinions.  If a thing be true, to stand up for it; if a thing be
> right, to do it, whatsoever it may cost us.  Make up your minds
> then, my friends, to be honest men like Elijah the prophet of old.
> 
> For your own sake, for your neighbour's sake, and for God's sake, be
> honest men.
> 
> For your own sake.  If you want to be respected; if you want to be
> powerful--and it is good to be powerful sometimes--if God has set
> you to govern people, whether it be your children and household,
> your own farm, your own shop, your own estate, your own country or
> neighbourhood--Do you want to know the great secret of success?--Be
> honest and brave.  Let your word be as good as your thought, and
> your deed as good as your word.  Who is the man who is respected?
> Who is the man who has influence?  The complaisant man--the cringing
> man--the man who cannot say No, or dare not say No?  Not he.  The
> passionate man who loses his temper when anything goes wrong, who
> swears and scolds, and instead of making others do right, himself
> does wrong, and lowers himself just when he ought to command
> respect?  My experience is--not he:  but the man who says honestly
> and quietly what he thinks, and does fearlessly and quietly what he
> knows.  People who differ from him will respect him, because he acts
> up to his principles.  When they are in difficulty or trouble, they
> will go and ask his advice, just because they know they will get an
> honest answer.  They will overlook a little roughness in him; they
> will excuse his speaking unpleasant truths:  because they can trust
> him, even though he is plain-spoken.
> 
> For your neighbour's sake, I say; and again, for your children's
> sake; for the sake of all with whom you have to do, be honest and
> brave.  For our children--O my friends, we cannot do a crueller
> thing by them than to let them see that we are inconsistent.  If
> they hear us say one thing and do another--if, while we preach to
> them we do not practice ourselves, they will never respect us, and
> never obey us from love and principle.  If they do obey us, it will
> be only before our faces, and from fear.  If they see us doing only
> what we like, when our backs are turned they will do what they like.
> 
> And worse will come than their not respecting us--they will learn
> not to respect God.  If they see that we do not respect truth and
> honesty, they will not respect truth and honesty; and he who does
> not respect them, does not respect God.  They will learn to look on
> religion as a sham.  If we are inconsistent, they will be profane.
> 
> But some may say--'I have no power; and I want none.  I have no
> people under me for whom I am responsible.'
> 
> Then, if you think that you need not be honest and brave for your
> own sake, or for other peoples' sake, be honest and brave for God's
> sake.
> 
> Do you ask what I mean?  I mean this.  Recollect that truth belongs
> to God.  That if a thing is true, it is true because God made it so,
> and not otherwise; and therefore, if you deny truth, you fight
> against God.  If you are honest, and stand up for truth, you stand
> up for God, and what God has done.
> 
> And recollect this, too.  If a thing be right for you to do, God has
> made it right, and God wills you to do it; and, therefore, if you do
> not do your duty, you are fighting against God; and if you do your
> duty, you are a fellow-worker with God, fulfilling God's will.
> Therefore, I say, Be honest and brave for God's sake.  And in this
> way, my friends, all may be brave, all may be noble.  Speak the
> truth, and do your duty, because it is the will of God.  Poor, weak
> women, people without scholarship, cleverness, power, may live
> glorious lives, and die glorious deaths, and God's strength may be
> made perfect in their weakness.  They may live, did I say?  I may
> say they have lived, and have died, already, by thousands.  When we
> read the stories of the old martyrs who, in the heathen persecution,
> died like heroes rather than deny Christ, and scorned to save
> themselves by telling what they knew to be a lie, but preferred
> truth to all that makes life worth having:--how many of them--I may
> say the greater part of them--were poor creatures enough in the eyes
> of man, though they were rich enough, noble enough, in the eyes of
> God who inspired them.  'Few rich and few noble,' as the apostle
> says, 'were called.'  It was to poor people, old people, weak women,
> ill-used and untaught slaves, that God gave grace to defy all the
> torments which the heathen could heap on them, and to defy the
> scourge and the rack, the wild beasts and the fire, sooner than foul
> their lips and their souls by denying Christ, and worshipping the
> idols which they knew were nothing, and worth nothing.
> 
> And so it may be with any of you here; whosoever you may be, however
> poor, however humble.  Though your opportunities may be small, your
> station lowly, your knowledge little; though you may be stupid in
> mind, slow of speech, weakly of body, yet if you but make up your
> mind to say the thing which is true, and to do the thing which is
> right, you may be strong with the strength of God, and glorious with
> the glory of Christ.
> 
> It is a grand thing, no doubt, to be like Elijah, a stern and bold
> prophet, standing up alone against a tyrant king and a sinful
> people; but it is even a greater thing to be like that famous martyr
> in old time, St. Blandina, who, though she was but a slave, and so
> weakly, and mean, and fearful in body, that her mistress and all her
> friends feared that she would deny Christ at the very sight of the
> torments prepared for her, and save herself by sacrificing to the
> idols, yet endured, day after day, tortures too horrible to speak
> of, without cry or groan, or any word, save 'I am a Christian;' and,
> having outlived all her fellow-martyrs, died at last victorious over
> pain and temptation, so that the very heathen who tortured her broke
> out in admiration of her courage, and confessed that no woman had
> ever endured so many and so grievous torments.  So may God's
> strength be made perfect in woman's weakness.
> 
> You are not called to endure such things.  No:  but you, and I, and
> every Christian soul are called on to do what we know to be right.
> Not to halt between two opinions:  but if God be God, to follow Him.
> If we make up our minds to do that, we shall be sure to have our
> trials:  but we shall be safe, because we are on God's side, and God
> on ours.  And if God be with us, what matter if the whole world be
> against us?  For which is the stronger of the two, the whole world,
> or God who made it, and rules it, and will rule it for ever?
> 
> SERMON XX.  THE LOFTINESS OF HUMILITY
> 
> 1 Peter v. 5.  Be clothed with humility:  for God resisteth the
> proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
> 
> This is St. Peter's command.  Are we really inclined to obey it?
> For, if we are, there is nothing more easy.  There is no vice so
> easy to get rid of as pride:  if one wishes.  Nothing so easy as to
> be humble:  if one wishes.
> 
> That may seem a strange saying, considering that self-conceit is the
> vice of all others to which man is most given; the first sin, and
> the last sin, and that which is said to be the most difficult to
> cure.  But what I say is true nevertheless.
> 
> Whosoever wishes to get rid of pride may do so.  Whosoever wishes to
> be humble need not go far to humble himself.
> 
> But how?  Simply by being honest with himself, and looking at
> himself as he is.
> 
> Let a man recollect honestly and faithfully his past life; let him
> recollect his sayings and doings for the past week; even for the
> past twenty-four hours:  and I will warrant that man that he will
> recollect something, or, perhaps, many things which will not raise
> him in his own eyes; something which he had sooner not have said or
> done; something which, if he is a foolish man, he will try to
> forget, because it makes him ashamed of himself; something which, if
> he is a wise man, he will not try to forget, just because it makes
> him ashamed of himself; and a very good thing for him that he should
> be so.  I know that it is so for me; and therefore I suppose it is
> so for every man and woman in this Church.
> 
> I am not going to give any examples.  I am not going to say,--
> 'Suppose you thought this and this about yourself, and were proud of
> it; and then suppose that you recollected that you had done that and
> that:  would you not feel very much taken down in your own conceit?'
> 
> I like that personal kind of preaching less and less.  Those random
> shots are dangerous and cruel; likely to hit the wrong person, and
> hurt their feelings unnecessarily.  It is very easy to say a hard
> thing:  but not so easy to say it to the right person and at the
> right time.
> 
> No.  The heart knoweth its own bitterness.  Almost every one has
> something to be ashamed of, more or less, which no one but himself
> and God knows of; and which, perhaps, it is better that no one but
> he and God should know.
> 
> I do not mean any great sin, or great shame--God forbid; but some
> weak point, as we call it.  Something which he had better not say or
> do; and yet which he is in the habit of saying and doing.  I do not
> ask what it is.  With some it may be a mere pardonable weakness;
> with others it may be a very serious and dangerous fault.  All I ask
> now is, that each and every one of us should try and find it out,
> and feel it, and keep it in mind; that we may be of a humble spirit
> with the lowly, which is better than dividing the spoil with the
> proud.
> 
> But why better?
> 
> The world and human nature look up to the proud successful man.  One
> is apt to say, 'Happy is the man who has plenty to be proud of.
> Happy is the man who can divide the spoil of this world with the
> successful of this world.  Happy is the man who can look down on his
> fellow-men, and stand over them, and manage them, and make use of
> them, and get his profit out of them.'
> 
> But that is a mistake.  That is the high-mindedness which goes
> before a fall, which comes not from above, but is always earthly,
> often sensual, and sometimes devilish.  The true and safe high-
> mindedness, which comes from above, is none other than humility.
> For, if you will look at it aright, the humble man is really more
> high-minded than the proud man.  Think.  Suppose two men equal in
> understanding, in rank, in wealth, in what else you like, one of
> them proud, the other humble.  The proud man thinks--'How much
> better, wiser, richer, more highly born, more religious, more
> orthodox, am I than other people round me.'  Not, of course, than
> all round him, but than those whom he thinks beneath him.  Therefore
> he is always comparing himself with those below himself; always
> watching those things in them in which he thinks them worse, meaner
> than himself; he is always looking down on his neighbours.
> 
> Now, which is more high-minded; which is nobler; which is more fit
> for a man; to look down, or to look up?  At all events the humble
> man _looks up_.  He thinks, 'How much worse, not how much better, am
> I than other people.'  He looks at their good points, and compares
> them with his own bad ones.  He admires them for those things in
> which they surpass him.  He thinks of--perhaps he loves to read of--
> men superior to himself in goodness, wisdom, courage.  He pleases
> himself with the example of brave and righteous deeds, even though
> he fears that he cannot copy them; and so he is always looking up.
> His mind is filled with high thoughts, though they be about others,
> not about himself.  If he be a truly Christian man, his thoughts
> rise higher still.  He thinks of Christ and of God, and compares his
> weakness, ignorance, and sinfulness with their perfect power,
> wisdom, goodness.  Do you not see that this man's mind is full of
> higher, nobler thoughts than that of the proud man?  Is he not more
> high-minded who is looking up, up to God himself, for what is good,
> noble, heavenly?  Even though it makes him feel small, poor, weak,
> and sinful in comparison, still his mind is full of grace, and
> wisdom, and glory.  The proud man, meanwhile, for the sake of
> feeding his own self-conceit at other men's expense, is filling his
> mind with low, mean, earthly thoughts about the weaknesses, sins,
> and follies, of the world around him.  Is not he truly low-minded,
> thinking about low things?
> 
> Now, I tell you, my friends, that both have their reward.  That the
> humble man, as years roll on, becomes more and more noble, and the
> proud man becomes more and more low-minded; and finds that pride
> goes before a fall in more senses than one.  Yes.  There is nothing
> more hurtful to our own minds and hearts than a domineering,
> contemptuous frame of mind.  It may be pleasant to our own self-
> conceit:  but it is only a sweet poison.  A man lowers his own
> character by it.  He takes the shape of what he is always looking
> at; and, if he looks at base and low things, he becomes base and low
> himself; just as slave-owners, all over the world, and in all time,
> sooner and later, by living among slaves, learn to copy their own
> slaves' vices; and, while they oppress and look down on their
> fellow-man, become passionate and brutal, false and greedy, like the
> poor wretches whom they oppress.
> 
> Better, better to be of a lowly spirit.  Better to think of those
> who are nobler than ourselves, even though by so doing we are
> ashamed of ourselves all day long.  What loftier thoughts can man
> have?  What higher and purer air can a man's soul breathe?  Yes, my
> friends; believe it, and be sure of it.  The truly high-minded man
> is not the proud man, who tries to get a little pitiful satisfaction
> from finding his brother men, as he chooses to fancy, a little
> weaker, a little more ignorant, a little more foolish, a little more
> ridiculous, than his own weak, ignorant, foolish, and, perhaps,
> ridiculous self.  Not he; but the man who is always looking upwards
> to goodness, to good men, and to the all-good God:  filling his soul
> with the sight of an excellence to which he thinks he can never
> attain; and saying, with David, 'All my delight is in the saints
> that dwell in the earth, and in those who excel in virtue.'
> 
> But I do not say that he cannot attain to that excellence.  To the
> goodness of God, of course, no man can; but to the goodness of man
> he may.  For what man has done, man may do; and the grace of God
> which gave power to one man to rise above sin, and weakness, and
> ignorance, will give power to others also.  But only to those who
> look upward, at better men than themselves:  not to those who look
> down, like the Pharisee, but to those who look up like the Publican;
> for, as the text says, 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to
> the humble.'
> 
> And why does God resist and set himself against the proud?  To turn
> him out of his evil way, of course, if by any means he may be
> converted (that is, turned round) and live.  For the proud man has
> put himself into a wrong position; where no immortal soul ought to
> be.  He is looking away from God, and down upon men; and so he has
> turned his face and thoughts away from God, the fountain of light
> and life; and is trying to do without God, and to stand in his own
> strength, and not in God's grace, and to be somebody in himself,
> instead of being only in God, in whom we live and move and have our
> being.  So he has set himself against God; and God will, in mercy to
> that foolish man's soul, set himself against him.  God will humble
> him; God will overthrow him; God will bring his plans to nought; if
> by any means he may make that man ashamed of himself, and empty him
> of his self-conceit, that he may turn and repent in dust and ashes,
> when he finds out what those proud Laodicaean Christians of old had
> to find out--that all the while that they were saying, 'I am rich,
> and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,' they did not
> know that they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
> and naked.
> 
> And how does God give grace to the humble?  My friends, even the
> wise heathen knew that.  Listen to a heathen; {328} a good and a
> wise man, though; and one who was not far from the kingdom of God,
> or he would not have written such words as these,--
> 
> 'It is our duty,' he says, 'to turn our minds to the best of
> everything; so as not merely to enjoy what we read, but to be
> improved by it.  And we shall do that, by reading the histories of
> good and great men, which will, in our minds, produce an emulation
> and eagerness, which may stir us up to imitation.  We may be pleased
> with the work of a man's hands, and yet set little store by the
> workman.  Perfumes and fine colours we may like well enough:  but
> that will not make us wish to be perfumers, or painters:  but
> goodness, which is the work, not of a man's hands, but of his soul,
> makes us not only admire what is done, but long to do the like.  And
> therefore,' he says, he thought it good to write the lives 'of
> famous and good men, and to set their examples before his
> countrymen.  And having begun to do this,' he says in another place,
> 'for the sake of others, he found himself going on, and liking his
> labour, for his own sake:  for the virtues of those great men served
> him as a looking-glass, in which he might see how, more or less, to
> order and adorn his own life.  Indeed, it could be compared,' he
> says, 'to nothing less than living with the great souls who were
> dead and gone, and choosing out of their actions all that was
> noblest and worthiest to know.  What greater pleasure could there be
> than that,' he asks, 'or what better means to improve his soul?  By
> filling his mind with pictures of the best and worthiest characters,
> he was able to free himself from any low, malicious, mean thoughts,
> which he might catch from bad company.  If he was forced to mix at
> times with base men, he could wash out the stains of their bad
> thoughts and words, by training himself in a calm and happy temper
> to view those noble examples.'  So says the wise heathen.  Was not
> he happier, wiser, better, a thousand times, thus keeping himself
> humble by looking upwards, than if he had been feeding his petty
> pride by looking down, and saying, 'God, I thank thee that I am not
> as other men are?'
> 
> If you wish, then, to be truly high-minded, by being truly humble,
> read of, and think of, better men, wiser men, braver men, more
> useful men than you are.  Above all, if you be Christians, think of
> Christ himself.  That good old heathen took the best patterns which
> he could find:  but after all, they were but imperfect, sinful men:
> but you have an example such as he never dreamed of; a perfect man,
> and perfect God in one.  Let the thought of Christ keep you always
> humble:  and yet let it lift you up to the highest, noblest, purest
> thoughts which man can have, as it will.
> 
> For all that this old heathen says of the use of examples of good
> men, all that, and far more, St. Paul says, almost in the same
> words.  By looking at Christ, he says, we rise and sit with him in
> heavenly places, and enjoy the sight of His perfect goodness;
> ashamed of ourselves, indeed, and bowed to the very dust by the
> feeling of our own unworthiness; and yet filled with the thought of
> his worthiness, till, by looking we begin to admire, and, by
> admiring, we begin to love; and so are drawn and lifted up to him,
> till, by beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, and the
> perfect beauty of his character, we become changed into the same
> image, from glory to glory:  and thus, instead of receiving the just
> punishment of pride and contempt, which is lowering our characters
> to the level of those on whom we look down, we shall receive the
> just reward of true humility, which is having our characters raised
> to the level of him up to whom we look.
> 
> Oh young people, think of this; and remember why God has given you
> the advantage of scholarship and education.  Not that you may be
> proud of the very little you know; not that you may look down on
> those who are not as well instructed as you are; not that you may
> waste your time over silly books, which teach you only to laugh at
> the follies and ignorance of some of your fellow-men, to whom God
> has not given as much as to you; but that you may learn what great
> and good men have lived, and still live, in the world; what wise,
> and good, and useful things have been, and are being, done all
> around you; and to copy them:  above all, that you may look up to
> Christ, and through Christ, to God, and learn to copy him; till you
> come, as St. Paul says, to be perfect men; to the measure of the
> stature of the fulness of Christ.  To which may he bring you all of
> his mercy.  Amen.
> 
> SERMON XXI.  THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
> 
> (Trinity Sunday.)
> 
> John v. 19.  Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily,
> I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth
> the Father do:  for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth
> the Son likewise.
> 
> This is Trinity Sunday; and on this day we are especially to think
> of the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity, and on the Athanasian
> Creed, which was read this morning.  Now there is much in this
> Athanasian Creed, which simple country people, however good their
> natural abilities may be, cannot be expected to understand.  The
> Creed was written by scholars, and for scholars; and for very deep
> scholars, too, far deeper than I pretend to be; and the reasonable
> way for most men to think of the Athanasian Creed, will be to take
> it very much upon trust, as a child takes on trust what his father
> tells him, even though he cannot understand it himself; or, as we
> all believe, that the earth moves round the sun, and not the sun
> round the earth, though we cannot prove it; but only believe it,
> because wiser men than we have proved it.  So we must think of the
> Athanasian Creed, and say to ourselves--'Wiser men than I can ever
> hope to be have settled that this is the true doctrine, and the true
> meaning of Holy Scripture, and I will believe them.  They must know
> best.'  Still, one is bound to understand as much as one can; one is
> bound to be able to give some reason for the faith which is in us;
> and, above all, one is bound not to hold false doctrines, which are
> contrary to the Athanasian Creed and to the Bible.
> 
> Some people are too apt to say now-a-days, 'But what matter if one
> does hold false doctrine?  That is a mistake of the head and not of
> the heart.  Provided a man lives a good life, what matter what his
> doctrines are?'  No doubt, my friends, if a man lives a good life,
> all is well:  but _do_ people live good lives?  I am not speaking of
> infidels.  Thank God, there are none here; to God let us leave them,
> trusting in the Good Friday collect, and the goodwill of God, which
> is, that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
> 
> But, as for Christian people, this I will tell you, that unless you
> hold true doctrines, you will _not_ lead good lives.  My experience
> is, that people are often wrong, when they say false doctrine is a
> mistake of the head and not of the heart.  I believe false doctrine
> is very often not bred in the head at all, but in the heart, in the
> very bottom of a man's soul; that it rises out of his heart into his
> head; and that if his heart was right with God, he would begin at
> once to have clearer and truer notions of the true Christian faith.
> I do not say that it is always so; God forbid!  But I do say that it
> is often so, because I see it so; because I see every day false
> doctrines about God making men lead bad lives, and commit actual
> sins; take God's name in vain, dishonour their fathers and mothers,
> lie, cheat, bear false witness against their neighbours, and covet
> other men's goods.  I say, I see it, and I must believe my own eyes
> and ears; and when I do see it, I begin to understand the text which
> says, 'This is eternal life, to know thee, the only God, and Jesus
> Christ, whom thou hast sent;' and I begin to understand the
> Athanasian Creed, which says, that if a 'man does not believe
> rightly the name of God, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
> Christ, he will perish everlastingly; his soul will decay more and
> more, become more and more weak, unhealthy and corrupt, till he
> perishes everlastingly.  And whatsoever that may mean, it must mean
> something most awful and terrible, worse than all the evil which
> ever happened to us since we were born.
> 
> There is a very serious example of this, to my mind, in what is
> called the Greek Church; the Greeks and Russians.  They split off
> from the rest of Christ's Catholic Church, many hundred years ago,
> because they would not hold with the rest of the Church that the
> Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father.  They
> said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone.  Now that
> may seem a slight matter of words:  but I cannot help thinking that
> it has been a very solemn matter of practice with them.  It seems to
> me--God forgive me if I am judging them hardly!--that because they
> denied that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son, they forgot that
> he was the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by whom he
> says for ever, 'Father, not my will but thine be done!' and so they
> forgot that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of
> adoption, which must proceed and come from Christ to us, that we may
> call God our Father, and say with Christ, 'Father, I come to do thy
> will;' and so, in course of time, they seem to have forgotten that
> Christian men were in any real practical sense, God's children; and
> when people forget that they are God's children, they forget soon
> enough to behave like God's children, and to live righteous and
> Godlike lives.
> 
> I give you this as an example of what I mean; how not believing
> rightly the Athanasian Creed may make a man lead a bad life.
> 
> Now let me give an example nearer home; one which has to do with you
> and me.  God grant that we may all lay it to heart.  You read, in
> the Athanasian Creed, that we are not to confound the persons of the
> Trinity, nor divide the substance; but to believe that such as the
> Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost, the Glory
> equal, the Majesty co-eternal.  Now there is little fear of our
> confounding the persons, as some people used to do in old times; but
> there is great fear of our dividing God's substance, parting God's
> substance, that is, fancying that God is made up of different parts,
> and not perfectly one God.
> 
> For people are very apt to talk as if God's love and God's justice
> were two different things, different parts of God; as if his justice
> had to be satisfied in one way, and his love in another; as if his
> justice wished to destroy sinners, and his love wished to save
> sinners; and so they talk as if there was a division in God; as if
> different attributes of God were pulling two different ways, and
> that God has parts of which one desires to do one thing, and one
> part another.  It sounds shocking, I am sure you will feel, when I
> put it into plain English.  I wish it to sound shocking.  I wish you
> to feel how wrong and heretical it is; that you may keep clear of
> such notions, and believe the orthodox faith, that God has neither
> parts nor passions, nor division in his substance at all, but is
> absolutely and substantially one; and that, therefore, his love and
> his justice are the very same things; his justice, however severe it
> may seem, is perfect love and kindness; and his love is no
> indulgence, but perfect justice.
> 
> But you may say--Very likely that is true; but why need we take so
> much care to believe it?
> 
> It is always worth while to know what is true.  You are children of
> the Light, and of the Truth, adopted by the God of truth, that you
> may know the truth and do it, and no mistake or falsehood can, by
> any possibility, do anything for you, but harm you.  Always,
> therefore, try to find out and believe what is true concerning
> everything; and, above all, concerning God, on whom all depend, in
> whom you live, and move, and have your being.  For all things in
> heaven and earth depend on God; and, therefore, if you have wrong
> notions about God, you will sooner or later have wrong notions about
> everything else.
> 
> For see, now, how this false notion of God's justice and love being
> different things, leads people into a worse error still.  A man goes
> on to fancy, that while God the Son is full of love towards sinners,
> God the Father is (or at least was once) only full of justice and
> wrath against sinners; but if a man thinks that God the Son loves
> him better than God the Father does, then, of course, he will love
> God the Son better than he loves God the Father.  He will think of
> Christ the Son with pleasure and gratitude, because he says to
> himself, Christ loves me, cares for me; I can have pity and
> tenderness from him, if I do wrong.  While of God the Father he
> thinks only with dread and secret dislike.  Thus, from dividing the
> substance, he has been led on to confound the persons, imputing to
> the Son alone that which is equally true of the Father, till he
> comes (as I have known men do) to make for himself, as it were, a
> Heavenly Father of Jesus Christ the Son.
> 
> Now, my dear friends, it does seem to me, that if anything can
> grieve the Spirit of Christ, and the sacred heart of Jesus, this is
> the way to grieve him.  Oh read your Bibles, and you will see this,
> that whatever Jesus came down on earth for, it certainly was not to
> make men love him better than they love the Father, and honour him
> more than they honour the Father, and rob the Father of his glory,
> to give it to Jesus.  What did the Lord Jesus say himself?  That he
> did not come to seek his own honour, or shew forth his own glory, or
> do his own will:  but his Father's honour, his Father's glory, his
> Father's will.  Though he was equal with the Father, as touching his
> Godhead, yet he disguised himself, if I may so say, and took on him
> the form of a servant, and was despised and rejected of men.  Why!
> That men might honour his Father rather than him.  That men might
> not be so dazzled by his glory, as to forget his Father's glory.
> Therefore he bade his apostles, while he was on earth, tell no man
> that he was the Christ.  Therefore, when he worked his work of love
> and mercy, he took care to tell the Jews that they were not his
> works, but the works of his Father who sent him; that he was not
> doing his own will, but his Father's.  Therefore he was always
> preaching of the Father in heaven, and holding him up to men as the
> perfection of all love and goodness and glory:  and only once or
> twice, it seems, when he was compelled, as it were, for very truth's
> sake, did he say openly who he was, and claim his co-equal and co-
> eternal glory, saying, 'Before Abraham was, I am.'
> 
> And, after all this, if anything can grieve him now, must it not
> grieve him to see men fancying that he is better than his Father is,
> more loving and merciful than his Father is, more worthy of our
> trust, and faith, and adoration, and gratitude than his Father is?--
> His Father, for whose honour he was jealous with a divine jealousy--
> His Father, who, he knows well, loved the world which shrinks from
> him so well that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely
> gave him up for it.
> 
> Oh, my friends, believe me, if any sin of man can add a fresh thorn
> to Christ's crown, it is to see men, under pretence of honouring
> him, dishonouring his Father.  For just think for once of this--What
> nobler feeling on earth than the love of a son to his father?  What
> greater pain to a good son than to see his father dishonoured, and
> put down below him?  But what is the love of an earthly son to an
> earthly father, compared to the love of The Son to the Father?  What
> is the jealousy of an earthly son for his father's honour, compared
> with the jealousy of God the Son for God the Father's honour?
> 
> All men, the Father has appointed, are to honour the Son, even as
> they honour the Father.  Because, as the Athanasian Creed says,
> 'such as the Father is, such is the Son.'  But, if that be true, we
> are to honour the Father even as we honour the Son; because such as
> the Son is, such is the Father.  Both are true, and we must believe
> both; and therefore we must not give to Christ the honour which we
> should to a loving friend, and give to the Father the honour which
> we should to an awful judge.  We must give them both the same
> honour.  If we have a godly fear of the Father, we ought to have a
> godly fear of Christ; and if we trust Christ, we ought to trust the
> Father also.  We must believe that Jesus Christ, the Son, is the
> brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his
> person; and therefore we must believe that because Jesus is love,
> therefore the Father is love; because Jesus is long-suffering,
> therefore the Father is long-suffering; because Jesus came to save
> the world, therefore the Father must have sent him to save the
> world, or he would never have come; for he does nothing, he says, of
> himself.  Because we can trust Jesus utterly, therefore we can trust
> the Father utterly.  Because we believe that the Son has life in
> himself, to give to whomsoever he will, we must believe that the
> Father has life in himself likewise, and not, as some seem to fancy,
> only the power of death and destruction.  Because nothing can
> separate us from the love of Jesus, nothing can separate us from the
> love of his Father and our Father, whose name is Light and Love.
> 
> If we believe this, we shall indeed honour the Father, and indeed
> honour the Son likewise.  But if we do not, we shall dishonour the
> Son, while we fancy we are honouring him:  we shall rob Christ of
> his true glory, to give him a false glory, which he abhors.  If we
> fancy that he does anything for us without his Father's commands; if
> we fancy that he feels anything for us which his Father does not
> feel, and has not always felt likewise:  then we dishonour him.  For
> his glory is to be a perfectly good and obedient Son, and we fancy
> him--may he forgive us for it!--a self-willed Son.  This is Christ's
> glory, that though he is equal with his Father, he obeys his Father.
> If he were not equal to his Father, there would be less glory in his
> obeying him.  Take away the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity, and
> you rob Christ of his highest glory, and destroy the most beautiful
> thing in heaven, except one.  The most beautiful and noble thing of
> all in heaven--that (if you will receive it) out of which all other
> beautiful and noble things in heaven and earth come, is the Father
> for ever saying to the Son, 'Thou art my Son; this day have I
> begotten thee.  And in thee I am well pleased.'  The other most
> beautiful thing is the co-equal and co-eternal Son for ever saying
> to the Father, 'Father, not my will, but thine be done.  I come to
> do thy will, O God.  Thy law is written in my heart.'
> 
> Do you not see it?  Oh, my dear friends, I see but a very little of
> it.  Who am I, that I should comprehend God?  And who am I, that I
> should be able to make you understand the glory of God, by any dull
> words of mine?  But God can make you understand it.   The Spirit of
> God can and will shew you the glory of God.  Because he proceedeth
> from the Father, he will shew you what the glory of the Father is
> like.  Because he proceedeth from the Son, he will shew you what the
> glory of the Son is like.  Because he is consubstantial, co-equal,
> and co-eternal with the Father and the Son, he will shew you that
> the glory of the Father and the Son is not the glory of mere power;
> but a moral and spiritual glory, the glory of having a perfectly
> glorious, noble, and beautiful character.  And unless he shews you
> that, you will never be thoroughly good men.  For it is a strange
> thing that men are always trying, more or less, to be like God.  And
> yet, not a strange thing; for it is a sign that we all came from
> God, and can get no rest till we are come back to God, because God
> calls us all to be his children and be like him.  A blessed thing it
> is, if we try to be like the true God:  but a sad and fearful thing,
> if we try to be like some false god of our own invention.  But so it
> is.  It was so even among the old heathen.  Whatsoever a man fancies
> God to be like, that he will try himself to be like.  So if you
> fancy than God the Father's glory is stern and awful power, that he
> is extreme to mark what is done amiss, or stands severely on his own
> rights, then you will do the same; you will be extreme to mark what
> is done amiss; you will stand severely on your rights; you will grow
> stern and harsh, unfeeling to your children and workmen, and fond of
> shewing your power, just for the sake of shewing it.  But if you
> believe that the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is all
> one; and that it is a loving glory if you believe that such as Jesus
> Christ is, such is his Father, gracious and merciful, slow to anger,
> and of great kindness, and repenting him of the evil; if you believe
> that your Father in heaven is perfect, just because he sendeth his
> sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the
> just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil--
> if you believe this, I say, then you will be good to the unthankful
> and the evil; you will be long-suffering and tender; good fathers,
> good masters, good neighbours; and your characters will become
> patient, generous, forgiving, truly noble, truly godlike.  And all
> because you believe the Athanasian Creed in spirit and in truth.
> 
> In like manner, if you believe that Jesus Christ is not a perfect
> Son; if you fancy that he has any will but his Father's will; that
> he has any work but what his Father gives him to do, who has
> committed all things into his hands; that he knows anything but what
> his Father sheweth him, who sheweth him all things, because he
> loveth him; then you will be tempted to wish for power and honour of
> your own; to become ambitious, self-willed, vain, and disobedient to
> your parents.
> 
> But if you believe that Jesus is a perfect Son, all that you would
> wish your son to be to you, and millions of times more; and if you
> believe that that very thing is Christ's glory; that his glory
> consists in being a perfect Son, perfectly obedient, having no will
> or wish but his Father's; then will you, by thus seeing Christ in
> spirit and in truth, see how beautiful and noble it is to be good
> sons; and you will long to try to be good sons:  and what you long
> for, and try for, you will surely be, in God's good time; for he has
> promised,--'Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
> righteousness:  for they shall be filled.'  And all through
> believing the Athanasian Creed?  All?  Yes, all.
> 
> But will not the Holy Spirit teach us, without the Athanasian Creed?
> 
> The Holy Spirit will teach us.  Must teach us, if we are really to
> learn one word of all this in spirit and in truth.  But whether the
> Holy Spirit does teach us, will depend, I fear, very much upon
> whether we pray for him; and whether we pray for him aright will
> depend on whether we know who he is, and what he is like; and that,
> again, the Athanasian Creed will tell us.
> 
> Now, go home with God's blessing.  Remember that such as the Son is,
> such is the Father, and such is the Holy Ghost.  Pray to be made
> good fathers, after the likeness of The Father, from whom every
> fatherhood in heaven and earth is named; good sons, after the
> likeness of God The Son; and good and holy spirits, after the
> likeness of The Holy Spirit; and you will be such at last, in God's
> good time, as far as man can become like God; for you will be
> praying for the Holy Spirit himself, and he will hear you, and come
> to you, and abide with you, and all will be well.
> 
> SERMON XXII.  THE TORMENT OF FEAR
> 
> (First Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> 1 John iv. 16, 18.  And we have known and believed the love that God
> hath to us.  God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in
> God, and God in him.  Herein is our love made perfect, that we may
> have boldness in the day of judgment:  because as he is, so are we
> in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth
> out fear:  because fear hath torment.  He that feareth is not made
> perfect in love.
> 
> The text tells us how to get one of the greatest blessings; a
> blessing which all long for, but all do not find; and that is a
> happy death.  All wish to die happily; even bad men.  Like Balaam
> when he was committing a great sin, they can say, 'Let me die the
> death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.'  But
> meanwhile, like Balaam, they find it too hard to live the life of
> the righteous, which is the only way to die the death of the
> righteous.  But something within them (if false preachers will but
> leave them alone) tells them that they will not succeed.  Reason and
> common sense tell them so:  for how can a man expect to get to a
> place without travelling the road which leads to it?  And the Spirit
> of God, the Spirit of truth and right, tells them that they will not
> succeed:  for how can a man win happiness, save by doing right?
> Every one shall 'receive the things done in his body, according to
> that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.'  So says Scripture;
> and so say men's own hearts, by the inspiration of God's Holy
> Spirit.  And therefore such men's fear of death continues.  And why?
> The text tells us the secret.  As long as we do not love God, we
> shall be tormented with fear of death.  And as long as we do not
> love our neighbour, we shall not love God.  We may try, as thousands
> have tried, and as thousands try still, to love God without loving
> their neighbour; to be very religious, and worship God, and sing His
> praises, and think over all His mercy to them, and all that he has
> done for them, by the death of His blessed Son Jesus Christ; and so
> to persuade themselves and God that they love Him, while they keep
> in their hearts selfishness, pride, spite, uncharitableness:  but
> they do not succeed.  If they think they succeed, they are only
> deceiving themselves.  So says St. John.  'He who loveth not his
> brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
> seen?'  But they cannot deceive themselves long.  You will see, if
> you watch such people, and still more if you watch yourselves, that
> if you do not love your neighbours in spirit and in truth, then
> those tormenting fears soon come back again, worse than ever.  Ay,
> whenever we indulge ourselves in hard words and cruel judgments, the
> thought of God seems darkened to us there and then; the face of God
> seems turned from us; and peace of mind and brightness of spirit,
> and lightness of soul, do not come back to us, till we have
> confessed our sins, and have let the kindly, the charitable, the
> merciful thoughts rise up in us once more, as, by the grace of
> Christ, they will rise up.
> 
> Yes, my friends, as far as I can see, people are filled with the
> peace of God just in as far as they are at peace with their fellow-
> men.  They are bright, calm, and content, looking forward with
> cheerfulness to death, and with a humble and holy boldness to
> judgment, just in as far as their hearts are filled with love,
> gentleness, kindness, to all that God has made.  They dwell in God,
> and God in them, and perfect love has cast out fear.
> 
> But if a man does not live in love, then sooner or later he will
> hear a voice within him, which whispers, Thou art going wrong; and,
> if thou art going wrong, how canst thou end at the right place?
> None but the right road can end there.  The wrong road must lead to
> the wrong place.
> 
> Then the man gets disturbed and terrified in his mind, and tormented
> with fears, as the text says.  He knows that the day of judgment is
> coming, and he has no boldness to meet it.  He shrinks from the
> thought of death, of judgment, of God.  He thinks--How shall I meet
> my God?  I do not love my neighbour.  I do not love God; and God
> does not love me.  The truth is, that the man cannot love God even
> if he will.  He looks on God as his enemy, whom he has offended, who
> is coming to take vengeance on him.  And, as long as we are afraid
> of any one, and fancy that they hate us, and are going to hurt us,
> we cannot love them.  So the man is tormented with fear; fear of
> death, fear of judgment, fear of meeting God.
> 
> Then he takes to superstition; he runs from preacher to preacher;
> and what not?--There is no folly men have not committed, and do not
> commit still, to rid themselves of that tormenting fear.  But they
> do not rid themselves of it.  Sermons, church-goings, almsgivings;
> leaving the Church and turning Dissenters or Roman Catholics;
> joining this sect and that sect; nothing will rid a man of his
> superstitious fear:  nothing but believing the blessed message of
> the text.
> 
> And what does the text say?  It says this,--'God is love.'  God does
> not hate thee, He loves thee.  He willeth not thy death, O sinner,
> but rather that thou shouldest turn from thy wickedness and live.
> Thy sins have not made Him hate thee:  but only pity thee; pity thy
> folly, which will lead on the road to death, when He wishes to put
> thee on the road to life, that thou mayest have boldness in the day
> of judgment, instead of shrinking from God like a guilty coward.
> And what is the way of life?  Surely the way of Christ, who _is_ the
> life.  Live like Him, and thou wilt not need to fear to die.  So
> says the text.  We are to have boldness in the day of judgment,
> because as Christ is, so are we in this world.  And how was, and is,
> and ever will be, Christ in this world?  Full of love; of brotherly-
> kindness, charity, forgiveness, peace, and good will to men.  That,
> says St. John, is the life which brings a joyful death; for God is
> love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
> 
> Oh consider this, my good friends.  Consider this; lest when you
> come to die the ghosts of all your sins should rise up at your
> bedside, and torment you with fear--the ghosts of every cruel word
> which you ever spoke against your fellow men; of every kind action
> which you neglected; as well as of every unjust one which you ever
> committed.  And, if they do rise up in judgment against you, what
> must you do?
> 
> Cast yourself upon the love of God, and remember that God is love,
> and so loved us that He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
> sins.  Ask Him to forgive you your sins, for the sake of that
> precious blood which was shed on the cross:  but not that you may
> keep your sins, and may escape the punishment of them.  God forbid.
> What use in having your past sins forgiven, if the sinful heart
> still remains to run up fresh sins for the future?  No.  Ask Him not
> merely to forgive the past, but to mend the future; to create in you
> a new heart, which wishes no ill to any human being, and a right
> spirit, which desires first and utterly to do right, and is filled
> with the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of love, by which God made
> and redeemed the world, and all that therein is.
> 
> So will all tormenting fears cease.  You will feel yourself in the
> right way, the way of charity, the way in which Christ walked in
> this world, and have boldness in the day of judgment, facing death
> without conceit, indeed, but also without superstitious fear.
> 
> SERMON XXIII.  THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT
> 
> (Eighth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Romans viii. 12.  Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the
> flesh, to live after the flesh; for if ye live after the flesh, ye
> shall die.
> 
> What does walking after the flesh mean?  St. Paul tells us himself,
> in Gal. v., where he uses exactly the same form of words which he
> does here.  'The works of the flesh,' he says, 'are manifest.'  When
> a man gives way to his passions and appetites--when he cares only
> about enjoying his own flesh, and the pleasures which he has in
> common with the brutes, then there is no mistake about the sort of
> life which he will lead--'Now the works of the flesh are manifest,
> which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
> idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
> seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and
> such like.'  An ugly list, my friends; and God have mercy on the man
> who gives way to them.  For disgraceful as they are to him, and
> tormenting also to him in this life, the worst is, that if he gives
> way to them, he will die.
> 
> I do not mean that he will bring his mortal body to an untimely end;
> that he will ruin his own health; or that he will get himself
> hanged, though that is likely enough--common enough.  I think St.
> Paul means something even worse than that.  The man himself will
> die.  Not his body merely:  but his soul, his character, will die.
> All in him that God made, all that God intended him to be, will die.
> All that his father and mother loved in him, all that they watched
> over, and hoped and prayed that it might grow up into life, in order
> that he might become the man God meant him to be, all that will die.
> His soul and character will become one mass of disease.  He will
> think wrong, feel wrong, about everything of which he does think and
> feel:  while, about the higher matters, of which every man ought to
> know something, he will not think or feel at all.  Love to his
> country, love to his own kinsfolk even; above all, love to God, will
> die in him, and he will care for nothing but himself, and how to get
> a little more foul pleasure before he goes out of this world, he
> dare not think whither.  All power of being useful will die in him.
> Honour and justice will die in him.  He will be shut up in himself,
> in the ugly prison-house of his own lusts and passions, parted from
> his fellow-men, caring nothing for them, knowing that they care
> nothing for him.  He will have no faith in man or God.  He will
> believe no good, he will have no hope, either for himself or for the
> world.
> 
> This, this is death, indeed; the death of sin; the death in which
> human beings may go on for years, walking, eating, and drinking;
> worse than those who walk in their sleep, and see nothing, though
> their eyes are staring wide.
> 
> Oh pitiable sight!  The most pitiable sight in the whole world, a
> human soul dead and rotten in sin!  It is a pitiable sight enough,
> to see a human body decayed by disease, to see a poor creature
> dying, even quietly and without pain.  Pitiable, but not half so
> pitiable as the death of a human soul by sin.  For the death of the
> body is not a man's own fault.  But that death in life of sin, is a
> man's own fault.  In a Christian country, at least, it is a man's
> own fault, if he goes about the world, as I have seen many a one go,
> having a name to live, and yet dead in trespasses and sins, while
> his soul only serves to keep his body alive and moving.  How shall
> we escape this death in life?  St. Paul tells us, 'If ye through the
> Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.'
> 
> Through the Spirit.  The Spirit of God and of Christ.  Keep that in
> mind, for that is the only way, the right way, to mortify and kill
> in us these vices and passions, which, unless we kill them, will
> kill us.  The only way.  For men have tried other ways in old times,
> do try other ways now:  but they fail.  I could mention many plans
> which they have tried.  But I will only mention the one which you
> and I are likely to try.
> 
> A young man runs wild for a few years, as young men are too apt to
> do:  but at last he finds that ill-living does not _pay_.  It hurts
> his health, his pocket, his character.  He makes himself ill; he
> cannot get employed; he has ruin staring him in the face, from his
> wild living.  He must mend.  If he intends to keep out of the
> workhouse, the gaol, the grave, he must mortify the deeds of the
> body.  He must bridle his passions, give up lying about, drinking,
> swearing, cheating, running after bad women:  and if he has a strong
> will, he does it from mere selfish prudence.  But is he safe?  I
> think not, as long as he loves still the bad ways he has given up.
> He has given them up, not because he hates them, because he is
> ashamed of them, because he knows them to be hateful to God, and
> ruinous to his own soul:  but because they do not pay.  The man
> himself is not changed.  His heart within is not converted.  The
> outside of his life is whitewashed; but his heart may be as foul as
> ever; as full as ever of selfishness, greediness, meanness.  And
> what happens to him?  Too often, what happened to the man in the
> parable, when the unclean spirit went out of him, and came back
> again.  The unclean spirit found his home swept and garnished:  but
> empty.  All very neat and respectable:  but empty.  There was no
> other spirit dwelling there.  No good spirit, who could fight the
> unclean spirit and keep him out.  So he took to himself seven other
> spirits worse than himself--hypocrisy, cant, cunning, covetousness,
> and all the smooth-shaven sins which beset middle-aged and elderly
> men; and they dwell there, and so does the unclean spirit of youth
> too.
> 
> Alas!  How often have I seen men whom that description would fit but
> too well--men who have kept themselves respectable till they have
> got back their character in the world's eyes:  and when they get
> into years, and have risen perhaps in life, and made money, are
> looked up to by their fellows:  but what are they at heart?  As
> great scoundrels as they were thirty years before--cunning, false,
> covetous, and hypocritical--and indulging, perhaps, the unclean
> spirit of youth, as much as they dare without being found out.  God
> help them! for their last state is worse than their first.  But that
> is the fruit of trying to mortify and kill their own vices by mere
> worldly prudence, and not by the Spirit of God, which alone can
> cleanse the heart of any man, or make him strong enough really to
> conquer and kill his sins.
> 
> And what is this spirit of God?  We may know in this way.  What says
> our Lord in the Gospel?  'The tree is known by its fruits.'  Then if
> we know the fruits of the Spirit, we shall surely know something at
> least of what the Spirit is like.  What then says St. Paul, 'The
> fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
> goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.'  Therefore the Spirit is a
> loving spirit--a peaceable, a gentle, a good, a faithful, a sober
> and temperate spirit.  And if you follow it, you will live.  If you
> give yourselves up honestly, frankly, and fully, to be led by that
> good spirit, and obey it when it prompts you with right feelings,
> you, your very self, will live.  You will be what God intended you
> to be; you will grow as God intended you to grow; grow as Christ
> did, in grace; in all which is graceful, amiable, worthy of respect
> and love; and therefore in favour with God and man.  Your character
> will improve and strengthen day by day; and rise day by day to
> fuller, stronger, healthier spiritual life.  You will be able more
> and more to keep down low passions, evil tempers, and all the works
> of the flesh, when they tempt you; you will despise and hate them
> more and more; for having seen the beauty of goodness, you will see
> the ugliness of sin.  So the bad passions and tempers, instead of
> being merely put to sleep for a while to wake up all the stronger
> for their rest, will be really mortified and killed in you.  They
> will die out of you; and you, the real _you_ whom God made, will
> live and grow continually.  And, instead of having your character
> dragged down, diseased, and at last ruined, it will rise and
> progress, as you grow older, in the sure and safe road of eternal
> life.  To which God bring us all in his mercy!  Amen.
> 
> SERMON XXIV.  THE UNRIGHTEOUS MAMMON
> 
> (Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Luke xvi. 1-8.  And he said also unto his disciples, There was a
> certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto
> him that he had wasted his goods.  And he called him, and said unto
> him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy
> stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.  Then the steward
> said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from
> me the stewardship:  I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.  I am
> resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship,
> they may receive me into their houses.  So he called every one of
> his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest
> thou unto my lord?  And he said, An hundred measures of oil.  And he
> said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.
> Then said he to another, And how much owest thou?  And he said, An
> hundred measures of wheat.  And he said unto him, Take thy bill and
> write fourscore.  And the lord commended the unjust steward, because
> he had done wisely:  for the children of this world are in their
> generation wiser than the children of light.
> 
> This parable has always been considered a difficult one to
> understand.  Fathers and Divines, in all ages, have tried to explain
> it in different ways; and have never, it seems to me, been satisfied
> with their own explanations.  They have always felt it strange, that
> our Lord should seem to hold up, as an example to us, this steward
> who, having been found out in one villainy, escapes, (so it seems,
> from the common explanation) by committing a second.  They have not
> been able to see either, how we are really to copy the steward.  Our
> Lord says, that we are to copy him by making ourselves friends of
> the Mammon of unrighteousness:  but how?  By giving away a few alms,
> or a great many?  Does any rational man seriously believe, that if
> his Mammon was unrighteous, that is, if his wealth were ill-gotten,
> he would save his soul, and be received into eternal life, for
> giving away part of it, or even the whole of it?
> 
> No doubt, there always have been men who will try.  Men who, having
> cheated their neighbours all their lives, have tried to cheat the
> Devil at last, by some such plan as the unjust steward's, but that
> plan has never been looked on as either a very honourable or a very
> hopeful one.  I think, that if I had been an usurer or a grinder of
> the poor all my life, I should not save my soul by founding
> almshouses with my money when I died, or even ten years before I
> died.  It might be all that I was able to do:  but would it justify
> me in the sight of God?  That which saves a soul alive is
> repentance; and of repentance there are three parts, contrition,
> confession, and satisfaction--in plain English, making the wrong
> right, and giving each man back, as far as one can, what one has
> taken from him.  To each man, I say; for I have no right to rob one
> man and then give to another.  I ought to give back again to the man
> whom I have robbed.  I have no right to cheat the rich for the sake
> of the poor; and after I have cheated the rich, I do not make
> satisfaction, either to god or man, by giving that money to the
> poor.  Good old Zaccheus, the publican, knew better what true
> satisfaction was like.  He had been gaining money not altogether in
> an unjust way, but in a way which did him no credit; he had been
> farming the taxes, and he was dissatisfied with his way of life.
> Therefore, Behold, Lord, he says, the half of my goods, of what I
> have a right to in the world's eyes--what is my own, and I could
> keep if I liked--I give to the poor.  But if I have done wrong to
> any man, I restore to him fourfold.  Then said the Lord, 'This day
> is salvation come to this man's house; forsomuch as he also is a son
> of Abraham;' a just and faithful man, who knows what true repentance
> is.
> 
> But now, my friends, suppose that this was just what our Lord tells
> us to do in this parable.  Suppose that this was just what the
> unjust steward did.  I only say, suppose; for I know that more
> learned men than I explain the difficulty otherwise.  Only I ask you
> to hear my explanation.
> 
> The steward is accused of wasting his lord's goods.
> 
> He will be put out of his stewardship.
> 
> He goes to his lord's debtors, and bids them write themselves down
> in debt to him at far less sums than they had thought that they
> owed.
> 
> Now, suppose that these debtors were the very men whom he had been
> cheating.  Suppose that he had been overcharging these debtors; and
> now, in his need, had found out that honesty was the best policy,
> and charged them what they really owed him.  They were, probably,
> tenants under his lord, paying their rents in kind, as was often the
> custom in the East.  One rented an olive garden, and paid for it so
> many measures of oil; another rented corn-land, and paid so many
> measures of meal.  Now suppose that the steward, as he easily might,
> had been setting these poor men's rents too high, and taking the
> surplus himself.  That while he had been charging one tenant a
> hundred, he had been paying to his lord only fifty, and so forth.
> 
> What does he do, then, in his need?  He does justice to his lord's
> debtors.  He tells them what their debts really are.  He sets their
> accounts right.  Instead of charging the first man a hundred, he
> charges him fifty; instead of charging the second a hundred, he
> charges him eighty; and he does not, as far as we are told, conceal
> this conduct from his lord.  He rights them as far as he can now.
> So he shews that he honestly repents.  He has found out that honesty
> is the best policy; that the way to make true friends is to deal
> justly by them; and, if he cannot restore what he has taken from
> them already (for I suppose he had spent it), at least to confess
> his sin to them, and to set the matter right for the time to come.
> 
> This, I think, is what our Lord bids us do, if we have wronged any
> man, and fouled our hands with the unrighteous mammon, that is, with
> ill-gotten wealth.  And I think so all the more from the verses
> which come after.  For, when he has said, 'Make yourselves friends
> of the mammon of unrighteousness,' he goes on in the very next verse
> to say, 'He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful
> also in that which is much.  If, therefore, ye have not been
> faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust
> the true riches?'  Now, surely, this must have something to do with
> what goes before.  And, if it has, what can it mean but this--that
> the way to make friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness, is to
> be faithful in it, just in it, honest in it?
> 
> But some one may say, If mammon be unrighteous, how can a man be
> righteous and upright in dealing with it?  If money be a bad thing
> in itself, how can a man meddle with it with clean hands?
> 
> So some people will say, and so some will be glad to say.  But why?
> Because they do not want to be righteous, upright, just, and honest
> in their money dealings; and, therefore, they are glad to make out
> that they could not be upright if they tried; because money being a
> bad thing altogether, a man must needs, if he has to do with money,
> do things which he knows are wrong.  I say some people are glad to
> believe that.  I do not mean any one in this congregation.  God
> forbid!  I mean in the world in general.  We do see people,
> religious people too, do things about money which they know are
> mean, covetous, cruel, and then excuse themselves by saying,--'Well,
> of course I would not do so to my own brother; but, in the way of
> business, one can't help doing these things.'  Now, I do not quite
> believe them.  I have seldom seen the man who cheated his neighbour,
> who would not cheat his own brother if he had a chance:  but so they
> say.  And, if they be religious people, they will quote Scripture,
> and say,--Ah! it is the fault of the unrighteous mammon; and, in
> dealing with the unrighteous mammon, we cannot help these little
> failings, and so forth:  till they seem to have two quite different
> rules of right and wrong; one for the saving of their own souls,
> which they keep to when they are hearing sermons, and reading good
> books; and the other for money, which they keep to when they have to
> pay their debts or transact business.
> 
> Now, my dear friends, be not deceived:  God is not mocked.  God
> tempts no man.  Man tempts himself by his own lusts and passions.
> God does not tempt us when he gives us money, puts us in the way of
> earning money, or spending money.  Money is not bad in itself;
> wealth is not bad in itself.  If mammon be unrighteous, we make
> money into mammon, when we make an idol of it, and worship it more
> than God's law of right and justice.  We make it unrighteous, by
> being unrighteous, and unjust ourselves.
> 
> Money is good; for money stands for capital; for money's worth; for
> houses, land, food, clothes, all that man can make; and they stand
> for labour, employment, wages; and they stand for human beings, for
> the bodily life of man.  Without wealth, where should we be now?  If
> God had not given to man the power of producing wealth, where should
> we be now?  Not here.  Four-fifths of us would not have been alive
> at all.  Instead of eight hundred people in this parish, all more or
> less well off, there would be, perhaps, one hundred--perhaps far
> less, living miserably on game and roots.  Instead of thirty
> millions of civilized people in Great Britain, there would be
> perhaps some two or three millions of savages.  Money, I say, stands
> for the lives of human beings.  Therefore money is good; an
> ordinance and a gift of God; as it is written, 'It is God that
> giveth the power to get wealth.'  But, like every other good gift of
> God, we may use it as a blessing; or we may misuse it, and make it a
> snare and a curse to our own souls.  If we let into our hearts
> selfishness and falsehood; if we lose faith in God, and fancy that
> God's laws are not well-made enough to prosper us, but that we must
> break them if we want to prosper; then we turn God's good gift into
> an idol and a snare; into the unrighteous Mammon.
> 
> It is not the quantity of money we have to deal with which is the
> snare, it is our own lusts and covetousness which are the snares.
> It is just as easy to sell our souls for five pounds as for five
> thousand.  It is just as easy to be mean and tricky about paying
> little debts of a shilling or two, as it is about whole estates.  I
> do not see that rich people are at all more unjust about money than
> poor ones; and if any say:  Yes, but the poor are tempted more than
> the rich; I answer, then look at those who are neither poor nor
> rich; who have enough to live on decently, and are not tempted as
> the poor are, to steal, or tempted as the rich are, to luxury and
> extravagance.  Are they more honest than either rich or poor?  Not a
> whit.  All depends on the man's heart.  If his heart be selfish and
> mean, he will be dishonest as a poor man, as a middle-class man, as
> a great lord.  If his heart be faithful and true, he will be honest,
> whether he lives in a cottage or in a palace.  Any man can do
> justly, and love mercy, if his heart be right with God.  I have seen
> day-labourers who had a hard struggle to live at all, keep out of
> debt, and out of shame, and live in a noble poverty, rich in the
> sight of God, because their hearts were rich in goodness.  I have
> seen tradesmen and farmers, among all the temptations of business,
> keep their honour as bright as any gentleman's--brighter than too
> many gentlemen's, because they had learnt to fear God and work
> righteousness.  I have seen great merchants and manufacturers,
> because that they were their brothers' keepers, spread not only
> employment, but comfort, education, and religion, among the hundreds
> of workmen whom God had put into their charge.  I have seen great
> landowners live truly royal lives, doing with all their might the
> good which their hand found to do; and, after the likeness of their
> heavenly Father, causing their sun to shine on the evil and on the
> good, and their rain to fall on the just and on the unjust.  Yes; in
> every station of life, thy dealings will be right with men, if thy
> heart be right with God.
> 
> Yes.  Let us bear in mind this--that whatever we cannot be, we can
> at least be honest men.  Let us go to our graves, if possible, with
> the feeling that there is not a man on earth, a penny the worse for
> us.  And if we have ever fouled our hands with the unrighteous
> Mammon, let us cleanse them by the only possible plan, by making
> restitution to those whom we have wronged; and so make friends of
> the Mammon of unrighteousness, who shall forgive us, and receive us
> as friends in heaven, instead of making enemies, and going out of
> the world with the fearful thought, that we shall meet at God's
> judgment-seat people whom we have made miserable, who will rise up
> to accuse us, and demand payment of us when it is too late for ever.
> 
> Let us bear in mind, even though we cannot copy, the dying words of
> Muhammed the Arab, who, when he found his end draw near, went forth
> into the market-place, and asked before all the people, 'Was there
> any man whom he had wronged?  If so, his own back should bear the
> stripes.  Was there any man to whom he owed money? and he should be
> paid.'  'Yes,' cried some one, 'those coins which you borrowed from
> me on such a day.'  'Pay him,' said Muhammed:  'better to be shamed
> now on earth, than shamed in the day of judgment.'  He was a
> heathen.  And shall we Christians be worse than he?  Then let us
> pray for the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, which will
> make us faithful and true; so that no man may be the worse for us in
> this life; no man may have to say of us, when he hears that we lie
> dying, 'He wronged me, he cheated me, he lied to me; God forgive
> him:' but that our friends, as they carry us to the grave, may feel
> that they have lost one whom they could respect and trust; and say,
> as the earth rattles in upon the coffin lid, 'There lies an honest
> man.'
> 
> SERMON XXV.  THE SIGHS OF CHRIST
> 
> (Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Mark vii. 34, 35.  And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith
> unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.  And straightway his ears
> were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake
> plain.
> 
> Why did the Lord Jesus look up to heaven?  And why, too, did he
> sigh?
> 
> He looked up to heaven, we may believe, because he looked to God the
> Father; to God, of whom the glorious collect tells us, that he is
> more ready to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give more than
> either we desire or deserve.  He looked up to the Father, who is the
> fountain of life, of order, of health, of usefulness; who hates all
> death, disease, infirmity; who wills that none should perish, body
> or soul.
> 
> My friends, think of these cheering words; and try to look up to God
> the Father, as Christ looked up.  Look up to him I say, if but once,
> as a Father.  Not merely as your Father, but as the Father of the
> spirits of all flesh; the good God who creates, and delights to
> create; who orders all worlds and heavens with perfect wisdom,
> perfect power, perfect justice, perfect love; and peoples them with
> immortal souls and spirits, that they may be useful, happy, blessed,
> in keeping his laws, and doing the work which he has ordained for
> them.  Oh think, if but once, of God the perfect and all-loving
> Father; and then you will know why Jesus looked up to him.
> 
> And you will see, too, why Jesus sighed.  He sighed because he was
> one with the Father.  He sighed because he had the mind of God.
> Because God, the Lord of health and order, hates disease and
> disorder.  Because God, the Lord of bliss and happiness, hates
> misery and sorrow.  Because God made the world at first very good;
> and, behold, by man's sin, it has become bad.
> 
> Why did he sigh?  Surely, also, from pity for the poor man.  His
> infirmity was no such great one; he had an impediment in his speech,
> and with it, as many are apt to have, deafness also:  but it was an
> infirmity.  It was a disease.  It was something out of order,
> something gone wrong in God's world; and as such, Christ could not
> abide it; he grieved over it.  He sighed because there was sickness
> in a world where there ought to be nothing but health, and sorrow
> where there ought to be nothing but happiness.  He sighed, because
> man had brought this sickness and sorrow on himself by sin; for,
> remember, man alone is subject to disease.  The wild animal in the
> wood, the bird upon the tree, seldom or never know what sickness is;
> seldom or never are stunted or deformed.  They live according to
> their nature, healthy and happy, and die in a good old age.  While
> man--Why should I talk of what man is, of how far man is fallen from
> what God the Father meant him to be, while one hundred thousand
> corpses of brave men are now fattening the plains of Italy for next
> year's crop; while even in our favoured land, we find at every turn
> prisons and reformatories, lunatic asylums, hospitals for numberless
> kinds of horrible diseases; sickness, weakness, and death all round
> us?  Only look up yonder to Windsor Forest, and see the vast
> building now in progress there before your eyes, for lunatic
> convicts--the most miserable, perhaps, and pitiable of human
> beings,--and let that building be a sign to you, how far man is
> fallen, and what cause Jesus had to sigh, and has to sigh still,
> over the miseries of fallen man.
> 
> Yes, my friends, not without reason did the old heathen poet, who
> had no sure and certain hope of everlasting life, say, that man was
> the most wretched of all the beasts of the field; not without reason
> did St. Paul say, that if in this life only we have hope in Christ,
> then the Christian man, who dare not indulge his passions and
> appetites, dare not say, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die:
> but must curb himself, and give up his own pleasure and his own
> fancy at every turn, is of all men most miserable.
> 
> If Christ's work is done; if his mercy and help ended when he died
> upon the cross; if all he did was to heal the sick for three short
> years in Judea a long while ago:  then what have we to which we can
> look forward?  What hope have we, not merely for ourselves, who are
> here now, but for all the millions who have died and suffered
> already?  Yes:  what reasonable hope for mankind can they have, who
> do not believe that Christ is Very God of Very God, the perfect
> likeness of the heavenly Father?
> 
> But what if that which was true of him then, is true of him now?
> What if he be the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever?  What if he
> be ascended on high, that he might fill all things with his almighty
> power, and declare that almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy
> and pity?  What if he be for ever looking up to his Father and our
> Father, to his God and our God, interceding for ever for mankind;
> for ever offering up to the Father that sacrifice of himself which
> he perfected upon the Cross, for the sins of the whole world?  What
> if he be for ever sighing over every sin, every sorrow, every
> cruelty, every injustice, over all things, great and small, which go
> wrong throughout the whole world; and saying for ever, 'Father, this
> is not according to thy will.  Let thy will be done on earth, as in
> heaven.'  And what, if he does not look up in vain, nor sigh in
> vain?  What if the will of God the Father be, that sin and sorrow,
> disease and death, being contrary to his will and law, should be at
> last rooted out of this world, and all worlds for ever?  What if
> Christ have authority and commission from God to fight against all
> evil, sin, disease, and death, and all the ills which flesh is heir
> to; and to teach men to fight them likewise, till they conquer them
> by his might, and by his light?  What if he reigns, and will reign,
> till he has put all enemies under his feet, and he has delivered up
> the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all?
> What if the day shall come, when all the nations of the earth shall
> thus see Christ's good works, and glorify his Father and their
> Father who is in heaven? and by obeying the Law of their being, and
> the commandment of God, which is life eternal, shall live for ever
> in that glory, of which it is written, that a river of water of life
> shall proceed out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; and the
> leaves of the trees which grow thereby shall be for the healing of
> the nations; and there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God
> and of the Lamb shall be in the city of God, and his servants shall
> serve him; and the Lord God shall give them light; and they shall
> reign for ever and ever.
> 
> What those words mean I know not, and hardly dare to think:  but as
> long as those words stand in the Bible, we will have hope.  For God
> the Father, who willeth that none should perish, and Jesus the only-
> begotten Son, who sighed over the poor man's infirmity in Judea, are
> the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
> 
> SERMON XXVI.  THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA
> 
> (Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 1856.)
> 
> 2 Kings xviii. 9-12.  And it came to pass in the fourth year of King
> Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of
> Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria,
> and besieged it.  And at the end of three years they took it:  even
> in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is the ninth year of Hoshea king
> of Israel, Samaria was taken.  And the king of Assyria did carry
> away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the
> river of Gozon, and in the cities of the Medes:  because they obeyed
> not the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed his covenant,
> and all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded, and would not
> hear them, nor do them.
> 
> These are very simple words:  but they are awful words enough.
> Awful enough to the poor creatures of whom they speak.  You here,
> most of you, can hardly guess all that these words mean.  You may
> thank God that you do not.  That you do not know the horrors of war,
> and the misery of a conquered country, in old times.
> 
> To lose all they had ever earned; all that makes life worth having.
> To have their homes burnt over their heads, their crops carried off
> their fields.  To see their women dishonoured, their old men and
> children murdered--to be insulted, beaten, and tortured to make them
> tell where their money was hidden; and after they and theirs had
> suffered every unspeakable shame and misery from the hands of brutal
> enemies, to be stripped, bound, and marched away, for hundreds of
> miles across the deserts, into the cold and dreary mountains of the
> north of Assyria, there to live and die as slaves, and never again
> to see their native land.  And such a land as it was, and is still:
> or rather might be still, if there were men in it worthy the name of
> men.  For of all countries in the world, that land of Israel is one
> of the most rich and beautiful.  The climate and the soil there is
> such, that two crops can often be grown in the year, of almost any
> kind which man may need; there are rich valleys well watered, where
> not only wheat and every grain-crop, but the olive, and the fig, and
> the vine, flourish in perfection; rich park-like uplands, where
> sheep and cattle without number may find pasture; great forests of
> timber, fit for every use; and all kept cool and fruitful, even
> beneath that burning eastern sun, by the clear streams which flow
> for ever down from Hermon. the great snow-mountain ten thousand feet
> high, which overlooks that pleasant land.  There is hardly,
> travellers say, a lovelier or richer country upon earth, than the
> land of Israel, from Hebron on the south to Hermon on the north; nor
> a country which might have been stronger, and safer, and more
> prosperous, if these Jews had been but wise.
> 
> It is, so to speak, one great castle, rising most of it two thousand
> feet high, and walled in by God in a way as is seen hardly in any
> other land.  On the west lies the sea; on the south and on the east
> vast wildernesses of sandy desert; and on the north, the mighty
> mountains of Hermon and Lebanon, which no invading army could have
> crossed, if the Jews had had courage to keep them out.  And that,
> the noble and divine Law of Moses would have given them.  It would
> have made them one free, brave, God-fearing people, at unity with
> itself; and the promise of Moses would have been fulfilled--that one
> of them should chase a thousand, and no man or nation be able to
> stand against them.  In David's time, and in Solomon's time also,
> that promise came true; and that small people of the Jews became a
> very powerful nation, respected and feared by all the kingdoms
> round.
> 
> But when they fell into idolatry, and forsook the true God, and his
> law:  all was changed.  Idolatry brought sin, and sin brought bad
> passions, hatred, division, weakness, ruin.
> 
> The first beginning was, the breaking up of the nation into two;--
> the kingdom of Judah to the south, the kingdom of Israel to the
> north.  And with that division came envy, spite, quarrels; wars
> between Israel and Judah, which were but madness.  For what could
> come of those two brother-nations fighting against each other, but
> that both should grow weaker and weaker, and so fall a prey to some
> third nation stronger than them both?  The ruin of the kingdom of
> Israel, of which the text tells us, arose out of some unnatural
> quarrel of this kind.  Pekah, the king of Israel, had made friends
> with the heathen king of Syria, and got him to join in making war on
> Judah:  and a fearful war it was; for the Israelites, according to
> one account, killed in that war a hundred and twenty thousand of the
> Jews, men of their own blood and language, all Abraham's descendants
> as well as they.  On which, Ahaz, king of Judah, not to be behind-
> hand in folly, sent to the heathen king of Assyria to help him, just
> as the king of Israel had sent to the king of Damascus.  He had
> better have been dead than to have done that.  For those terrible
> Assyrians, who had set their hearts on conquering the whole east,
> were standing by, watching all the little kingdoms round tearing
> themselves to pieces by foolish wars, till they were utterly weak,
> and the time was ripe for the Assyrians to pounce upon them.  The
> king of Assyria came.  He swept away all the heathen people of
> Damascus, and killed their king.  But he did not stop there.  In a
> very few years, he came on into the land of Israel, besieged Samaria
> for three years, and took it, and carried off the whole of the
> inhabitants of the country; and there was an end of that miserable
> kingdom of Israel, which had been sinking lower and lower ever since
> the days of Jeroboam.  This was the natural outcome of all their sin
> and folly, of which we have been reading for the last few Sundays.
> 
> Elijah's warnings had been in vain, and Elisha's warnings also.
> They liked, at heart, Ahab's and Jezebel's idolatries better than
> they did the worship of the true God.  And why?  Because, if they
> worshipped God, and kept his laws, they must needs have been more or
> less good men, upright, just, merciful, cleanly and chaste livers:
> while, on the other hand, they might worship their idols, and
> nevertheless be as bad as they chose.  Indeed, the very idol-feasts
> and sacrifices were mixed up with all sorts of filthy sin,
> drunkenness and profligacy; so that it is a shame even to speak of
> the things which went on, especially at those sacrifices to
> Ashtaroth, the queen of heaven, of which they were so fond.  They
> choose the worse part, and refused the better; and they were filled
> with the fruit of their own devices, as every unrepenting sinner
> surely will be.
> 
> But did the Jews of Judea and their king escape, who had thus
> brought the king of Assyria down to murder their own countrymen, and
> lay that fair land waste?  Not they.  A very few years more, the
> Assyrians were back again, and overran Judea itself, laying the
> country waste with fire and sword, till nothing was left to them,
> but the mere city of Jerusalem.  And so they, too, were filled with
> the fruit of their own devices.  In their madness they had destroyed
> their brethren, the people of Israel, who ought to have been a
> safeguard for them to the north; now there was nothing and no man to
> prevent the Assyrians, or any other invaders, from pouring right
> down into their land.  Truly says Solomon, 'He that diggeth a pit,
> shall fall into it, and he who breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall
> bite him.'  From that day, Judah became weaker and weaker, standing
> all alone.  Good king Hezekiah, good king Josiah, could only stave
> off her ruin for a few years; a little while longer, and her cup was
> full too, and the Babylonians came and swept the Jews away into
> captivity, as the Assyrians had swept away Israel, and that fair
> land lay desolate for many a year.
> 
> The king of Assyria, we read, after he had carried away the people
> of Israel, brought heathens from Assyria, and settled them in the
> Holy Land, instead of the Israelites.  But the Lord sent lions among
> them, we read; the land, I suppose, lying waste, the wild beasts
> increased, and became very dangerous:  so these poor ignorant
> settlers sent to the king of Assyria, to beg for a Jewish priest, to
> teach them, as they said, the manner of the god of that land, that
> they might worship him, and not be terrified by the lions any more.
> It was a simple, confused notion of theirs:  but it brought a
> blessing with it; for the king of Assyria sent them one of the
> Jewish priests who had been carried away from Samaria; and he came
> and lived at Beth-el, and taught them to fear the Lord.  So these
> poor people got some confused notion of the one true God:  but they
> mixed it up sadly with their old heathen idolatry, and made gods of
> their own, and some of them even burnt their children in the fire,
> to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim, from which
> town they had come.  And so they went on for several hundred years,
> marrying with the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind,
> and worshipping idols and the true God at the same time.  Now these
> people are the Samaritans, of whom you read so often in the New
> Testament.  The Jews, when they came back, hated and despised the
> Samaritans, and would not speak to them, eat with them, trade with
> them, because they were only half-blooded Jews, and did not observe
> Moses' law rightly; and so they were left to themselves:  but as
> time went on, they seemed to have got rid of their old idolatry, and
> built themselves a temple on Mount Gerizim, by Samaria, in Jacob's
> old haunts, by Jacob's well, and there worshipped they knew not
> what.  But still they did their best.  And their reward came at
> last.
> 
> Many a hundred years had passed away.  The proud Pharisees of
> Jerusalem were still calling them dogs and infidels; when there came
> to that half-heathen city of Samaria such a one as never came there
> before or since; and yet had been very near that place, and those
> poor Samaritans, for a thousand years.
> 
> And being wearied with his journey, he sat down upon the edge of
> Jacob's well, by Joseph's tomb.  The well is still there, choked
> with rubbish to this very day; and Joseph's tomb by it, all in
> ruins, among broad fields of corn.  And on the edge of that well he
> sat.  Along the very road which was before him, Jeroboam, and Ahab,
> and many a wicked king of Israel, had gone in old times, travelling
> between Shechem and Samaria:  along that road the terrible Assyrians
> had marched back to their own land, leading strings of weeping
> prisoners out of their pleasant native land, to slavery and misery
> in the far North.  He knew it all; and doubt not that he thought
> over it all, as never man thought on earth.  Doubt not that his
> heart yearned over these poor ignorant Samaritans, and over the
> sinful woman who came to draw water at the well.  After all, half-
> heathens as they were, Jacob's blood was in their veins; and if not,
> were they not still human beings?  They were worshipping they knew
> not what:  but still they were worshipping the best which they knew.
> 
> 'Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye
> shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
> Father.  Ye worship ye know not what:  we know what we worship:  for
> salvation is of the Jews.  But the hour cometh, and now is, when the
> true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:
> for the Father seeketh such to worship him.  God is a spirit:  and
> they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.  The
> woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called
> Christ:  when he is come, he will tell us all things.  Jesus saith
> unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. . . . So when the Samaritans
> were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them:
> and he abode there two days.  And many more believed because of his
> own word; and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of
> thy saying:  for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is
> indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'
> 
> Oh, my friends, despise no man; for Christ despises none.  He is no
> respecter of persons:  but in every nation, he that feareth God and
> worketh righteousness is accepted with him.  Despise no man; for by
> so doing you deny the Father, who has made of one blood all nations
> of men to dwell on the earth, and has appointed them their times,
> and the bounds of their habitation; if haply they may feel after
> him, and find him:  though he be not far from any of us; for in him
> we live and move and have our being, and are the offspring of God.
> For hundreds of years those poor ignorant Samaritans had felt after
> him; in that foreign land to which the cruel Assyrian conqueror had
> banished them:  but it was God who had appointed them their
> habitation there, and their time also; and, in due time, they found
> God:  for he came to them, and found them, and spoke with them face
> to face.
> 
> Better to have been one of those ignorant Samaritans, than to have
> been King Ahab, or King Hoshea, in all their glory, with all their
> proud Jewish blood.  Better to have been one of those ignorant
> Samaritans than one of those conceited Pharisees at Jerusalem, who,
> while they were priding themselves on being Abraham's children, and
> keeping Moses' law, ended by crucifying him who made Abraham, and
> Moses, and his law, and them themselves.  Better to be the poorest
> negro slave, if, in the midst of his ignorance and misery and shame,
> he believes in Christ, and works righteousness, than the cleverest
> and proudest and freest Englishman, if, in the midst of his great
> light, he works the works of darkness, and, while he calls himself a
> child of God, lives the sinful life, on which God's curse lies for
> ever.
> 
> So you who have many advantages, take warning by the fate of those
> foolish Jews, who knew a great deal, and yet did not do it, and so
> came to shame and ruin.  And you who have few advantages, take
> comfort by those poor Samaritans, who knew a very little, and yet
> made the best of it, and so at last saw a great light, after sitting
> in darkness for so long.  Schools, books, church-going, ordinances
> of all kinds, they are good.  If you can get them, use them, and
> thank God for them:  but remember, God does not ask for learning,
> but for goodness and holiness:  he does not ask for knowledge, but
> for a right life.  And do not fancy, that because your children have
> a good education now, and you had none, that God does not love you
> as well as he loves them.  His mercy is over all his works; and the
> promises are to you as well as to your children.  There is many a
> poor soul who never read a book in her life, who is nearer God than
> many a great scholar, and fine preacher, and learned divine.  All
> Christ asks of you is, to receive him when he comes to you; and to
> love, and thank, and admire him, and try to be like him, because he
> will make you like him:  while for the rest to whom little is given,
> of him shall little be required; and to him who uses what he has, be
> it little or much, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance.
> For God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that
> feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted by him.
> 
> SERMON XXVII.  THE INVASION OF THE ASSYRIANS
> 
> (Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, Morning.)
> 
> 2 Kings xix. 15-19.  And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said,
> O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art
> the Lord, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou
> hast made heaven and earth.  Lord, bow down thine ear, and hear:
> open, Lord, thine eyes, and see:  and hear the words of Sennacherib,
> which hath sent him to reproach the living God.  Of a truth, Lord,
> the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and
> have cast their gods into the fire:  for they were no gods, but the
> work of men's hands, wood and stone:  therefore they have destroyed
> them.  Now, therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us
> out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that
> thou art the Lord God, even thou only.
> 
> This noble story, which we read in Church every year, seems to have
> had a great hold on the minds of the Jews.  They plainly thought it
> a very important story.  For it is told three times over in the
> Bible:  first in the Book of Kings, then in the Book of Chronicles,
> and again in that of the Prophet Isaiah.  Indeed, many chapters of
> Isaiah's prophecies speak altogether of this invasion of the
> Assyrians and their destruction.  But what has this story to do with
> us, you may ask?  There are no miracles in our day.  We can expect
> no angels to fight for our armies.  We must fight for ourselves.
> 
> True, my friends:  but the lesson of these old stories, the moral of
> them stands good for ever.  And I am thankful that this very story
> is appointed to be read publicly in church once a year, to put us in
> mind of many things, which all men are too apt to forget.
> 
> For instance:  to learn one lesson out of many which this chapter
> may teach us.  We are too apt to think that peace and prosperity are
> the only signs of God's favour.  That if a nation be religious, it
> is certain to thrive and be happy.  But it is not so.  We find from
> history that the times in which nations have shewn most nobleness,
> most courage, most righteousness, most faith in God, have been times
> of trouble, and danger, and terror.  When nations have been invaded,
> persecuted, trampled under foot by tyrants, then all the good which
> was in them has again and again shewed itself.  Then to the
> astonishment of the world they have become greater than themselves,
> and done deeds which win them glory for ever.  Then they are truly
> purged in the fire of affliction, that whatever dross and trash is
> in their hearts may be burnt out, and the pure gold left.
> 
> So it was with the Jews in Hezekiah's time.  So again in the time of
> the Maccabees.  So with the old Greeks, when the great Kings of
> Persia tried to enslave them.  So with the old Romans, when the
> Carthaginians set upon them.  So it was with us English, three
> hundred years ago, when for a time the whole world seemed against
> us, because we alone were standing up for the Gospel and the Bible
> against the Pope of Rome.  Then the king of Spain, who was then as
> terrible a conqueror and devourer of nations, as the Assyrians of
> old, sent against us the Great Armada.  Then was England in greater
> danger than she had ever been before, or has been since.
> 
> And what came of it?  That that dreadful danger brought out more
> faith, more courage, than perhaps has ever been among us since.
> That when we seemed weakest we were strongest.  That while all the
> nations of Europe were looking on to see us devoured up by those
> Spaniards, our laws and liberties taken from us, the Popish
> Inquisition set up in England, and England made a Spanish province,
> what they did see was, the people of this little island rising as
> one man, to fight for themselves on earth, while the tempests of God
> fought for them from heaven; and all that mighty fleet of the King
> of Spain routed and scattered, till not one man in a hundred ever
> saw their native country again.
> 
> And in England, after that terrible trial had passed over us, there
> rose up the best and noblest time which she had ever yet beheld.
> 
> Yes, my friends, three hundred years ago we went through just such a
> fiery trial as the Jews went through in Hezekiah's time; and God
> grant that we may never forget that lesson.
> 
> But what is true of whole nations, is often true also of each single
> person; of you and me.
> 
> To almost every man, at least once in his life, comes a time of
> trial--what we call a crisis.  A time when God purges the man, and
> tries him in the fire, and burns up the dross in him, that the pure
> sterling gold only may be left.
> 
> To some people it comes in the shape of some terrible loss, or
> affliction.  To others it comes in the shape of some great
> temptation.  Nay, if we will consider, it comes to us all, perhaps
> often, in that shape.  A man is brought to a point where he must
> choose between right and wrong.  God puts him where the two roads
> part.  One way turns off to the broad road, which leads to
> destruction:  the other way turns off to the narrow road which leads
> to life.  The man would be glad to go both ways at once, and do
> right and wrong too:  but it so happens that he cannot.  Then he
> would be glad to go neither way, and stay where he is:  but he
> cannot.  He must move on.  He must do something.  Perhaps he is
> asked a question which he does not wish to answer:  but he must.  It
> would be well worth his while to tell a lie.  It would be very safe
> for him, profitable for him; while it would be very dangerous for
> him to tell the truth.  He might ruin himself once and for all, by
> being an honest man.  Now which shall he do?  He would be glad to do
> both, glad to do neither:  but choose he must; speak he must.  He
> must either lie or tell the truth.  Then comes the trial, whether he
> believes in God and in Christ, or whether he does not.  If he only
> believes, as too many do without knowing it, in a dead God, a God
> far away, he will lie.  If he only believes, as too many do without
> knowing it, in a dead Christ, a Christ who bore his sins on the
> cross eighteen hundred years ago, but since then has had nothing to
> do with him to speak of, as far as he knows--then he will lie.  And
> that is the God and the Christ which most people believe in:  and
> therefore when the time of trial comes, they fall away, and do and
> say things of which they ought to be ashamed, because their trust is
> not in God, but in man.
> 
> But if that man believes in the living God, and believes that he
> lives, and moves, and has his being in God, he cannot lie.  As it is
> written, 'he that is born of God, sinneth not, for his seed
> remaineth in him, and that wicked one toucheth him not.'  He will
> say, Whatever happens, I must obey God, and not man.  The Lord is on
> my side, therefore I will not fear what man can do to me.
> 
> And what is the seed which remains in that man, and keeps him from
> playing the coward?  Christ himself, the seed and Son of God.  If he
> believes in the living Christ; if he believes that Christ is really
> his master, his teacher, who is watching over him, training him,
> from his cradle to his grave;--if he believes that Christ is
> dwelling in him, that whatever wish to do right he has comes from
> Christ, whatever sense of honour and honesty he has comes from
> Christ; then it will seem to him a dreadful thing to lie, to play
> the hypocrite, or the coward; to sin against his own better
> feelings.  It will be sinning against Christ himself.
> 
> Remember the great Martin Luther, when he stood on one side, a poor
> monk standing up for the Bible and the Gospel, and against him were
> arrayed the Pope and the Emperor, cardinals, bishops, and almost all
> the princes in Europe; and his friends wanted him to hold his
> tongue, or to say Yes and No at once; in short, to smooth over the
> matter in some way.--What conceit, said many, of one poor monk
> standing up against all the world; and what folly, too!  He would
> certainly be burnt alive.  But Luther could not hold his tongue.  He
> was afraid enough, no doubt.  He disliked being burnt as much as
> other men.  But he felt he must speak God's truth then or never.  He
> must bear witness for Christ's free gospel, against Pope, Emperor,
> all the devils in hell, if need be, or else hereafter for ever hold
> his peace.  He must play the honest man that day, or be a hypocrite
> and a rogue for ever.  His friends said to him, 'If you go to the
> Council, Duke George will have you burnt.'  He answered, 'If it
> snowed Duke Georges nine days together, I must go.'  They said, 'If
> you go into that town, you will never leave it alive.'  He said, 'If
> there were as many devils in the town as there are tiles on the
> houses, I must go.'  And he went, Bible in hand, and said, 'Here I
> stand; I can do no otherwise.  God help me!'  He went, and he
> conquered.
> 
> And so it will be with you, my friends, if you will believe in the
> living God, and in the living Christ; then, when temptation comes,
> you will be able to stand in the evil day, and having done all, to
> stand.  And you will feel yourselves better men from that day
> forward.  You will feel that you have made one great step upward;
> you will look back upon that time of temptation and perplexity as
> the beginning of a new life; as a sign to you that Christ is with
> you, and in you, training you and shaping your character, till he
> makes you, at last, somewhat like himself; somewhat of the stature
> of a true man; somewhat like what he has bidden you to be, 'perfect
> as your Father in heaven is perfect.'
> 
> SERMON XXVIII.  THE TEN LEPERS
> 
> (Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Luke xvii. 17, 18.  Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the
> nine?  There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save
> this stranger.
> 
> No men, one would have thought, had more reason to thank God than
> those nine lepers.  Afflicted with a filthy and tormenting disease,
> hopelessly incurable, at least in those days, they were cut off from
> family and friends, cut off from all mankind; forced to leave their
> homes, and wander away; forbidden to enter the houses of men, or the
> churches of God; forbidden, for fear of infection, to go near any
> human being; keeping no company but that of wretched lepers like
> themselves, and forced to get their living by begging; by standing
> (as the Gospel says) afar off, and praying the passers-by to throw
> them a coin.
> 
> In this wretched state, in which they had been certain of living and
> dying miserably, they met the Lord:  and suddenly, instantly, beyond
> all hope or expectation, they found themselves cured, restored to
> their families, their homes, their power of working, their rights as
> citizens; restored to all that makes life worth having, and that
> freely, and in a moment.  If such a blessing had come to us, should
> we have thought any thanks too great!  Would not our whole lives
> have been too short to bless God for his great mercy?  Should we
> have gone away, like those nine, without a word of thanks to God, or
> even to the man who had healed us?  What stupidity, hardhearted-
> ness, ingratitude of those nine, never to have even thanked the Lord
> for their restoration to health and happiness.
> 
> Ay, so we think.  Yet those nine lepers were men of like passions
> with ourselves; and what they did, we perhaps might do in their
> place.  It is very humbling to think so:  but the Bible is a
> humbling book:  and, therefore, a wholesome book, profitable for
> reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.  And I am
> very much afraid that when the Bible tells us that nine out of ten
> of those lepers were ungrateful to God, it tells us that nine out of
> ten of us are ungrateful likewise.
> 
> Ungrateful to God?  I fear so; and more ungrateful, I fear, than
> those ten lepers.  For which of the two is better off, the man who
> loses a good thing, and then gets it back again; or the man who
> never loses it at all, but enjoys it all his life?  Surely the man
> who never loses it at all.  And which of the two has more cause to
> thank God?  Those lepers had been through a very miserable time;
> they had had great affliction; and that, they might feel, was a set-
> off against their good fortune in recovering their health.  They had
> bad years to balance their good ones.  But we--how many of us have
> had nothing but good years?  Oh consider, consider the history of
> the average of us.  How we grow up tolerably healthy, tolerably
> comfortable, in a free country, under just laws, with the power of
> earning our livelihood, and the certainty of keeping what we earn.
> Famine we know nothing of in this happy land; war, and the horrors
> of war, we knew nothing of--God grant we never may.  In health,
> safety and prosperity most of us grow up; forced, it is true, to
> work hard:  but that, too, is a blessing; for what better thing for
> a man, soul and body, than to be forced to work hard?  In health,
> safety and prosperity; leaving children behind us, to prosper as we
> have done.  And how many of us give God the glory, or Christ the
> thanks?
> 
> But if these be our bodily blessings, what are our spiritual
> blessings?  Has not God given us his only-begotten son Jesus Christ?
> Has he not baptised us into his Church?  Has he not forgiven our
> sins?  Has he not revealed to us that he is our Father, and we his
> children?  Has he not given us the absolutely inestimable blessing
> of his commandments?  Of knowing what the right thing to be done is,
> that we may do it and live for ever; that treasure of which not only
> Solomon, but the wise men of old held, that to know what was right
> was a more precious possession than rubies and fine gold, and all
> the wealth of Ind?  Has he not given us the hope of a joyful
> immortality, of everlasting life after death, not only with those
> whom we have loved and lost, but with God himself?
> 
> And how many of us give God the glory, and Christ the thanks?  Do we
> not copy those nine lepers, and just shew ourselves to the priest?--
> Come to church on the Sunday, because it is the custom; people
> expect it of us; and God, we understand, expects it too:  but where
> is the gratitude?  Where is the giving of glory to God for all his
> goodness?  Which are we most like?  Children of God, looking up to
> our Father in heaven, and saying, at every fresh blessing, Father, I
> thank thee.  Truly thou knowest my necessities before I ask, and my
> ignorance in asking?--Or, like the stalled ox, which eats, and eats,
> and eats, and never thanks the hand which feeds him?
> 
> We are too comfortable, I think, at times.  We are so much
> accustomed to be blest by God, that we take his blessings as matters
> of course, and feel them no more than we do the air we breathe.
> 
> The wise man says--
> 
> Our torments may by length of time become
> Our elements;
> 
> and I am sure our blessings may.  They say that people who endure
> continual pain and misery, get at length hardly to feel it.  And so,
> on the other hand, people who have continual prosperity get at
> length hardly to feel that.  God forgive us!  My friends, when I say
> this to you, I say it to myself.  If I blame you, I blame myself.
> If I warn you, I warn myself.  We most of us need warning in these
> comfortable times; for I believe that it is this very
> unrighteousness of ours which brings many of our losses and troubles
> on us.  If we are so dull that we will not know the value of a thing
> when we have got it, then God teaches us the value of it by taking
> it from us.  He teaches us the value of health by making us feel
> sickness; he teaches us the value of wealth by making us feel
> poverty.  I do not say it is always so.  God forbid.  There are
> those who suffer bitter afflictions, not because they have sinned,
> but that, like the poor blind man, the glory of God may be made
> manifest in them.  There are those too who suffer no sorrow at all,
> even though they feel, in their thoughtful moments, that they
> deserve it.  And miserable enough should we all be, if God punished
> us every time we were ungrateful to him.  If he dealt with us after
> our sins, and rewarded us according to our iniquities, where should
> we be this day?
> 
> But still, I cannot but believe that if we do go on in prosperity,
> careless and unthankful, we are running into danger; we are likely
> to bring down on ourselves some sorrow or anxiety which will teach
> us, which at least is meant to teach us--from whom all good things
> come; and to know that the Lord has given, when the Lord has taken
> away.
> 
> God grant that when that lesson is sent to us we may learn it.
> Learn it, perhaps, at once, and in a moment, we cannot.  Weak flesh
> and blood cannot enter into the kingdom of God, and see that he is
> ruling us, and all things, in love and justice; and our eyes are, as
> it were, dimmed with our tears, so that we cannot see God's
> handwriting upon the wall against us.  But at length, when the first
> burst of sorrow is past, we may learn it; and, like righteous Job,
> justify God; saying,--The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,
> blessed be the name of the Lord.  If we do that, and give God the
> glory, it may be with us, after all, as it was with Job, when God
> gave him back sevenfold for all that he had taken away, wealth and
> prosperity, sons and daughters.  For God doth not afflict willingly,
> nor grieve the children of men out of spite.  His punishments are
> not revenge, but correction; and, as a father, he chastises his
> children, not to harm, but to bless them.
> 
> And God grant that if that day, too, comes--if after sorrow comes
> joy, if after storm comes sunshine--we may not forget God afresh in
> our prosperity, nor go our ways like those dull-hearted Jews, after
> they were cleansed from their leprosy:  but, like the Samaritan,
> return, and give glory to God, who gives, and delights in giving;
> and only takes away, that he may lift up our souls to him, in whom
> we live, and move, and have our being:  and so, knowing who we are,
> and where we are, may live in God, and by God, and for God, in this
> life, and for ever.
> 
> SERMON XXIX.  PARDON AND PEACE
> 
> (Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity.)
> 
> Psalm xxxii. 1-7.  Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
> whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord
> imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.  When
> I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day
> long.  For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me:  my moisture is
> turned into the drought of summer.  I acknowledge my sin unto thee,
> and mine iniquity have I not hid.  I said, I will confess my
> transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my
> sin.  For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a
> time when thou mayest be found:  surely in the floods of great
> waters they shall not come nigh unto him.  Thou art my hiding place;
> thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shall compass me about
> with songs of deliverance.
> 
> The collect for to-day is a very beautiful one.  There is something
> musical in the sound of the very words; so musical, that it is sung
> as an anthem in many churches.  Let us think a little over it.
> 'Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people
> pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and
> serve thee with a quiet mind, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.'
> That is a noble prayer; and a prayer for each and every one of us,
> every day.  I say for every day.  It is not like the fifty-first
> psalm, the prayer of a man who has committed some black and dreadful
> crime; who fears lest God should take his Holy Spirit from him, and
> leave him to remorse and horror; who feels that he needs to be
> utterly changed, and have a new heart created within him.  It is not
> a prayer of that kind.  It is rather the prayer of a man who is
> weary with the burden of sinful mortality; who finds it very hard
> work to do his duty, even tolerably well; who is dissatisfied with
> himself, and ashamed of himself, not about one great fault, but
> about many little faults; and who wants to be cleansed from them;
> who is tempted to be fretful, anxious, out of heart, because things
> go wrong; and because he feels it partly his own fault that things
> go wrong; and who, therefore, wants peace, that he may serve God
> with a quiet mind.  Now then, dear friends, did I not speak truth,
> when I said, this is a prayer for every one of us, and for every
> day?  For which of us does his duty as he ought?  I take for
> granted, we are all trying to do our duty, better or worse:  but I
> take for granted, too, that the more we try to do our duty, the more
> dissatisfied with ourselves we are; and the more we find we have
> sins without number to be cleansed from.  For the more we try to do
> our duty, the higher notion we get of what our duty is; the more we
> do, the more we feel we ought to do; and the more we feel that we
> leave undone a great many things which we ought to do, and do a
> great many things which we ought not to do, and that there is no
> health in us:  but a great deal of disease and weakness;--disease of
> soul, in the way of conceit, pride, selfishness, temper, obstinacy;
> weakness, in the way of laziness, fearfulness, and very often of
> sheer stupidity; we do not see, or rather will not take the trouble
> to see, what we ought to do, and how to do it.  And therefore, we
> must be, or rather ought to be, dissatisfied with ourselves; and our
> consciences accuse us when we lie down at night, of a hundred petty
> miserable mistakes, which we ought to have avoided.  We are
> continually knowing what is right, and doing what is wrong, till we
> get deservedly angry with ourselves; and think at times, that God
> must be deservedly angry with us; that we are such poor paltry
> creatures that he can only look on us with dislike and contempt:
> and even worse; that, perhaps, he does not care to see us mend; that
> our struggles to do right are of no value in his eyes:  but that he
> has sternly left us to ourselves, to struggle through life, right or
> wrong, as best we may; and to be punished at last, for all that we
> have done amiss.
> 
> Such thoughts will cross our minds.  They have crossed the minds of
> all mankind since the first man's conscience awoke, and he
> discovered that he was not a brute animal, by finding in himself
> that awful thought, which no brute animal can have--'I have done
> wrong.'  And therefore the consciences of men will cry for pardon,
> just in proportion as they are worthy of the name of men, and not
> merely a superior sort of animals; and therefore just in proportion
> as our souls are alive in us, alive with the feeling of duty, of
> justice, of purity, of love, of a just and orderly God above--just
> in that proportion shall we be tormented by the difference between
> what we are, and what we ought to be; and the sense of sin, and the
> longing for pardon, will be more keen in us; and we shall have no
> rest till the sins are got rid of, and the pardon sure.  That is the
> price we pay for having immortal souls.  It is a heavy price truly:
> but it is well worth the paying, if it be only paid aright.  If that
> tormenting feeling of being continually wrong in this life, ends by
> making us continually right for ever in the world to come; if Christ
> be formed in us at last; if out of our sinful and mortal manhood a
> sinless and immortal manhood is born;--then shall we, like the
> mother over her new-born babe, forget our anguish, for joy that a
> man is born into the world.
> 
> But, again, besides pardon, we want peace.  Who does not know that
> state of mind in which, perhaps, without any great reason in
> reality, one has no peace?  When everything seems to go wrong with a
> man.  When he suspects everybody to be against him.  When little
> troubles, which he could bear easily enough at other times, seem
> quite intolerable to him.  When he is troubled with vain regrets
> about the past--'Ah, if I had done this and that!' and vain fears
> for the future, conjuring up in his mind all sorts of bad luck which
> may, but most probably never will, happen; and yet from off which he
> cannot turn his mind.  Who does not know this frame of mind?
> 
> True, a great deal of this may depend on ill-health; and will pass
> away as the man's bodily condition gets better.  We know, in the
> same way, that the strange anxiety which comes over us in sleepless
> nights, comes from bodily causes.  That is merely because, the
> circulation of our blood being quickened, our brain becomes more
> active; and because we are lying alone in the silent darkness, with
> nothing to listen to or look at, we cannot turn our attention away
> from the thoughts which get possession of us and torment us.  That
> is only bodily; and yet it may be very useful to our souls.  As we
> lie awake, our own past lives, our own past mistakes and sins, and
> God's past blessings and mercies, too, may rise up before us with
> clearness, and teach us more than a hundred sermons; and we may
> find, with David, that our reins chasten us in the night-season.
> 'When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God; when my heart is
> vexed, I will complain.  Thou holdest mine eyes waking. . . . I have
> considered the days of old, and the years that are past.  I call to
> remembrance my song, and in the night I commune with my own heart,
> and search out my spirits.  Will the Lord absent himself for ever,
> and will he be no more intreated?  Is his mercy clean gone for ever:
> and is his promise come utterly to an end for evermore?  Hath God
> forgotten to be gracious:  and will he shut up his loving-kindness
> in displeasure?  And I said it is mine own infirmity.  But I will
> remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest.'  These
> sleepless hours taught the Psalmist somewhat; and they may teach us
> likewise.  And so, again, with these sad and fretful frames of mind.
> Even if they do partly come from our bodies, they have a real
> effect, which cannot be mistaken, on our souls; and they may have a
> good effect on us, if we choose.  I believe that we shall find, that
> even if they do come from ill health and weak nerves, what starts
> them is--that we are dissatisfied with ourselves.  We feel something
> wrong, not merely in our bodies, but in our souls, our characters;
> and then we try to lay the blame on the world around us, and shift
> it off ourselves; saying in our hearts, 'I should do very well, if
> other people, and things about me, would only let me:' but the more
> we try to shift off the blame, the less peace we have.  Nothing
> mends matters less than throwing the blame on others.  That is
> plain.  Other people we cannot mend; they must mend themselves.
> Circumstances about us we cannot mend; God must mend them.  So, as
> long as we throw the blame on them, we cannot return to a cheerful
> and hopeful frame of mind.  But the moment we throw the blame on
> ourselves, that moment we can have hope, that moment we can become
> cheerful again; for whatsoever else we cannot mend, we can at least
> mend ourselves.  Now a man may forget this in health.  He may be put
> out and unhappy for a while:  but when his good spirits return, he
> does not know why.  Things have not improved; but, somehow, they do
> not affect him as they did before.  Now this is not wrong.  God
> forbid!  In such a world as this, one is glad to see a man rid of
> sadness by any means which is not wrong.  Better anything than that
> a poor soul should fret himself to death.
> 
> But it may be very good for a man now and then not to forget; to be
> kept low, whether by ill health or by any other cause, till he faces
> fairly his own state, and finds out honestly what does fret him and
> torment him.
> 
> And then, I believe, his experience will generally be like David's.--
> 'As long as I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my groaning
> all the day long.'
> 
> Think over these words, I beg you.  I chose them for my text, just
> because they seem to me to contain all that I wish you to
> understand.  As long as the Psalmist held his peace--as long as he
> did not confess his sin to God--all seemed to go wrong with him.  He
> fretted his very heart away.  The moment that he made a clean breast
> to God, peace and cheerfulness came back to him.
> 
> This psalm may speak of some really great sin which he had
> committed.  But that makes all the more strongly for us.  For if he
> got forgiveness for a great sin, by merely confessing it, how much
> more may we hope to be forgiven, for the comparatively little sins
> of which I am now speaking?  Surely there is forgiveness for them.
> Surely we, Christians, are not worse off than the old Jews.  God
> forbid!  What does the Bible tell us?  If we confess our sins, he is
> faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
> unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a
> liar, and his word is not in us.  And again, if we walk in the
> light; that is, if we look honestly at our own hearts, and confess
> honestly to God what we see wrong there; then we have fellowship one
> with another; all our frettings and grudgings against our fellow-men
> pass away; and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.
> God forbid again!  For what is the message of the Absolution,
> whether general in the church, or private by the sick-bed, but this--
> that there is continual forgiveness for those who really confess
> and repent?  God forbid again!  For what is the message of the Holy
> Communion, but that we really are forgiven, really helped by God not
> to do the like again; that the stains and scars of our daily
> misdoings are truly healed by God's grace; and power given us to
> lead a healthier life, the longer we persevere in the struggle after
> God.
> 
> Therefore, instead of proudly laying the blame of our unhappiness on
> our fellow-men, much less on God and his providence, let us cast
> ourselves, in every hour of shame or of sadness, on the boundless
> love of him who hateth nothing that he hath made; who so loved the
> world that he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us
> all.  How shall he not with him freely give us all things?  Let us
> open our weary hearts to him who watches with tender interest, as of
> a father watching the growth of his child, over every struggle of
> ours from worse to better; and so we shall have our reward.  The
> more we trust to the love of God, the more shall we feel his love--
> feel that we are pardoned--feel that we are at peace.  We may not
> grow more cheerful as we grow older; but we shall grow more
> peaceful.  Sadder men, it may be; but wiser men also; caring less
> and less for pleasure; caring even less and less for mere happiness:
> but finding a lasting comfort in the knowledge that we are doing our
> life's work not altogether ill, under the smile of Almighty God;
> aware more and more of our own weakness, and of our own failings:
> but trusting that God will take the will for the deed, and forgive
> us what we have left undone, and accept what we have done, for the
> sake of Christ, in whom, and not in our own poor paltry selves, he
> looks upon us as his adopted children.
> 
> Only let us remember to ask for pardon and to ask for peace, that we
> may use them as the collect bids us;--To ask for pardon, not merely
> that we may escape punishment; not even to escape punishment at all,
> if punishment be wholesome for us, as it often is:  but that we may
> be cleansed from our sins; that we may not be left to our own
> weakness and our own bad habits, to grow more and more useless, more
> and more unhappy, day by day, but that we may be cleansed from them;
> and grow purer, nobler, juster, stronger, more worthy of our place
> in God's kingdom, as our years roll by.  Let us remember to ask for
> peace, not merely to get rid of unpleasant thoughts, or unpleasant
> people, or unpleasant circumstances; and then sit down and say,
> Soul, take thine ease, eat and drink, for thou hast much goods laid
> up for many years:  but let us ask for peace, that we may serve God
> with a quiet mind; that we may get rid of the impatient, cowardly,
> discontented, hopeless heart, which will not let a man go about his
> business like a man; and get, instead of it, by the inspiration of
> God's Holy Spirit, the calm, contented, brave, hopeful heart, in the
> strength of which a man can work with a will wherever God may put
> him, even amidst vexation, confusion, disappointment, slander, and
> persecution; and, in his place and calling, serve the Lord, who
> served him when he died for him, and who serves him, and all his
> people, now and for ever in heaven.
> 
> So shall we have real pardon, and real peace.  A pardon which will
> make us really better; and a peace which will make us really more
> useful.  And to be good and to be useful were the two ends for which
> God sent us into the world at all.
> 
> SERMON XXX.  THE CENTRAL SUN
> 
> (Sunday after Ascension, Evening.)
> 
> Ephesians iv. 9. 10.  Now that he ascended, what is it but that he
> also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?  He that
> descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens,
> that he might fill all things.
> 
> This is one of those very deep texts which we are not meant to think
> about every day; only at such seasons as this, when we have to think
> of Christ ascending into heaven, that he might send down his Spirit
> at Whitsuntide.  Of this the text speaks; and therefore, we may, I
> hope, think a little of it to-day, but reverently, and cautiously,
> like men who know a very little, and are afraid of saying more than
> they know.  These deep mysteries about heaven we must always meddle
> with very humbly, lest we get out of our depth in haste and self-
> conceit.  As it is said,
> 
> Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
> 
> For, if we are not very careful, we shall be apt to mistake the
> meaning of Scripture, and make it say what we like, and twist it to
> suit our own fancies, and our own ignorance.  Therefore we must
> never, with texts like this, say positively, 'It must mean this.  It
> can mean only this.'  How can we tell that?
> 
> This world, which we do see, is far too wonderful for us to
> understand.  How much more wonderful must be the world which we do
> not see?  How much more wonderful must heaven be?  How can we tell
> what is there, or what is not there?  We can tell of some things
> that are not there, and those are sin, evil, disorder, harm of any
> kind.  Heaven is utterly good.  Beyond that, we know nothing.
> Therefore I dare not be positive about this text, for fear I should
> try to explain it according to my own fancies.  Wise fathers and
> divines have differed very much as to what it means; how far any one
> of them is right, I cannot tell you.
> 
> The ancient way of explaining this text was this.  People believed
> in old times that the earth was flat.  Then, they held, hell was
> below the earth, or inside it in some way:  and the burning
> mountains, out of which came fire and smoke, were the mouths of
> hell.  And when they believed that, it was easy for them to suppose
> that St. Paul spoke of Christ's descending into hell.  He went down,
> says St. Paul, into the lower parts of the earth.  What could those
> lower parts be, they asked, but the hell which lay under the earth?
> 
> Now about that we know nothing.  St. Paul himself never says that
> hell is below the earth.  Indeed (and this is a very noteworthy
> thing) St. Paul never, in his epistles, mentions in plain words hell
> at all; so what St. Paul thought about the matter, we can never
> know.  Whether by Christ's descending into the lower parts of the
> earth, he meant descending into hell, or merely that our Lord came
> down on this earth of ours, poor, humble, and despised, laying his
> glory by for a while, this we cannot tell.  Some wise men think one
> thing, some another.  Two of the wisest and best of the great old
> fathers of the Church think that he meant only Christ's death and
> burial.  So how dare I give a positive opinion, where wiser men than
> I differ?
> 
> But about the other half of the text, which says, that he ascended
> high above all heavens, there is no such difficulty.
> 
> All agree as to what that means:  though, perhaps, in old times they
> would have put it in different words.
> 
> The old belief was, that as hell was below the flat earth, so heaven
> was above it; and that there were many heavens, seven heavens, in
> layers, as it were, one above the other; and that the seventh
> heaven, which was the highest of all, was where God dwelt.  Now,
> whether St. Paul believed this, we cannot tell.  He speaks of being
> himself caught up into the third heaven, and here Christ is spoken
> of as ascending above all heavens.
> 
> My own belief, though I say it very humbly, is, that St. Paul spoke
> of these things only as a figure of speech, for the sake of the
> ignorance of the people to whom he was writing.  They talked in that
> way; and he was forced now and then to talk in that way, too, to
> make them understand him.  I think that, when he spoke of being
> caught up into the third heaven, he did not mean that he was lifted
> bodily off the earth into the skies:  but that his soul was raised
> up and enlightened to understand high and wonderful heavenly
> matters, though not the highest or most wonderful.  If he had meant
> that, he would have said, that he was caught up into the seventh
> heaven.  We know that our Lord, in the same way, continually used
> parables; because, as he said, the ignorant people could not
> understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; and he had,
> therefore, to put them into parables, taken from the common country
> matters, and country forms of speech, if by any means he might make
> them understand.  And so, I suppose, it was with St. Paul.  He had
> to speak in such a way that he could be understood; and no more.
> 
> But when he says that Christ ascended far above all heavens, we are
> to believe this--that he ascended to God himself.  So high that he
> could go no higher; so far that he could go no farther.
> 
> We, now, do not believe that there are seven heavens above the
> earth; and we need not.  It is no doctrine of the Church, or of the
> Creeds.  We know that the earth is round, and not flat; and that the
> heavens, if by that we mean the sky, is neither above it, nor below
> it, but round it on every side.  But some may say, whither, then,
> did our Lord ascend?  To what place did his body go up?  And that is
> a right question; for we must always bear in mind that not merely
> Christ's godhead but his manhood, not merely Christ's soul but his
> body also, ascended into heaven.  If we do not believe that, we do
> not hold the Catholic faith.  Whither, then, did Christ ascend?
> 
> My friends, we know this.  That this earth and the planets move
> round the sun, which is in the centre of them.  We know this, too;
> that all the countless stars which spangle the sky are really suns
> likewise, perhaps, with worlds which we cannot see, moving round
> them, as we move round the sun.  We know, too, that these fixed
> stars, as they seem to be, are not really fixed, but have some
> regular movements among themselves, which seem very slow and small
> to us, from their immense distance, but which really are very great
> and fast.
> 
> Now all these suns and stars, it is reasonable to believe, most
> probably have a centre.  There must be order among them; and they
> most probably move round one thing, one place, one central sun, as
> it were, which is the very heart of all the worlds, and the whole
> universe.  Where that place is, or what it is like, we know not, and
> cannot know.  Only this we may believe, that it is glorious beyond
> all that eye hath seen, and ear heard, or hath entered into the
> heart of man to conceive.  If this world be beautiful, how beautiful
> must that world of all worlds be.  If the sun be glorious, how
> glorious must the sun of all suns be.  If the heaven over us be
> grand, how grand must that heaven of heavens be.  We will not talk
> of it; for we cannot imagine it:  and if we tried to, we should only
> lower it to our own low fancies.  But is it not reasonable to
> suppose, that there God the Father does, perhaps, in some
> unspeakable way, shew forth his glory?  That there, in the heart of
> all the worlds, Cherubim and Seraphim continually adore him, crying
> day and night, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth:  Heaven and
> earth are full of the majesty of thy glory!' before his throne from
> which goes forth light, and power, and life, to all worlds and all
> created things.
> 
> And is it not reasonable to believe, that there Christ is, in the
> bosom of the Father, and at the right hand of God?  We know that
> those, too, are only figures.  That God is a Spirit, everywhere and
> nowhere; and has not hands as we have.  But it is only by such
> figures that the Bible can make us understand the truth, that Christ
> is the highest being in all heavens and worlds; equal with God the
> Father, and sharer of his kingdom, and power, and glory, God blessed
> for ever.  Amen.
> 
> What then does St. Paul mean, when he says, 'That he may fill all
> things?'  I do not know.  And I will take care not to lessen and
> spoil St. Paul's words, by any ignorant words of my own.  But one
> thing I know it will mean one day, for St. Paul says so.  That
> Christ reigns, and will reign, triumphant over sin, and death, and
> hell, till he have put all enemies under his feet, and the last
> enemy that shall be destroyed is death.  Then shall he deliver up
> the kingdom to God, even the Father; that God may be all in all.
> What that means I do not know.  But this I can say, and you can say.
> We can pray that God will finish the number of his elect and hasten
> his kingdom, that we, with all that are departed in the true faith,
> may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul,
> in his eternal kingdom.  And this I can say, that it means now, for
> you and me; for Whitsuntide tells me:--that whatever else Christ can
> or cannot fill, he can at least fill our hearts, because he is in
> the bosom of the Father himself; and therefore from him, as from the
> Father, proceeds the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life.  That
> Spirit will proceed even to us, if we will have him.  He will fill
> our hearts with himself; with the Spirit of goodness, which proceeds
> out of the heaven of heavens, and out of the bosom of God himself;
> with love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness; with truth,
> honour, duty, earnestness, and all that is the likeness of Christ
> and of God.  Oh let us pray for that Spirit; the Spirit of truth,
> which Christ promised us when he ascended up into the heaven of
> heavens, to keep us sound in our most holy faith; and the Spirit of
> goodness, to give us strength to live the good lives of good
> Christian men.
> 
> And then it will matter little what opinions we hold about deep
> things, which the wisest man can never put into words.  And it will
> matter little, whether what I have been telling you to-day about the
> heaven of heavens be exactly true or not; for what says St. Paul of
> such deep matters?  That we know in part, and prophesy in part; and
> that prophecies shall fail, and knowledge vanish away:  but charity,
> love, and right feeling, and right doing, which is the very Holy
> Spirit of God, shall abide for ever.  And if that Spirit be with us,
> he will guide us in due time into all truth; teach us all we need to
> know, and enable us to practise all we ought to do.  Amen.
> 
> SERMON XXXI.  CHRISTMAS PEACE
> 
> (Sunday before Christmas.)
> 
> Phil. iv. 4.  Rejoice in the Lord alway:  and again I say, Rejoice.
> 
> This is a glorious text, and one fit to be the key-note of
> Christmas-day.  If we will take it to heart, it will tell us how to
> keep Christmas-day.  St. Paul has been speaking of two good women,
> who seem to have had some difference; and he beseeches them to make
> up their difference, and be of the same mind in the Lord.  And then
> he goes on to tell them, and all Christian people, why they should
> make up their differences.
> 
> And for that reason, I suppose, the Church has chosen it for the
> epistle before Christmas-day, on which all men are to make friends
> with each other, and rejoice in the Lord.  Let your moderation, he
> says, be known to all men.  The Greek word signifies forbearance,
> reasonable dealing, consideration for one another, readiness to give
> way, not standing too severely on one's own rights.  Now this is
> just the temper in which we ought to meet our friends at Christmas--
> forbearance.  They may not have always behaved well to us.  Be it
> so.  No more have we to them.  Let us, once in the year at least,
> forget old grudges.  Let us do as we would be done by; give and
> forgive; live and let live; bury our past quarrels, and shake hands
> over their graves.
> 
> For the Lord is at hand.  Close to all of us:  watching all we do,
> and setting the right value on it.  He cannot mistake.  He sees both
> sides of a matter, and all sides--a thousand sides which we cannot
> see.  He can judge better than we.  Let him judge.  Why do I say,
> Let him judge?  He has judged already, weeks, months ago, as soon as
> each quarrel happened:  and, perhaps, he found us in the wrong as
> well as our neighbours; and, if so, the least said the soonest
> mended.  Let us forgive and forget, lest we be neither forgotten nor
> forgiven.
> 
> And, because the Lord is at hand, be anxious about nothing.  The
> word here is the same as in the Sermon on the Mount.  It means do
> not fret; do not terrify yourselves; for the Lord is at hand; he
> knows what you want:  and will he not give it?  Is not Christmas-day
> a sign that he will give it--a pledge of his love?  What did he do
> on the first Christmas-day?  What did he shew himself to be on the
> first Christmas-day?  Now, here is the root of the whole matter, and
> a deep root it is; as deep as the beginning of all things which are,
> or ever were, or ever will be.  And yet if we will believe our
> Bibles, it is a root which we all may find.  What did the angels say
> the first Christmas night?  Peace on earth, and goodwill to men.
> That is what God proclaimed.  That is what he said that he had, and
> would give.
> 
> Now, says the apostle, if you will believe the latter half of this
> same Christmas message, then the first half of it will come true to
> you.  If you will believe that God's will is a good will to you,
> then you will have peace on earth.  For believe in Christmas-day;
> believe that the Lord is at hand; that he has been made man for ever
> and ever; and that to the Man Christ Jesus all power is given in
> heaven and earth:  and then, if you want aught, instead of grudging
> or grinding your neighbours, ask him.  In everything let your
> requests be made known unto God:  and then the peace of God will
> keep your hearts through Christ Jesus.
> 
> You will feel at peace with God through Christ Jesus, because you
> have found out that God is at peace with you; that God is not
> against you, but for you; that God does not hate you, but love you;
> and if God is at peace with you, what cause have you to be at war
> with him?  And so the message of Christmas-day will bring you peace.
> 
> You will be at peace with your neighbours, through Christ Jesus.
> When you see God stooping to make peace with sinful men, you will be
> ashamed to be quarrelling with them.  When you see God full of love,
> you will be ashamed to keep up peevishness, grudging, and spite.
> When you see God's heaven full of light, you will be ashamed to be
> dark yourselves; your hearts will go out freely to your fellow-
> creatures; you will long to be friends with every one you meet; and
> you will find in that the highest pleasure which you ever felt in
> life.  But mind one thing--what sort of a peace this peace of God
> is.  It passes all understanding; the very loftiest understanding.
> The cleverest and most learned men that ever lived could not have
> found it--we know they did not find it--by their own cleverness and
> learning.  No more will you find God's peace, if you seek for it
> with your understanding.  Thinking will not bring you peace, think
> as shrewdly as you may.  Reading will not bring it, read as deeply
> as you may.  Some people think otherwise; that they can get the
> peace of God by understanding.  If they could but understand more,
> their minds would be at rest.  So they weary themselves with
> reading, and thinking, and arguing, perhaps trying to understand
> predestination, election, assurance; perhaps trying to understand
> which is the true Church.  What do they get thereby?  Certainly not
> the peace of God.  They certainly do not set their minds at rest.
> They cannot.  Books cannot give a live soul rest.  Understanding
> cannot.  Nothing can give you or me rest, save God himself.  The
> peace is God's; and he must give it himself, with his own hand, or
> we shall never get it.  Go then to God himself.  Thou art his child,
> as Christmas-day declares:  be not afraid to go unto thy Father.
> Pray to him; tell him what thou wantest:  say, Father, I am not
> moderate, reasonable, forbearing.  I fear I cannot keep Christmas-
> day aright, for I have not a peaceful Christmas spirit in me; and I
> know that I shall never get it by thinking, and reading, and
> understanding; for it passes all that, and lies far away beyond it,
> does peace, in the very essence of thine undivided, unmoved,
> absolute, eternal Godhead, which no change nor decay of this created
> world, nor sin or folly of men or devils, can ever alter; but which
> abideth for ever what it is, in perfect rest, and perfect power, and
> perfect love.  O Father, give me thy peace.  Soothe this restless,
> greedy, fretful soul of mine, as a mother soothes a sick and
> feverish child.  How thou wilt do it I do not know.  It passes all
> understanding.  But though the sick child cannot reach the mother,
> the mother is at hand, and can reach it.  Though the eagle, by
> flying, cannot reach the sun, yet the sun is at hand, and can reach
> all the earth, and pour its light and warmth over all things.  And
> thou art more than a mother:  thou art the everlasting Father.  Pour
> thy love over me, that I may love as thou lovest.  Thou art more
> than the sun:  thou art the light and the life of all things.  Pour
> thy light and thy life over me, that I may see as thou seest, and
> live as thou livest, and be at peace with myself and all the world,
> as thou art at peace with thyself and all the world.  Again, I say,
> I know not how; for it passes all understanding:  but I hope that
> thou wilt do it for me.  I trust that thou wilt do it for me, for I
> believe the good news of Christmas-day.  I believe that thou art
> love, and that thy mercy is over all thy works.  I believe the
> message of Christmas-day:  that thou so lovest the world, that thou
> hast sent thy Son to save the world, and me.  I know not how; for
> that, too, passes understanding:  but I believe that thou wilt do
> it; for I believe that thou art love; and that thy mercy is over all
> thy works, even over me.  I believe the message of Christmas-day,
> that thy will is peace on earth, even peace to me, restless and
> unquiet as I am; and goodwill to men, even to me, the chief of
> sinners.
> 
> SERMON XXXII.  THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT
> 
> (First Sunday after Christmas.)
> 
> Isaiah xxxviii. 16.  O Lord, by these things men live, and in all
> these things is the life of my spirit.
> 
> These words are the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah; and they are
> true words, words from God.  But, if they are true words, they are
> true words for every one--for you and me, for every one here in this
> church this day:  for they do not say, By these things certain men
> live, one man here and another man there; but all men.  Whosoever is
> really alive, that is, has life in his spirit, his soul, his heart,
> the life of a man and not a beast, the only life which is worthy to
> be called life, then that life is kept up in him in the same way
> that it was kept up in Hezekiah, and by the same means.
> 
> Let us see, then, what things they were which gave Hezekiah's spirit
> life.  Great joy, great honour, great success, wealth, health,
> prosperity and pleasure?  Was it by these things that Hezekiah found
> men lived?  Not so, but by great sorrow.  'In those days was
> Hezekiah sick unto death.  And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amos
> came unto him and said, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in
> order; for thou shall die and not live.  Then Hezekiah turned his
> face towards the wall and prayed unto the Lord; and Hezekiah wept
> sore.'
> 
> Trouble upon trouble came on Hezekiah; and that just when he might
> have expected a little rest.  The Lord had just delivered Hezekiah
> and the Jews from a fearful danger, of which we read in the chapter
> before.  Hezekiah had believed God's promise by the mouth of Isaiah.
> He held fast his faith in God when Sennacherib and his Assyrian army
> were camping round Jerusalem; for God had said, 'I will defend this
> city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David's sake.'
> He defended his city bravely and nobly, and showed himself a true,
> and valiant, and godly king.  And perhaps Hezekiah expected to be
> rewarded for his faith, and rewarded for having done his duty:  but
> it was not so.  He had to wait, and to endure more.  And now this
> fresh trouble was come upon him.  Isaiah told him he should die and
> not live:  and he must prepare himself to meet death.
> 
> Hezekiah, you see, was horribly afraid of death.  I do not mean that
> he was afraid of going to hell, for he does not say so:  but he
> felt, to use his own words, 'The grave cannot praise thee, death
> cannot celebrate thee:  they that go down into the pit cannot hope
> for thy truth.'  And, therefore, death looked to him an ugly and an
> evil thing--as it is; the Lord's enemy, and his last enemy, the one
> with which he will have the longest and sorest fight.  He conquered
> death by rising from the dead:  but nevertheless we die; and death
> is an ugly, fearful, hateful thing in itself, and rightly called the
> King of Terrors:  for terrible it is to those who do not know that
> Christ has conquered it.  Hezekiah lived before the Lord Jesus came
> into the flesh to bring life and immortality to light, by rising
> from the dead; and, therefore, the life after death was not brought
> to light to him, any more than it was to David, or any other Old
> Testament Jew.  He dreaded it, because he knew not what would come
> after death.  And, therefore, he prayed hard not to die.  He did not
> pray altogether in a right way:  but still he prayed.  'Remember
> now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth
> and with a perfect heart, and have done that which was good in thy
> sight.'  And the Lord heard his prayer.  'Then came the word of the
> Lord to Isaiah, saying, Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the
> Lord, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears, behold I will
> add unto thy days fifteen years.'
> 
> Then what was the use of God's warning to him?  What was the use of
> his sickness and his terror, if, after all, his prayer was heard,
> and after the Lord had told him, Thou shall die and not live--that
> did not come to pass:  but the very contrary happened, that he
> lived, and did not die?
> 
> Of what use to him was it?  Of this use at least, that it taught him
> that the Lord God would hear the prayers of mortal men.  Oh my
> friends, is not that worth knowing?  Is not that worth going through
> any misery to learn--that the Lord will hear us?  That he is not a
> cold, arbitrary tyrant, who goes his own way, never caring for our
> cries and tears, too proud to turn out of his way to hear us:  but
> that he is very pitiful and of tender mercy, and repenting him of
> the evil?  Hezekiah did not pray rightly.  He thought himself a
> better man than he was.  He said, 'Remember now, O Lord, I beseech
> thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect
> heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight.'  And Hezekiah
> wept sore.  But he did pray.  He went to God, and told his story to
> him, and wept sore; and the Lord God heard him, and taught him that
> he was not as good as he fancied; taught him that, after all, he had
> nothing to say for himself--no reason to shew why he should not die.
> 'What shall I say?  He hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath
> done it:  I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my
> soul.'  And so he felt that, instead of justifying himself, he must
> throw himself utterly on God's love and mercy; that God must
> undertake for him.  'O Lord, I am oppressed, crushed--the heart is
> beaten out of me.  I have nothing to say for myself.  Undertake for
> me.  I have nothing to say for myself, but I have plenty to say of
> thee.  Thou art good and just.  Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.
> I can say no more.'
> 
> And then he found that the Lord was ready to save him.  That what
> the Lord wished was, not to kill him, but to recover him, and make
> him live--live more really, and fully, and wisely, and manfully--by
> making him trust more utterly in God's goodness, and love, and
> mercy; making him more certain that, good as he thought himself, and
> perfect in heart, he was full of sins:  and yet that the Lord had
> cast all these sins of his behind his back, forgotten and forgiven
> them, as soon as he had made him see that all that was good and
> strong in him came from God, and all that was evil and weak from
> himself.  And then he says, 'O Lord, by these things men live, and
> in all these things is the life of my spirit.'  God meant all along
> to receive me, and make me live.  He chastened me, and brought me
> low, to shew me that my own faith, my own righteousness, was no
> reason for his saving me:  but that his own love and mercy was a
> good reason for saving me.  'Behold,' he goes on to say, 'for peace
> I had great bitterness:  but thou hast in love to my soul delivered
> it from the pit of corruption:  for thou hast cast all my sins
> behind thy back.'
> 
> And, my dear friends, what Hezekiah saw but dimly, we ought to see
> clearly.  The blessed news of the Gospel ought to tell us it
> clearly.  For the blessed Gospel tells us that the same Lord who
> chastened and taught, and then saved, Hezekiah, was made flesh, and
> born a man of the substance of a mortal woman; that he might in his
> own person bear all our sicknesses and carry our infirmities; that
> he might understand all our temptations, and be touched with the
> feeling of our infirmities, seeing that he himself was tempted in
> all points likewise, yet without sin.
> 
> Oh hear this, you who have had sorrows in past times.  Hear this,
> you who expect sorrows in the times to come.
> 
> He who made, he who lightens, every man who comes into the world; he
> who gave you every right thought and wholesome feeling that you ever
> had in your lives:  he counts your tears; he knows your sorrows; he
> is able and willing to save you to the uttermost.  Therefore do not
> be afraid of your own afflictions.  Face them like men.  Think over
> them.  Ask him to help you out of them:  or if that is not to be, at
> least to tell you what he means by them.  Be sure that what he must
> mean by them is good to you:  a lesson to you, that in some way or
> other they are meant to make you wiser, stronger, hardier, more sure
> of God's love, more ready to do God's work, whithersoever it may
> lead you.  Do not be afraid of the dark day of affliction, I say.
> It may teach you more than the bright prosperous one.  Many a man
> can see clearly in the cloudy day, who would be dazzled in the
> sunlight.  The dull weather, they say, is the best weather for
> battle; and sorrow is the best time for seeing through and
> conquering one's own self.  Therefore do not be afraid, I say, of
> sorrow.  All the clouds in the sky cannot move the sun a foot
> further off; and all the sorrow in the world cannot move God any
> further off.  God is there still, where he always was; near you, and
> below you, and above you, and around you; for in him you live and
> move and have your being, and are the offspring and children of God.
> Nay, he is nearer you, if possible, in sorrow, than in joy.  He is
> informing you, and guiding you with his eye, and, like a father,
> teaching you the right way which you should go.  He is searching and
> purging your hearts, and cleansing you from your secret faults, and
> teaching you to know who you are and to know who he is--your Father,
> the knowledge of whom is life eternal.  By these things, my friends--
> by being brought low and made helpless, till ashamed of ourselves,
> and weary of ourselves, we lift up eyes and heart to God who made
> us, like lost children crying after a Father--by these things, I
> say, we live, and in all these things is the life of our spirit.
> 
> SERMON XXXIII.  THE UNCHANGEABLE ONE
> 
> Psalm cxix. 89-96.  For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.
> Thy faithfulness is unto all generations:  thou hast established the
> earth, and it abideth.  They continue this day according to thine
> ordinances:  for all are thy servants.  Unless thy law had been my
> delight, I should then have perished in mine affliction.  I will
> never forget thy precepts:  for with them thou hast quickened me.  I
> am thine, save me; for I have sought thy precepts.  The wicked have
> waited for me to destroy me:  but I will consider thy testimonies.
> I have seen an end of all perfection; but thy commandment is
> exceeding broad.
> 
> The Psalmist is in great trouble.  He does not know whom to trust,
> what to expect next, whom to look to.  Everything seems failing and
> changing round him.  His psalm was most probably written during the
> Babylonish captivity, at a time when all the countries and kingdoms
> of the east were being destroyed by the Chaldean armies.
> 
> Then, he says, Be it so.  If everything else changes, God cannot.
> If everything else fails, God's plans cannot.  He can rest on the
> thought of God; of his goodness, his faithfulness, order,
> providence.  God is governing the world righteously and orderly.
> Whatever disorder there is on earth, there is none in heaven.  God's
> word endures for ever there.
> 
> Then he looks on the world round him; all is well ordered--seasons,
> animals, sun, and stars abide.  They continue this day according to
> God's ordinances.  The unchangeableness of nature is a comfort to
> him; for it is a token of the unchangeablenes of God who made it.
> 
> Now, I do beg you to think carefully over this verse; because it is
> quite against the very common notion that, because the earth was
> cursed for Adam's sake, therefore it is cursed now; that because it
> was said to him, Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee,
> therefore that holds good now.  It is not so, my friends; neither is
> there, as far as I know, in any part whatsoever of Scripture, any
> mention of Adam's curse continuing to our day.  St. John, in the
> Revelations, certainly says, 'And there shall be no more curse.'
> But if you will read the Revelation, you will find that what he
> plainly refers to is to the fearful curses, the plagues, the vials
> of wrath, as he calls them, which were to be poured out on the
> earth; and then to cease when the New Jerusalem came down from
> heaven.
> 
> St. Paul, again, knows nothing about any such curse upon the earth.
> He says that death came into the world by Adam's sin:  but that must
> be understood only of man, and the world of man; and for this simple
> reason, that we know, without the possibility of doubt, that animals
> died in this world just as they do now, not only thousands, but
> hundreds of thousands of years before man appeared on earth.
> 
> What St. Paul says of the creation, in one of his most glorious
> passages, is this--not that it is cursed, but that it groans and
> travails continually in the pangs of labour, trying to bring forth;
> trying to bring forth something better than itself; to develop, and
> rise from good to better, and from that to better still; till all
> things become perfect in a way which we cannot conceive, but which
> God has ordained before the foundation of the world.
> 
> Besides, as a fact, the earth does not bring forth thorns and
> thistles to us, but good grain, and fruitful crops, and an abundant
> return for our labour, if we choose to till the ground.
> 
> And wise men, who study God's works, can find no curse at all upon
> the earth, nor sign of a curse, neither in plants nor beasts, no,
> nor in the smallest gnat in the air.  The more they look into the
> wonders of God's world, the more they find it true that there is
> order everywhere, beauty everywhere, fruitfulness everywhere,
> usefulness everywhere--that all things continue as at the beginning;
> that, as the psalmist says in another place, God has made them fast
> for ever and ever, and given them a law which cannot be broken.  And
> if you will look at Genesis viii. 21, 22, you will find from the
> plain words of Scripture itself, that Adam's curse, whatever it was,
> was taken off after the flood, 'And the Lord smelled a sweet savour:
> and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground
> any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil
> from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything
> living, as I have done.  While the earth remaineth, seed-time and
> harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
> shall not cease.'
> 
> Therefore, my friends, open your eyes and your hearts freely to the
> message which God is sending you, in summer and winter, in seed-time
> and in harvest, in sunshine and in storm; that God is not a hard
> God, a revengeful God, a God of curses, who is extreme to mark what
> is done amiss, and keepeth his anger for ever.  No:  but that he is
> your Father in heaven, who hateth nothing that he has made, and
> whose mercy is over all his works; who made heaven and earth, the
> sea, and all that therein is; who keepeth truth for ever; who
> helpeth them to right that suffer wrong; who feedeth the hungry; a
> God who feeds the birds of the air, though they sow not, neither do
> they reap, nor gather into barns; and who clothes the grass of the
> field, which toils not, neither doth it spin; and who will much much
> more clothe and feed you, to whom he has given reason,
> understanding, and the power of learning his laws, the rules by
> which this world of his is made and works, and of turning them to
> your own profit in rational and honest labour.
> 
> And think, my friends, if the old Psalmist, before Christ came,
> could believe all this, and find comfort in it, much more ought we.
> Shame to us if we do not.  I had almost said, we deny Christ, if we
> do not.  For who said those last words concerning the birds of the
> air, and the grass of the field?  Who told us that we have not
> merely a Master or a Judge in heaven, but a Father in heaven?  Who
> but that very Word of God, whom the Psalmist saw dimly and afar off?
> He knew that the Word of God abode for ever in heaven:  but he knew
> not, as far as we can tell, that that same Word would condescend to
> be made flesh, and dwell among men that we might see his glory, full
> of grace and truth.  The old Psalmist knew that God's word was full
> of truth, and that gave him comfort in the wild and sad times in
> which he lived; but he did not know--none of the Old Testament
> prophets knew,--how full God's word was of grace also.  That he was
> so full of love, condescension, pity, generosity, so full of longing
> to seek and save all that was lost, to set right all that was wrong,
> in one word again, so full of grace, that he would condescend to be
> born of the Virgin Mary, suffer under Pontius Pilate, to be
> crucified, dead and buried, that he might become a faithful High
> Priest for us, full of understanding, fellow-feeling, pity, love,
> because he has been tempted in all things like as we are, yet
> without sin.
> 
> My friends, was not the old Psalmist a Jew, and are not we Christian
> men?  Then, if the old Psalmist could trust God, how much more
> should we?  If he could find comfort in the thought of God's order,
> how much more should we?  If he could find comfort in the thought of
> his justice, how much more should we?  If he could find comfort in
> the thought of his love, how much more should we?  Yes; let us be
> full of troubles, doubts, sorrows; let times be uncertain, dark, and
> dangerous; let strange new truths be discovered, which we cannot, at
> first sight, fit into what we know to be true already:  we can still
> say, 'I will not fear, though the earth be moved, and the hills be
> carried into the midst of the sea.'  For the word of God abideth for
> ever in heaven, even Jesus Christ, who is the Light of the world and
> the Life of men.  To him all power is given in heaven and earth.  He
> is set on the throne, judging right, and ministering true judgment
> among the people.  All things, as the Psalmist says, come to an end.
> All men's plans, men's notions, men's systems, men's doctrines, grow
> old, wear out, and perish.
> 
> The old order changes, giving place to the new:
> But God fulfils himself in many ways.
> 
> For men are not ruling the world.  Christ is ruling the world, and
> his commandment is exceeding broad.  His laws are broad enough for
> all people, all countries, all ages; and strangely as they may seem
> to work, in the eyes of us short-sighted timorous human beings,
> still all is going well, and all will go well; for Christ reigns,
> and will reign, till he has put all enemies under his feet, and God
> be all in all.
> 
> SERMON XXXIV.  [GREEK: EN TOYTO NIKA]
> 
> (Good Friday, 1860.)
> 
> 1 Corinthians i. 23-25.  But we preach Christ crucified, unto the
> Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto
> them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of
> God, and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser
> than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
> 
> The foolishness of God?  The weakness of God?  These are strange
> words.  But they are St. Paul's words, not mine.  If he had not said
> them first, I should not dare to say them now.
> 
> But what do they mean?  Can God be weak?  Can God be foolish?  No,
> says St. Paul.  Nothing less.  For so strong is God, that his very
> weakness, if he seems weak, is stronger than all mankind.  So wise
> is God, that his very foolishness, if he seems foolish, is wiser
> than all mankind.
> 
> Why then talk of the weakness of God, of the foolishness of God, if
> he be neither weak nor foolish?  Why use words which seem
> blasphemous, if they are not true?
> 
> I do not say these ugly words for myself.  St. Paul did not say
> these ugly words for himself.  But men have said them; too many men,
> and too often.  The Jews, who sought after a sign, said them in St.
> Paul's time.  The Corinthian Greeks, who sought after wisdom, said
> them also.  There are men who say them now.  We all are tempted at
> times to say them in our hearts.  As often as we forget Good Friday,
> and what Good Friday means, and what Good Friday brought to all
> mankind, we do say them in our hearts; and charge God--though we
> should not like to confess it even to ourselves--with weakness and
> with folly.
> 
> Now, how is this?  Let us consider, first, how it was with these
> Jews and Greeks.
> 
> Why did the cross of Christ, and the message of Good Friday, seem to
> them weakness and folly?  Why did they answer St. Paul, 'Your Christ
> cannot be God, or he would never have allowed himself to be
> crucified?'
> 
> The Jews required a sign; a sign from heaven; a sign of God's power.
> Thunder and earthquakes, armies of angels, taking vengeance on the
> heathen; these were the signs of Christ which they expected.  A
> Christ who came in such awful glory as that, they would accept, and
> follow, and look to him to lead them against the Romans, that they
> might conquer them, and all the nations upon earth.  And all that
> St. Paul gave them, was a sign of Christ's weakness.  'He was
> despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with
> grief. . . . He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, yet
> we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.  He was
> oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth:  he is
> brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
> shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.'  Then said the Jews--
> This is no Christ for us, this weak, despised, crucified Christ.
> Then answered St. Paul--Weak?  I tell you that what seems to you
> weakness, is the very power of God.  You Jews wish to conquer all
> mankind:  and behold, instead, you yourselves are rushing to ruin
> and destruction:  but what you cannot do, Christ on his cross can
> do.  Weak, shamed, despised, dying man as he seemed, he is still
> conqueror; and he will conquer all mankind at last, and draw all men
> to himself.  Know that what seems to you weakness, is the very power
> of God; the power of doing good, and of suffering all things, that
> he may do good:  and that _that_ will conquer the world, when riches
> and glory, and armies, aye, the very thunder and the earthquake,
> have failed utterly.
> 
> The Greeks, again, sought after wisdom.  If St. Paul was (as he
> said) the apostle of God, then they expected him to argue with them
> on cunning points of philosophy; about the being of God, the nature
> of the world and of the soul; about finite and infinite, cause and
> effect, being and not being, and all those dark questions with which
> they astonished simple people, and gained power over them, and set
> up for wise men and teachers to their own profit and glory,
> pampering their own luxury and self-conceit.  And all St. Paul gave
> them, seemed to them mere foolishness.  He could have argued with
> these Greeks on those deep matters; for he was a great scholar, and
> a true philosopher, and could speak wisdom among those who were
> perfect:  but he would not.  He determined to know nothing among
> them but Jesus Christ, and him crucified; and he told them, You
> disputers of this world, while you are deceiving simple souls with
> enticing words of man's wisdom and philosophy, falsely so called,
> you are trifling away your own souls and your hearers' into hell.
> What you need, and what they need, is not philosophy, but a new
> heart and a right spirit.  Sin is your disease; and you know that it
> is so, in the depth of your hearts.  Then know this, that God so
> loved you, sinners as you are, that he condescended to become mortal
> man, and to give himself up to death, even the shameful and horrible
> death of the cross, that he might save you from your sins; and he
> that would be saved now, let him deny himself, and take up his cross
> and follow him.  And to that, those proud Greeks answered,--That is
> a tale unworthy of philosophers.  The Cross?  It is a death of
> shame--the death of slaves and wretches.  Tell your tale to slaves,
> not to us.  To give himself up to the death of the cross is
> foolishness, and not the wisdom which we want.  Then answered St.
> Paul and said,--True.  The cross is a slave's and a wretch's death;
> and therefore slaves and wretches will hear me, though you will not.
> 'For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men
> after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:  but
> God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
> wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound
> the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and
> things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which
> are not, to bring to nought things that are:  that no flesh should
> glory in his presence.'  For the foolishness of God is wiser than
> all the wisdom of men.  You Greeks, with all your philosophy and
> your wisdom, have been trying, for hundreds of years, to find out
> the laws of heaven and earth, and to set the world right by them;
> and you have not done it.  You have not found out the secrets of the
> world.  You have not set the world right.  You have not even set
> your own hearts and lives right.  But what your seeming wisdom
> cannot do, the seeming foolishness of Christ on his cross will do.
> Does it seem to you foolish of him, to believe that he could save
> the world, by giving himself up to a horrible and shameful death?
> Does it seem to you foolishness in me, to preach nothing but him
> crucified, and to say, Behold God dying for men?  Then know, that
> what seems to you foolishness, is the very wisdom of God.  That God
> knows the secret of touching, convincing, and converting the hearts
> of men, though you do not.  That God knows how the world is made,
> and how to set it right, though you do not.  That God knows the law
> which keeps all heaven and earth in order, though you do not; and
> that that law is charity,--self-sacrificing love, which shines out
> from the cross of Christ.  Know, that when all your arguments and
> philosophies have failed to teach men what they ought to do, one
> earnest penitent look at Christ upon his cross will teach them.
> That their hearts will leap up in answer, and cry, If this be God, I
> can believe in him.  If this be God, I can trust him.  If this be
> God, I can obey him.  That one look at Christ upon his cross will
> make them--what you could never make them--new men, filled with a
> new thought; the thought that God is love, and that he who dwelleth
> in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him; and that the poor slaves
> and wretches, whom you despise, will look unto the cross and be
> saved, and become new men, and lead new lives, and rise to be saints
> and martyrs to God and to his Christ, giving themselves up to
> torments and death, as Christ did before them; and that out of them
> shall spring that church of Christ, which shall reign over all the
> world, when you and your philosophies have crumbled into dust.
> 
> My friends, let us look, earnestly, humbly, and solemnly this day,
> at Christ upon his cross.  Let us learn that love, the utter self-
> sacrificing love which Christ shewed on his cross, is stronger than
> all pomp and might, all armies, riches, governments; aye, that it is
> the very power of God, by which all things consist, which holds
> together heaven and earth and all that is therein.
> 
> Let us learn that love, the utter self-sacrificing love which Christ
> shewed on his cross, is wiser than all arguments, doctrines,
> philosophies, whether they be true or false; aye, that it is the
> very wisdom of God, by which he convinces and converts all hearts
> and souls; and let us look to the cross, and see there the wisdom of
> God, and the power of God, mighty to save to the uttermost all who
> come through Christ to him.
> 
> And let us remember this, that whenever we fancy ourselves to be
> strong and powerful, and think to aggrandize ourselves at our
> neighbour's expense, and to crush those who are weaker than
> ourselves, then we are forgetting the lesson of Good Friday; that
> whenever we fancy that the way to be wise is, to use our wit and our
> knowledge for our own glory, and by them to manage our fellow-men,
> and make them admire us and bow down to us, then we forget the
> lesson of Good Friday.  For whosoever gives himself up to selfish
> ambition, or to selfish cunning, charges Christ upon his cross with
> weakness and with foolishness, and denies the Lord who bought him
> with his blood.
> 
> My friends, I have no more to say.  Much more I might say.  For Good
> Friday has many other meanings, and all the sermons of a lifetime
> would not exhaust them all.
> 
> But one thing seemed to me fit to be said, and I say it again, and
> entreat you to carry it home with you, and live by the light of it
> all the year round.
> 
> Do you wish to be powerful?  Then look at Christ upon his cross; at
> what seems to men his weakness; and learn from him how to be strong.
> Do you wish to be wise?  Then look at Christ upon the cross; and at
> what seemed to men his folly; and learn from him how to be wise.
> For sooner or later, I hope and trust, you will find that true,
> which St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say,--That
> all the learning in the world had never taught him so much as the
> sight of Christ upon the cross.
> 
> SERMON XXXV. THE ETERNAL MANHOOD
> 
> (First Sunday after Easter.)
> 
> John xx. 29.  Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen
> me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet
> have believed.
> 
> The eighth day after the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared
> a second time to his disciples.  On this day he strengthened St.
> Thomas's weak faith, by giving him proof, sensible proof, that he
> was indeed and really the very same person who had been crucified,
> wearing the very same human nature, the very same man's body.
> 
> 'Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.'  You
> have not seen.  You have never beheld with your bodily eyes, or
> touched with your bodily hand, as St. Thomas did, the Lord Jesus
> Christ.  And yet you may be more blessed now, this day, than St.
> Thomas was then.  We are too apt to fancy, that, to have seen the
> Lord with our eyes, to have walked with him, and talked with him, as
> the apostles did, was the greatest honour and blessing which could
> happen to man.  We fancy, perhaps, at times, that if the Lord Jesus
> were to come visibly among us now, we should want nothing more to
> make us good:  that we could not help listening to him, obeying him,
> loving him.
> 
> But the Scriptures prove to us that it was not so.  The Scribes and
> Pharisees saw him and talked with him; yet they hated him.  Judas
> Iscariot, yet he betrayed him.  Pilate, yet he condemned him.  The
> word preached profited them nothing, not being mixed with faith in
> those who heard him.  Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, came and
> preached himself to them; declared to them who he was, proved who he
> was by his mighty works of love and mercy, and by fulfilling all the
> prophecies of Scripture which spoke of him; and yet they did not
> believe him, they hated him, they crucified him; because they had no
> faith.
> 
> You see, therefore, that something more than seeing him with our
> bodily eyes is wanted to make us believe in the Lord Jesus Christ;
> something more than seeing him with our bodily eyes is wanted to
> make us blessed.  St. Thomas saw him; St. Thomas was allowed, by the
> boundless condescension and mercy of the Lord Jesus, to put his hand
> into his side.  And yet the Lord does not say to him,--See how
> blessed thou art; see how honoured thou art, by being allowed to
> touch me.  No; our Lord rather rebukes him for requiring such a
> proof.
> 
> There are those who will not believe without seeing; who say, I must
> have proof.  What I hear in church is too much for me to believe
> without many more reasons than are given for it all.  Many people,
> for instance, stumble at the stumbling-block of the cross, and
> cannot bring themselves to believe that God would condescend to
> suffer and to die for men.  Others cannot make up their minds about
> the resurrection.  It seems to them a strange and impossible thing
> that Jesus' body should have risen from the grave and ascended to
> heaven, and that our bodies should rise also.  That was the great
> puzzle to the Greeks, who thought themselves very learned and
> cunning, and were great arguers and disputers about all deep matters
> in heaven and earth.  When St. Paul preached to them on Mars' Hill,
> they heard him patiently enough, till he spoke of Jesus rising from
> the dead; and then they mocked; laughed at the notion as absurd.
> And we find that the Corinthians, even after they were converted and
> baptised Christians, were puzzled about this same matter.  They
> could not understand how the dead were raised, and with what body
> they would come.
> 
> With such the Lord is not angry.  If they really wish to know what
> is true, and to do what is right; if they really are, as St. Paul
> says, 'feeling after the Lord, if haply they may find him;' then the
> Lord will give them light in due time, and shew them what they ought
> to believe, and give them the sort of proof which they want.  All
> such he treats as he did Thomas, when he said, in his great
> condescension, 'Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and
> reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not
> faithless but believing.'
> 
> So the Lord sent to those Corinthians the very sort of proof which
> they wanted, by the hand of the learned apostle, St. Paul.  They
> were great observers of the works of nature, of the strange movement
> and change, birth and death, which goes on in beasts, and in plants,
> and in the clouds, and the rivers, and the very stones under our
> feet.  And they said, We cannot believe in the resurrection of the
> dead, because we see nothing like it in the world around us.  And
> St. Paul was sent to tell them.  No:  you do see something like it.
> If you will look deeper into the working of the world around you,
> you will see that the rising again of the dead, instead of being an
> unnatural or an absurd thing, is the most reasonable and natural
> thing, the perfect fulfilment, and crowning wonder of wonderful laws
> which are working round you in every seed which you sow; in the
> flesh of beasts and fishes; in bodies celestial and bodies
> terrestrial:  and so in that glorious chapter which we read in the
> Burial Service, St. Paul tells the Corinthians, who went altogether
> by sense, and reasoning about the things which they could see and
> handle, that sense and reasoning were on his side, on God's side;
> and that the mysteries of faith, like the resurrection of the body,
> were not contrary to reason, but agreed with it.
> 
> So does the Lord clear up the doubts of his people, in the way which
> is best for them.  But he does not call them as blessed as others.
> There is a higher faith than that.  There is a better part.  The
> same part which Mary chose.  The same faith of which our Lord says,--
> 'Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.'  The
> faith of the heart; the childlike, undoubting, ready, willing faith,
> which welcomes the news of the Lord; which runs to meet it, and is
> not astonished at it; and, if it ever doubts for a moment, only
> doubts for very joy and delight; and feeling that the news of the
> gospel is good news, cannot help feeling now and then that it is too
> good news to be true; shewing its love and its faith in its very
> hesitation.  This is the childlike heart, whereof it is written,
> 'Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall in
> no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.'
> 
> The hearts of little children; the hearts which begin by faith and
> love toward God himself; the hearts which know God; the hearts to
> whom God has revealed himself, and taught them, they know not how,
> that he is love.  They are so sure of God's goodness, so sure of his
> power, so sure of his love, his willingness to have mercy, and to
> deliver poor creatures, that they find nothing strange, nothing
> difficult, in the mysteries of faith.  To them it is not a thing
> incredible, that God should have come down and died upon the cross.
> When they hear the good news of him who gave his own life for them,
> it seems a natural thing to them, a reasonable thing:  not of course
> a thing which they could have expected; but yet not a thing to doubt
> of or to be astonished at.  For they know that God is love.
> 
> And now some of you may say, 'Then are we more blessed than Thomas?
> We have not seen, and yet we have believed.  We never doubted.  We
> never wanted any arguments, or learned books, or special inward
> assurances.  From the moment that we began to learn our catechisms
> at school we believed it, of course, every word of it.  Do we not
> say the Creed every Sunday; I believe in--and so forth?'  O my
> friends, do you believe indeed?  If you do, blessed are you.  But
> are you sure that you speak truth?
> 
> You may believe it.  But do you believe in it?  Have you faith in
> it?  Do you put your trust in it?  Is your heart in it?  Is it in
> your heart?  Do you love it, rejoice in it, delight to think over
> it; to look forward to it, to make yourselves ready and fit for it.
> Do you believe in it, in short, or do you only believe it, as you
> believe that there is an Emperor of China, or that there is a
> country called America, or any other matter with which you have
> nothing to do, for which you care nothing, and which would make no
> difference at all to you, if you found out to-morrow that it was not
> so.  That is mere dead belief; faith without works, which is dead,
> the belief of the brains, not the faith of the heart and spirit.
> 
> Oh, do you really believe the good news of this text, in which the
> Son of God himself said to mortal men like ourselves, 'Handle me and
> see that it is I, indeed; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as
> ye see me have.'  Do you believe that there is a Man evermore on the
> right hand of God?  That now as we speak a man is offering up before
> the Father his perfect and all-cleansing sacrifice?  That, in the
> midst of the throne of God, is he himself who was born of the Virgin
> Mary, and crucified under Pontius Pilate?  Do you wish to find out
> whether you believe that or not?  Then look at your own hearts.
> Look at your own prayers.  Do you think of the Lord Jesus Christ, do
> you pray to the Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, very man, born of
> woman?  Do you pray to him as to one who can be touched with the
> feeling of your infirmities, because he has been tempted in all
> things like as you are, yet without sin?  When you are sad,
> perplexed, do you take all your sorrows and doubts and troubles to
> the Lord Jesus, and speak them all out to him honestly and frankly,
> however reverently, as a man speaketh to his friend?  Do you really
> cast all your care on him, because you believe that he careth for
> you?  If you do, then indeed you believe in the resurrection of the
> Lord Jesus Christ; and you will surely have your reward in a peace
> of mind, amid all the chances and changes of this mortal life, which
> passes man's understanding.  That blessed knowledge that the Lord
> knows all, cares for all, condescends to all--That thought of a
> loving human face smiling upon your joys, sorrowing over your
> sorrows, watching you, educating you from youth to manhood, from
> manhood to the grave, from the grave to eternities of eternities--
> Whosoever has felt that, has indeed found the pearl of great price,
> for which, if need be, he would give up all else in earth or heaven.
> 
> Or do you say to yourselves at times, I must not think too much
> about the Lord Jesus's being man, lest I should forget that he is
> God?  Do you shrink from opening your heart to him?  Do you say
> within yourself, He is too great, too awful, to condescend to listen
> to my little mean troubles and anxieties?  Besides, how can I expect
> him to feel for them; I, a mean, sinful man, and he the Almighty
> God?  How do I know that he will not despise my meanness and
> paltriness?  How do I know that he will not be angry with me?  I
> must be more reverent to him, than to trouble him with very petty
> matters.  He was a man once when he was upon earth:  but now that he
> is ascended up on high, Very God of Very God, in the glory which he
> had with the Father before the worlds were made, I must have more
> awful and solemn thoughts about him, and keep at a more humble
> distance from him.
> 
> Do you ever have such thoughts as those come over you, my friends,
> when you are thinking of the Lord Jesus, and praying to him?  If you
> do, shall I tell you what to say to them when they arise in your
> minds, 'Get thee behind me, Satan.'  Get thee away, thou accusing
> devil, who art accusing my Lord to me, and trying to make me fancy
> him less loving, less condescending, less tender, less
> understanding, than he was when he wept over the grave of Lazarus.
> Get thee away, thou lying hypocritical devil, who pretendest to be
> so very humble and reverent to the godhead of the Lord Jesus, in
> order that thou mayest make me forget what his godhead is like,
> forget what God's likeness is, forget that it was in his manhood, in
> his man's words, his man's thoughts, his man's actions, that he
> shewed forth the glory of God, the express image of his person, and
> fulfilled the blessed words, 'And God said, Let us make man in our
> image, after our likeness.'  Get thee behind me, Satan.  I believe
> in the good news of Easter Day, and thou shall not rob me of it.  I
> believe that he who died upon the Cross, rose again the third day,
> as very and perfect man then and now, as he was when he bled and
> groaned on Calvary, and shuddered at the fear of death, in the
> garden of Gethsemane.  Thou shalt not make my Lord's incarnation,
> his birth, his passion, his resurrection, all that he did and
> suffered in those thirty-three years, of none effect to me.  Thou
> shalt not take from me the blessed message of my Bible, that there
> is a man in heaven in the midst of the throne of God.  Thou shalt
> not take from me the blessed message of the Athanasian Creed, that
> in Christ the manhood is taken into God.  Thou shalt not take from
> me the blessed message of Holy Communion, which declares that the
> very human flesh and blood of him who died on the Cross is now
> eternal in the heavens, and nourishes my body and soul to
> everlasting life.  Thou shalt not, under pretence of voluntary
> humility and will-worship, tempt me to go and pray to angels or to
> saints, or to the Blessed Virgin, because I choose to fancy them
> more tender, more loving and condescending, more loving, more human,
> than the Lord himself, who gave himself to death for me.  If the
> Lord God, the Son of the Father, is not ashamed to be man for ever
> and ever, I will not be ashamed to think of him as man; to pray to
> him as man; to believe and be sure that he can be touched with the
> feeling of my infirmities; to entreat him, by all that he did and
> suffered as a man, to deliver me from those temptations which he
> himself has conquered for himself; and to cry to him in the
> smallest, as well as in the most important matters--'By the mystery
> of thy holy incarnation; by thine agony and bloody sweat; by thy
> cross and passion; by thy precious death and burial; by thy glorious
> resurrection and ascension;' by all which thou hast done, and
> suffered, and conquered, as a man upon this earth of ours, good
> Lord, deliver us!
> 
> SERMON XXXVI.  THE BATTLE WITHIN
> 
> (Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1858.)
> 
> Galatians, v. 16, 17.  This I say then, Walk in the spirit, and ye
> shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.  For the flesh lusteth
> against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh:  and these are
> contrary the one to the other:  so that ye cannot do the things that
> ye would.
> 
> Does this text seem to any of you difficult to understand?  It need
> not be difficult to you; for it does not speak of anything which you
> do not know.  It speaks of something which you have all felt, which
> goes on in you every day of your lives.  It speaks of something,
> certainly, which is very curious, mysterious, difficult to put into
> words:  but what is not curious and mysterious?  The commonest
> things are usually the most curious?  What is more wonderful than
> the beating of your heart; your pulse which beats all day long,
> without your thinking of it?
> 
> Just so this battle, this struggle, which St. Paul speaks of in this
> text, is going on in us all day long, and yet we hardly think of it.
> Now what is this battle?  What are these things which are fighting
> continually in your mind and in mine?  St. Paul calls them the flesh
> and the spirit.  'The flesh,' he says, 'lusts against the spirit,
> and the spirit against the flesh.'  They pull opposite ways.  One
> wants to do one thing, and the other the other.  But if so, one of
> them must be in the right, and the other in the wrong.  Now, St.
> Paul says, when these two fall out with each other, the spirit is in
> the right, and the flesh in the wrong.  And therefore, the secret of
> life is, to walk in the spirit, and so not to fulfil the lusts of
> the flesh.
> 
> But if so, it must be worth our while to find out which is flesh,
> and which is spirit in us, that we may know the foolish part of us
> from the wise.  What the flesh is, we may see by looking at a dumb
> beast, which is all flesh, and has no immortal soul.  It may be very
> cunning, brave, curiously formed, beautiful, but one thing you will
> always see, that a beast does what it likes, and only what it likes.
> And this is the mark of the flesh, that it does what it likes.  It
> is selfish, and self-indulgent, cares for nothing but itself, and
> what it can get for itself.
> 
> True, you may raise a dumb beast above that, by taming and training
> it.  You may teach a horse or dog to do what it does _not_ like, and
> give it a sense of duty, and as it were awaken a soul in it.  That
> is very wonderful, that we should be able to do so.  It is a sign
> that man is made in God's likeness.  But I cannot stay to speak of
> that now.  I say our flesh, our animal nature, is selfish and self-
> indulgent.  I do not say, therefore, that it is bad:  God forbid.
> God made our bodies and brains, as well as our souls; and God makes
> nothing bad.  It is blasphemous to say that he does.  No, our bodies
> as bodies are good; the flesh as flesh is good, when it is in its
> right place; and its right place is to be servant, not master.  We
> are not to walk after the flesh, says St. Paul:  but the flesh is to
> walk after the spirit--in English, our bodies are to obey our
> spirits, our souls.  For man has something higher than body in him.
> He has a spirit in him; and it is just having this spirit which
> makes him a man.  For this spirit cares about higher things than
> mere gain and comfort.  It can feel pity and mercy, love and
> generosity, justice and honour; and when a man not only feels them,
> but obeys them, then he is a true man--a Christian man:  but, on the
> other hand, if a man does not; if he be a man in whom there is no
> mercy or pity, no generosity, no benevolence, no justice or honour;
> who cares for nothing and no one but himself, and filling his own
> stomach and his own pulse, and pleasing his own brute appetites in
> some way, what should you say of that man?  You would say, he is
> like a brute beast--and you would say right--you would say just what
> St. Paul says.  St. Paul would say, that man is fulfilling the lusts
> of the flesh; and you and St. Paul would mean just the same thing.
> Now, St. Paul says, 'The flesh in us lusts against the spirit, and
> the spirit against the flesh.'  And what do we gain by the spirit in
> us lusting against the flesh, and pulling us the opposite way?  We
> gain this, St. Paul says, 'that we cannot do the things that we
> would.'
> 
> Does that seem no great gain to you?  Let me put it a little
> plainer.  St. Paul means this, and just this, that you may not do
> whatever you like.  St. Paul thought it the very best thing for a
> man not to be able to do whatever he liked.  As long, St. Paul says,
> as a man does whatever he likes, he lives according to the flesh,
> and is no better than a dumb beast:  but as soon as he begins to
> live according to the spirit, and does not do whatever he likes, but
> restrains himself, and keeps himself in order, then, and then only,
> he becomes a true man.
> 
> But why not do whatever we like?  Because if we did do so, we should
> be certain to do wrong.  I do not mean that you and I here like
> nothing but what is wrong.  God forbid.  I trust the Spirit of God
> is with our spirits.  But I mean this:--That if you could let a
> child grow up totally without any control whatsoever, I believe that
> before that lad was twenty-one he would have qualified himself for
> the gallows seven times over.  Thank God, that cannot happen in
> England, because people are better taught, most of them at least;
> and more, we dare not do what we like, for fear of the law and the
> policeman.
> 
> But, if you knew the lives which savages lead, who have neither law
> outside them to keep them straight by fear, nor the Spirit of God
> within them to keep them straight by duty and honour, then you would
> understand what I mean only too well.
> 
> Now St. Paul says,--It is a good thing for a man not to be able to
> do what he likes.  But there are two ways of keeping him from it.
> One is by the law, the other is by the Spirit of God.  The law works
> on a man from the outside by fear; but the Spirit of God works in a
> man by honour, by the sense of duty, by making him like and love
> what is right, and making him see what a beautiful and noble thing
> right is.
> 
> Now St. Paul wants us to restrain ourselves, not from fear of being
> punished, but because we like to do right.  That is what he means
> when he says that we are to be led by the Spirit, instead of being
> under the law.  It is better to be afraid of the law than to do
> wrong:  but it is best of all to do right from the Spirit, and of
> our own free will.
> 
> Am I puzzling you?  I hope not:  but, lest I should be, 1 will give
> you one simple example which ought to make all clear as to the
> struggle between a man's flesh and his spirit, and also as to doing
> right from the Spirit or from law.
> 
> Suppose you were a soldier going into battle.  You see your comrades
> falling around you, disfigured and cut up; you hear their groans and
> cries; and you are dreadfully afraid:  and no shame to you.  It is
> the common human instinct of self-preservation.  The bravest men
> have told me that they are afraid at first going into action, and
> that they cannot get over the feeling.  But what part of you is
> afraid?  Your flesh, which is afraid of pain, just as a beast is of
> the whip.  Then your flesh perhaps says, Run away--or at least skulk
> and hide--take care of yourself.  But next, if you were a coward,
> the law would come into your mind, and you would say, But I dare not
> run away; for, if I do, I shall be shot as a deserter, or broke, and
> drummed out of the army.  So you may go on, even though you are a
> coward:  but that is not courage.  You have not conquered your own
> fear--you have not conquered yourself--but the law has conquered
> you.
> 
> But, if you are a brave man, as I trust you all are, a higher spirit
> than your own speaks to your spirit, and makes you say to yourself,
> I dare not run away; but, more, I cannot run away.  I should like
> to--but I cannot do the things that I would.  It is my duty to go
> on; it is right; it is a point of honour with me to my country, my
> regiment, my Queen, my God, and I must go on.
> 
> Then you are walking in the Spirit.  You have conquered yourself,
> and so are a really brave man.  You have obeyed the Spirit, and you
> have your reward by feeling inspirited, as we say; you can face
> death with spirit, and fight with spirit.
> 
> But the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh is not ended
> there.  When you got excited, there would probably come over you the
> lust of fighting; you would get angry, get mad and lose your self-
> possession.
> 
> There is the flesh waking up again, and saying, Be cruel; kill every
> one you meet.  And to that the Spirit answers, No; be reasonable and
> merciful.  Do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, and turn yourself
> into a raging wild beast.  Your business is not to butcher human
> beings, but to win a battle.
> 
> Well; and even if you have conquered the enemy, you may not have
> conquered your worst enemy, which is yourself.  For, after having
> fought bravely, and done your duty, what would the flesh say to you?
> I am sure it would say it to me.  What but--Boast:  talk of your own
> valiant deeds and successes; get all the praise and honour you can;
> and shew how much finer a person you are than any of your comrades.
> But what would the Spirit say?--and I trust you would all listen to
> the Spirit.  The Spirit would say, No; do not boast; do not lower
> yourself into the likeness of a vain peacock:  but be just, and be
> modest.  Give every man his due; try to praise and recommend every
> one whom you can; and trust to God to make your doing your duty as
> clear as the light, and your brave actions as the noonday.
> 
> So, you see, all through, a man's flesh might be lusting, and would
> be lusting, against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
> and see, too, how in each case, the flesh is tempting the man to be
> cowardly, brutal, vain, selfish, and wrong in some way, and the
> Spirit is striving to make him forget himself, and think of his
> comrades and his duty.
> 
> Now when a man is led by the Spirit, if he is tempted to do wrong,
> he does not say, I will not do this wrong thing, but I cannot.  I
> cannot do what you want me.  I like to hear a man say that.  It is a
> sign that he feels God's voice in him, which he must obey, whether
> he likes or not; as Joseph said when he was tempted.  Not, I had
> rather not, or I dare not:  but, How _can_ I do this great
> wickedness against my master, who has trusted me, and put everything
> into my hand, and so, by being a treacherous traitor, sin against
> God?
> 
> Now, is this Spirit part of our spirits, or not?  I think we confess
> ourselves that it is not.  St. Paul says that it is not.  For he
> says, there is one Spirit--that is, one good Spirit--of whom he
> speaks as the Spirit; and this, he says, is the Spirit of God, and
> the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit which inspires the spirits of
> all noble, Christ-like, God-like men.
> 
> In this Spirit there is nothing proud, spiteful, cruel, nothing
> selfish, false, and mean; nothing violent, loose, debauched.  But he
> is an altogether good and noble spirit, whose fruit is love, joy,
> peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
> temperance.  This, he says, is the Spirit of God; and this Spirit he
> gives to those spirits,--souls, as we call them now,--who desire it,
> that they may become righteous with the righteousness of Christ, and
> good with the goodness of God.
> 
> And is not this good news?  I say, my friends, if we will look at it
> aright, there is no better news, no more inspiriting news for men
> like us, mixed up in the battle of life, and often pulled downward
> by our own bad passions, and ashamed of ourselves more or less,
> every day of our lives;--no better news, I say, than this, that what
> is good and right in us is not our own, but God's; that our longings
> after good, our sense of duty and honour, kindliness and charity,
> are not merely our own likings or fancies:  but the voice of God's
> almighty and everlasting Spirit.  Good news, indeed!  For if God be
> for us who can be against us?  If God's Spirit be with our spirits,
> they must surely be stronger than our selfish pleasure-loving flesh.
> If God himself be labouring to make us good; if he be putting into
> our hearts good desires; surely he can enable us to bring those
> desires to good effect:  and all that is wanted of us, is to listen
> to God's voice within, and do the right like men, whatever pain it
> may cost us, sure that we, by God's help, shall win at last in the
> hardest battle of all battles, the victory over our own selves.
> 
> SERMON XXXVII.  HYPOCRISY
> 
> Matthew xvi. 3.  Oh ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the
> sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
> 
> It will need, I think, some careful thought thoroughly to understand
> this text.  Our Lord in it calls the Pharisees and Sadducees
> hypocrites; because, though they could use their common sense and
> experience to judge of the weather they would not use them to judge
> of the signs of the times; of what was going to happen to the Jewish
> nation.
> 
> But how was their conduct hypocritical?  Stupid we might call it, or
> unreasonable:  but how hypocritical?  That, I think, we may see
> better, by considering what the word hypocrite means.
> 
> We mean now, generally, by a hypocrite, a man who pretends to be one
> thing, while he is another; who pretends to be pious and good, while
> he is leading a profligate life in secret; who pretends to believe
> certain doctrines, while at heart he disbelieves them; a man, in
> short, who is a scoundrel, _and knows it_; but who does not intend
> others to know it:  who deceives others, but does not deceive
> himself.
> 
> My friends, such a man is a hypocrite:  but there is another kind of
> hypocrite, and a more common one by far; and that is, the hypocrite
> who not only deceives others, but deceives himself likewise; the
> hypocrite who (as one of the wisest living men puts it) is
> astonished that you should think him hypocritical.
> 
> I do not say which of these two kinds is the worse.  My duty is to
> judge no man.  I only say that there are such people, and too many
> of them; that we ourselves are often in danger of becoming such
> hypocrites; and that this was the sort of people which the Pharisees
> for the most part were.  Hypocrites who had not only deceived
> others, but themselves also; who thought themselves perfectly right,
> honest, and pious; who were therefore astonished and indignant at
> Christ's calling them hypocrites.
> 
> How did they get into this strange state of mind?  How may we get
> into it?
> 
> Consider first what a hypocrite means.  It means strictly neither
> more nor less than a play-actor; one who personates different
> characters on the stage.  That is the one original meaning of the
> word hypocrite.
> 
> Now recollect that a man may personate characters, like a play-
> actor, and pretend to be what he is not, for two different objects.
> He may do it for other people's sake, or for his own.
> 
> 1.  For other people's sake.  As the Pharisees did, when they did
> all their works to be seen of men; and therefore, naturally, gave
> their attention as much as possible to outward forms and ceremonies,
> which could be seen by men.
> 
> Now, understand me, before I go a step further, I am not going to
> speak against forms and ceremonies.  No man less:  and, above all,
> not against the Church forms and ceremonies, which have grown up,
> gradually and naturally, out of the piety, and experience, and
> practical common sense of many generations of God's saints.  Men
> must have forms and ceremonies to put them in mind of the spiritual
> truths which they cannot see or handle.  Men cannot get on without
> them; and those who throw away the Church forms have to invent fresh
> ones, and less good ones, for themselves.
> 
> All, I say, have their forms and ceremonies; and all are in danger,
> as we churchmen are, of making those forms stand instead of true
> religion.  In the Church or out of the Church, men are all tempted
> to have, like the Pharisees, their traditions of the elders, their
> little rules as to conduct, over and above what the Bible and the
> Prayer-book have commanded; and all are tempted to be more shocked
> if those rules are broken, than if really wrong and wicked things
> are done; and like the Pharisees of old, to be careful in paying
> tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, the commonest garden herbs, and
> yet forget the weighty matters of the law, justice, mercy, and
> judgment.  I have known those who would be really more shocked at
> seeing a religious man dance or sing, than at hearing him tell a
> lie.  But I will give no examples, lest I should set you on judging
> others.  Or rather, the only example which I will give is that of
> these Pharisees, who have become, by our Lord's words about them,
> famous to all time, as hypocrites.
> 
> Now you must bear in mind that these Pharisees were not villains and
> profligates.  Many people, feeling, perhaps, how much of what the
> Lord had said against the Pharisees would apply to them, have tried
> to escape from that ugly thought, by making out the Pharisees worse
> men than our Lord does.  But the fact is, that they cannot be proved
> to be worse than too many religious people now-a-days.  There were
> adulterers, secret loose-livers among them.  Are there none now-a-
> days?  They were covetous.  Are no religious professors covetous
> now-a-days?  They crept into widows' houses, and, for a pretence
> made long prayers.  Does no one do so now?  There would, of course,
> be among them, as there is among all large religious parties, as
> there is now, a great deal of inconsistent and bad conduct.  But, on
> the whole, there is no reason to suppose that the greater number of
> them were what we should call ill-livers.  In that terrible twenty-
> third chapter of St. Matthew, in which our Lord denounces the sins
> of the Scribes and Pharisees, he nowhere accuses them of profligate
> living; and the Pharisee of whom he tells us in his parable, who
> went into the Temple to pray, no doubt spoke truth when he boasted
> of not being as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers.  He
> trusted in himself that he was righteous.  True.  But whatever that
> means, it means that he thought that he was righteous, after a
> fashion, though it proved to be a wrong one.  What our Lord
> complains of in them is, first, their hardness of heart; their pride
> in themselves, and their contempt for their fellowmen.  Their very
> name Pharisee meant that.  It meant separate--they were separate
> from mankind; a peculiar people; who alone knew the law, with whom
> alone God was pleased:  while the rest of mankind, even of their own
> countrymen, knew not the law, and were accursed, and doomed to hell.
> Ah God, who are we to cast stones at the Pharisees of old, when this
> is the very thing which you may hear said in England from hundreds
> of pulpits every Sunday, with the mere difference, that instead of
> the word law, men put the word gospel.
> 
> For this our Lord denounced them; and next, for their hypocrisy,
> their play-acting, the outward show of religion in which they
> delighted; trying to dress, and look, and behave differently from
> other men; doing all their good works to be seen of men; sounding a
> trumpet before them when they gave away alms; praying standing at
> the corners of the streets; going in long clothing, making broad
> their phylacteries, the written texts of Scripture which they sewed
> to their garments; washing perpetually when they came from the
> market, or any public place, lest they should have been defiled by
> the touch of an unclean thing, or person; loving the chief seats in
> their religious meetings, and the highest places at feasts; and so
> forth,--full of affectation, vanity, and pride.
> 
> I could tell you other stories of their ridiculous affectations:
> but I shall not.  They would only make you smile:  and we could not
> judge them fairly, not being able to make full allowance for the
> difference of customs between the Jews and ourselves.  Many of the
> things which our Lord blames them for, were not nearly so absurd in
> Judea of old, as they seem to us in England now.  Indeed, no one but
> our Lord seems to have thought them absurd, or seen through the
> hollowness and emptiness of them:--as he perhaps sees through, my
> friends, a great deal which is thought very right in England now.
> Making allowance for the difference of the country, and of the
> times, the Pharisees were perhaps no more affected, for Jews, than
> many people are now, for Englishmen.  And if it be answered, that
> though our religious fashions now-a-days are not commanded expressly
> by the Bible or the Prayer Book, yet they carry out their spirit:--
> remember, in God's name, that that was exactly what the Pharisees
> said, and their excuse for being righteous above what was written;
> and that they could, and did, quote texts of Scripture for their
> phylacteries, their washings, and all their other affectations.
> 
> Another reason I have for not dwelling too much on these
> affectations; and it is this.  Because a man may be a play-actor and
> a self-deceiver in religion, without any of these tricks at all, and
> without much of the vanity and pride which cause them.  For
> recollect that a man may act for his own amusement, as well as for
> other people's.  Children do so perpetually, and especially when no
> one is by to listen to them.  They delight in playing at being this
> person and that, and in living for a while in a day-dream.  Oh let
> us take care that we do not do the same in our religion!  It is but
> too easy to do so.  Too easy; and too common.  For is it not play-
> acting, like any child, to come to this church, and here to feel
> repentance, feel forgiveness, feel gratitude, feel reverence; and
> then to go out of church and awake as from a dream, and become our
> natural selves for the rest of the week, till Sunday comes round
> again; comforting ourselves meanwhile with the fancy that we had
> been very religious last Sunday, and intended to be very religious
> next Sunday likewise?
> 
> Would there not be hypocrisy and play-acting in that, my friends?
> 
> Now, my dear friends, if we give way to this sort of hypocrisy, we
> shall get, as too many do, into the habit of living two lives at
> once, without knowing it.  Outside us will be our religious life of
> praying, and reading, and talking of good things, and doing good
> work (as, thank God, many do whose hearts are not altogether right
> with God, or their eyes single in his sight) good work, which I
> trust God will not forget in the last day, in spite of all our
> inconsistencies.  Outside us, I say, will be our religious life:
> and inside us our own actual life, our own natural character, too
> often very little changed or improved at all.  So by continually
> playing at religion, we shall deceive ourselves.  We shall make an
> entirely wrong estimate of the state of our souls.  We shall fancy
> that this outward religion of ours is the state of our soul.  And
> then, if any one tells us that we are play-acting, and hypocrites,
> we shall be as astonished and indignant as the Pharisees were of
> old.  We shall make the same mistake as a man would, who because he
> always wore clothes, should fancy at last that his clothes were
> himself, part of his own body.  So, I say, many deceive themselves,
> and are more or less hypocrites to themselves.  They do not, in
> general, deceive others; they are not, on the whole, hypocrites to
> their neighbours.  For their neighbours, after a time, see what they
> cannot see themselves, that they are play-acting; that they are two
> different people without knowing it:  that their religion is a thing
> apart from their real character.  A hundred signs shew that.  How
> many there are, for instance, who are, or seem tolerably earnest
> about religion, and doing good, as long as they are actually in
> church, or actually talking about religion.  But all the rest of
> their time, what are they doing?  What are they thinking of?  Mere
> frivolity and empty amusement.  Idle butterflies, pretending to be
> industrious bees once in the week.
> 
> Others again, will be gentle and generous enough about everything
> but religion; and as soon as they get upon that, will become fierce,
> and hard, and narrow at once.  Others again (and this is most
> common) commit the very same fault as the Pharisees in the text, who
> could use their common sense to discern the signs of the weather,
> and yet could not use it to discern the signs of the time, because
> they were afraid of looking honestly at the true state of public
> feeling and conscience, and at the danger and ruin into which their
> religion and their party were sinking.  For about all worldly
> matters, these men will be as sound-headed and reasonable as they
> need be:  but as soon as they get on religious matters, they become
> utterly silly and unreasonable; and will talk nonsense, listen to
> nonsense, and be satisfied with nonsense, such as they would not
> endure a moment if their own worldly interest, or worldly character,
> were in question.
> 
> But most of all do these poor souls not deceive their neighbours
> when a time of temptation comes upon them.  For then, alas! it comes
> out too often that they are of those whom our Lord spoke of, who
> heard the word gladly, but had no root in themselves, and in time of
> temptation fell away.  For then, before the storm of some trying
> temptation, away goes all the play-acting religion; and the man's
> true self rises up from underneath into ugly life.  Up rise,
> perhaps, pride, and self-will, and passion; up rise, perhaps,
> meanness and love of money; up rise, perhaps, cowardice and
> falsehood; or up rises foul and gross sin, causing some horrible
> scandal to religion, and to the name of Christ; while fools look on,
> and, laughing an evil laugh, cry,--'These are your high professors.
> These are your Pharisees, who were so much better than everybody
> else.  When they are really tried, it seems they behave no better
> than we sinners.'
> 
> Oh, these are the things which make a clergyman's heart truly sad.
> These are the things which make him long that all were over; that
> Christ would shortly accomplish the number of his elect, and hasten
> his kingdom, that we, with all those who are departed in the true
> faith of his holy name, may rest in peace for ever from sin and
> sinners.
> 
> Not that I mean that some of these very people, in spite of all
> their inconsistency, will not be among that number.  God forbid!
> How do we know that?  How do we know that they are one whit worse
> than we should be in their place?  How do we know, above all, that
> to have been found out may not be the very best thing that has
> happened to them since the day that they were born?  How do we know
> that it may not be God's gracious medicine to enable them to find
> themselves out; to make them see themselves in their true colours;
> to purge them of all their play-acting; and begin all over again,
> crying to God, not with the lips only, but out of the depth of an
> honest and a noble shame, as David did of old--Behold I was shapen
> in wickedness, conceived in sin, and I have found it out at last.
> But thou requirest truth in the inward parts, in the very root and
> ground of the heart, and not merely truth in the head, in the lips,
> and in the outward behaviour.  Make me a clean heart, O God, and
> renew a right spirit within me.  Thou desirest no sacrifice, else
> would I give it thee:  but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.
> The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit, as mine is now.  A broken
> and a contrite heart, ground down by the shame of its own sin, that,
> O God, thou wilt not despise.
> 
> And then--when that prayer has gone up in earnest, and has been
> answered by the gift of a clean heart, and of a right spirit, which
> desires nothing but to be made clean and made right, to learn its
> duty and to do it--then, I say, that man may go back safely and
> freely, to such forms and ceremonies, as he has been accustomed to,
> and have been consecrated by the piety and wisdom of his
> forefathers.  For, says David, though forms and ceremonies,
> sacrifice and burnt-offering cannot make any peace with God, yet I
> am not going to give up forms and ceremonies, sacrifice and burnt-
> offerings.  No.  When my peace is made, when the broken and the
> contrite heart has put me in my true place again, and my heart is
> clean, and my spirit right once more; then, he says, will God be
> pleased with my sacrifices, with my burnt-offerings and oblations;
> because they will be the sacrifice of righteousness, of a righteous
> man desiring to shew honour to that God from whom his righteousness
> comes, and gratitude to that God to whom he owes his pardon.
> 
> And so with us, my friends, if ever we have fallen, and been
> pardoned, and risen again to a new, a truer, a more honest, a more
> righteous life.  Our forms of devotion ought then to become not a
> snare and a hypocrisy, but honest outward signs of the spiritual
> grace which is within us; as honest and as rational as the shake of
> the hand to the friend whom we truly love, as the bowing of the knee
> before the Queen for whom we would gladly die.
> 
> O may God give us all grace to seek first the kingdom of God and his
> righteousness.  To seek first the kingdom of God; to work earnestly,
> each in his place, to do God's will, and to teach and help others to
> do it likewise.  To seek his righteousness, which is the
> righteousness of the heart and spirit:  and then all other things
> will be added to us.  All outward forms and ceremonies, ways of
> speaking, ways of behaving, which are good and right for us, will
> come to us as a matter of course; growing up in us naturally and
> honestly, without any affectation or hypocrisy, and the purity and
> soberness, the reverence and earnestness of our outward
> conversation, will be a pattern of the purity and soberness, the
> reverence and earnestness, which dwells in our hearts by the
> inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God.
> 
> SERMON XXXVIII.  A PEOPLE PREPARED FOR THE LORD
> 
> Ephesians iii. 3-6.  How that by revelation he made known unto me
> the mystery (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read,
> ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in
> other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now
> revealed unto the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the
> Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers
> of his promise in Christ by the Gospel.
> 
> This day is the feast of the Epiphany.  Epiphany, as many of you
> know, means 'shewing,' because on this day the Lord Jesus Christ was
> first shewn to the Gentiles; to the Gentile wise men who, as you
> heard in the Gospel, saw his star in the east, and came to worship
> him.  And the part of Scripture from which I have taken my text, is
> used for the Epistle this day, because in it St. Paul explains to us
> the meaning of the Epiphany.  The meaning of those wise men being
> shewn our Lord, and worshipping him, though they were not Jews as he
> was, but Gentiles.  He says that it means this, that the Gentiles
> were fellow-heirs with the Jews, and of the same body as them, and
> partakers of God's promise in Christ by the Gospel.
> 
> This does not seem so very wonderful to us; and why?  Because we,
> though we are Gentiles like those wise men, have lived so long, we
> and our forefathers before us, in the light of the Gospel, that we
> are inclined to take it as a matter of course; forgetting what a
> wonderful, unspeakable, condescension it was of God, not to spare
> his only begotten Son, but freely to give him for us.  God forgive
> us!  We are so heaped with blessings that we neglect them, forget
> them, take them as our right, instead of remembering our sins and
> ungratefulness, and saying, Thy mercies are new every morning; it is
> only of thy mercies that we are not consumed.
> 
> But to St. Paul it was very wonderful news.  A mystery, as he said;
> quite a new and astonishing thought, that heathens had any share in
> God's love and Christ's salvation.
> 
> And so it was to St. Peter.  God had to teach it him by that
> wonderful vision, in which he saw coming down from heaven all sorts
> of animals, and God bade him kill and eat; and when he refused,
> because they were common and unclean, God forbade him to call
> anything common or unclean, now that God had cleansed all things by
> the precious blood of his dear Son.  Then Peter was bidden to go to
> the Gentile Roman soldier Cornelius.  And he went, though, he said,
> he had been used to think it unlawful for a Jew even to eat with a
> Gentile.  And when he went, he found, to his astonishment, that
> God's love was over that Gentile soldier and his family, because
> they were good men, as far as they had light and knowledge, just as
> much as if they had been good Jews.  And God gave St. Peter a sign
> which there was no mistaking, that he really did care for those
> Gentile Romans, just as much as if they had been Jews; for, as he
> was preaching Christ to them, the Holy Ghost fell on them, not
> after, but before they were baptised.  So that St. Peter, astonished
> as he was, was forced by his own conscience and reason to say, 'Can
> any man forbid water, that these should not be baptised, who have
> received the Holy Ghost as well as we' (Jews)?  Then he commanded
> them to be baptised in the name of the Lord.
> 
> And what was the lesson which God taught St. Peter by this?  St.
> Peter himself tells us; for he opened his mouth and said, 'Of a
> truth I see that God is no respecter of persons; but in every
> nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted
> by him.'
> 
> Now, my dear friends, this is (as the Lord Jesus Christ tells us)
> God's everlasting law, 'That he that hath, to him shall be given,
> and he shall have more abundantly; but from him that hath not, shall
> be taken away even that which he seems to have.'
> 
> So it was, as I have just shewn you, with Cornelius; and so it was
> with those wise men.  They were worshippers (as is supposed) of the
> one true God, though in a dim confused way:  but they had learnt
> enough of what true faith was, and of what true greatness was, too,
> not to be staggered and fall into unbelief, when they saw the King
> of the Jews, whom they had come so many hundred miles to see, laid,
> not in a palace, but in a manger; and attended not by princesses and
> noblewomen, but by a poor maiden, espoused to a carpenter.
> Therefore God bestowed on them that great honour, that they, first
> of all the Gentiles, should see the glory and the love of God in the
> face of Jesus Christ, his Son.
> 
> And so it was with our forefathers, my friends.  And I think that on
> this Epiphany, we ought to thank God, among all his other blessings,
> for having given us such forefathers, and letting us be born of that
> noble stock, to whom he gave the kingdom of God, after he took it
> away from the faithless and rebellious Jews, and afterwards from the
> false and profligate Greeks and Romans, to whom the epistles of the
> apostles were written.  I will tell you what I mean.
> 
> When the Lord Jesus came on earth; our forefathers did not live here
> in England, but in countries across the sea, in Germany, Denmark,
> and Sweden, which did not belong to the Roman Empire; for the
> Romans, who had conquered all the world beside, could never conquer
> our forefathers.  It was God's will, that whenever they tried they
> were beaten back with shame and slaughter; and our forefathers,
> almost alone of all, remained free men, even as we are at this day.
> But for that very reason, the apostles could never come among us to
> preach the Gospel to us; for they could not pass the bounds of the
> Roman empire; and that was so large, that they had enough to do to
> preach the Gospel in it; so that it was not till at least 400 years
> after the apostles' death, that their successors, zealous
> missionaries, priests and bishops, came and preached to our
> forefathers; and when they came, they found us a people prepared for
> the Lord, who heard the word gladly, and turned, thousands sometimes
> in one day, from vain idols to serve the living God, and were
> baptised into that holy church in which we now stand.  And it has
> been among us, and the nations who are our kinsmen, that the light
> of the gospel has shone ever since, while all through the East,
> where the apostles preached most and earliest, it has died out.  So
> that our Lord's words have been fulfilled, that many that are last
> shall be first, and those that are first shall be last.  God grant
> that it may not always be so.  God grant that his kingdom may return
> to its ancient seat at Jerusalem, and that all nations may go up to
> the mountain of the Lord's house, in the day of which St. Paul
> prophesies, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and all
> Israel shall be saved, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge
> of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.  But it is not so now; and
> cannot be so, as far as we can see, for many a year to come.
> 
> But in the meanwhile, why were our forefathers--heathens though they
> were, and sinners in many things, being truly children of wrath,
> fierce, bloodthirsty, revengeful, without the grace of Christ, which
> is Love and Charity--nevertheless a people prepared for the Lord?
> How was it true of them that to him that hath shall be given?
> 
> I will tell you.  There is an old book, written in Latin by a
> heathen gentleman of Rome, who lived in St. Paul's time, and wrote
> this book about twenty years after St. Paul's death.  It is a little
> book; but it is a very precious one:  and I think it is a great
> mercy of God that, while so many famous old books have been lost,
> this little book should have been preserved:  for this Roman
> gentleman had travelled among our forefathers; and when he returned
> he wrote this book to shame his countrymen at Rome.  In it he calls
> us 'Germans;' but that was the Roman fashion.  By Germans they meant
> not only the people who now live in Germany, but the English and the
> Danes, and the Swedes, and the Franks, who afterwards conquered
> France.  In fact he meant our own forefathers.  And he said to the
> Romans,--
> 
> 'Look at these wild Germans.  You despise them because they go half-
> naked, and cannot read or write, and live in mud cottages; while you
> go in silk and gold, and have all sorts of learning, and live in
> great cities, palaces, and temples, in worldly pomp and glory.  But
> I tell you,' he said, 'that these wild Germans are better men than
> you; for, while you are living in sin, in cheating and falsehood, in
> covetousness, adultery, murder, and every horrible iniquity, they
> are honest, chaste, truthful; they honour their fathers and mothers;
> they are obedient and loyal to their kings and their laws; they shew
> hospitality to strangers; they do not commit adultery, steal, bear
> false witness, covet their neighbours' goods.  And therefore,' this
> Roman felt (and really it seems as if a spirit of prophecy from God
> had come on him), 'something great and glorious will come out of
> these wild Germans, while the Romans will rot away and perish in
> their sins.'  That was true enough.  We see it true at this day.
> 
> For what happened?  That great Roman empire, Babylon the great, as
> St. John calls it in the Revelations, perished miserably and
> horribly by its own sins; while our forefathers rose and conquered
> it all, and live and thrive till this day.  But it is curious that
> they never throve really, though they made great conquests, and did
> many wonderful deeds, till they became Christians:  but as soon as
> they became Christians, they began to thrive at once, and settled
> down, and became that great family of nations, and kingdom of God,
> which we call Christendom; England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany,
> Sweden, and the other countries of Christian Europe; which God has
> so prospered for his Son Jesus Christ's sake, in spite of many sins
> and shortcomings, with wealth and numbers, skill, and learning, and
> strength, that now the empire of the whole world depends upon these
> few small Christian nations, which in our Lord's time were only
> tribes of heathen savages:  so that here again our Lord's great
> parable was fulfilled.
> 
> The gospel seed which the apostle sowed in those rich, luxurious,
> clever, learned, Romans, was like the seed which fell on thorny
> ground; and the cares and pleasures of this life, and the
> deceitfulness or riches, sprang up, and choked the word, and it
> remained unfruitful.  But the gospel seed which was sown among our
> poor, wild, simple, ignorant forefathers, was the seed which fell on
> an honest and good heart, and took root, and brought forth fruit,
> some thirty, some fifty, and some one hundred fold.  Epiphany came
> late to us--not for three hundred years after our Lord's birth:
> but, when it came, the light which it brought remained with us, and
> lights us even now from our cradle to our grave:  and so again was
> fulfilled the Scripture, which says, that God chooses the weak
> things of this world to confound the strong; the foolish to confound
> the wise; yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought the
> things which are, that no flesh should glory in his presence.
> 
> That no flesh should glory in his presence.  For mind, my friends,
> our business is not to be high-minded but to fear.  And we English
> are too apt to be high-minded now.  We pride ourselves on our
> English character, English cleverness, English courage, English
> wealth.  My friends, be not high-minded but fear.  We have no right
> to pride ourselves on being Englishmen, if we do the very things
> which our forefathers were ashamed to do even when they were
> heathens.  They honoured their fathers and mothers.  Do we?  They
> were loyal and obedient to law.  Are we?  They were chaste and clean
> livers:  adultery was seldom heard of among them; and, when it was,
> they punished it in the most fearful way:  while what astonished
> that old Roman gentleman, of whom I spoke, most of all, was the pure
> and respectable lives of the young men and women.  Is it so now-a-
> days among us, my friends?  They were honest, too, and just in all
> their dealings.  Are we?  They were true to their word; no men on
> earth more true.  Are we?  They hated covetousness and overreaching.
> Do we?  They were generous, open-handed, hospitable.  Are we?  My
> friends, this was the old English spirit, which God accepted in our
> forefathers.  Is it in us now?  We must not pride ourselves on it,
> unless we have it.  Nay, more, what is it but a shame to us, if,
> while our forefathers were good heathens, we are bad Christians?
> They had but a small spark, a dim ray, as it were, of the light
> which lighteth every man who comes into the world:  but they were
> more faithful to that little than many are now, who live in the full
> sunshine of God's gospel, in the free dispensation of God's spirit,
> with Christ's sacraments, Christ's Churches, means of grace and
> hopes of glory, of which they never dreamed.  May they not rise up
> against some of us in the day of judgment, and condemn us, and say,--
> 'Are you our children?  Do you boast of knowing God better than we
> did, while you did things which we dared not do?  We knew that God
> hated such sins, and therefore we kept from them.  You should know
> that better than we; for you had seen God's horror of sin in the
> death of his own Son Jesus Christ; and yet you went on committing
> the very sins which crucified the Lord of Glory.'
> 
> My friends, I speak sober earnest.  God grant that our old heathen
> forefathers may not rise up against us in the day of judgment, and
> condemn us.  Let us turn to the Lord this day with all our hearts,
> and come to this holy table, confessing all our sins and
> unfaithfulness, and backslidings, that we may get there cleansing
> from his most precious blood, strength from his most precious body,
> life from his life, and spirit from his spirit; that so we may go
> away to lead new lives, following the commandments of God, and
> living up to our great light and knowledge, at least as well as our
> forefathers lived up to their little light.  And so we shall really
> keep the feast of Epiphany in spirit and in truth:  for Epiphany
> means the shewing of Jesus Christ to us Gentiles; and the way to
> prove that Jesus Christ has been shewn to us, and that we have seen
> his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of
> grace and truth, is to keep his commandments, and live lives like
> his.
> 
> SERMON XXXIX.  THE WRATH OF LOVE
> 
> Psalm cvii. 6.  Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and
> he delivered them out of their distresses.
> 
> If I were asked to give a reason why I believed the Old Testament to
> be an inspired and divine book, as well as the New, I could not do
> better, I think, than to lay my hand on this 107th psalm, and say,--
> This is my reason for believing the Old Testament to be inspired.  I
> have hundreds of others:  but this one is enough--this one psalm.
> It contains an account of God's dealings with men, such as the world
> never heard before, and very seldom since, save from a very few men,
> who really saw what the Bible meant, and honestly followed its
> teaching.  It gives a notion of the justice of God, and an
> explanation of the chances and changes of this mortal life, such as
> you will find nowhere else save in the Bible, and in the books of
> Christian men who have been taught by the Bible.  The man who wrote
> that psalm knew so much more than other men, that he must have been
> indeed inspired by the Spirit of Truth, and the Holy Ghost of God.
> 
> And, I should say, I have come to this opinion mainly by comparing
> this psalm with the writings of heathens, even the wisest and the
> best of them.  For the heathens, like all men, used to have their
> troubles, and to ask themselves, Who has sent this trouble?  And why
> has he sent it?  And their answers remain to us in their writings,
> some worse, some better, some very foolish, some tolerably wise.
> But when one compares the heathen writings with this psalm, or with
> any psalms or passages of the Old Testament which talk of God's
> dealings with man, then we shall be altogether astonished at the
> superiority of the Bible.  The Bible will seem to us quite
> infinitely wiser than heathen books, on this matter, as on others--
> so much more simple, and yet so much more deep; so much more
> rational also, and so much more true:  agreeing so much more with
> the facts which we see happen round us:  agreeing so much more with
> our own reason, experience, inward conscience, about what is just
> and unjust:--that we shall begin to see as much difference between
> heathen books and the Old Testament, as there is between the dim
> dawn of morning, and the full blaze of noonday light.
> 
> One of the earliest heathen notions why troubles came was, it seems,
> that the gods were offended with men, because they had not shown
> them due honour, flattered them enough, or offered sacrifices enough
> to them:  or else they fancied that the gods envied men:  grudged
> their prosperity, did not like to see them too happy.
> 
> That dark and base notion gradually faded away, as men got higher
> notions of right and wrong, and of the gods, as the judges and
> avengers of wrong.  Then they began to think these troubles were
> punishments for doing wrong.  The Gods, or God, punished sin;
> inflicting so much pain for so much sin, very much as the heathens
> are apt to punish their criminals still, and as Christian nations
> used to punish theirs, namely, with shameful and horrible tortures;
> before they began to find out that the end of punishment is not to
> torment, but to reform, the criminal, wherever it is possible.
> 
> But then the thought would come--Why, after all, should God, if he
> be just and merciful, punish my sin by pain and misery?  How can it
> profit God, how can it please God, to give me pain?  Because it
> satisfies his justice?  How can it do that?  It would not satisfy
> mine.  Suppose my child, or even my dog, disobeyed me, would it
> satisfy my sense of justice to beat him?  It might satisfy my
> passion:  but God has no passions.  It would be base, blasphemous to
> fancy that he takes pleasure in hurting me, as I take pleasure in
> beating my dog when I lose my temper with it.  God forbid!  The old
> prophets saw that, and cried--'Have I any pleasure in the death of
> him, saith the Lord, and not rather that he should turn from his
> wickedness, and live?'
> 
> Then, naturally, the thought would come into the mind of a wise and
> serious man--I punish my child, or my dog, and God punishes me.  May
> he not punish me for the same reason that I punish them?  I punish
> them to correct them and make them better.  Surely God punishes me,
> to correct me, and make me better.  I punish my child, because I
> love him, and wish him good.  God punishes me because he loves me
> and desires that I may be a partaker of his holiness.
> 
> And as soon as that blessed thought had risen up in any man's mind,
> by the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, all the world would begin
> to look bright and clear and full of hope.  This earth, with all its
> sorrows and sufferings, would look no longer to him as God's prison
> house, where poor sinners sat tortured and wailing, fast bound in
> misery and iron, till they should pay the uttermost farthing, which
> they never could pay.  No.  It would look to him as God's school-
> house, God's reformatory, in which he is training and chastening and
> correcting the souls of men, that he may deliver them from the ruin
> and misery which sin brings on them, both the original sin which is
> born in them and the actual sin which they commit.  Then God appears
> to him a gracious and merciful father.  He can see a blessed meaning
> and a wholesome use in all human suffering; and he can break out, as
> the Psalmist does in this glorious psalm, into praise and
> thanksgiving, and call on mankind to give thanks to the Lord; for he
> is gracious, and his mercy endureth for ever.
> 
> In every kind of human suffering, I say, he sees now a meaning and a
> use.
> 
> First, he takes, it seems, his own countrymen, the Jews, coming back
> from Babylon into their own country after the seventy years'
> captivity.  They had been punished for their sins.  But for what
> purpose?  That they might know (as Ezekiel said), that God was the
> Lord.  And when they cried unto him in their trouble, he delivered
> them out of their distress.
> 
> Then he goes on to those who have brought themselves into poverty
> and shame, and sit fast bound in misery and iron.  It is their own
> fault.  They have brought it on themselves by rebelling against the
> word of the Lord, and lightly regarding the counsel of the Most
> Highest.  But God does not hate them.  God is not going to leave
> them to the net which they have spread for their own feet.  When
> they cry unto the Lord in their troubles, he delivers them out of
> their distress.  God himself, by strange and unexpected ways, will
> deliver them from their darkness of ignorance and sin, and from the
> danger and misery which they have brought upon themselves.
> 
> Then he goes on to those who have injured their health by their own
> folly, till their soul abhors all manner of food, and they are even
> hard at death's door.  Neither does God hate them.  They, too, are
> in God's school-house.  And when they cry to the Lord in their
> trouble, he will deliver them, too, out of their distress, and send
> his word, and heal them, and save them from destruction.
> 
> Then he goes on to men who are exposed to danger, and terror, and
> death in their lawful calling; and his instance is the seamen--those
> who go on to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great
> waters.
> 
> The storms come up, they know not when or how:  but they are not the
> sport of a blind chance; they are not the victims of the wrath of
> God.  The wild sea, too, is his school-house, where they are to see
> the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep; and so, by
> strange dangers and strange deliverances, learn, as I have seen many
> a seaman learn, a courage and endurance, a faith, a resignation,
> which puts us comfortable landsmen to shame.
> 
> Then he goes on to even a deeper matter--to those terrible changes
> in nature, so common in the East, in which whole districts, by
> earthquake or drought, are rendered worthless and barren.  They too,
> he says, are God's lessons, though sharp ones enough.  'He turneth
> the rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into dry ground;
> a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that
> dwell therein.  Again, he turneth the wilderness into a standing
> water, and dry ground into water-springs.  And there he maketh the
> hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation; and
> sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of
> increase.'
> 
> Lastly, he goes on to political changes, which bring a whole nation
> low, into oppression and misery.  'They are minished and brought low
> through oppression, affliction and sorrow.  He poureth contempt upon
> princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there
> is no way.  Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and
> maketh him families like a flock.  The righteous shall see it, and
> rejoice:  and all iniquity shall stop her mouth.  Whoso is wise, and
> will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-
> kindness of the Lord.'
> 
> And so, in all the changes of this mortal life, he sees no real
> chance, no real change, but the orderly education of a just and
> loving Father, whose mercy endureth for ever; who chastens men as a
> father chastens his children, for their profit, that they may be
> partakers of his holiness, in which alone is life and joy, health
> and wealth.
> 
> Surely, here is a Gospel, and good news;--news so good, that it
> turns what seems to the superstitious the worst of news, into the
> very best.  For it seems at first sight the worst of news that which
> the ninth Article tells us, that our original sin, in every person
> born into this world, deserves God's wrath and damnation.  And so it
> would be the worst of news, if God were merely a judge, inflicting
> so much pain and misery for so much sin, without any wish to mend us
> and save us.  But if we remember only the blessed message of this
> psalm; if we will remember that God is our Father; that God is
> educating us; that God hath neither parts nor passions; and that,
> therefore, God's wrath is not different or contrary to his love, but
> that God's wrath is his love in another shape, punishing men just
> because he loves men;--then the ninth Article will bring us the very
> best of news.  We shall see that it is the best thing that can
> possibly befall us, that our sin deserves God's wrath and damnation,
> and that it would have been the worst thing which could possibly
> have befallen us, if our sin had not deserved God's wrath and
> damnation.  For if our sin had not deserved God's anger, then he
> would not have been angry with it; and then he would have left it
> alone, instead of condemning it, and dooming it to everlasting
> destruction as he has done; and then, if our sin had been left
> alone, we should have been left alone to sin and sin on, growing
> continually more wicked, till our sin became our ruin.  But now God
> hates our sin, and loves us; and therefore he desires above all
> things to deliver us from sin, and burn our sin up in his
> unquenchable fire, that we ourselves may not be burned up therein.
> For if our sins live, we shall surely die:  but if our sins die,
> then, and then only, shall we live.
> 
> Do these words seem strange to some of you?  I doubt not that they
> will:  but if they do, that will be only a fresh proof to me, that
> the Bible is inspired by the Holy Ghost.  Yes, nothing shews me how
> wide, how deep, how wise, how heavenly the Bible is, as to see how
> far average Christians are behind the Bible in their way of
> thinking; how the salvation which it offers is too free for them,
> the love which it proclaims too wide for them, the God whom it
> reveals too good for them:  so that they shrink from taking the
> Bible and trusting the Bible, in its fulness; and are perpetually
> falling back on heathen notions--the very old heathen notions from
> which this psalm delivers us--concerning what God's anger means, and
> what God's punishment means; because they are afraid of taking the
> words of Scripture literally and fully, and believing honestly the
> blessed news, that God is Love.
> 
> They try to make God's ways as their ways, and God's thoughts as
> their thoughts.  But do not you do so.  Receive the Bible in its
> fulness.  Believe that it tells you infinitely more of God's
> character and dealings, than you can ever tell yourselves; that
> God's ways are not as your ways, nor God's thoughts as your
> thoughts, even at their best:  but that God's ways are always wider
> and deeper than yours, were you the most learned of men; God's
> thoughts are always more loving and just than yours, were you the
> most holy of men, and that when you have learned all that you can
> learn, or that any man can learn, out of the Bible, there will be
> still left behind treasures beside, which you have not yet found
> out.  For the riches of Christ are unsearchable; like the depth of
> the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose only-begotten
> son, and perfect likeness, he is; and the man who reads the
> Scripture with a single eye, and an humble heart, will see that the
> more he finds in the Bible, the more he has yet to find; and that if
> he studied it to all eternity, he would have fresh and fresh cause
> for ever to cry with the Psalmist, 'Oh give thanks to the Lord; for
> he is gracious, and his mercy endureth for ever!'
> 
> Footnotes:
> 
> {328}  Plutarch.
>
> — *The Persian Mystics: Jami — F. Hadland Davis (Public Domain (Project Gutenberg))*