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 Randall, Richard William. 
 Life in the Catholic Churc 
 
 P r; SMT^i « mu. m m 
 
 
LIFE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
LIFE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: 
 
 Jts Blessings anb Responsibilities. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. R. W. '-RANDALL, M.A., 
 
 Vicar of All Saints, Clifton. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, 
 PALL MALL, S.W. 
 
 1889. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
^0 
 
 THE MOST DEAR AND HONOURED MEMORY OF 
 
 BISHOP MOBERLY, 
 
 WHO TAUGHT ME AS A BOY AT WINCHESTER 
 THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH, AND ITS POWER 
 TO SANCTIFY LIFE ; 
 
 AND OF 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE, 
 
 WHOSE WORDS, WHOSE WORKS, AND WHOSE LIFE LED ME TO SEE 
 IN THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH 
 THE SPECIAL MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD 
 TO THE HEART AND MIND OF ENGLAND, 
 
 IN THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY HELP TO BRING HOME TO 
 OTHERS SOMETHING OF THE 
 
 BLESSINGS OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 MOST of the Sermons contained in this volume were 
 preached many years ago. Three of them have 
 already been published in Newland's ' Seasons of the 
 Church,' for which they were written. 
 
 The Author was requested to publish several of 
 the Sermons at the time of their being preached, 
 but he hesitated to comply with the request. The 
 Sermons are published now with the hope that they 
 may deepen in others the sense of the greatness of the 
 Blessing and of the Responsibility of membership in 
 the Church of England. The sense of that Blessing 
 has grown ever stronger in the Author's mind during 
 a ministry of more than forty years. This has led 
 him to give to this volume the title of ' Life in the 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 Catholic Church.' If Life, real, true Life, is Love 
 for God, most assuredly this Life is to be found in 
 the fulness of its Power and its Joy, in that wondrous 
 Union with Christ our Lord granted to all faithful 
 souls in the Catholic Church. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 Responsibility for Living and Working in a 
 Supernatural System. 
 
 Ephesians iv. 4. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " There is One Body, and One Spirit " . . . . 1 
 
 Preached at SS. Philip and James. Oxford, June 5, 
 1865. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Peril of Restraining the Spirit's Work 
 in the Church. 
 
 1 Thessalonians v. 19. 
 " Quench not the Spirit " 18 
 
 Preached at GrarTham. Whitsunday, 1866. 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Life of Christ within us. 
 Acts x. 38. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost 
 and with power : Who went about doing good, and 
 healing all that were oppressed of the devil ; for God 
 was with Him 34 
 
 Preached at Chichester Cathedral. October 25, 1866. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Blessedness of Obedience. 
 St. John xiii. 17. 
 " If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them " . 49 
 
 Preached at All Saints, Margaret Street. March 23, 
 1865. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Forfeiture of Neglected Blessings. 
 
 St. Luke viii. 18. 
 
 " Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that 
 
 which he seemeth to have " . . . . .68 
 
 Preached at All Saints, Margaret Street. April 4, 
 1867. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Union a Supernatural Gift, 
 i Corinthians x. 17. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • ; We being many are one bread, and one body : for we 
 
 are all partakers of that one Bread " . . .89 
 Preached at St. Michael's, Brighton. November 6, 
 1866. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Faith in the Supernatural. 
 St. John i. 50, 51. 
 " Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto 
 thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? 
 thou shalt see greater things than these. And He 
 saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Here- 
 after ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God 
 ascending and descending upon the Son of Man " . 107 
 Preached at St. Michael's, Brighton, 1866. Feast 
 of St. Michael and all Angels. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Man Revealed to Himself. 
 
 St. John i. 22, 23. 
 " Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may 
 give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest 
 thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one 
 crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the 
 Lord" . i 125 
 
 Preached at St. John the Baptist, Frome. Dedica- 
 tion Feast, 1867. 
 
xii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 IX. ' 
 
 Knowledge of Christ the Strength of 
 Work for Him. 
 
 St. Matthew xvi. 15. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 " He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? " .142 
 Preached at Wantage. June 30, 1868. 
 
 X. 
 
 Joy in the Knowledge of God. 
 1 Corinthians xiii. 12. 
 
 " Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to 
 face : now I know in part ; but then shall I know 
 even as also I am known" . . . . 155 
 
 Preached at St. Mary's, Cambridge. Trinity Sunday, 
 1887. 
 
 XI, 
 
 Love for the Faithful the Consequence of 
 Feeding on Christ. 
 
 1 Corinthians x. 17. 
 
 "We being many are one bread, and one body; for we 
 
 are all partakers of that one Bread " . . .172 
 
 Preached at St. John the Divine, Kennington. 
 May 27, 1875. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Blessed Sacrament the Safeguard of 
 the Christian Faith. 
 
 St. Luke xxii. 19. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " This do in remembrance of Me". . . . .186 
 Preached at St. Peter's, London Docks. May 30, 
 1872. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Blessedness of Working with God for 
 His Church. 
 
 Acts iv. 29, 30. 
 
 " And now, Lord, behold their threatenings : and grant 
 unto Thy servants, that with all boldness they may 
 speak Thy Word, by stretching forth Thine hand 
 to heal ; and that signs and wonders may be done by 
 the name of Thy Holy Child Jesus". . . . 200 
 
 Preached at St. Michael's, Shoreditch. June 22, 
 1870. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Christ our Food in the Blessed Sacrament. 
 
 St. John vi. 57. 
 
 "As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the 
 Father : so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by 
 Me" 217 
 
 Preached at St. Barnabas, Pimlico. May 27, 1869. 
 
xiv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Fierceness of Temptation and the 
 Victory. 
 
 Genesis iii. 5. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 H Ye shall be as gods " 235 
 
 Preached at Oxford. Lent, 1873. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Great Overthrow. 
 St. John xii. 31. 
 
 " Now is the judgment of this world : now shall the Prince 
 
 of this world be cast out " . . . . -253 
 Preached at St. Giles, Oxford. March 23, 1866. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The Intermediate State. 
 Acts vii. 59. 
 
 " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" . . . . .272 
 Preached at St. Mary's, Oxford. Lent, 1867. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Our Heavenly Citizenship. 
 Philippians iii. 20. 
 " Our conversation is in heaven ; from whence also we 
 
 look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ " . . 293 
 Preached in the Church of St. Giles, GrafTham. 
 The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, 1857. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XV 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Absolution. 
 St. Matthew ix. 25, 26. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " But when the people were put forth, He went in, and 
 took her by the hand, and the maid arose. And the 
 fame hereof went abroad into all that land " . .312 
 
 Preached in the Church of St. Peter, Lavington. 
 The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity, 1857. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Full Reward. 
 
 Jeremiah xxiii. 5, 6. 
 
 " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise 
 unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall 
 reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and 
 justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be 
 saved, and Israel shall dwell safely : and this is His 
 Name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD 
 OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS " 330 
 
 Preached in the Church of St. Peter, Lavington. 
 The Sunday before Advent, 1857. 
 
 1 
 
L 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Preached at SS. Philip and James, Oxford. June 5, 1865. 
 
 Ephesians iv. 4. 
 " There is One Body, and One Spirit. : ' 
 
 HERE, my brethren, is the wonderful Truth on which 
 all the work of a Church Union must be built up. Here 
 is the great safeguard against the peculiar sins and 
 temptations which beset such work. Here is the 
 grand principle of Faith which will carry us through 
 the difficulties that lie in our path. Here is our 
 ground and reason for hope. Here is the moving 
 and constraining thought which should spur and urge 
 us on to earnestness, and endurance, and perseverance. 
 
 " There is One Body, and One Spirit." 
 
 These words tell us that we are living, and moving, 
 
 B 
 
2 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 and working in a supernatural System ; nay, that we 
 are ourselves parts of that supernatural System ; 
 that one by one we all go to make up that gathered 
 multitude of forces which are bearing up with 
 heavenly might against the world around us. And 
 this seems to me, my brethren, to be the very Truth 
 which is most likely to act upon our Hearts in meet- 
 ing the Difficulties of the Day. We need the strong 
 spring of buoyant hope to send us forth in real godly 
 courage to battle bravely with the sin, and corruption, 
 and falsehood, that open out before us in the actual 
 world in such startling contrast to the ideal of per- 
 fection that we long to reach. We need quite as 
 much the strong sense of awe which may guard us 
 against rashness, and unchastened eagerness in all 
 that we do. Well, we may gather hope, the truest 
 Christian hope ; we may learn awe — the deepest, 
 humblest awe — from these words, " There is One Body, 
 and One Spirit." Do you ask me how ? I answer — 
 Have you ever thought out what those words mean ? 
 Of course their first, plain, simple meaning is clear to 
 all of us. They express to us two Articles of our 
 Creed : " I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Holy 
 Catholic Church." True — and I cannot doubt that 
 you believe this. When you said the Creed just now 
 you told God that you were ready to receive at His 
 Word, as an undoubted truth, that there is One Holy 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 3 
 
 Ghost, and as certainly one outward and visible 
 society of men which we call His Church. You have no 
 doubt of this. It would be waste of time to set about 
 proving to you that, just as St. Paul says that there is 
 but One Unseen Spirit, so he says also as plainly that 
 there is but One outward Body of believers. You 
 know well that every figure by which the Church is 
 described in Holy Scriptures shows that she is one 
 great visible society, bound and knit together, and 
 taking her place in such a manner in this world that 
 her power can be felt and seen. The Church is called 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, the House of God, the Bride 
 of Christ, the Heavenly Jerusalem. All these names 
 speak to us of a society clearly defined, and having a 
 separate existence of its own, held together by certain 
 recognised bonds of union, and easily to be dis- 
 tinguished from the world around. And so we find 
 that in its actual constitution the Church is described 
 as having its settled laws, its appointed governors, its 
 prescribed work. We are ready, therefore, at once to 
 admit that, if we are to be members of the Church, we 
 are bound to act together, to profess the same faith, 
 to agree in the doctrines that we hold, to receive the 
 same Sacraments, to obey the same pastors. So far 
 we acknowledge the " One Body." 
 
 But all this is not to rise above the Principles of 
 Nature. There is no matter for Faith in this. When 
 
 6 2 
 
4 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 we say, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," if we 
 only mean that there is a set of men who are formed 
 into a society bound together under fixed laws and 
 governors and ordinances to do a common work ; why, 
 we can see this with our eyes ; there is no mystery to be 
 believed in all this. It is a matter of true wisdom to 
 say that the Church must be One Body, if she is to do 
 her work. A Kingdom divided against a Kingdom 
 cometh to desolation ; and a house divided against a 
 house falleth. It is absolutely impossible that a 
 number of sects disagreeing with each other can do 
 the work of God in this world. It is absurd to say that 
 the Bible allows a host of warring denominations, self 
 taught and self governed, or that it speaks of more than 
 one True Church ; but, true as all this is, it is no more 
 than worldly wisdom.* Where is it, then, that faith 
 comes in ? Faith tells us what the nature of the One 
 Body is. With our own eyes we see the outward visible 
 Body, the Society of the one Catholic Church, existing 
 in the world. It is before us. By study of Holy 
 Scriptures, by history and tradition we may know 
 what are the marks of the true Church. We may 
 discover by observation and inquiry what is the One 
 Body, but its hidden nature and character is matter 
 for belief. 
 
 And what, then, is the nature and character of this 
 * See " Allies on Romans." Sermon xviii. ad fin. 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 5 
 
 one Body? It is the Body of Christ. The whole 
 company of the baptised has been taken out of the 
 natural order of this lower, fallen world, and lifted 
 into a higher, supernatural, spiritual order. By the 
 Power of the Holy Ghost the baptised have been 
 joined and united to our Blessed Lord, so that they 
 become One Body in, and with Him. u By One Spirit 
 are we all baptised into one Body." So closely is 
 the Church made one with our Blessed Lord that 
 Holy Scripture says, "we are members of His Body," 
 formed out " of His Flesh, and of His Bones." Yea, 
 the Church is called Christ Himself, so entirely is it 
 made one with Him : " as the body is one, and hath 
 many members, and all the members of that one 
 body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." 
 And again we read, w The Church is His Body, the 
 fulness of Him that filleth all in all." This, then, is 
 what we mean when we say that we believe in the 
 Holy Catholic Church — we receive it as an undoubted 
 truth from God that the members of the Church, who 
 are outwardly no more than a set of men, are yet 
 truly and really joined to our Blessed Lord ; that He 
 has made the Church one with Himself ; that He 
 cleanses it through His Blood ; takes away its sin 
 and guilt through the atoning Power of His Cross ; 
 enriches it through His merits ; clothes it with His 
 righteousness ; makes it pure with His purity. Yea, 
 
6 RESPONSIBILITY FOR WORKING AND LIVING 
 
 more, we mean that He is Himself Righteousness, 
 and Sanctification and Redemption to His Church. 
 The power of His Nature, of His stainless and holy 
 Humanity works on all the members of His Body, 
 and makes them new creatures. He enlightens them 
 with His wisdom, strengthens them with His strength, 
 and renews them after His Own image. He is 
 born within their souls, and formed within them. 
 He multiplies in them likenesses of His Own holiness, 
 and replenishes the world with off-shoots from His 
 Own Perfect Nature, so that the Church is called the 
 fulness, the going out into perfection of Him that 
 filleth all in all. And yet, further, it is thus that our 
 Blessed Lord acts upon the outer world through the 
 Church. By the one Body which is enriched with 
 His fulness He manifests to the world what is His 
 Own Power, and Beauty, and Glory, and Majesty. 
 In and through her He conquers sin, makes known 
 His Truth, and shows what are the Perfections of the 
 Divine Nature. And so once more our Blessed Lord 
 is so identified with His Church that her trials are 
 His trials, her sufferings are His sufferings, her 
 work is His work, and her triumph is His triumph. 
 
 It is, then, in the midst of this supernatural system, 
 dear brethren, that we are living. We are ourselves 
 possessed with this Divine Power. The Son of God 
 dwells in us. We are used by Him as instruments for 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 7 
 
 His Divine and loving work for the delivery of a fallen 
 world. The Church is the One Body of Christ, 
 instinct with His Spirit, and in her every faithful act 
 the powers of the Godhead are going forth to exercise 
 their mighty influence on the world of weak, suffering, 
 and sinful humanity. Could you find a thought that 
 ought to act with more constraining force on the 
 members of the Church union ? Let us try and see its 
 bearings on our work. 
 
 And, first, how careful ought we to be in all Church 
 work ! If in very deed the Church is our Blessed 
 Lord's Body, what need is there to watch lest we do 
 harm to it, lest we hinder its work, or mar its per- 
 fection ! All injury done to the Church is injury 
 done to our Blessed Lord Himself. His own voice 
 has taught us this. When Saul was making havoc of 
 the Church, when he was madly bent on putting 
 down the truth, when he was following his own 
 head-strong will, when he was eagerly forcing his own 
 opinions on others, when in very blindness he was led 
 along by that most false and dangerous of all guides, 
 an ill-instructed conscience, when he was breathing 
 out threatenings and slaughters against those who 
 were thwarting what seemed to him a true zeal for 
 God. then it was that the voice of the Blessed Jesus 
 spoke to him from heaven, and said, " Saul, Saul, 
 why persecutest thou Me ? " He found that it was the 
 
8 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 Lord Himself against whom he had been raging. He 
 saw the human society with its laws, and its governors, 
 and its opinions, as he would have called them, and 
 he looked upon it as no more than a mere band of 
 men and women of a certain way of thinking ; but as 
 the light from heaven flashed upon him, and the voice 
 from heaven fell on his startled ear, he felt what was 
 the supernatural character of that society. To touch 
 one member of that society was to touch the Lord to 
 whom it belonged. To hurt it was to hurt Christ ; to 
 oppose it was to oppose the Lord The Church was the 
 Body of Christ, united and bound to Him, filled with 
 His Divine Presence, cherished by His Love, chosen 
 as the instrument of His work ; and to persecute the 
 Body was to persecute Him who is the head of the 
 Body. And this, which was true then, is true now 
 and for ever. It is a truth as eternal as the union 
 between our Lord and His Church. Oh, weigh this 
 truth well ; it needs to be well weighed. It should 
 be weighed by those who oppose the Church, her 
 faith, her laws of worship. They oppose God. 
 
 But the truth is in reality no less full of awe for 
 those who profess to be working for the Church than 
 for him who was so blindly working against it. Think 
 well what it is to have to do with the Church, which is 
 the Body of Christ Himself, Who is the Head, the 
 Life, the moving power that works by that Body ! 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 9 
 
 Blessed indeed it is to be allowed to work with our 
 Lord by serving His Church, and carrying on His own 
 loving purposes through her. But, oh ! what if we 
 hurt and harm the Church ? What if we wound and 
 injure the Body of our Lord? What if, living in the 
 midst of this supernatural system, we check the 
 working of these heavenly powers that are putting 
 forth their influences around us ? You would shrink 
 from this. You are startled, saddened perhaps, at the 
 thought of the possibility that you might have done 
 this. You would be grieved beyond measure to think 
 that there might be need for the pleading voice that 
 checked Saul to say to you, " Why persecutest thou 
 Me ? " You feel that I am severe, harsh, unjust, in 
 accusing you of injuring the body of our Lord. No, 
 you do not feel that ; you know that I am heart and soul 
 with you in your work, rejoicing in your earnestness, 
 welcoming your zeal. Why else am I here to-day ? 
 But you would ask, " How could it be that we should 
 do harm to the Church ? " Let me, then, suggest to you 
 certain ways in which you might work against our 
 Blessed Lord instead of working for Him, as from 
 my heart I believe you wish to do. 
 
 1. One way of doing deadly harm to the Church is 
 through wilfulness. One chief gain of belonging to 
 the Church is that the very system of the Church 
 breeds in us a spirit of obedience, submission, order, 
 
io RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 self-denial. We have spiritual governors to obey — 
 spiritual laws by which both governors and governed 
 have to be ruled. On every side the Divine Authority 
 of the Church, — the authority of God ruling us in and 
 by His Church, touches upon our individual will, and 
 so checks, humbles, subdues, brings it down. This 
 would seem to be one chief part of the moral design 
 of God in setting up His Church on earth, to train us 
 in that true obedience from which man broke away, 
 when he rebelled against God, and so to prepare us 
 for the harmony and peace of the Blessed hereafter 
 under the perfect reign of God. What else is the 
 meaning of that name by which our Blessed Lord so 
 often called His Church — the Kingdom of Heaven? 
 And so the decisions of the Church in matters of 
 Faith demand the submission of our Intellect. The 
 rules of the Church in matters of Divine worship de- 
 mand the submission of our Will. The sacred bonds 
 of brotherhood in the Church demand the submission 
 of our Affections. The whole man, body and soul, in 
 outward act and inward feeling, is trained to forget, 
 to subdue self ; to live for others and for God. So 
 much is this so, that if any man neglect to hear the 
 Church, he is to be counted as a heathen man and a 
 publican, — he puts himself out of the pale of that 
 Society, whose governing principle is obedience ; by 
 the spirit of rebellion he outlaws himself from that 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. n 
 
 supernatural Kingdom, wherein the blessings of heaven 
 are pledged to those who are living as the subjects of 
 the King of heaven. 
 
 If this be so, then, what deadly harm must be done 
 by wilfulness in all matters that have to do with the 
 faith of the Church, or with her outward acts of wor- 
 ship ! Should we not be most careful to watch with 
 the true-hearted obedience of loyal sons against the 
 least approach to errors which the Church condemns ? 
 Should we not shun the use of devotional forms, and 
 be careful not to take part in religious ceremonies 
 which set forth those errors ? This, at least, seems to 
 be no more than an act of simple obedience to the 
 authority which the Church of God has over us. We 
 surely peril the well-being of the Body of Christ if we 
 do not act thus. 
 
 But, further, are we not bound to follow with an 
 exact obedience the laws which the Church has laid 
 down for our acts of worship ? What is to be said of 
 individual caprice, eccentricities, and irregularities, 
 novelties, and unauthorised additions to the 
 Church's settled rules for the performing of her 
 sacred offices ? Do not such things destroy all real 
 harmony and agreement, and break down the spirit of 
 obedience and submission ? Do they not offend and 
 wound the minds of many faithful members of the 
 Church ? Do they not hurt the Church ? And, if so, 
 
12 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 do they not hinder our Blessed Lord's own work? 
 And, oh, dear brethren, would not a deep sense, a 
 lively faith that the Church is His Body restrain us 
 from following our own fancies and inclinations ? 
 Could any man dare to play with error, to amuse him- 
 self with novelties, to tamper with what is forbidden, 
 to trifle in his talk at the risk of grieving or mislead- 
 ing others, if he felt that by such recklessness he was 
 doing harm to the Body of Christ ? Imagine only the 
 love of our Blessed Lord for His Church. Bring home 
 to your own minds the tender interest with which He 
 watches over each weak member of it. Remember 
 that as a man nourisheth and cherisheth his own flesh 
 so our Lord nourishes and cherishes His Church. 
 Think how He yearns over it, how He is ready to set 
 it free from every sin, and failing, till there is neither 
 spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing left upon it to 
 spoil its beauty. Contemplate our Lord's longing to 
 cleanse every sinful soul through His Blood, and to 
 perfect every feeble soul through His Grace. Think 
 what it would be if the veil were lifted for a moment 
 from your eyes and you could see the secret working 
 of that Divine system by which the members of the 
 Body of Christ are drawing from their Head the 
 powers that are in Himself, Wisdom by which to 
 know God and His Truth, and Holiness by which to 
 serve God, and Love by which to cleave to Him, 
 
IN A S UPERNA TURA L S YS TEM. 1 3 
 
 and then imagine what you would feel if you found 
 that you were checking the flow of these graces, and 
 hindering the blessed working of the Life of Christ in 
 His Body ! Ah, brethren, think of this, and see how 
 full of awe is the work we do, how full of vast interest 
 are the words we speak, in the Church of Christ ! In 
 a moment of excitement an act of extravagance is soon 
 done. In the heat of an argument a startling paradox 
 is soon thrown out. In the strife of one mind with 
 another, or in a paper war, a sharp, biting, clever 
 retort is soon made. In hunting after novelties there 
 is a momentary enjoyment in the freshness of some 
 strange ceremony. But what if one and all of these 
 do harm to the Body of Christ ? What if they split 
 heart from heart, — what if they help to hide the truth 
 which Christ would teach to the poor, blind world, — 
 what if they chill the love with which He would warm 
 all souls, — what if they are a resisting of the Powers 
 of Heaven and a strengthening of the Powers of Hell? 
 Who would not cut off a right hand, or pluck out a 
 right eye rather than offend one of Christ's little ones, 
 and wound the Body of the Lord ? Oh, take this 
 loving warning, dear brethren, and weigh well the 
 issue of the slightest word or act which you speak or 
 do as members of the Body of Christ. 
 
 2. But enough of warnings. I have uttered these 
 only lest your great, and high, and holy work should be 
 
14 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 marred, — or rather lest our dear Lord's work through 
 you should fail of being done to His joy and yours. 
 Let us turn to the hope and comfort which is to be 
 found for us in the text. If to know that the Church 
 is the Body of Christ may well make us enter on all 
 Church work with awe, and reverence, and care, yet 
 that awe will be mixed with a calm and holy glad- 
 ness, and that reverence and care will grow up into 
 a firm and quiet trustfulness. What earnest Church- 
 man among us has not felt the anxieties of our times 
 press upon him ? Who has not looked back to what 
 seemed in the distance, which hid from us their 
 defects, better and purer times, and sighed over the 
 contrast with the evils of our own days ? Who has 
 not mourned over the breach of the Church's godly 
 rules, the neglect of her holy seasons, the low tone of 
 life, the irreverence of acts of worship, the want of 
 discipline, the decay of sacred learning, the growth of 
 false doctrine, the unblushing boldness of unbelief? 
 Who has not almost been tempted to think that the 
 flood of ungodliness must prevail ? Who has not at 
 times grown weary with the struggle to stem the tide, 
 and felt that he might as well swim with the stream ? 
 Alas ! do we not miss from our ranks those that have 
 been carried away with its force ? And what, then, is 
 the one thought in the strength of which to stand 
 firm? Faith in the Presence of our Lord with His 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 15 
 
 Church. u There is one Body and one Spirit." Once 
 more, we live, we move, we work, we are worked upon, 
 in a supernatural system. The work that we are. 
 seeking to do is not our work — it is the work of God. 
 The Faith which we would fain see preserved whole 
 and undefiled, it is not our faith, it is the faith taught 
 by God ; the faith not invented by, but delivered to, 
 the Saints ; the faith which could not be kept pure 
 by our unaided efforts, but which may be kept by the 
 Holy Ghost, Which dwelleth in us. The holiness 
 which we long to see spread amongst men, it is no 
 mere ideal of perfection which we have imagined for 
 ourselves, it is the holiness of the character of our 
 Blessed Lord, which He lived out in our nature on 
 earth, which He lives now to impart to us. The 
 Church itself is not " our Church." Perish the very 
 phrase which robs the Church of its Divine character, 
 which robs our Lord of what belongs to Him, and not 
 to us. The Church is Christ's, it is the One Body in 
 which the One Spirit dwells. 
 
 Oh, go forth, dear brethren, in the strength of this 
 thought, to enter on the plans, the labours, the trials, 
 the contests, the sufferings of another year of the 
 work of your union for the good of the Church of 
 Christ. Be watchful, be wary, for you are acting on 
 behalf of the holiest of all holy things, the Body of 
 your Lord. Be specially on your guard against the 
 
1 6 RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIVING AND WORKING 
 
 creeping in of thoughts of self. Make sure that you 
 are acting with a single eye to the glory of your 
 Lord. See that your work is such as you can safely 
 offer to Him. Then lean on His Power with the 
 calm certainty that He at least cannot fail. The 
 miseries of this sinful world touch even our hearts. 
 Ah, they touch His heart far more ; they are an 
 appeal to Him for the comfort and peace which He 
 can give. The blindness of those who have lost this 
 Truth saddens us. Ah, it saddens Him far more ; 
 it is an appeal to him to shed abroad the light of 
 truth in His Church. The sins of those who have 
 wandered away from God are a grief to us. Ah, what 
 must they be to Him, who was pierced on the Cross 
 to take away those very sins? As certainly as the 
 Church is the Body of our Lord, so surely He feeis 
 for its every sorrow, and mourns for its every imper- 
 fection, and marks each single sin that spoils it. 
 And as certainly as the One Spirit dwells in the One 
 Body, so by that Spirit is the Church made one with 
 Christ, and all the Power, and Grace, and Love of our 
 Lord is pledged to the Church for her deliverance. 
 The cause of the Church is the cause of Christ. The 
 victories of the Church are His victories. Yea, the 
 perfection of the Church is His Perfection. Oh, 
 thrice blessed he, then, who can do work for our dear 
 Lord in His Church, if it were but to increase to her 
 
IN A SUPERNATURAL SYSTEM. 17 
 
 the food of life, or to clothe her in greater holiness, or 
 to restore her to strength, or to break off only one 
 shackle from her, so that to him the Lord Himself 
 might say at the last : " I was hungry and ye gave 
 Me meat ; naked and ye clothed Me ; sick and in 
 prison and ye visited Me ; inasmuch as ye did it unto 
 my Body, ye did it unto Me." 
 
i8 
 
 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 II. 
 
 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING THE SPIRIT'S 
 WORK IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 Preached in the church of St. Giles, Graffham. Whitsunday, 
 
 1866. 
 
 1 Thessalonians v. 19. 
 " Quench not the Spirit." 
 
 THIS was the day on which our Blessed Lord was 
 pleased to send down God the Holy Ghost to be 
 with the Church. And so we are met together to 
 thank God for His goodness in sending His Blessed 
 Spirit to help us, and to see what our duties are to 
 that Blessed Spirit. Ah, brethren, perhaps none of 
 us know what we owe to God the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Those who have been too careless to watch their 
 own hearts and lives of course have no notion how 
 much the Holy Ghost has done for them. If you 
 would but see it, how He has tried to check 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH. 19 
 
 you ! Many and many a thing you have done 
 against God. You condemn yourselves for these 
 things. You feel that you have not been what you 
 should have been to God. You wish that you were 
 very different from what you "are. You see the 
 blackness of your own ways, but you do not know 
 how much worse you might have been if God the 
 Holy Ghost had not held you back. In how many 
 ways has He warned you, and made you feel the 
 harm of sin ! When you have not thought of Him at 
 all, how has He thought of you ! When you have 
 grieved God much, how has the Blessed Spirit kept 
 you from giving up God altogether ! You have no 
 notion how He has worked on your souls to bring 
 them to God : — and so it is good to have a day like 
 this to think what the work of God the Holy Ghost is. 
 And is not this a good thing also for the most 
 earnest ? Even amongst those who do think how 
 good the Holy Ghost is, how loving, how tender, 
 who will say that he thinks enough of what that 
 Blessed Spirit does in his heart ? How He comforts 
 us in trouble ! How He strengthens us in temptation ! 
 How He makes us hate what is bad ! How He stirs 
 us up to love God ! How He opens our eyes to see 
 the good things that God gives to those who love 
 Him ! How He lifts our hearts above the world ! 
 How He fixes them on God ! Even those who see 
 
20 
 
 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 the most of what the Holy Ghost does for them see 
 only a very small part of the wonders that He works 
 in the soul. So it must be good for all to have a day 
 like this on which we can calmly, quietly, and thank- 
 fully go over in our minds some of the proofs that 
 the Holy Ghost has given us of His tender love. 
 
 I. And now there are some things, of course, which 
 we all know at once. 
 
 i. We know that the Holy Ghost is God, and so 
 He has all the Strength and Power of God. What 
 He pleases to do He can do. None can stand 
 against Him. This is of the greatest possible comfort 
 to us, because we have enemies that are too strong 
 for us ; but no enemy is strong enough to hurt us if 
 the Spirit of God is on our side. And, again, as the 
 Holy Ghost is God, so He has that wonderful power 
 of working on the heart which belongs to God. And 
 yet, again, as God is love, so the very nature of the 
 Holy Ghost is all love and tenderness. This is what 
 He is by nature. There is nothing that He cannot do. 
 There is nothing that He cannot see. He reads us 
 through and through. His eye pierces us. He sees 
 every thought and feeling that passes through our 
 minds. He knows well every grief we ever feel, 
 every danger that threatens us. He understands our 
 weakness and our wants. And He yearns to comfort 
 and to help us, and cares for us as only God can care 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH. 21 
 
 for His creatures. This at least we know about the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 2. And we know also something of the way in 
 which the Holy Ghost works. He dwells in the 
 Church. His work is done upon those who belong to 
 the Church. This was our Blessed Lord's Own 
 Promise: "He dwelleth with you and shall be in you." 
 This was what St. Paul declared : " Know ye not 
 that your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, 
 Which is in you, Which ye have of God ? " What the 
 soul of each one of us is to our body, that the Holy 
 Ghost is to the Church. As the soul lives in our 
 body, and works through it, so that it gives life to all 
 the parts of the body, so the Holy Ghost lives in the 
 Church, and gives spiritual life to each one of us who 
 belongs to the Church, so that we are able by the 
 Power of the Spirit to live to God. Again, as my 
 soul only gives life to my own body, and cannot give 
 life to yours, so the Holy Ghost only gives life to 
 the One Church which is the Body of Christ. Those 
 who do not belong to the Church have no promise 
 that the Holy Ghost will work in them. "There is 
 One Body and One Spirit." There is one Church, 
 and in that One Church is the One Spirit of God. 
 Again, the Holy Ghost works through the ordinances 
 of the Church. The Church is called " the minis- 
 tration of the Holy Spirit." What the Holy Spirit 
 
22 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 gives, He is pleased to give through the ordinances 
 of the Church. At our Baptism he puts the first 
 beginning of life into our souls, for then we are "born 
 again of water and the Spirit " ; then, by the " One 
 Spirit we are all baptised into the One Body.", At 
 Confirmation He strengthens that life in us, for, when 
 the Bishop's hands are laid on us, we receive the 
 Holy Ghost. In Holy Communion He refreshes our 
 souls, for then we "all drink into One Spirit." So 
 those who belong to the Church have this Blessed 
 Spirit ready to work upon them. We are within 
 reach of His influence. We are brought very close to 
 Him. We may find Him if we will. He is amongst 
 us, though we do not see Him. 
 
 3. And now, one thing more about His work we 
 may learn from the text — this Spirit is like a Fire to 
 the Heart of Man. Can we doubt why He is so 
 called ? Fire gives warmth and light. Is not this 
 exactly the character of the work of the Holy Ghost ? 
 What is colder than the heart of fallen man towards 
 God ? How little does he see of the love of God to 
 him ! How does God lavish His blessings on us ! 
 and what do we care for Him ? What good things 
 does He heap on us! Life, and food, and health, 
 and strength, and His daily guardian care, and how 
 much do we care for Him ? What riches of mercy 
 does God offer us for the soul ! Pardon, and peace, 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH. 23 
 
 and grace, and everlasting life : and what return of 
 love do we make for all this ? Who then warms the 
 cold heart of man into real love for God ? It is God 
 the Holy Ghost by whom the love of God is shed 
 abroad in the heart. Again, what is darker than the 
 heart of man ? Always ready to go wrong ; blind as 
 to what is really for his good ; catching at some 
 worldly gain which cannot last, and throwing away 
 the blessings of heaven ; bent on gaining the world 
 which is to be burnt up, and reckless about losing his 
 soul, which is to last for ever. And who pours light 
 into those poor, dark hearts of ours ? Who makes us 
 see that God is the true portion of the soul ? Who 
 strips off the tinsel and glitter from the toys of earth ? 
 Who takes the film from our eyes and shows us that 
 one moment's true love for God makes a man more 
 happy than all the treasures of the world ? It is God 
 the Holy Ghost. We "have an unction from the 
 Holy One, and we know all things." 
 
 This, then, is something of that which we know 
 about God the Holy Ghost. With all the power, 
 and all the strength, and all the love of God, He 
 lives, and moves, and works in the Holy Church 
 of Christ to bless us. He is as a living Fire amongst 
 us to warm us into the love of God. He is a Li^ht 
 in the midst of this poor, dark world — yea, in the 
 midst of our poor, dark hearts, to show us what God 
 
24 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 is to us, what we should be to God, what is our real 
 danger, and what is our true bliss. 
 
 II. And now see what St. Paul tells us not to do : 
 " Quench not the Spirit." This mighty, loving 
 Spirit of God — He is like a fire amongst you. His 
 strange power is like a flame which glows, and burns 
 around and within you, and which would kindle into 
 flame all which it touches. Do not put out the glowing 
 Fire of the Spirit of Love. The Presence of the 
 Holy Ghost in the Church is like a fair, shining light. 
 Its rays fall on all hearts. It touches, it gilds, it 
 beautifies all souls. It gives them a new fairness, like 
 the rays of the sun which light up the whole land- 
 scape, making each separate leaf to glisten as it dances 
 in the light, and bathing hill and valley, wood and 
 meadow, in its glow. Do not choose darkness rather 
 than light. " Quench not the Spirit." Brethren, 
 is not this a strange, fearful power which the Apostle 
 hints at here ? Here in the Church, here amongst us 
 who are the people of God, there lives, and moves, 
 and walks, the Blessed Spirit of God, with all His 
 Power to touch the heart, to win it to God, to change 
 it — and we have power to stop His work. If we 
 choose, we may say, I will not be changed, I will not 
 give up my icy coldness of soul, I will not be thawed 
 into love, I will go on in the hard-bound frost of my 
 own selfishness, I will go my own way, I will care for 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK-IN THE CHURCH. 25 
 
 myself, live for myself. The fire of the Holy Ghost 
 may burn in me, and around me, but I will quench 
 it We have the power to do this. We may keep 
 our coldness of heart towards God, and shut out the 
 blessed influences of the Spirit of God. Or again, we 
 may live within the clear shining of the light of the 
 Knowledge of God, and yet refuse to know Him. 
 The Spirit of God may give us light in the Holy 
 Scriptures, and we may refuse to read them at all, or 
 read them without learning to know God and our- 
 selves. The Spirit of God may give us light in the 
 Church, which is the pillar and ground of the Truth, 
 and we may determine not to see what the Church 
 tells us to believe and to do. And so we may put out 
 the light which would lead us to God and to heaven. 
 
 " Quench not the Spirit " — how deep, how full the 
 words are ! How do they tell of the mighty, living 
 Presence that is with us ! What wonders of Power, 
 of Love, of Tenderness do they bring before us ! Yet 
 what wonders do they show that we may do in the 
 working out of our own self-chosen misery ! He is 
 here, and yet we may despise Him if we will, and 
 perish in His very Presence. 
 
 III. But this is not all, there is another thing to mark 
 here, before we shall have drawn out the full meaning 
 of the Apostle. When was it that he used those few 
 startling words of warning, "Quench not the Spirit"? It 
 
26 
 
 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 was when the Holy Ghost had been doing great things 
 for the Church. See what his next words are, " Despise 
 not prophesyings." We have here the key-note of 
 the warning. In those days the Holy Ghost gave a 
 special power to some men to teach and warn others ; 
 and this teaching was called prophesying. This was 
 the way in which the Holy Spirit showed His Love. 
 Pie was trying to kindle men into the love of God, to 
 lead them on to know more of God. His Fire was 
 burning with no common glow. His Light was 
 shining out with a strange brightness. What were 
 the members of the Church to do ? Listen to their 
 teachers, you will say ; make good use of those great 
 blessings of the Spirit. True, most true. But see 
 what St. Paul says. He says more than this : " Quench 
 not the Spirit." What does he mean? The loving 
 Spirit of God is longing to work amongst you. His 
 heart is set upon you. He is opening out the trea- 
 sures of His goodness in the midst of you. Oh, take 
 care that you do not check Him. He will act to you 
 as you act to Him. Just as fire cannot burn in a 
 damp, unwholesome atmosphere — as there are places 
 underground where the air is so foul that a candle 
 will go out at once— so, if you choke the Heavenly 
 Fire, it will go out. The Holy Ghost will not work 
 in the midst of cold, careless, worldly, unbelieving 
 hearts : " Quench not the Spirit." 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH. 27 
 
 See how strange this is ! See how it brings out 
 that the Holy Ghost is a real, living Person, and has 
 to do with us as one man has to do with another. His 
 work will be checked if it is not welcomed. It was the 
 same with our Blessed Lord. We read of Him that in 
 one place " He could there do no mighty work." He 
 was ready to help the sick and the suffering, we 
 cannot doubt that He longed to do it ; but something 
 drove His acts of mercy back into His Own Spirit. 
 " He could there do no mighty work, because of their 
 unbelief." His love was restrained because of the 
 coldness of those amongst whom He was. Their 
 cold hearts were like a sharp frosty air, which keeps 
 back the bursting of the trees and flowers. The sap is 
 there, rising, working, almost thrusting the leaves out, 
 but the chill air drives it in. 
 
 We see the same thing amongst ourselves. If 
 there is some matter in which we take a great interest, 
 we can speak of it at once to those who understand 
 us and enter into our feelings. There are some 
 persons to whom we could scarcely mention it — " they 
 quench our spirit." So in preaching a Priest can 
 speak at once to those who care for what he says. 
 If he speaks amongst those who love God, who love 
 the Faith, his whole heart is opened out to them, his 
 words flow out. A mere look, a glance of the eye, a 
 sign of interest is like fuel ready for the fire of his 
 
28 
 
 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 own warmth. On the other hand, unbelief, indiffer- 
 ence, carelessness checks a teacher at once. It 
 quenches his spirit. Here, then, is a very wonderful 
 part of the meaning of St. Paul's words, "Quench 
 not the Spirit." That Blessed Spirit of God is 
 working amongst you. You see, you feel the tokens 
 of His love. But he is close to you as your own soul. 
 It is as though He laid His Heart on yours. His 
 Heart beats with love for you, and He is listening for 
 your heart to beat in answer to His. Oh, " quench 
 not the Spirit." Do not disappoint, do not chill, do 
 not check Him. You know not what He will do, if 
 you will only follow Him. There is no saying what 
 blessed truths He will teach you ; what strength He 
 will give you, what new love He will pour into you, 
 what new powers He will grant you. Only, all de- 
 pends on what you show yourself to Him. " Quench 
 not the Spirit." 
 
 IV. And now see, my dear brethren, what this has 
 to do with us. We have the Holy Ghost amongst 
 us. Every day, every hour His work is going on. 
 As we might see one of our friends going wrong, 
 and might set ourselves to lead him to God, so the 
 Holy Ghost sets Himself to lead us to God. As a 
 living Person He sets Himself to touch and move 
 our hearts. By the words which we read in our 
 Bibles, by the words which the ministers of God speak 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH. 29 
 
 to us, by His Own secret Voice speaking to us in our 
 souls, the Holy Ghost tries to stir us to the love of 
 God. And we make this loving, tender Companion 
 rejoice if we follow Him. We sadden Him if we will 
 not be led by Him. 
 
 But, more than this, there have been times in the 
 History of the Church from the first when the Holy 
 Ghost has worked with a special love and power in 
 the Church. He did so when St. Paul wrote. Then 
 the Spirit was moving men, and teaching them great 
 things. We have seen that the danger was lest men 
 should prevent the Spirit from carrying on His work, 
 lest they should quench Him by their coldness. 
 Brethren, I ask you earnestly, solemnly, is not this a 
 time when the Holy Ghost is seeking to light up the 
 Fire of love for God in His Church ? Look at the 
 change which has passed over that part of the Church 
 to which we belong. See what calls we have to lead a 
 more holy, a more earnest, a more religious life. See 
 what helps are given to us for the service of God. 
 The country has been covered with schools for teaching 
 the young. The little ones of the Church are con- 
 stantly catechised in the House of God. Great pains 
 are taken to bring out the meaning of the Holy 
 truths which our Blessed Lord taught. The Churches 
 are opened more and more often for the worship of 
 God. The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Com- 
 
30 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 munion is far more often celebrated than it used to be. 
 In all these ways the love of God for us, the love of 
 Christ for us, the Power of Christ to cleanse the soul, 
 the strength of His grace to change the soul — all, in 
 fact, which can draw the heart of God — is being pressed 
 upon us. So great a change has been passing over the 
 Church that even those who are not outwardly 
 in communion with us have^said, "the Church is 
 becoming more vigorous and influential every day. 
 She has not been more active for good, nor stronger, 
 for many centuries. Her words, and her work are 
 before God." Who is doing this ? Who is working 
 in the Church of England ? Who is working amongst 
 and upon us ? I cannot doubt that this is the work of 
 the Holy Ghost. It is He who is making the Fire of 
 love burn that it may warm our souls. It is He who 
 is making the Light of Truth shine, that it may lead 
 us in God's way. He is waiting, watching, longing to 
 bless us. He is ready to bless the Church, perhaps 
 more fully than He has ever done yet. He is ready 
 to pour His benefits upon us, to make us know 
 more of God and of His Truth than we have ever 
 known, to make us love God more, live for Him more, 
 give ourselves to Him more, have His gifts given to 
 us in more abundant fulness. Brethren, what are 
 we doing ? It is in our power to drive back all this 
 love of the Spirit. We may stop His work. We 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH 31 
 
 may damp the Fire that He would kindle in the 
 Church. We may make up our minds that we will 
 not do any more for God's sake. We may live for 
 the world, and go after the world, instead of living for 
 God and heaven. We may let the Church be opened, 
 but never care to go and offer our prayers there. We 
 may see the Holy Table spread, but neglect to take 
 the Blessed Food which is offered us there for our 
 souls. We may hear the ministers of God press us to 
 live for God, and we may shut our ears to what they 
 say. Or, almost worse, we may come to the Church 
 and mock God with a lip worship. We may receive 
 Christ and not live by Him, or grow into His 
 likeness. We may hear the Word of God, praise it, 
 and be living contradictions to it. We may move in 
 the midst of all the outward signs of solemn Catholic 
 worship which testify that God is here, present to 
 work amongst us ; and refuse to acknowledge that 
 presence in the soul by submitting the will to Him. 
 And so we may quench the Spirit, and make Him 
 give up in sadness the blessed work that He is now 
 ready to do. 
 
 Oh, God forbid ! Let us not do this. If we have 
 done it, let us do it no more. No, brethren, close 
 with the offer of the Spirit of God. Receive Him as 
 a Friend amongst you, as the truest Friend of the 
 soul. Welcome His work. Follow as He leads. 
 
32 
 
 THE PERIL OF RESTRAINING 
 
 Use the means of grace which he offers. Make Him 
 the loved and honoured Guest of the Church. Catch 
 at the least warning that He gives you. Gather up 
 every hint by which He would lead you nearer to 
 God. If warnings come, break off the sins which He 
 shows you. If He invites you to a more earnest life, 
 let Him draw you on. You know not how He will 
 increase His gifts to you, if you let Him see that you 
 value them. You know not what a work He will do 
 within you. The spark of love for God that now 
 only just glimmers in your soul will glow day by day 
 more and more, as the Fire of the Holy Ghost burns 
 within you. The light of the knowledge of God will 
 shine more and more in your mind, till it reaches the 
 perfect day. It is written of those on whom the 
 Holy Ghost works that they are changed into the 
 very image and likeness of Christ, from glory to 
 glory, by the Spirit of the Lord. It is written again 
 of those who follow the guidance of God, " Then shall 
 we know, if we follow on to know the Lord." I dare 
 not attempt to say all that is meant by those words, 
 but at least they must mean as much as this, — What- 
 ever peace is to be found in serving God, or whatever 
 happiness He can give, — whatever God can do for the 
 soul in cleansing, strengthening, cheering, comforting 
 it, — whatever God can be to the soul, — that shall be 
 known by those who make it the one object of life to 
 
THE SPIRITS WORK IN THE CHURCH. 33 
 
 know Him. Until His u Loving Spirit has led us 
 forth into the land of righteousness " we shall never 
 know fully what this is. Then we shall see that " He 
 is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we 
 ask or think." 
 
 D 
 
34 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 Preached at Chichester Cathedral. October 25, 1866. 
 
 Acts x. 38. 
 
 " God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and 
 with power : Who went about doing good, and healing all that 
 were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him." 
 
 What an account we have here of our Blessed Lord's 
 Life ! How short it is, and yet how full ! " He went 
 about doing good." Brethren, if you or I had 
 passed beyond this world, could we ask for a .better 
 epitaph to be written over our grave than this, " He 
 went about doing good ? " If we were taken away 
 from those who know us, could we wish that they 
 should express their love, their regrets, their fond 
 remembrance of us, in better words than these, " He 
 went about doing good " ? If our last hour were 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 35 
 
 come, and our souls had gone forth from the body, 
 and were presented before God to be judged, what a 
 joy would it be to us if He, Who treasures in His 
 mind every act of love done by His Saints, should 
 say of us, " He went about doing good." 
 
 And this was the epitaph of our blessed Lord, 
 though it was written over One Who had left His 
 grave empty when He rose from the dead. It was 
 the record of the fond remembrance of one of the 
 closest friends of our Lord who had watched and 
 witnessed His unceasing acts of love. Nay, more, it 
 was the witness borne to Him even by those who 
 came about Him to find fault with Him. His tender- 
 ness and loving-kindness drew from them, almost in 
 spite of themselves, the wondering confession : " He 
 hath done all things well ; He maketh both the deaf 
 to hear, and the dumb to speak." And so, when our 
 Lord had withdrawn His visible Presence from the 
 world, where He had been the One True Light shining 
 in the world's darkness, — this was the sentence re- 
 vealed by the Spirit to St. Peter, and passed by the 
 Father on the completed Life of the Son in Whom 
 He had been so well pleased : " He went about doing 
 good." 
 
 Brethren, how strangely fair is this Picture of our 
 Blessed Lord ! I know not whether it will move your 
 hearts, as it seems to move my own. But there 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 seems to me to be a singular power in these words 
 to attract, and draw us to the Blessed Jesus. They 
 win our trust, our confidence, our faith. They melt 
 us into love for our Lord. They fix our souls on 
 Him, Who in all the miseries, and trials, and dangers 
 of the world is our One Refuge. 
 
 Look at the words, and try to draw out something 
 of their meaning for yourselves. 
 
 i. See, first, how the full, free, unselfish — say rather 
 the self-sacrificing love of our Lord comes out in this 
 description of Him. " He went about doing good," 
 He was the Benefactor of all around Him. He lived 
 to spend Himself on others. His days were so 
 passed. He travelled through the cities and villages 
 to carry on a constant course of teaching. Some- 
 times He spoke to the people in masses and congre- 
 gations. We read of their pressing on Him to hear 
 the word of God, and of there being so many coming 
 and going that He had no leisure so much as to eat. 
 Sometimes He dealt with souls one by one. He was 
 ever enlightening, and encouraging, and cheering, and 
 lifting men from earth to heaven, from themselves to 
 God. But, more than this, He was continually re- 
 lieving the sorrows and sufferings of those around 
 Him. He took away the foulness of the leper who 
 fled to Him in his misery. He opened the blind eye. 
 He unsealed the deaf ear. He gave new strength to 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 37 
 
 the palsied limbs. He drove out the burning fever 
 from the parched body. Love and mercy were stored 
 up in Him as in a Fountain which was ever welling 
 and bursting forth, and spreading life and blessing 
 around Him. And men felt this. They learnt that 
 they had in Him One to whom they could appeal. 
 They could reckon on an answer to their groans and 
 cries of anguish in the heart of the Son of Man. 
 This is brought out by what we read of the multitude 
 who thronged upon Him, and pressed on Him to 
 touch Him, when virtue went out of Him to heal 
 those that touched Him. 
 
 So He moved about in the world, taking away its 
 woes. He lived for others in continual labours of 
 love. He toiled even to weariness in giving rest to 
 the weary and heavy-laden. He even denied Himself 
 retirement, and calm, and solitude that He might be 
 at the call of others. He was obliged to use the 
 night or the early morning for those secret commun- 
 ings in which He leaned His worn spirit on His 
 Father's love, — because all through the day He made 
 Himseif the servant of those who were sinking under 
 their loads of suffering, So ik He went about doing 
 good." I ask you especially to notice this, because we 
 are apt to lose the thought of this life of suffering, 
 enduring, persevering love, in the more amazing 
 thought of the Death on the Cross, in which this Love 
 
38 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 mounted to its full height. The wonder of that Death, 
 both in its suffering, and in its power to cleanse, 
 throws almost all else into the background. Yet, oh, 
 brethren, mark the toiling life of love also. 
 
 2. And, now, see next what it was that seems 
 especially to have drawn forth the love that was in 
 our Blessed Lord. " He went about doing good, and 
 healing all that were oppressed of the devil." Let 
 me ask you especially to mark here what a yoke 
 it was that was pressing on the galled shoulders 
 of humanity ! We are indeed touching on great 
 mysteries, but we must not pass over the strange 
 and pregnant word that has been used here by 
 the Holy Ghost. The special work of love which 
 our Lord had set Himself to do was to heal those 
 who had been brought under the tyranny and 
 thraldom of the Evil One. Alas ! there was a 
 dynasty of evil in the world. We know not how this 
 could be. We cannot understand how rebellion, and 
 wickedness, and the force and cruelty of sin could break 
 in upon the order, and purity, and peace, and love, and 
 bliss which belongs to God. But we see that it has done 
 so. On every side of us we see sickness and pain, and 
 agony, and ruined powers, and decay, and death. 
 The evil works around us, and within us. Did you ever 
 stop to marvel at the many forms of suffering that rack 
 the bodies and even destroy the minds of men ? Did 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 39 
 
 you ever take up a book of medical treatises, and 
 shut it up almost in bewildered horror at the confusing 
 multitude of diseases of which it speaks ? So various 
 are the forms of suffering that attack us that, as you 
 know, there are departments of medical science which 
 are concerned with the treatment of one limb, or the 
 variations of one disease. Did you ever ask yourself 
 how this is ? Can it be that the inventiveness of the 
 powers of evil, with .all their keenness of science and 
 malice, is put forth to torture the bodies of men ? At 
 least we have strange hints of this in the history of the 
 suffering woman of whom our Blessed Lord expressly 
 said that Satan had bound her with the chains of 
 her peculiar malady for eighteen years. And it 
 may be that the very difficulty of distinguishing 
 between madness and actual possession arises from the 
 working of the Evil One in all forms of suffering. 
 We know for a certainty that it was when man broke 
 away from God, and yielded to the temptations of 
 the devil, that all the flood of sorrow and affliction 
 poured in upon him. The worst of all his misery, no 
 doubt, was the sin that worked in his soul. Here his 
 slavery to the Evil One most galled him. But every 
 outward form of pain was a mark of the dominion of 
 the devil, and so the text speaks of all sufferers alike 
 as being under the yoke of that dynasty of hate and 
 anguish. The world had become a house of bondage, 
 
40 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 and the cries of the oppressed mounted up into the 
 ear of the Redeemer. 
 
 3. And now, with this thought in your minds, see 
 what fuller light is thrown on the words, " He went 
 about doing good." Our Blessed Lord was made man. 
 He took His Place in the ranks of His Own creatures. 
 He came into this world so full of miseiy. He lived 
 in the midst of these sorrows and sufferings, as One 
 of the race on whom they had fallen. He is sur- 
 rounded by all the forms of anguish. The world is 
 one vast hospital, full of the sick, the diseased, the 
 suffering, and the Blessed Jesus walks through it. Oh, 
 imagine what He must have felt ! On all sides of Him 
 are grief, and woe, and agony. The multiplied forms 
 of pain sadden His eye, wherever He turns. Yes, 
 but more, far more than this. His is an eye that 
 can pierce within into the inner mind. He can not 
 only count every throb and pang that works in the 
 agonised frame, but He can see how this tells upon 
 the feeble spirits of the sufferer, and tries, and wears, 
 and wastes it. More than this, He can see the hidden 
 powers of Satan and his angels working out their 
 purposes of cruelty on mankind. More still, He 
 reads the hidden meaning of this parable of suffering. 
 He knows how every outward and visible form of 
 bodily anguish is only a sign and sacrament of the 
 more deadly harm that the devil is trying to work in 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US, 41 
 
 the soul. And with all this working in His mind — or 
 rather ever present to Him in one clear, defined 
 vision — He hears every sigh from every sick-bed, 
 every groan that bursts from every sufferer worn 
 beyond the powers of endurance. He lived, He 
 moved in the midst of this. Could we imagine what 
 He must have felt ? What is it to us, who are not 
 used to such sights, to pay only one visit to the wards 
 of an hospital ? Do we not wonder at those who have 
 strength and nerve to work in the midst of the sick 
 and suffering ? What must it have been to our Lord, 
 then, to live in the midst of a world which to His 
 eye was one vast gathering of sufferers ! And yet 
 add to this, that He was the God Who had made man. 
 Every pang that shot through every frame smote on 
 His Spirit as it could only smite on Him Who knew 
 what man might have been, and what he was. 
 
 4. But even here we must add this further wonder 
 and mystery ; He knew in His Own Person what 
 suffering was. He was God. Yes ; and so every 
 separate sorrow was seen by Him. But He was man 
 also, and He had had His share of pain. He had 
 known what it was to be cold — perhaps to ache with 
 cold, in the stable at Bethlehem. He had known 
 what it was to be weak with the pangs of hunger, 
 to be parched with the fever of thirst, to be faint 
 with weariness. No disease could have worked in 
 
42 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 that sacred Body, for His whole nature was pure ; 
 but all forms of suffering that can come from without 
 He bowed Himself to bear. He was in all points 
 tempted like as we are. And so this very compassion 
 must have moved Him to enter into all that was 
 afflicting those around Him. 
 
 5. And now, then, we are ready to understand 
 how it was that " He went about doing good, and 
 healing all that were oppressed of the devil." This 
 was so, because " God was with Him." He was One 
 with the Father. The living Father had sent Him, 
 and He lived by the Father. He was One in nature, 
 One in mind, One in being with God. " The Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God." And just 
 then because our Blessed Lord v/as God, He could 
 not be in His Own world, and leave that world to its 
 miseries. His love could not be pent up. His Power 
 could not be kept in. The Life of God that was in 
 Him must show itself in acts such as God would do. 
 " He went about doing good, and healing all that 
 were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him." 
 
 Such is the short history of our Blessed Lord's life 
 and work on earth. 
 
 And now see what we should learn from this. 
 
 I. What a light this throws on the miracles of our 
 Blessed Lord ! We are too apt to look at the miracles 
 as if they were only works of wonderful power, which 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 43 
 
 set their seal upon the truth of what our Lord taught. 
 They were indeed works of Power, but they were 
 also works of Love. They were acts of the tenderness 
 of a Redeeming God Who was relieving the miseries 
 of His suffering creatures. And then see what an 
 answer we have here to those who tell us that there 
 cannot be miracles, because such acts are interferences 
 with the course of nature. We may almost say that 
 when God the Son came into the world there must 
 have been miracles, just because they were interferences 
 with the course of nature. For with what nature did 
 they interfere? Was it with the pure and perfect 
 nature of this world of creatures, and of man, as it 
 left the hands of God? No, it was with a fallen, 
 shattered, corrupted, ruined, diseased, disjointed, 
 suffering nature that our Lord had to do when He 
 put forth His miraculous power. Was it any wonder 
 that He should interfere with this ? Wonder it was ; 
 but it was a wonder only that His love was so great 
 as to stoop to rescue a world that had rebelled against 
 Him. When He had once, in His vast pity, taken 
 upon Him to be made man, and so to interfere with 
 the ruined nature of man by raising it into union with 
 Himself, all else that He did was almost to be 
 looked for. It would have been an interference with 
 His own nature if He had moved in the midst of the 
 sighs, and groans, and agonies of His creatures, and 
 
44 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 yet His acts of love had not shown that He was ready 
 to set them free from their sorrows. The most 
 astounding of all miracles would have been if He had 
 worked no miracles. As surely as fire must throw 
 out heat, so the love of God must have gone forth to 
 undo the evil that was torturing the world which He 
 came to redeem. And therefore " He went about 
 doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of 
 the devil." * 
 
 II. And see, my dear brethren, next, why I press 
 this upon you. What a comfort it is to us ! The 
 miseries of the world have not ceased. No, nor 
 have the miracles of Christ. Still He lives, He 
 moves, He works amongst us. He is present with us 
 in His Church to do good, and to heal all that are 
 oppressed of the devil. Ah, the miseries of the heart 
 are an appeal to His Redeeming Love every day, 
 every hour now ; and all the works of love which 
 He once did on the suffering bodies of men are only 
 specimens of that supernatural work of grace which 
 He does now on our suffering souls. Still virtue is 
 ever going forth from Him to heal those who touch 
 Him by faith. The blind eye is opened by Him to 
 see and know God — the love and the fairness of God. 
 The deaf ear is unstopped to hear the voice of God. 
 
 * See the Preface to Archbishop Trench on the Miracles of 
 our Lord. He calls them " Redemptive Acts." 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST IVITHIX US. 45 
 
 The weak and palsied heart draws strength from Him 
 to walk in the ways of God. The stained, leprous 
 man is made clean through Him. Yea, the very dead 
 in soul is made to live again with the life of Christ 
 in it. These are the miracles which are worked in the 
 kingdom of the grace and love of our Blessed Lord. 
 
 III. But what a question does this truth open out to 
 us ! What is the one hope of the soul ? Union with 
 Christ. " If Christ be in you, the body is dead be- 
 cause of sin, and the spirit is life because of righteous- 
 ness." If we are one with Christ, then guilt, and sin, 
 and weakness, and suffering, and misery, and corrup- 
 tion will pass away from us. If we are one with 
 Christ, God will be with us, we shall be partakers of 
 the Divine Nature, and the evil of sin will be healed 
 in us. But how are we to know if God is with us ? 
 If the life of God works in our souls, it will show 
 itself by cur doing what the Son of God did — " He 
 went about doing good, and healing all that were 
 oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him." Most 
 surely these words have a special bearing on ourselves. 
 We are like our Blessed Lord in one point un- 
 doubtedly. We are men, as He is man. Like Him, 
 then, we cannot but feel for the suffering. We know 
 what pain, and sickness, and weakness is. We can 
 at least guess what it would be to be left in the hours 
 of agony, or disease, to suffer or to waste away un- 
 
46 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 aided, uncomforted, unrelieved. We can well imagine 
 all that aggravates sickness to the poor, as we re- 
 member how hard it was for us to endure one hour 
 of pain with all that we had at hand to soothe and 
 comfort us. We can feel, then, for others, pity others. 
 But, after all, this is only to show that we are men. 
 
 Brethren, remember, I implore you, that we claim 
 to be more than men. We claim to be one with God, 
 to be members of Christ, — to be ruled and guided by 
 His Spirit. And, if this be so, then we shall do more 
 than feel for others, — we shall act, we shall suffer, we 
 shall sacrifice ourselves for them. There was a Divine 
 Restlessness in our Blessed Lord. The Life of God 
 in Him could not be still. It moved, it urged him to 
 go about doing good, and healing all that were 
 oppressed with the devil. So it must be with us. If 
 the life of God is in us, it will stir us to do our utmost 
 to relieve those who are suffering round us. 
 
 Think, then, of this to-day. A very special call is 
 made on you to take part in lightening the sufferings 
 of the sick. There is great need of large self-denying 
 alms to carry on the work of the Infirmary, whose 
 cause I have been called upon to plead. What 
 will you do ? If the pulses of the Divine Life still 
 beat in your soul, you will be glad by a real loving 
 effort to join in the blessed work of your Lord in 
 lessening the miseries of the world. 
 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 47 
 
 Yes ! mark, I beseech you, those words. You are 
 asked to join in doing the very work of our Lord — to 
 do it with Him, and for Him — " Bear ye one 
 another's burthen, and so fulfil the law of Christ." 
 He is relieving those that are oppressed of the devil, 
 and He asks you to join with Him. The groans of 
 each sufferer that tosses in pain on the bed of sick- 
 ness, the sighs of those that are being worn out by 
 disease, go up into His ear, — and our Lord comes 
 to us to-day, and points to them and says, u Look, 
 then, will you go about with Me, and undo this 
 misery ? These all belong to Me, will you relieve 
 them for My sake ? You must suffer if you would 
 really relieve them ; you must cut off from your own 
 pleasures ; but, ah, so did I ! See what I suffered, 
 and yet the joy of saving others was greater than the 
 suffering, — will not you enter into My joy?" And 
 then the Form of Jesus rises before our eyes on the 
 Cross, worn, wasted, bleeding, pierced, naked, dying. 
 He has given up all — His Life, Himself. And for 
 whom ? For us, to cleanse us, to save us, to relieve 
 us who were oppressed of the devil, And He seems 
 to whisper in His dying words : " For the joy that 
 was before Me — the joy of saving thee — I endured 
 the Cross"; and then He says again: "Enter thou 
 into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
 And at those words the world seems to pass away. 
 
48 THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHIN US. 
 
 A Judgment-seat is set, and there is One on it. He 
 has the marks of suffering still, — but they are shining 
 with glory ; and He is welcoming those who have 
 suffered with Him in relieving those who were 
 oppressed by the devil. His eye beams on them 
 with the welcome of love, as He says, " I was sick 
 and ye visited Me. Inasmuch as ye have done it 
 unto one of the least My Brethren, ye have done it 
 unto me. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
 Give then, give now to Him what you will wish to 
 have given in that hour ! 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 49 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 Preached at All Saints, Margaret Street. March 23, 1865. 
 
 St. John xiii. 17. 
 " If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 
 
 You know well, my brethren, Who spoke these 
 words. They were spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ 
 They were spoken by God upon earth. Master this 
 thought to begin with this morning, so far as we can 
 master it ; for it really is a tremendous thought. 
 These words fell from the lips of Him Who was God 
 as well as Man — and before He spoke them they were 
 in His mind as a thought, and so we have here one 
 of the thoughts of God put before us. And, as the 
 thought came out of that mind in which were hid all 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge, so this thought 
 
 E 
 
So THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 must be the most true, real, wise thought that could 
 be made known to us. I am almost afraid to say 
 that we can trust it, depend upon it, feel certain of its 
 truth — for this seems so like judging and criticising it, 
 where we ought to adore and wonder at the goodness 
 of Him Who has been pleased to speak to us. 
 
 Imagine how we should feel about these words if 
 they were the only words that we knew of that had 
 come directly from God to us ! How we should prize 
 them, look into them, try and draw out their full 
 meaning, and long to have them written upon our 
 very hearts ! Surely they are not less valuable to 
 us because in His wondrous mercy God has spoken 
 to us so fully again and again. 
 
 Let us begin at once by saying to ourselves, " Here 
 
 in these words my God speaks to me ; He who knows 
 
 everything, every secret of His Being and of mine ; 
 
 He before Whom my heart, my life, my dangers, my 
 
 trials, all lie clear and manifest as in an open book, 
 
 He tells me what He knows." 
 
 And, then, next, let us notice that it is about 
 
 ourselves that He speaks to us. 
 
 And, then, that He really answers here the one great 
 
 question that concerns us more than any other. 
 
 If we master this, we shall surely be ready to listen 
 
 with all earnestness to what our Blessed Lord says 
 
 here. 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 5 1 
 
 2. But you will perhaps say, "What is the one great 
 question ? " There seem to be so many great questions 
 in our day, for which we are driven to find answers. 
 Yes — for instance, what would you say seems to 
 you to be the great question of the day ? Perhaps 
 you would say that it is, How we are to find a 
 remedy for all the great social evils of our time. Or, 
 if your mind naturally turns in that direction, you 
 might say that the question that is pressing for an 
 answer is, How we are to find a way through all the 
 growing intricacies of foreign politics. Or possibly, if 
 you have not patient faith enough to wait for due in- 
 quiry to work out its results, you may be over-eager to 
 know how what God has taught us in His Word and 
 by His Church agrees with what appear for the present 
 to be the conclusions of scientific investigation. Or the 
 question of the day to you may seem to be, What is 
 truth ? What has God really told us about Himself 
 and ourselves ? What are we to believe? Or, again, 
 the very difficulty of this last question may have forced 
 you to ask, How does God speak to my soul ? Is 
 there on earth any living authority which has a right 
 to propound the truth, and am I at once bound to 
 listen to that authority ? Am I sure that the Voice of 
 God Himself reaches me through it ? 
 
 These are great questions, my brethren, and doubt- 
 less it would be most interesting to find the answer 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 to some of them. Certainly some of them demand an 
 answer. But behind them all there is lurking a really 
 deeper question, and it is this : How shall we make life 
 happy ? Tell us where we shall find real happiness. 
 Sorrows, difficulties, perplexities, temptations, miseries 
 press upon us on every side. Is there no way in 
 which the heart can find rest and peace for itself? 
 
 This I believe to be the real question of the day. 
 This lies beyond all efforts to mend the evils of our 
 time. This is what the mind is craving after when it 
 imagines that the settling of some doubt, or the 
 solving of some problem would satisfy it. This is the 
 question that is being asked by all the anxious care- 
 worn faces, the eager, unsettled looks of the crowds 
 that we meet in the streets of this great town, and 
 which touch and move one's heart so profoundly. 
 Ah, there is no sadder book to read than the history 
 of man's life written broadly on all those faces which 
 seem to be yearning after something which they 
 cannot reach. And tell me, then, you who live 
 amongst this crowd of men, what are all the masses 
 of them seeking after ? Money, perhaps ; or power ; or 
 success of some kind in the world ; or fame ; or honour ; 
 or comfort and bodily enjoyment ; luxury ; or pomp, or 
 influence over others. It may be so, but behind these 
 again there is something for which all these things are 
 all being sought. Each man in all the crowd is only 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 53 
 
 longing, labouring, hunting after those things because 
 he believes that they will make him happy. It is on 
 reaching and finding true happiness that he is bent. 
 Even a heathen philosopher could tell us that that 
 was the end of life. 
 
 Nay, dear brethren, we need not look beyond these 
 holy walls to find out that this is the one object after 
 which we are straining. Why are you here now ? 
 What do you come here to inquire after? What is 
 it you would learn from us ? There is something you 
 have not found. What is it? There is something 
 which you hope yet to reach. For something you 
 have prayed. If there were no longing in your souls, 
 why should you cry so earnestly to God ? Before you 
 too there stretches out the bright hope of happiness. 
 
 See, then, here is the great question, How can the 
 soul be happy ? Here is the great need of every one 
 of us : — the finding of real, true, unfailing happiness. 
 And, here, out of the mouth of God Himself, Who 
 made us, knows us, feels for us, notices our every 
 longing, and can satisfy it, out of His mind and out 
 of His mouth comes the answer to the question in 
 these words : " If ye know these things, happy are ye 
 if ye do them." 
 
 Happiness lies in these two things, in knowing, and 
 in doing. Rather perhaps knowledge opens the way 
 to true happiness. True happiness itself is only to be 
 
54 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 found in real, hearty, loving obedience to God. This 
 is the Revelation that comes out of the Heart of God 
 the Son to us. This is his answer to the longing, 
 yearning, craving heart of man. The whole human 
 race, in the midst of its sorrows and perplexities, its 
 ignorance and darkness, its wanderings and blindness, 
 its disappointments and failures, cries out to Him, 
 4< Oh, show us what will make life really happy. Tell 
 us what will lift us above these griefs and trials. Tell 
 us what will satisfy our souls " ; and our Lord answers, 
 " Learn to know the truth, and act upon it." 
 
 3. But see further what fresh force and meaning 
 these words gather from the time at which they were 
 spoken. It was on the night before He died on the 
 Cross that our Lord said these words. They were 
 spoken at the close of His long, patient, loving, gentle, 
 forbearing teaching of His Apostles. For three years 
 He had been training them, and leading them on to 
 perceive the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. He 
 had borne with their dulness and slowness of heart. 
 He had been seeking to lift them above the world. 
 He had shown them that the world was not worth 
 following after by refusing for Himself its honours, its 
 praise, its comforts. He had opened their eyes to the 
 great secrets of God and of their own nature. He 
 had shown them what God is in Himself, what He is 
 to man. He had spoken to them of His own coming 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 55 
 
 from the Father to give them life. He had foretold 
 His sufferings, His Cross, and Passion. He had 
 manifested to them His mercy and His Power, in 
 words and parables of love, in miracles of tenderness 
 and compassion. He had lived before their eyes a 
 life of spotless, winning, perfect holiness. His even- 
 word and act had borne witness to the deep, true 
 blessedness of a life thoroughly devoted to God. All 
 this for three years He had been leading them on to 
 know. Nay, more, much of this He had only a few 
 minutes before set touchingly before them in a 
 parable of action. He had laid aside His garments, 
 and taken a towel, and girded Himself, and washed 
 His disciples' feet, and wiped them with the towel 
 wherewith He was girded. In this very act He had 
 expressed before their eyes the deepest mysteries of 
 His Incarnation, how He had laid aside His heavenly 
 glory, and united our poor Human Nature to Himself, 
 and how through that pure Human Nature of His 
 each one of us was to be washed and cleansed. And 
 then, from these high mysteries of the washing which 
 alone could give them a part in Him, He calls down 
 their thoughts to the simple following of His example. 
 If they have understood the wonders of that Incar- 
 nation and its cleansing power, He tells them to do to 
 one another in lowly acts of kindness after their 
 measure what He had done in stooping from heaven 
 
56 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 to earth for their sakes. And in this He promises 
 that they will find their happiness ; " If ye know these 
 things, happy are ye if ye do them." 
 
 II. There are two lessons which follow from what 
 has been said. 
 
 I. The first is the importance of knowing the 
 Truth. Alas, it is too common to hear people say 
 in our days, " So long as a man leads a good life it 
 does not matter what he believes." We should meet 
 this at once by asking, Can a man lead a good life — 
 can his heart be really right with God — if he con- 
 sciously refuses to believe what God has told us ? 
 Can he love God if he does not wish to learn all that 
 he can about Him ? Can he trust God if he thinks 
 that God could deceive him ? Can he be humble 
 towards God, can he feel his own weakness and 
 nothingness, and the majesty and greatness of God, 
 if he is too proud to receive from the mouth of God 
 what seems too hard to him ? It is clear that if a 
 man knows that a truth comes from God, and sets his 
 mind against it, he is as much disobeying God as if 
 he broke one of God's commandments. It is equally 
 clear that, if a man will not take the trouble to find out 
 what God has taught to the world, he is despising 
 God. God does not speak to the world for nothing. 
 What He tells us, He tells us in love and mercy, 
 because it is for our good to know it. We must be 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 57 
 
 the worse, therefore, for not knowing any one of the 
 truths that He has revealed. Why did our Blessed 
 Lord make known all the body of truth that He 
 taught in the world ? Why did He deliver it to His 
 Apostles? Why did He promise that the Spirit 
 should lead them into all truth? Why did He 
 charge them to teach to others exactly what He had 
 taught to them ? W T hy does He describe it as part of 
 the world's sin that the faith will not be found on the 
 earth at His coming ? This can only be because it is 
 for our happiness to know what He taught, and 
 because it is a sin against His Loye to be careless 
 about holding fast what He has been pleased to 
 reveal. And so here is the first point for us to aim 
 at, if we would enjoy real happiness : we must set 
 ourselves to learn in all its fulness the whole body of 
 Divine Truth, we must find out what is the Revelation 
 that God has made — what He has told us about 
 Himself, and ourselves. And so St. Augustine says, 
 " No riches, no treasures, no honours, no possessions in 
 this world are worth so much as the Catholic Faith." 
 Again and again in His Word God presses this upon 
 us. " Hold fast the form of sound words, which 
 thou hast heard of me in faith and love which is in 
 Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed 
 unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost, Which dwelleth in 
 us." This one sentence alone speaks of the blessing 
 
53 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 of having the true faith, the duty of keeping it pure 
 as we received it, and the help which the Holy Spirit 
 gives to those who try to hold it fast. 
 
 And here, my brethren, I feel almost appalled as 
 I speak to you. This place, this church, this service, 
 this congregation fill me with fear. They have 
 checked and restrained my words. Do you know 
 why ? They seem to me so to witness of the presence 
 of God. They make me feel indeed that God has 
 been working, speaking, revealing Himself amongst 
 you. He, Who for those three patient years, lived 
 and spoke amongst the apostles, has no less lived and 
 spoken here. He, Who opened out the meaning of the 
 truths of heaven by degrees to His dull disciples, has 
 been opening out those same truths to you. He has 
 led you on to see more and more the fulness and depth 
 of all those truths that He has made known to His 
 Church. Even in other matters it may be that He 
 has dealt with you as He dealt with His first followers. 
 As He repressed, and softened, and directed the over- 
 eagerness of the burning heart of St. John, which was 
 once so impatient of all that stood in the way of the 
 Truth, so He may have taught you, even under trial and 
 opposition, to learn what spirit you are of. As He 
 raised the hearts of the whole band of the apostles 
 above the world, as He made them not look for out- 
 ward and visible triumphs of His kingdom in this 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 59 
 
 world, but watch rather for signs of His power as the 
 King of all the spirits of men, to mould those spirits 
 by His grace, so He may have taught you to look 
 for the glory of His Church, not in any outward signs 
 of increased power before men, but in the inward 
 spiritual change that is passing over her. But, what- 
 ever has been the manner of His teaching, the signs 
 of that teaching are so plain, that they make one feel 
 how awfully close is His presence here. What has 
 He not done amongst, and sought to do in you ? 
 What a contrast is this noble church to the small and 
 obscure chapel which stood here before it ! What a ser- 
 vice is that in which we are taking part this morning ! 
 How do both these witness to a restoration of the true 
 faith, for men build noble shrines when they believe 
 in a mighty and blessed Presence to take possession 
 of them : and they make their acts of worship instinct 
 with reverence when they are adoring One Whom they 
 feel to be in the midst of them, demanding all that 
 they can offer. Yet it is not in these that one sees so 
 plainly the work of our Blessed Lord amongst you as 
 in the opening out of the truth which He taught into 
 an ever-growing freshness. Ah, brethren, what words 
 have you heard here for ihree years past at these 
 same services ! How has the purity of our Blessed 
 Loid's example ; the winning holiness of His life ; 
 the pcwer of His indwelling ; the love shown to you 
 
60 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 in His Passion ; the blessedness of self-sacrifice, in 
 and through Him, the peace and rest in God, that 
 the soul may find through Him ; how have all these 
 things been spoken of to you ! With what moving 
 and persuasive eloquence ! How have you been 
 blessed in knowing all these things ! What reason 
 have you had to find out for yourselves what real 
 happiness it gives to the soul to know its God ; the 
 love, the tenderness, the compassion, the grace, the 
 salvation of God. 
 
 2. And, if this be so, is not one other lesson plain ? 
 Knowledge is nothing without obedience. " If ye 
 know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 
 What is all knowledge of God, of His nature, of His 
 love, of His Person, of His acts, of His grace, if it 
 does not lead on to obeying Him ? What but a 
 condemnation of those who know so much and do so 
 little? Ah, could I press upon you a more real, 
 true, useful work for this Lent than that you should 
 see how your life is answering to all that our Lord 
 has taught you ! All this high teaching, which has 
 almost set Him before you in His life and in His 
 death, with all the constraining influence which that 
 sight ought to have upon your souls, — what change 
 has it brought about in your lives, your characters, 
 your aims, your efforts, your thoughts, your wishes, 
 your acts, your words ? 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 61 
 
 Take these words of our Blessed Lord's, and make 
 them the subject of meditation and self-examination. 
 "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do 
 them." 
 
 (a.) On your knees speak, as it were, thus to Him : 
 ' ; Thou tellest me, O Lord, what is the secret of real 
 happiness. Thou, Who didst make this soul, and Who 
 knowest what it needs, dost point out to me the way 
 to the true enjoyment of life. Help me to listen, and 
 to learn of Thee ! " 
 
 (&.) Then thank our Blessed Lord for having brought 
 the Truth into this blind, ignorant world. Thank 
 Him for having brought you within the circle of that 
 divine light, and made its beams to play upon your 
 soul. Count up the number of truths of which He 
 has given you clear and certain knowledge through 
 the teaching of His Church, which is the pillar and 
 ground of the truth. Recognise the richness and 
 fulness of the inheritance of mysteries that have come 
 to your soul from God. Say to yourself, "I know 
 what God is in Himself, the wonderful Unity of the 
 Three Blessed Persons in one Godhead ; I know 
 what God is to me, His reconciliation to me through 
 His Son, His tender fatherly love, His readiness to 
 aid and guide me, His will to make me His Own for 
 ever. I know the love of my Lord in being made 
 man for me, — and the cleansing power of His death 
 
62 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 on the Cross to take away my sin, — and the store of 
 grace that is laid up in Him for me, — and the coming 
 forth of His life into me through His Sacraments, — 
 and the power of that life to quicken me, to change 
 and work upon my fallen nature, until I grow into a 
 -likeness of Him Who Himself lives, and dwells, and 
 /grows up within me." Then, again, thank our Lord, 
 Who has made you know these things. Yet, once more, 
 turn to the thought of the perception of these truths 
 that has come upon your mind as you have read of 
 them in Holy Scripture, — or especially as you have 
 heard of them in these Lenten services. Acknow- 
 ledge this too as the gift of our Lord, the un- 
 deserved gift of His love to you. Then turn to your 
 Lord in thought again, but this time not only to adore 
 Him, but to judge yourself before Him for the use you 
 have made of His teaching. " So far Thou hast led 
 me, how have I answered to Thy guidance ? All 
 these wonders of heavenly Truth Thou hast shown 
 me. Not one of them could I have reached for 
 myself. Thou hast taught me them to make my 
 heart happy. How have I used them ? Can I say 
 before Thee that I am happy, at peace, calm, re- 
 joicing in the light of truth that Thou has shed 
 around me ? If not, why not ? What is amiss ? What 
 makes me still uneasy ? How have I come short of 
 the blessing to which Thou hast been leading me 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 63 
 
 on? What is wrong in my soul, my life, at this 
 moment ? " 
 
 Then take the words of our Lord as if they were 
 spoken directly to yourself, " If ye know these things, 
 happy are ye if ye do them," — and see if you do not 
 find in them the reason for all the sadness, and gloom, 
 and despondency, and perplexity, and dissatisfaction 
 that is robbing you of true happiness. Ah, perhaps 
 you have never even tried to live up to these high 
 truths that have been brought before you ! When our 
 Lord, Who revealed them, was looking to see how they 
 would affect you, you have disappointed His watching 
 eye. You could listen to His words ; but, when the 
 time came for the memory of those words to tell upon 
 you in the lowly, common acts of daily life, you 
 turned aside from the demand that they made upon 
 you. When in the intercourse with others He was 
 looking for denial, and forgetfulness of self, for offices 
 of humble kindness, for all that could soothe, or com- 
 fort, or help ethers, for lowly ministering in gentleness 
 and sympathy with the wants, or the sorrows, or the 
 difficulties of those about you, for the washing of the 
 feet, — you did not care to do what He was asking of 
 you. You were ready enough for listening in rapture 
 to the wonders that fell from Him, but you had no 
 heart for doing for His sake what it would have been 
 a joy to Him to see you do. This is why at the 
 
64 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 present moment you are unhappy. See whether this 
 be not so. 
 
 You find yourself dull and lifeless in the things that 
 have to do with God. You are heavy and listless in 
 His worship. There is neither point, nor fervour, nor 
 earnestness in your prayers. You read, and no light 
 comes into your mind. You hear of God and no love 
 is kindled in you. You sing His praises with your 
 voice, but there is no warmth in your heart to give fire 
 to those praises. The incense will not burn. 
 
 Why is this ? Is it not because you have heard all 
 the moving truths of our faith so long without acting 
 upon then, that now they do not affect you at all ? 
 You have got used to them as a man gets used to 
 some oft-repeated strain of music, so that he hardly 
 notices that it is sounding in his ears. 
 
 You are perplexed and puzzled about the articles of 
 your faith. You have no grasp of truth. You are 
 uncertain what to believe. You cannot make out 
 what comes to you with a revelation from God. 
 
 Again, why is this ? Is it not because you have 
 heard great truths spoken of, and have played with 
 them, argued about them, but never made them your 
 own by acting on them as principles of your spiritual 
 life? They have moved around you, and fallen on 
 you, as the sunbeams may play, and fall, and pass over 
 a stone statue. They have not passed into your being, 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 65 
 
 and warmed your inner life, as the sun gives heat to 
 the living body and cherishes its powers. 
 
 Or, once more, you are dissatisfied. There is an 
 aching void in your spirit, a sense cf craving want, — 
 or a feverish, excited looking out for something to 
 satisfy you. Again, why is this ? Is it not because 
 you have been spending your energies on merely 
 knowing, — " ever learning and never able to come to 
 the knowledge of the truth," — as if God could be loved 
 with the mind, without being loved with the heart. 
 You have been eager to hear the last noted preacher, 
 as eager to criticise what he said, to note his voice, 
 tone, manner, the cleverness and originality of his 
 thoughts. Your ears have been open to catch the 
 religious gossip of your circle. You have bought, as 
 with a hungry longing, the last new Devotional Book, 
 and seized with avidity on its most striking novelties. 
 You have turned almost with a weary disgust from 
 the calm, regular order of settled worship in the same 
 Church to novel and exciting forms of ritual. And 
 not one of all these things has satisfied you. Not one 
 has reached the heart and life. Not one has done 
 more than pass over the mind, or play upon the 
 imagination and fancy. You are at this moment dull, 
 perplexed, dissatisfied as ever. You are longing, 
 thirsting, gasping after happiness, — aye, even while 
 you do not know it. 
 
 Meanwhile one loving heart is yearning to com- 
 
 F 
 
66 THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 fort you. One true wise voice speaks to you. One 
 eye that can read your distress sees your great mis- 
 take. One tender warning fills your ear to-day. "If 
 ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 
 Try a life of simple obedience to God in all the duties 
 of life. There is an outer sphere of faith, and know- 
 ledge, and emotion, and feeling ; but true, full 
 happiness is not to be found there. It lies in the 
 innermost circle of the regenerate heart, where love 
 to God is seated on a throne and rules each thought, 
 and word, and act, bringing each and all into obedi- 
 ence to God. To know God is blessed, most blessed, 
 more than we could ask, and it must be the first step 
 to happiness ; but to love Him, to obey Him is far, 
 far better. To do His will in perfection is heaven 
 itself. Aim, then, at this. Do not let yourself fancy 
 that to be without temptation and difficulties is the 
 only way to happiness. It may even be your greatest 
 blessing for a while to be subject to temptation. 
 God's own Son was tempted in all points like as we are, 
 and in His firm resistance to temptation His fidelity to 
 the will of His Father was manifested. And of us too 
 it is written, " Blessed is the man that endureth tempta- 
 tion, for when he is tried he shall receive the crown 
 of life, which the Lord hath promised to those that love 
 Him." In faithful struggle against each sin in you that 
 grieves God, in denial of yourselves and placing Him 
 before yourselves, in sacrificing self to carry out God's 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF OBEDIENCE. 67 
 
 will or to serve those around you, — in ready submission 
 to what the unerring wisdom of God points out for you 
 to do or to bear, in daily acts of duty done simply 
 for God. whether you be wife, or sister, or mother, 
 or child, or husband, or father, — in living in a personal 
 relation to God, doing for Him and in His Name what- 
 ever in the business of life has to be done, — in one 
 and all these make it your aim to act upon the 
 knowledge that He has given you of Himself. Then 
 be sure happiness will come, will visit your soul, and 
 grow within it. Each act you do for Him will bind 
 you faster to God. Each thing you give up for His 
 sake will make you know Him more. Every earnest 
 effort to please Him will fill you with a consciousness 
 of His unswerving love. You will live and move, as it 
 were, in the sunshine of the smile of God. Dulness, 
 perplexity, and doubt, and dissatisfaction will pass 
 away. The reality of life will open upon you as 
 you acknowledge its true end and purpose. The 
 great question of life will be answered, and your 
 heart will be ready to exclaim to your Lord " Yes 
 Thou hast shown me where to find in truth what I 
 was blindly feeling after : to know is blessed ; but, 
 ah ! to do, to be allowed to do what a poor creature 
 can do for Thee, and to have its poor acts accepted 
 in Thy sight, this is happiness indeed. Make it but 
 lasting, persevering, eternal, and I can ask no more." 
 
6S 
 
 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 V. 
 
 THE FORFEITURE OF NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 
 Preached at All Saints, Margaret Street, April 4, 1867. 
 
 St. Luke viii. 18. 
 
 " Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which 
 he seemeth to have." 
 
 How strange a sight is this church and congregation ! 
 It is a sight to make a man wonder, and rejoice, and 
 adore God. You do not think it strange, of course. 
 You are used to the sight of all that surrounds you 
 here. You even wonder perhaps that it can seem 
 strange to me. But it does seem strange to me, when 
 I come, as it were, suddenly on the sight of what you 
 are enjoying. It strikes me as some beautiful view 
 strikes a traveller who has been walking through a 
 narrow defile, and then comes to an unexpected 
 opening from which the prospect breaks upon him 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 69 
 
 Turn where I will, there are sights here which speak 
 of the goodness and love of God to you. This very 
 building itself, so noble, so beautiful, so religious in 
 its effect, shows that God must have touched some 
 hearts and made them delight in spending their best 
 upon God. It is a witness to us of the greatness and 
 majesty of God for Whom it was built. And all the 
 several parts of the building tell the same story of the 
 love of God. The windows speak of the triumphs of 
 the grace of God in His saints. They set before 
 us the love of God Incarnate. They show us God 
 entering into human relationships, and loving with a 
 love new to Him, the love with which a son loves a 
 mother. They show us God suffering as man, and, out 
 of very love, making Himself acquainted with man's 
 sorrows, man's agonies, and man's death. They show 
 us God as man, throned in glory for man's sake. So 
 strangely full of lessons of the love of God is the 
 place. Not less strangely sweet to me are the sacred 
 services which are carried on here, the calm, quiet 
 daily morning and evening offices, sung in the 
 Church's old song which St. Augustine found to be 
 only too sweet to him, so that he feared lest it should 
 be a snare to him, and make him forget God in the 
 very act of seeming to praise Him. And, most of all, 
 how strange in its power to comfort, to cleanse, to 
 strengthen, to lift above the temptations of the world, 
 
70 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 to bind — yes, to unite to God, is that all-prevailing 
 sacrifice of the CROSS which is daily pleaded here ! 
 You who enjoy all this day by day can little imagine 
 how it moves one who has only a passing sight of it, 
 and makes him cry out : " Oh ! how amiable are Thy 
 dwellings, Thou Lord of Hosts ;" surely " God is well 
 known in these palaces as a sure Refuge." 
 
 Yes, yes ; and not to men only is this place full 
 of joy. " Surely all this is fair to Thee, O my God. 
 Here Thine eye rests on the gifts of Thy children which 
 they have brought to deck Thy chamber, and every 
 gift, however small, is a token of a child's love. Here 
 Thine ear drinks in the praise of those who feel Thy 
 goodness. Here on bended knees the vows are made 
 by which men bind themselves to Thee, who art 
 worth more than all the world to us. Here the 
 priceless offering of Thy dear Son's entire Sacrifice of 
 Himself is laid before Thee, and with it are offered 
 the hearts of those who are ready to sacrifice them- 
 selves to Thee in and through Him." Surely God 
 must delight in this. 
 
 This is what I have thought and felt from time to 
 time as I came in here. 
 
 But, then, a second thought has come into my mind, 
 " What if all that looks so fair be no more than out- 
 ward show ? " The Psalm sounds sweetly ; what if 
 the hearts of those who sing it be out of tune with 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 71 
 
 the law and will of God ? The saints look down 
 upon us from the windows ; what if we neglect to 
 copy their lives and ways ? What if their example 
 produces no effect on our hearts, just as the hues from 
 their painted figures, when the sun shines through 
 them, pass over the surface of the stone, but leave 
 no mark behind? What if the Sacrifice of our 
 Blessed Lord be shown forth at the Altar, but the 
 worshippers never act in union with that sacrifice, 
 and refuse to offer themselves to God ? What if our 
 Blessed Lord be ready to feed men herewith Himself, 
 but no one come to Him for life ? 
 
 And then, I said : " No, this cannot be. It would 
 be too sad." But then the thought came back : u Yet 
 it might be so. It might be so for some one here at 
 least. Go, and speak to that one, and warn and 
 plead. Show him the danger of neglecting so great 
 salvation." This, then, is what I wish to press upon 
 you to-day. There is a very great, a very real 
 danger in living in the enjoyment of such high bless- 
 ings as you have here. There is such a thing as not 
 using those blessings. There is such a thing as losing 
 them. See how plainly our blessed Lord warns us of 
 this in the text : " He that hath not, from him shall 
 be taken even that which he seemeth to have." 
 There is a sin mentioned here, and its punishment. 
 I. What is the sin ? It is the sin of not using 
 
7 2 
 
 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 the blessings which we have from God. It is clear 
 that it is against this sin that our Blessed Lord warns 
 us, for in the nineteenth chapter of St. Luke the same 
 warning is given at the end of the Parable of the 
 Talents. The servant that had made no use of his 
 lord's money, and gained nothing by trading with it, 
 was stripped of all that he had. And our Lord 
 explains the sentence that was passed on the man by 
 saying — " From him that hath not, even that he hath 
 shall be taken away from him." Again, the same warn- 
 ing is given in the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew. 
 And there the words are specially applied to the case 
 of those who have the truth set before them, and turn 
 away from it. From them the truth is veiled, and 
 hidden. They will not believe, and therefore they 
 cannot believe. The power to believe goes from them. 
 The disciples asked our Lord why he spoke to the 
 people in parables ; why He did not plainly, openly 
 tell out the full truth to them. And His answer was 
 that God gave the power to know, to see, and believe 
 the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to the dis- 
 ciples. He did not give that power to the rest. The 
 disciples were ready to make use of what they heard, 
 and therefore the truths of the Church were laid open 
 to them. The knowledge of those truths grew more 
 and more upon them. The others would not avail 
 themselves of what the Son of God was teaching, and 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 73 
 
 therefore they knew less and less of the Truth. 
 " For," our Lord says, " whosoever hath, to him shall 
 be given, and he shall have more abundunce ; but 
 whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away 
 even that he Jiath. Therefore speak I unto them in 
 parables ; because they, seeing, see not ; and hearing 
 they hear not, neither do they understand. And in 
 them is fulfilled the Prophecy of Esaias, which saith, 
 " By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; 
 and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive ; for 
 this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are 
 dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; lest 
 at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear 
 with their ears, and should understand with their heart, 
 and should be converted, and I should heal them." 
 
 Oh, strange, sad power, which is in man ! That 
 God should speak, and we should be able to refuse to 
 hear ! That God should open His mind to us, and 
 we should be able to shut out from our minds what 
 He is ready to teach us ! That the light of heaven 
 should shine all round about us, and that we should 
 be able to keep our own self-chosen darkness in the 
 midst of its shining, and to be black and lustreless 
 instead of reflecting the brilliancy of heaven ! " The 
 light shineth in darkness, and the darkness com- 
 prehendeth it not. This is the condemnation that 
 light is come into the world, and men loved darkness 
 
74 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 rather than light, because their deeds were evil." 
 That God should give, and we should be able to refuse ! 
 That He should press His mercies, and offer His 
 blessings, and shower His bounties around us, and 
 that we should be able to say, " I will have none of 
 Thy gifts ! " That the dews of His love should fall 
 all around us, and that we should be able to remain 
 dry as Gideon's fleece ! That we should " have His 
 riches, and yet not have them " ! That God should 
 open out all the treasure-house of His grace to us, 
 and yet that we should be poor and destitute in the 
 midst of the abundance which He pours out upon us ! 
 
 This is' the mystery of our probation. We have 
 that strange power of will by which the creature is 
 able to answer to the love of the Creator. And so it 
 may be our highest happiness to be drawn to God by 
 every act of His goodness to us. We may have His 
 every gift so as to be bound more and more to Him. 
 Alas ! we may so refuse use to His use gifts, that 
 one by one they shall be taken from us. 
 
 Ah, my brethen, keep this thought before you, and 
 then remember how many gifts and graces you have 
 received from God. It will make you count them 
 up with awe. 
 
 I. "He that hath ; " in one sense, so far as the act 
 of God's goodness goes, what is there which we have 
 not? 
 
XEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 75 
 
 We have been washed from sin : in Jesus Christ 
 we "have redemption through His blood, even the 
 forgiveness of our sins." 
 
 God has taken us to be His children. He has 
 bound Himself by the tenderest of ties to us as a 
 Father : " Ye are all the children of God by faith in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 We have the power to please Him, as children 
 should long to do ; for, though they that are " in the 
 flesh cannot please God, we are not in the flesh, but 
 in the Spirit." 
 
 We have the Spirit of God to guide us. It is the 
 very proof that God gives us that we are His children 
 that He has sent forth His Son into our hearts. " As 
 many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the 
 sons of God." 
 
 W T e know the truth : u Ye have an unction from the 
 Holy One and ye know all things." 
 
 We know more, we know Him from Whom the 
 truth came. We have learned Christ. We know 
 what He is to us, what He has done for us, what 
 He is in Himself, what we must be if w would 
 follow Him. 
 
 More even than this, we have been made one with 
 Christ. We are " members of His body," made out 
 " of His flesh and of His bones." His very life 
 works in us to make us like Himself. 
 
76 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 All this we " have " from God. These high 
 blessings with all that belongs to them, and flows out 
 from them, all has been given to us. In one sense we 
 " have " all these. 
 
 2. How is it, then, with us? Have we all these 
 great gifts in the fuller sense ? If forgiveness of sin 
 is pledged to us, do we hate sin, and shrink from its 
 pollution, and turn from it, lest we should grieve God ? 
 If we are the children of God, what do we know of 
 the childlike spirit, that is eager to do all that may 
 give joy to a father? If we have the power to please 
 God, what experience have we of that power ? What 
 do we know of the sense of that power working in us 
 in efforts to obey God, in willingness to suffer for His 
 sake, which St. Paul had when he said, " I can do all 
 things through Christ, which strengtheneth me ? " If 
 the Spirit of God is ever with us to lead us, do we 
 wait upon Him, quick, anxious, and ready to see the 
 way which He points out, and to choose it ? If we 
 know the Truth, do we carry out what we believe into 
 act ? If we have learnt what our blessed Lord was in 
 life, in character, in suffering, are we following Him ? 
 If He is ready to make His life work within us, are 
 we, by the power of that life, growing into His 
 likeness ? 
 
 These are fit thoughts for those so highly blessed. 
 See what calls the gifts of God make upon us. They 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 77 
 
 were not meant to be wasted. Nay, we could not 
 waste them, if we felt the full, free, rich, tender love 
 of Him Who has given us such blessings. And so 
 perhaps it may move us if we consider what God has 
 done for us. It may break our hearts into a truer 
 contrition than we have ever known yet if we try to 
 count over, what really are countless, the acts of 
 God's goodness to us, if we set ourselves to see what 
 He has been to us, and what we have been to Him. 
 In this way every blessing we have from God, from 
 our birth to our death, from our Baptism to the last 
 Sacrament which we receive, may be used as a means 
 of self-examination. Baptism itself, justification, the 
 cleansing of the soul, peace with God, His love for 
 us, His readiness to help us, His allowing us to pray, 
 His speaking to us in our hearts or by His word, His 
 teaching us by the unerring voice of His Church, the 
 light which He gives us to know Himself, or to know 
 ourselves, the power of the Cross of Christ to take 
 away sin, the power of the grace of Christ to change 
 the heart and life, the work which the Holy Spirit did 
 upon us at our Confirmation, the work which our 
 Blessed Lord does upon us in every absolution which 
 He speaks to us through the Priest, in every receiving 
 of Himself in the blessed Sacrament, we may search 
 ourselves about each and all of these, and see how far 
 in any real sense we have used, and enjoyed, and 
 
73 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 profited by, and gained from these gifts which He has 
 offered to us. Few forms of self-examination would 
 more humble us ; few would pierce us with a keener 
 sorrow ; few would more awaken in us that mourning 
 love for going against the goodness of God, which is 
 the mark of true repentance. 
 
 II. But it is not for this that I press you now to 
 remember what gifts you have had from God, and 
 what use you have made of them. No, I press this 
 on you, that you may see the danger of not using 
 them. See what the danger is, — the gifts shall be 
 taken away. "Whosoever hath not, from him shall 
 be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." 
 Oh, brethren, brethren, is it not almost agony even 
 to think of such a loss as this, here in this Church ? 
 To lose all that is within your reach here, what a woe ! 
 Instead of meeting as the members of the Church of 
 Christ, to be cut off from Him for evermore. Instead 
 of being gathered as children into your heavenly 
 Father's house, to be cast out as rebels from His 
 Family. Instead of feeling the comfort of His pre- 
 sence here to bless us, to hate the thought of that 
 presence and long to fly from it. Instead of the sound 
 of praise floating round one, to hear the ringing of 
 the curse and blasphemy against God — aye, and to 
 join in it, to join in it while we hate doing so. Instead 
 of the remembrance of Christ on His Cross inviting 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 79 
 
 the penitent and giving the hope of pardon, to feel 
 the memory of the love of the Cross, which we have 
 rejected, burning like fire into the brain. Instead of 
 the light of Truth shining into our minds, and alluring 
 us nearer and nearer to God, to have the gloom of an 
 unbroken darkness settle down for ever on the soul. 
 Instead of calm, soothing Communion with God, 
 binding us more and more to Him, and making Him 
 more and more all in all to us, to have the sound of 
 that last sentence, "Depart from Me," ever echoing 
 through the soul, and to know that we are cut off for 
 ever from Him Who can alone give peace, rest, joy, 
 and life to us. This is the completion of the misery 
 of which our Lord warns us when He says, " He that 
 hath not, from him shall be taken away even that 
 which he seemeth to have.' , Oh ! cast a glance round 
 this church, think of all that is offered to us here, 
 imagine the laying bare to our eye for only one second 
 of the comforts, the peace, the joy, the calm, the bliss 
 of union with God that have been within the reach of 
 those who have come face to face with God here, an x 
 then imagine the loss of all this, and the leaving the 
 soul to its own desolation and misery without hope, 
 without relief, without remedy, without God. It is 
 enough to break the heart to think of such a contrast. 
 
 But, dear brethren, the beginning of that woe is to 
 be seen in this world. Men begin to know even 
 
So 
 
 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 here the misery of having wasted gifts withdrawn. 
 Does no one here know that? Look especially at 
 the power to believe in the realities of the kingdom 
 of grace. It is sadly, miserably true that the Faith 
 loses its power over the heart that merely plays with 
 it. There may be some here whose own experience 
 makes them countersign what I say. They know to 
 their own unhappiness that I speak the truth. They 
 are ready to cry out in misery, " I cannot, I cannot 
 believe. Would to God the days of my childhood or 
 of my youth could come back ! I seemed then to live 
 in the Presence of God, I could almost see and feel 
 Him near me. I heard His voice speaking to me in 
 every sermon. The priest was indeed the messenger 
 of the Lord of Hosts to me. I hung upon his lips for 
 guidance, and God guided me by him. Then I found 
 my Lord in every communion. He melted my heart 
 with the memories of His own loving sorrows for me. 
 He made me ready to suffer with Him, and for Him. 
 He drew me to Himself. He raised me above myself, 
 I felt His life put forth in me to make me live to 
 God. Because He lived, I lived also. I knew my 
 own closeness to Him. Heaven was opened to me, 
 and the angels of God were ascending and descend- 
 ing on the Son of Man. The Church was indeed to 
 me the kingdom of heaven, full of light and inspira- 
 tion, and blessing, and protection, and strength, and 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 81 
 
 manifestations of God. But now all seems to be 
 empty, and bare, and desolate. No voices come to me 
 from God. No preacher ever reaches my heart. The 
 truths of the Catholic faith are dim, shadowy, and 
 uncertain. I am almost ready with Pilate, only more 
 mournfully, to ask, 1 What is Truth ? Is there any 
 Truth ? 1 All calls to high duties seem strained, ex- 
 travagant, and fanatical. If it was not for old habit, 
 I could almost ask whether it can be true that our 
 Blessed Lord really ever dwells in those who receive 
 His Body and Blood. I am living like one in a 
 dream. All that I hear and see in religion looks so 
 utterly unreal to me. Sometimes I feel as if it would 
 be a positive relief to throw off even the outward 
 semblance of religion, to have done with the dreary 
 farce of acting the part of a Christian, and to laugh 
 outright at all which once seemed so full of awe and 
 mystery." 
 
 Is there any one here across whose mind such 
 thoughts have ever passed ? If there be any one who 
 has sunk to a state of spiritual destitution so un- 
 utterably sad, how was that state reached ? 
 
 I. I will not go beyond what you may have seen 
 and heard in this church. Ah, it may be you have 
 knelt before that altar, and high above it you have 
 seen the picture of God in His poverty and humilia- 
 tion, stripped, bare, and naked, in shame and disgraced, 
 
 G 
 
32 
 
 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 the very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people. 
 You have gazed in soul on that form, which, marred 
 as it is, in its lifting up has a strange, supernatural 
 beauty that draws all men to it. You have heard 
 of the blessedness of following your Lord in self- 
 denial, and suffering, and humility. But you have 
 indulged self in luxuries ; your table has been loaded 
 with delicacies ; your rooms have been crowded with 
 all that could minister to comfort ; your whole life 
 has been passed in ease and softness ; you have 
 worshipped wealth ; you have schemed for it, you 
 have sinned for it ; you have sought out those who 
 had it as your friends ; you have lived beyond your 
 means to make a show of wealth ; you have simulat- 
 ed by extravagance a wealth which you had not ; 
 you have entailed misery on yourself and others by 
 debts which you cannot pay ; you have defrauded 
 others to increase your own sinful indulgences ; you 
 have deceived others by appearances ; you have 
 striven to hide your own humble origin. Ah, you 
 have grieved Him Who became poor for your sakes ; 
 you have shrunk from suffering ; you have been 
 ashamed of seeming to be as poor as Jesus ; you 
 have minded earthly things, and become an enemy of 
 the Cross of Christ. And now you cannot believe in 
 the blessedness and safety of suffering, and the Cross, 
 and the contempt of the world, and poverty borne for 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 83 
 
 your Lord's sake, or wealth poured at His feet. Do 
 you wonder ? Do you murmur ? Do you complain ? 
 " He that hath not, from him shall be taken even that 
 which he seemeth to have." You had the knowledge 
 of His poverty and shame. You felt what it called 
 you to. You acted against this knowledge. You 
 cannot now even believe that to take up the Cross 
 and follow Him is blessed. 
 
 Or, again, you have seen here before your eyes God 
 in His sufferings ; you have seen Him completing 
 the Sacrifice of His whole life in which He offered 
 -'-Himself to do all, and to bear all, out of love for God 
 and man, by the sacrifice of His death, in which He 
 yielded Himself up to go through every agony that 
 was to come upon Him. Within sight of that Form 
 stretched out there without a murmur and without a 
 struggle, you have heard the high teaching from the 
 pulpit that called upon you to offer yourself up to 
 God to do all and to suffer all for Him with and 
 through your Lord. And then perhaps you have 
 gone and indulged your own will and fancy, and 
 fretted at every restraint that was set on you. You 
 have never tried what it was to sacrifice your money 
 in alms ; you have thought how little, not how much 
 you could give, — nor your bodily comforts in fasting — 
 the old-fashioned strictness of the Church, — nor 
 your time in prayer, meditation, and acts of charity. 
 
84 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 Is it any wonder if all such teaching seems visionary 
 and unpractical to you, if you are almost ready to 
 feel that nothing but the heated brain of an enthusiast 
 could make S. Paul say, " I am crucified with Christ, 
 yet I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me " ? 
 
 2. But it may be that your case is more unhappy 
 still. You are losing faith in the miracles of grace. 
 You cannot believe in the converting power of the 
 Word of God, because you have learnt too well how 
 to resist it. You have listened to sermons to criticise 
 them, to gain a moment's excitement from them, to 
 comfort yourself by agreeing with them, to make up 
 for a lifelong disobedience to God by a moment's 
 approving of what His servants say. Yes, you have 
 forgotten that the word which God spoke to you by 
 His minister was judging you ; " the word which I 
 have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you in 
 the last day." And you have presumed to admire, 
 to patronise, and to judge the minister of God. But 
 you have not heard the Word of God, and kept it. 
 And now it never rouses, moves, warms, or awakens 
 you. " He that hath not, from him shall be taken 
 even that which he seemeth to have." 
 
 (a.) Is it not the same with Prayer ? Because you 
 have not asked, and not received, you are beginning to 
 doubt whether any do receive ; whether there is any 
 mighty power in Prayer. 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSINGS, S5 
 
 (£.) It may be even so with absolution. If you have 
 long confessed without contrition ; or even if, when 
 you have been loosed from the chains of sins, you 
 have not used that blessed freedom to make more 
 earnest efforts in the service of God, like the Psalmist, 
 who said, " I will run the way of Thy Commandments 
 when Thou hast set my heart at liberty," it is too 
 likely that your very faith in God's power to loose 
 you is being taken away. 
 
 (c.) Worst of all, if you have come to the Blessed 
 Sacrament, and have brought to our Lord a heart 
 that was in alliance with His enemy the world, and if 
 you have so shut Him out from your heart, you may 
 have come to doubt whether there is any such thing 
 as real union with Him. 
 
 Alas, then, is not the punishment working? That 
 which you seemed to have is being taken away. By 
 degrees all faith, all trust is dying out of you. There 
 seems to be no strength, no power, no person, apart 
 from yourself, on whom you may lean. The image 
 of God is fading away from before your eyes, out of 
 His Church, and, as the mists thicken round you, you 
 are bewildered, lost, confused, helpless, and hopeless, 
 and you are ready to close your eyes, and refuse to 
 think lest you should see the horror of the gulf into 
 which you are sinking. 
 
 III. And now, in the name of God, what is to save 
 
86 
 
 THE FORFEITURE OF 
 
 any who are taking the first step towards the abyss, 
 before the horror of that great darkness falls upon 
 them ? 
 
 1. Think what neglect of high privileges brings 
 men to. See this pictured to us in the end of 
 Jerusalem. We cannot dwell now on the sorrows of 
 that city so long loved, so richly blessed by God, but 
 given over at last to the fury of its enemies. The 
 sorrows were so great that our Lord wept at the 
 thought of all that the city had lost, and of all that 
 was coming upon it. And the sufferings of Jerusalem 
 are a parable of the sufferings of a lost soul, torn by 
 evil passions raging within it, beset, surrounded, 
 overcome by its enemies, helpless, and defenceless 
 against this malice, deserted and bereft of the Presence 
 of God. And as our Lord weeps out over Jerusalem 
 the sad lament, " If thou hadst known, even thou, at 
 least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy 
 peace ! But now they are hid from thine eyes," 
 we see the meaning of His words, " He that hath 
 not, from him shall be taken even that which he 
 seemeth to have." 
 
 2. Ah, but we see more. We see our hope. We 
 see that the hope of those who have been wasting the 
 gifts of God, but who would do so no more, lies in 
 the tender, mourning, patient love of the Son of God, 
 and in the yearning of His heart over us. What a 
 
NEGLECTED BLESSIXGS. 87 
 
 sorrow must that have been over Jerusalem which 
 almost broke the heart of the Son of God ; which 
 broke up the fountains of the great deep of His 
 compassion, and made the tears, which never fell for 
 His own bitter sufferings, fall so fast for the woes of 
 others ! — a new flood to wash the world ! And what a 
 love must have been the moving cause of that sorrow ! 
 a love which had borne with scorn, and ingratitude, 
 and hardness, and contempt, and rejection of His 
 offers ! In that love lies our hope. To that love let 
 us appeal for pardon for ever} 7 wasted opportunity, for 
 every formal prayer, and every unworthy Com- 
 munion, for every neglected warning, for the graces we 
 have spurned, for the graces we have not used, for a life 
 of profession which has been a lie before Him, and a 
 seeming service which has been well-nigh as bad 
 as the kiss of Judas. If even now we feel shame, fear, 
 sorrow at having been so hard to Him Who has been so 
 good to us, that sorrow is a gift which comes from His 
 love. And there is a strange power of reversing our 
 ruin of ourselves in His love. Hear His own words : 
 " I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast 
 left thy first love. Remember, therefore, from whence 
 thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works." 
 Not until we refuse this warning will He remove "the 
 candle-stick out of its place." 
 
 " Be watchful and strengthen the things which 
 
88 FORFEITURE OF NEGLECTED BLESSINGS. 
 
 remain, that are ready to die ; remember how thou 
 hast received, and heard, and hold fast, and repent." 
 Before His gifts are lost for ever, He stirs us thus to 
 use them. 
 
 Even with the lukewarm, who are on the edge of 
 that terrible rejection, " I will spue thee out of My 
 mouth," He says " I counsel thee to buy of Me gold 
 tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich ; and white 
 raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the 
 shame of thy nakedness do not appear ; and anoint 
 thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see." 
 Here is the promise of a new forgiveness, a new light, 
 and a new love. There is a higher promise still, in 
 which He offers the most that we can ask, His Own 
 close Presence, even in the soul which once had 
 ceased to care for him ; " As many as I love, I rebuke 
 and chasten ; be zealous, therefore, and repent. 
 Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man 
 hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to 
 him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." Ah, 
 then, even to us the restoration of all that has 
 seemed lost, or almost lost, is possible ; not only the 
 graces which we have forfeited, but Himself, the 
 Giver, and Source, and Fountain of all graces, the 
 Life and Joy of the soul. 
 
UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 89 
 
 VI. 
 
 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 Preached at St. Michael's, Brighton, November 6, 1866. 
 
 1 Corinthians x. 17. 
 
 " We being many are one bread, and one body : for we are all 
 partakers of that one Bread." 
 
 We are met together this morning, my brethren, to 
 thank God for making us able to do some work for 
 Him in His Church during the past year. We are 
 met to ask His pardon for the many faults which we 
 have committed in that work, for thoughts, and words, 
 and acts which so marred that work. We are met to 
 offer ourselves afresh to God to work more truly and 
 earnestly for Him in the coming year. We come 
 before Him to ask for wisdom, and guidance, and 
 strength to do whatever we may be called to do ; 
 and to get, if it may be, a clearer view of the principles 
 
90 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 on which all work in the Church of God ought to be 
 done. This is, I suppose, the object of a yearly 
 commemoration of a Church Union. And there is a 
 strange mixture of sadness and joy in such a meeting 
 as this of ours to-day. There must be very deep 
 sadness in the heart of any of us who loves our Blessed 
 Lord, as we think what the Church looks like to Him. 
 Alas ! What carelessness, and coldness, what un- 
 holiness and sin does He see in the members of His 
 Church ! What errors, and false doctrines, and delu- 
 sions, and darkness have clouded over the souls of 
 those whom He longs to enlighten with the light of 
 His truth ! What misunderstandings, and divisions, 
 and contentions have separated those whom He desires 
 to bind fast together in the bonds of love ! What 
 wilfulness and disorder does His eye mark in the 
 ranks of those who ought to find their happiness in 
 bringing every thought into obedience to Christ, and 
 in living in a glad submission to the loving rule of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven ! This must be a grief to our 
 Blessed Lord. It must be a grief to any one of us 
 who ever stops to think what the Church was meant 
 to be, and what it is. The very name your body 
 bears has in it the mark of failure and sin. For why 
 should there be a Church Union at all as distin- 
 guished from the whole body of the Church ? There 
 was indeed a Church Union in the days of the 
 
UNION A SUPERNA TURAL GIFT. 91 
 
 apostles, but it was the union of the whole Church, 
 banded together in one faith, in one love, in one 
 single devotion to God. "The multitude of them 
 that believed were of one heart and of one soul." 
 11 They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, 
 and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
 prayers." Why is there need of any narrower Church 
 Union now? It is only because to so many the 
 faith, and peace, and order, and well-being of the 
 Church are not dear as they should be. And this 
 must throw a shade of sadness over our hearts 
 to-day. 
 
 And yet some joy at least will mingle with that 
 sadness, for it is some cause of joy that any one of 
 you should have been drawn to our Blessed Lord, 
 and should be ready to work for Him. It is some 
 cause of joy that you so love and prize the truth 
 which our Blessed Lord taught to the world that you 
 are ready to defend, and preserve it for the good of 
 others. No one can wonder that you should be ready 
 to do so. If you have found that there is strength, 
 and support, and guidance, and happiness for the 
 soul in each part of the Catholic Faith, then you could 
 not help doing your utmost to keep that Faith so pure 
 that others may receive it in all its fulness and rich- 
 ness. If you have found for yourselves peace with 
 God, and forgiveness, and grace, and blessing in the 
 
92 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 Sacraments of the Church, then you must long that 
 others should share in those blessings. No one can 
 wonder at this. But it must be a happiness to any 
 one to notice year by year the increasing number of 
 those who are ready to work for the Church, because 
 they have found for themselves the truth of Christ 
 and the grace of Christ in the Church, and because 
 they would wish all others to be blessed as they have 
 been blessed. 
 
 And now, dear brethren, let us consider how this 
 work which you have at heart is to be done. How 
 is the Faith of the Church to be defended and spread ? 
 How are the Order and Discipline of the Church to 
 be restored ? You will tell me at once that this must 
 be done through union. "It is the meaning," you 
 will say, " of the very title which we bear. We have 
 bound ourselves together in a Church union, because 
 we are convinced that a firm, united band can do 
 more to carry a great object to a successful issue than 
 ever so many individuals acting separately. Union 
 is strength." Undoubtedly union is strength. It is 
 one of the commonest and truest maxims of worldly 
 wisdom. Would to God the children of light were 
 wise enough in their generation to see and act upon 
 the wisdom of the maxim ! If any work is to be done 
 in the Church, we must have union of heart, and will, 
 and mind, and purpose, and action. And such true 
 
UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 93 
 
 union will win its way. The true union of those first 
 believers, who were of one heart, and of one soul, did 
 win its way. The world was astonished, overawed, 
 attracted, subdued, hushed, and conquered by such 
 a union. But why ? That unearthly union — in which 
 all souls became one — in which lower interests were 
 merged in an interest transcendently higher — in 
 which all hearts beat together with one pulse of love, 
 and were thrilling with one common hope, in which 
 all affections were centered in One Person — whence 
 did it come ? What did it speak of ? That Union 
 came from heaven. It spoke of heaven. It was 
 brought out in the Church by the influence of the 
 King of Heaven, moulding all wills to His Own 
 blessed Will. That union spoke of a mind, a spirit, 
 a presence above the nature of man directing all the 
 purposes of man into one channel. Have we got such 
 a union, in which selfishness, and lower aims, and 
 the love of our own opinion, and the enjoyment of an 
 intellectual triumph, and the fondness for some petty 
 scheme, or the determination to carry out some 
 favourite notion are cast out and overcome by one 
 absorbing, purifying, ennobling interest, which takes 
 possession of all souls, as if there were but one soul 
 in the multitude of the believers ? 
 
 Answer, answer, hearts and consciences, as ye 
 remember the words that have been spoken, and the 
 
94 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 things that have been done, professedly in the Name 
 of God ! 
 
 Would we have such a union ? Oh, does it not 
 seem a fair thing to us, with the warmth and closeness 
 of its affection — with the fulness of mutual comfort 
 and support in our holy work, and the countenance 
 of God beaming upon it, and the spirit of love 
 working even more fully in its congenial atmosphere ? 
 As we turn from the thought of the bickerings, and 
 the suspicions, and the unkindnesses of those who 
 are not at one, to the thought of this oneness of heart, 
 do we not almost cry out in pain at the contrast — 
 " Behold how good and joyful a thing it is for brethren 
 to dwell together in unity ? " 
 
 And can we have such union amongst ourselves ? 
 Undoubtedly we can. But how shall we get it ? Is 
 it to be got by taking counsel with one another, or 
 by laying down fixed rules of action, and agreeing to 
 follow them ? These things are useful, but they will 
 not give union. There is something which must 
 come before all these. Union is a supernatural gift. 
 That which separates man ; that which makes one 
 will jar against another is the selfishness of our 
 sinful nature. And the blessed change which can 
 alone bring all hearts into a true union is a change 
 worked within us by a higher nature acting on our 
 nature. We may agree to work for one end ; we 
 
UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 95 
 
 may bind ourselves by rules in our efforts to attain 
 that end ; but this is only an outward plan of agree- 
 ment. True, lasting, real, firm union must spring 
 from an inward principle stirring in all souls in 
 common. And is this within our reach ? It is indeed. 
 It is one of the miracles of our Blessed Lord's love 
 and grace to work such a union within and amongst 
 us. We are ready now to understand the secret of 
 true union which is given us in the text. I have been 
 leading you to see clearly the difficulties that stand 
 in the way of union, that you may mount above the 
 world, and carry up your thoughts to the throne and 
 seat of union in the bosom and mind of our Blessed 
 Lord. " We being many are one bread and one body, 
 for we are all partakers of that One Bread." The 
 beginning of union is to be found in the life of Christ 
 imparted to the soul, when " by One Spirit we are all 
 baptised into One Body." The maintaining of union 
 is to be accomplished by the feeding in the holy 
 Eucharist on Him who is the One Bread. As our 
 Blessed Lord gives Himself to the soul, the soul feeds 
 on Him and lives by Him. The life, the power, the 
 strength of Christ passes into the soul, and so the 
 character of Christ is formed in the soul. Old things 
 pass away, behold all things become new. The soul 
 begins to love with the love which Christ awakens 
 within it ; to long for what Christ longs for ; to yield 
 
96 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 itself up to work for, and to be worked on by Christ 
 And this takes place in all the multitude of souls that 
 are dwelt in by our Blessed Lord. One life, one 
 converting power, one renewing grace works in all. 
 Nay, let us claim the fulness of truth in all its 
 astonishing blessedness ; not strength only, not any 
 mere gift is bestowed upon us, not any mere effluence 
 from our Lord visits our souls, but, what is far more, 
 One living, loving Lord personally works in all who 
 feed on Him, and so binds heart to heart in Himself. 
 Our Blessed Lord is, as it were, the heart and centre 
 of all life, love, purity, and holiness, and we are as 
 the limbs through which the life-blood circulates. 
 The presence of Christ is to the souls in which He 
 dwells what the breath of God was to the limbs of 
 Adam that had been fashioned out of the dust. It 
 fills them with the power of one common life, and 
 stirs them to the common action which springs from 
 the principle of that common inward life. Without 
 this living union with Christ, rules, and plans, and 
 regulations, and designs will never hold hearts to- 
 gether. You might as well take the branches severed 
 from a tree, and bind them together by cords 
 outwardly, and imagine that you could so make them 
 into one living tree, with the unity of a real life within 
 it, as imagine that you could make men really one by 
 the outward bands of rules, and laws restraining them. 
 
UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. ' 97 
 
 You could not so give a real, lasting union. There 
 might be outward conformity, and perhaps even a 
 measure of agreement for a time, in a society of men 
 so bound together ; but sooner or later the separated 
 life which every one would be living in his selfishness 
 would assert itself, and union would be lost. On the 
 other hand, where a living union with Christ exists, it 
 will mould men into a faster union, as they are more 
 possessed with the life that comes from Him and 
 as they grow into the likeness of our Blessed Lord. 
 And so St. Paul says that, the whole object of our 
 being brought together in the Church is that we may 
 " grow up into Him in all things, Which is the Head, 
 even Christ : from Whom the whole body fitly joined 
 together and compacted by that which every joint 
 supplieth, according to the effectual working in the 
 measure of every part, maketh increase of the body 
 unto the edifying of itself in love." 
 
 Let us see, then, what this involves. 
 
 1. First, of course, it shows us that the receiving of 
 the blessed Sacrament of the holy Eucharist is the 
 chief means for binding us together in a holy, true, and 
 loving union : " We being many are one bread, and 
 one body, for we are all partakers of that One Bread." 
 But there can be no need for me to press this on you. 
 It is a truth that has become dear to you in many 
 and many an act of communion with your Lord. 
 
 H 
 
93 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 2. I will, then, rather ask you next, whether you 
 see all that the receiving of the holy Eucharist, in 
 its turn, involves. If the wonderful blessedness of 
 communion lies in its being the means by which the 
 life of our Lord passes into the soul, then we need to 
 watch very closely how far there is a real communion 
 between our spirit and His Spirit. Do we indeed 
 crave to be one in heart and mind with our Blessed 
 Lord ? Are our plans such as He would wish to have 
 carried out ? Are the things which we long for such 
 as He longs to give ? I hardly know a more useful 
 question for the members of a Church Union to put 
 to themselves than this. We have our schemes and 
 intentions for the coming year. There are objects 
 which we have set before us. Is it the life of Christ 
 stirring within our souls which moves us to attempt 
 these things ? Are they in harmony with His will ? 
 Are they the objects of His heart ? It may help us to 
 answer these questions if we remember that there are 
 certain signs of our being brought into more entire 
 union with our Blessed Lord. 
 
 (a.) One such sign is a glad and ready submission 
 to our heavenly Father's will. How marvellous is the 
 combined fervour and patience of our Lord ! He 
 comes into the world, burning to do His Father's 
 work : " Lo ! I come to do Thy will, O Lord," is the 
 expression of His Spirit as He enters on His earthly 
 
UNION A SUPERNA TURAL GIFT. 99 
 
 course. Throughout His whole ministry there is a 
 positive hungering for work : u My meat is to do 
 the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His 
 work." And yet He waited till He was thirty years 
 old at Nazareth for the appointed time to begin ; and 
 He bore — who can say how meekly — with all that 
 crossed His purposes. See what a pattern we have 
 here for all Church work ; what reason to try the 
 singleness of our aims ; what need to notice how we 
 bear the contradiction of others ; and how far we are 
 able to restrain our eagerness, and to wait God's 
 time for His work to be done ; if we would make 
 sure that we are working in union with our Lord. 
 
 (b.) Mark, again, how our Blessed Lord obeyed 
 the law and ritual of the Jewish Church. See how 
 He submitted Himself to this in His Circumcision, in 
 His Presentation in the Temple, and in the many 
 other acts of worship which He offered as man, and 
 yet remember how He must have seen the imper- 
 fections of that system which was meant only for the 
 training of the people of God before the full truth 
 was manifested. And then contrast with this the 
 way in which some fret and chafe at what seem to 
 them imperfections in the law and ritual of the 
 Church now. Remember, while you think of this, 
 how often the fault may lie in those who murmur, 
 in their ignorance, or in their misunderstanding of the 
 
 H 2 
 
too UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 law of the Church, not in any real imperfection in 
 that law. And then see whether those who are im- 
 patient with everything that does not fall in with their 
 own, perhaps mistaken, ideal of perfection can be said 
 to be one in spirit with Him Who, in His perfect 
 obedience, said, " Suffer it to be so now, for thus it 
 becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." 
 
 (Y.) And so, as rising out of this, what special need 
 we have to guard against the following of self-will 
 and the indulgence of our own fancies ! We may 
 well doubt if there is any true communion of our 
 heart with the heart of Him who pleased not Himself, 
 if we are always eager to please the eye, the ear, or 
 even the imagination and the intellect in matters of 
 religion. 
 
 (d.) Above all, if we would be one with our Lord, 
 we must in our communion seek to be cleansed from 
 sin. It is sin which darkens the mind, and clouds 
 over the soul. We must crave to be set free from 
 sin in whatever form, whether of unkindliness, or 
 jealousy, or harshness, or vanity, or fierceness of 
 temper, or luxury, or defiling passion. There can be 
 no passing of the life of Christ into our souls if we keep 
 wilfully in our souls what He hates. It is only if we 
 walk in the light as He is in the light that we have 
 fellowship one with another, He with us, and we with 
 Him. 
 
UMON A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 101 
 
 3. And then, further, if we are living in communion 
 with our Blessed Lord ; if our communions are so 
 real that He and we are really brought together in 
 the receiving of the Blessed Sacrament, then we shall 
 catch His temper and disposition. And perhaps 
 there is no kind of work in which that temper and 
 disposition have more opportunity for showing them- 
 selves than in the work of a Church Union. What 
 is your aim and object, my brethren ? It is to bring 
 men to receive the Truth, and so to lead them to 
 God. And this is the very object of our Lord Himself, 
 at least in this you are one with Him. But see how 
 He worked for that object : how He yearned over 
 the men that were in error ; how patiently He taught 
 them ; how quick He was to make allowances for 
 them ; how deep was His compassion for their misery . 
 how gentle He was in His dealings with them. See 
 whether you are one with Him in this meekness and 
 lowliness of heart. Oh, pity, pity the poor world. 
 Do not be impatient, harsh, overbearing towards those 
 who cannot see the truth. Believe that men would 
 be glad to see it. Their spirits are often aching for 
 want of it, even while they know not this want. Deal 
 with the erring as you would deal with a sick man. 
 Pity, not impatience, is the feeling that should move 
 us towards those who have not received the faith. It 
 was pity that drew our Lord to seek and to save that 
 
io2 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 which was lost. He was moved with compassion 
 because they fainted, and were scattered abroad as 
 sheep having no Shepherd. If His life be in us, and 
 we are one with Him, pity and tender compassion 
 will be the one constraining feeling of our minds. 
 And then, my brethren, what becomes of bitter 
 condemnation of others, and sharp, clever, biting 
 sayings, and arrogance of mind, and heart, and ex- 
 pression, and intellectual triumphs, and all the 
 uncharitableness that arises out of unchastened con- 
 troversy ? Surely these must pass away where the 
 Spirit of Jesus rules the heart. Surely where they 
 remain there is reason to fear that the bond of Com- 
 munion with our Lord is very feeble. " The fruit of 
 the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, 
 goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Where these 
 tempers are, we may well believe that the life of Christ 
 is working in the soul. But where, instead of these, 
 we find " variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, 
 heresies," perhaps even "hatred," must we not fear 
 that the soul is losing the life of Christ, and that 
 death is beginning to work within it ? The life of 
 Christ may indeed yet cast out this death ; but unless 
 this be so this death will shut out His life. 
 
 4. And this leads us naturally to a further point as 
 regards our dealings with others. If one common 
 life works in the whole Church, then we ought to 
 
UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 103 
 
 cherish in ourselves a strong faith that our Lord 
 works in others as well as in ourselves. And this 
 would make us ready to learn from others. In our 
 Lord "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily." "In Him" alone "are hid all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge." How sad is it, then, to 
 hear men speaking with an assumption of perfect 
 wisdom, treating others with superciliousness, and 
 almost lecturing their companions with a tone of 
 superiority, as if they had attained themselves to the 
 whole range of knowledge ! They venture to seat 
 themselves aloft as on a tribunal from which to 
 pronounce infallible decrees. Is not this to forget 
 that " unto every one of us is given grace only 
 according to the measure of the gift of Christ " ? 
 The One Spirit of our Lord " divideth to every man 
 severally as He will." Others, then, have their gifts 
 and powers from God as well as ourselves. Others 
 have their work to do in the Church as well as we. 
 Rather, He Who is the life of the Church uses others 
 as His limbs, and organs, as well as ourselves. Let 
 us recognise His presence. Often and often some 
 side of the truth, partly hidden or kept in the back- 
 ground by ourselves, would be brought out more fully 
 by the mind of another, if we would be ready to listen 
 to the voice of Christ speaking through another. The 
 mind that is in union with Christ's mind will 
 
104 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 recognise His tones often when least expected. 
 Just as in the dim morning light, when our Blessed 
 Lord stood on the shore, the beloved disciple, with 
 the quick eye of a ready affection, recognised Him, 
 and said, " It is the Lord," so the heart that really 
 loves our Lord, whenever any fragment of the truth 
 is put forth by any one, will recognise that truth as 
 coming from our Lord, and will say, " It is the Lord's 
 voice, it is part of His teaching." There is no 
 saying how we might gain in intercourse with others 
 if, instead of being eager to force our own view, instead 
 of being eager to battle down the opinion of another, 
 instead of having the eye keenly set to find out error, 
 we would watch with a loving glance to discern some 
 of the forms of truth ; if, instead of " rejoicing in 
 iniquity, we would rejoice in the truth." 
 
 You will not misunderstand me, brethren. We 
 know that Catholic Truth is one, clear, distinct, 
 definite. But we know also that from the first it has 
 been given to the great minds of the teachers of the 
 Church to illustrate different sides of the truth. Do 
 we not believe that the same work is done amongst 
 ourselves now ? and, if so, ought we not to be ready to 
 learn one from another ? If Church Union does not 
 imply this, I do not know what it does imply. 
 
 5. But let me pass to one last thought that may well 
 animate and encourage, if it also awes and restrains, 
 
UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 105 
 
 you in your work. If, as we partake of the One 
 Bread, we become one Body ; if the life of our Lord 
 joins us together ; if His character is more and more 
 formed within us, and we are so more entirely one 
 with Him — then what a power is there on our side ! 
 The strength of Christ is on our side. The love of 
 Christ is shedding its influence over the earth through 
 us. It is no more we that work, but Christ Who 
 dwelleth in us. It is the wisdom of God that is to 
 reach the minds of men through us. It is the loving 
 law of God that is to mould the wills of men in His 
 Church through us. This may well make us think 
 and act with care, with watchfulness, with awe ; for 
 what a thing it is to be the instruments of God, to be 
 used by Him for bringing back a world that has fallen 
 into error and misery into the way of truth and 
 peace ! But, full of awe as the thought of our union 
 with God is, it is more full of hope and joy ; for, 
 when God works, the work must prosper. The King 
 of Kings goeth forth conquering and to conquer. 
 Before Him darkness and ignorance, sin and error, 
 confusion and discord, suffering and misery will 
 sooner or later flee away. It may be that the 
 Church, and we with the Church, may yet have to 
 pass through much suffering and trial, yes, even 
 through scorn, and derision, and rejection. So did 
 her Head, our Blessed Lord Himself, in the days of 
 
106 UNION A SUPERNATURAL GIFT. 
 
 His flesh. The world that rose up against Him 
 seemed to have its way, and He lay dead in His 
 grave. But He could not be conquered then. He 
 rose to life. And He cannot be conquered now. 
 The hour of His triumph will come. And blessed, 
 thrice blessed they who have lived in union with 
 Him, for, in the hour of His triumph, they too shall 
 triumph over all that now afflicts this poor world. 
 
 Be calm, then, my brethren, be patient, be firm, be 
 loving, be true, " be of one mind, live in peace, and 
 the God of love and peace shall be with you." Live 
 in real union of heart and will, of intention and act 
 with our Blessed Lord, let His purpose be your 
 purpose, and that purpose shall prevail at last. 
 " Magna est Veritas et prsevalebit." Yea, rather, 
 " Magnus est Ille qui dixit, Ego sum Veritas et Vita, 
 et praevalebit." 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERS A TURAL. 107 
 
 VII. 
 
 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 Preached at St. Michael's, Brighton, 1S66. Feast of St. Michael 
 and .All Angels. 
 
 St. John i. 50, 51. 
 
 " Jesus answered and said unto him, 1 Because I said unto 
 thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou ? Thou shalt 
 see greater things than these.' And he saith unto him, 1 Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and 
 the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of 
 Man.' " 
 
 THE use of such days as these, my brethren, is to 
 lift us nearer to God and heaven. All that we see 
 and hear around us this morning ought to do this. 
 If it does not, then the services of this week have lost 
 their point. Just as the great gathering of subjects at 
 the court of the sovereign on some high day helps to 
 bring out the greatness of the sovereign before men's 
 eyes, so, when we see the throngs of worshippers in 
 
io8 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 this holy place, the court of the King of Kings, it 
 helps to bring home to us something of the great- 
 ness of Him before Whom every knee in this great 
 crowd bows down. Just as loyal hearts grow even 
 more loyal, as men find themselves banded together 
 to testify their devotion to the sovereign, and en- 
 thusiasm spreads from one to the other, so, as we join 
 together here in one united band to show honour to 
 God, we feel our love and devotion to Him stirred to 
 a greater warmth. Every note of every hymn that 
 swells out from those amongst whom we stand, 
 makes our own souls thrill with more fervent praise ; 
 nay, every device which is painted on these walls 
 speaks of a pious love that delights to do something 
 for God, and so reminds us of what we owe to Him. 
 In all these ways a Feast of Dedication kindles the 
 loyalty of our hearts towards God. 
 
 But, besides this, such days ought to plant some 
 point of the faith deeper or to bring higher points 
 of the faith before us. Each fresh Feast of Dedi- 
 cation ought to be a step onwards. I do not mean in 
 outward things. It ought to make us know more of 
 God, and resolve to do more for God. Has not the 
 past year been preparing you for this ? If not, for 
 what has it been preparing you ? Probably at your 
 last Dedication Feast some new side of truth was 
 presented to you by the priest who spoke to you. 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNA TURAL. 109 
 
 Some new light was thrown upon the faith which 
 the Church teaches. Some new demand was made 
 upon your hearts. Some new and higher path of 
 duty was opened out to you. And how was this 
 followed on God's part ? By continual gifts of new 
 strength : by constant visits of God to your heart. 
 How many times has He let you seek His face here 
 in the holy services of this church since the last 
 Anniversary Feast of your church. In how many 
 Eucharists has He fed you with Himself. And now, 
 to day, after working in your souls for all the year 
 past, He has a new step for you to take. He makes 
 a fresh demand upon you. He calls you nearer to 
 Himself. He asks you to give up something more 
 for Him. He invites you to be still more fully His 
 Own, and to taste of the happiness of a more thorough 
 surrendering of yourselves to Him. He has shown 
 you great things ; He says to you that you shall " see 
 greater things than these." 
 
 Let me beseech you all to take care. Do not hold 
 back. Do not lose yourselves in what is merely out- 
 ward and passing. There is a very real danger here. 
 It is hardly possible for any one of you who loves 
 this church not to take an interest in the services of 
 to-day. You can hardly help feeling something of 
 the excitement caused by them. You perhaps enter 
 eagerly into the preparations for them, and take your 
 
no FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 part with delight in what you have been looking 
 forward to. It is only too possible for all this to do 
 you harm. All this interest and excitement may 
 only tie your thoughts and affections the more fast 
 to earth. It may only be a more subtle form of self- 
 pleasing. And so you will lose the real blessing of 
 such days as these. While you are busy with the 
 things that speak of God, you will forget God Him- 
 self. Do not do so. Try to use the services of these 
 days so as to gain some real advance in the service of 
 God, Just as a skilful swimmer would throw him- 
 self upon some strong wave that he might be borne 
 upon it high up on the shore, so throw yourselves into 
 the swelling wave of Church life that is rolling on 
 to-day. Use the solemn services of to-day to bear 
 you onward, higher and higher up the shore of ever- 
 lasting life. 
 
 Look at the history of the text and you will see 
 that such advance is granted by God to those who are 
 seeking Him in earnest. See how Nathanael was led 
 on by God. God gave him the Holy Scriptures to 
 guide him. He used these, and studied them, so that he 
 was on the look-out for the Messias of Whom Moses 
 and the prophets wrote. Then God sent him a call 
 through Philip. Philip told him that he had found 
 the Messias. There seemed to be everything against 
 the truth of what Philip told him, but Nathanael 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. in 
 
 went to see if it was true. He was ready to look into 
 the matter. At once he went to our Blessed Lord. 
 Even while he was coming, our Blessed Lord showed 
 Nathanael that He knew him, and could read his 
 heart. "Jesus saith of him, 'Behold an Israelite 
 indeed, in whom is no guile." This was a step on for 
 Nathanael. He felt that this could be no common 
 man who claimed to be able to look in and pronounce 
 that the heart was right with God. 1 How can this 
 be ? ' he says. ' Whence knowest Thou me ? ' Jesus 
 answered, and said unto him, 1 Before that Philip 
 called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw 
 thee." Oh, strange, strange ! When he was alone, com- 
 muning with God, as it seems, in secret under the fig 
 tree, hidden from man, his spirit feeling that there was 
 One alone with him, his heart laid bare to one eye alone, 
 in that moment our Lord says He was with Na- 
 thanael. The word smote upon Nathanael's heart. He 
 felt that he had to do with One whose gaze could 
 follow him everywhere ; out of the circle of Whose 
 surrounding presence he could not flee. And so he 
 cries out, " Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God ! Thou 
 art the King of Israel ! " 
 
 Even this was great faith. His earnestness, his 
 sincerity, his willingness to learn had been highlv 
 blessed. He showed that he felt that the eye of God 
 was able to search him through and through, and 
 
U2 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 that he could not move out of the presence of God. 
 But was this all which he had to learn ? No, this is no 
 more than what we call natural religion. There were 
 higher things for him to reach yet. Our Lord said 
 unto him, " Because I said unto thee, I saw thee 
 under the fig tree, believest thou ? Thou shalt see 
 greater things than these. Verily, verily, I say unto 
 you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the 
 angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
 Son of Man." What was this that he was to see ? 
 What new wonder was he to learn ? You will say, 
 perhaps, that he was to see the holy angels waiting 
 on our blessed Lord. Could this be what he was to 
 see ? They did wait upon our Lord. At his Birth 
 they burst from the cloud that hides them, and 
 showed themselves in hosts to the wondering shep- 
 herds, and sang forth the praises of the Love of our 
 Lord. When His sore Temptation was over, and He 
 was worn by the struggle, and faint from His long 
 Fast, they came to minister to Him. But this could 
 not be what Nathanael was to see. In the agony in 
 the garden an angel strengthened our Blessed Lord, 
 but Nathanael was not there to see it. Angels were 
 at the sepulchre, to tell the glad news that our Lord 
 was risen, but Nathanael was not there. Angels came 
 down, after His Ascension, and these, perhaps, 
 Nathanael did see. In the glory of His Judgment, 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 113 
 
 angels will be in throngs around Our Lord, but the 
 great vision of His tremendous majesty has not yet 
 broken on the world. No doubt all through His life 
 the angels were surrounding our Lord, and watching 
 Him and bending over Him. They were eager, we 
 may well believe, to do anything that He would 
 permit them to do. We can imagine what a joy it 
 must have been to them to be summoned to His side. 
 We know that, at the hour when He was taken, more 
 than twelve legions of those blessed spirits would 
 have come to His aid, if it had been His will. But 
 this cannot be what our Lord meant. There was 
 surely some further mystery wrapped up in those 
 words, " Ye shall see the heaven open and the angels 
 of God ascending and descending upon the Son of 
 Man." What does it mean ? 
 
 Surely our Blessed Lord is speaking of heaven and 
 earth being made one, of God and man being brought 
 together in His Person. As we hear the words, " Ye 
 shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God 
 ascending and descending upon the Son of Man ; " as 
 we notice that those words were spoken to the 
 Israelite indeed, our minds run back to Jacob lying 
 asleep at Bethel, and seeing the wonderful sight of 
 the ladder set up between earth and heaven, and the 
 angels passing up and down, as he gazed. And so 
 the full meaning of the words opens out to us. The 
 
 I 
 
ii4 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 ladder is the type of our Blessed Lord. Through His 
 being made man heaven is opened ; heaven and earth 
 are brought together. As St. Chrysostom says, when 
 the King of Heaven came down to dwell in this world, 
 earth became heaven. The glory, the power, the 
 majesty of heaven stooped to take up its abode on 
 earth. The Kingdom of Heaven, the Church of which 
 our Blessed Lord is the King, was set up here, and so 
 angels and men were joined together in a wonderful 
 order. 
 
 Is not this indeed a greater thing than what 
 Nathanael had learnt when first he came to our 
 Lord ? It is really the whole difference between 
 Natural and Supernatural Religion, between the 
 order of nature and the order of grace. It is much 
 indeed to know that there is a God. Perhaps we who 
 have known this from our childhood do not see what 
 a great gain this is. It is more still to feel His 
 presence, to know that, move where we will, do what- 
 ever we may, we never are where God is not. Alone, 
 or in the crowd ; here, in this holy place, or in our 
 most private room in the midst of our companions 
 and friends, or in the solitary walk in the dark night, 
 we are always with God. It is more still really to 
 bring home to ourselves that there is such a searching 
 power about the eye of God, that our most secret 
 thoughts and wishes lie as bare to Him as the letters 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERXATURAL. 115 
 
 in an open book to the eye of one that can 
 read. 
 
 But what comes from this ? Sometimes fear, and 
 dread. Men shrink from God, as they feel how pure 
 He is, and what they are in His sight. They 
 tremble before Him, they would go and bury them- 
 selves in the heart of the earth to escape from Him, 
 if it could be done. Or, on the other hand, if they 
 see something of the tenderness of the love of God 
 and of the beauty of His holiness, they long after 
 Him ; they crave to be brought near to Him ; they 
 feel that they would give the world to love Him ; 
 they find that nothing short of giving themselves up 
 to Him will satisfy their longings. They are ready to 
 confess that, great a thing as it is to know God, it 
 would be far, far greater so to love Him as to be 
 made one with Him. 
 
 Oh, brethren, brethren, this is the greater thing 
 which is granted to us in the Church. It is that greater 
 thing that was hinted at to Nathanael. It is that 
 greater thing within the full enjoyment of which we 
 live. There can be no need to do more than remind 
 you how this is so. We may be made one with God 
 through our Blessed Lord Who is God, and Who was 
 made one with us when He was made Flesh, and 
 dwelt in our nature. We may be made one with God 
 through the Blood of the Cross on which our Blessed 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 Lord offered Himself to bring us to God. We may 
 be made one with God through the Sacrament of 
 Baptism, in which we are born again to God, and 
 through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist in 
 which the life of God is nourished in the soul. And 
 so our Blessed Lord's words come true : " The angels 
 of God ascend, and descend upon the Son of Man." 
 Ah, it is one of those sayings that partly unveil the 
 wonders, and mysteries, and miracles of grace in the 
 midst of which we live. The angels of God ascend 
 and descend upon the Son of Man. Try and grasp 
 this truth to-day. It may be a new step in faith for 
 you in your dedication week. Christ and His Church 
 are one. The suffering that touches the Church, it 
 touches Christ too. He said from heaven to Saul, 
 " Saul, Saul, why persecutest Thou Me ? " What is 
 done to His members on earth, that our Lord 
 counts as done to Him, " Inasmuch as ye have done 
 it to one of the least of these My brethren, ye have 
 done it unto Me." He identifies Himself with us, 
 He is in us, we are in Him. We are "members of 
 His body," made out " of His flesh, and of His 
 bones." So close is our union with Him, that S. 
 Paul says, even now " we sit together with Him in 
 heavenly places." 
 
 See the angels ascend to the Son of Man. Our 
 Lord is high above the angels in His heavenly 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 117 
 
 glory, far above principalities, and powers, and every 
 name that is named. They may soar ever higher 
 and higher, but still above them is the Man Christ 
 Jesus. Above all the ranks of angels is One Who is 
 our brother, One who had, Who has an earthly mother, 
 One Who has shared our weaknesses and our sorrows. 
 Higher and higher the angels may soar, but our 
 Lord is infinitely above them stilL Higher and 
 higher they may rise in knowledge, but they cannot 
 rise to the height of His knowledge. Higher and 
 higher they may rise towards perfection, but even 
 higher is the wondrous perfection of Him Who is 
 the most perfect of all creatures, because in Him the 
 creature is knit for ever to the perfection of the 
 Creator. Higher and higher they may rise in love, 
 as they gaze on the glory of God, and bask in the 
 light of His love, and gather reflections of His love 
 into their own spirits ; but ever higher than their most 
 burning love is the love of Him Who is One with the 
 Father through the bond of the Spirit of love, Who 
 lives in the Communion of the Holy Ghost. Higher 
 and higher they may rise in bliss, as ages intensify this 
 bliss, but higher still is His bliss Who is the Source 
 and Fountain of all happiness. Nay, surely one 
 main cause of their happiness must be the gazing on 
 and admiring His perfections, and the wondering at 
 that love which has both stooped lower than their 
 
n8 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 own to succour us, and soared higher in the perfection 
 of the fulfilment of the Father's will. 
 
 So the angels ascend to the Son of Man. 
 
 And then, oh, further marvel ! oh, joy and awful 
 thought for us — they descend upon the Son of Man. 
 Fresh from gazing on our Blessed Lord in His glory, 
 the angels come down to us who are the members 
 of Christ. They see His likeness in us ; they come 
 forth to wait upon us, to watch round us, to shield us, 
 because we are His, because, in working for us, they 
 can do Him service. They are ready to keep off evil 
 from us, because every stain of sin on our souls is a 
 blot upon His likeness. They guide, cheer, comfort, 
 encourage us, because they have seen in Him what 
 we shall one day be ; for St. John says that "we shall 
 be like Him." So St. Paul says that the " worshipping 
 spirits " who offer their service to Him on high are 
 " sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of 
 salvation " below. So they descend upon the Son of 
 Man, glad to do anything for Him in His mem- 
 bers. 
 
 Yea, but can it be that they descend upon Christ 
 in a still more mysterious way ? They find Him 
 here working in His Church. They recognise His 
 life in the souls of the regenerate. They adore 
 His graces in the elect, as one might rejoice to see the 
 likeness of a father showing itself in the features of 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 119 
 
 a child. They mark the radiance of the glory of 
 Christ spreading over the souls of the saints as they 
 are " changed from glory to glory by the Spirit of the 
 Lord." 
 
 And if this be so, if they hail every token of His 
 presence about us, in us, can they fail to hail His 
 most wonderful presence at the altar? At least 
 St. Chysostom speaks with a glowing faith of angels 
 bending and adoring around the Holy Table while 
 the sacred mysteries are celebrated. And we at that 
 time speak of angels and archangels as joining in 
 our adoration. 
 
 And so, by a strange and varying reverse, they 
 ascend to us in Him where our nature is enthroned on 
 high ; they descend to Him in us, where He dwells 
 and imparts Himself. They adore Him there on 
 high ; they serve Him here below. And yet they 
 adore Him here also below, and serve Him there on 
 high. 
 
 Oh, strange union between God and man — oh, 
 blessed meeting of our weakness with His might, of 
 our impurity with His spotlessness, of our death with 
 His life ! Are not these indeed greater things than 
 Nathanael knew and saw when first he came to our 
 Lord ? If it is much to see that He knows our hearts, 
 is it not far greater to know Him as the changer and 
 converter of the heart ? If it is much to understand 
 
120 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 that we are always in His presence, is it not far more 
 to have Him present in us, Himself the very life of 
 the soul ; and so to have all the powers of heaven 
 pledged to guard, and bless, and cherish us, because 
 we are His ? 
 
 And now see what follows from these great truths. 
 
 (a.) The first thing that we should learn is a strong 
 feeling of the Majesty of the Presence of our Lord 
 with His Church. Imagine what it is to have Him 
 moving and working upon us ! How pure, how holy 
 He is ! The very angels adore Him with trembling. 
 They cover their faces with their wings, and bow 
 abashed and full of awe before Him. And He 
 is so close to us. The friend that comes and stands 
 face to face with us, and takes us by the hand, and 
 fixes his gaze upon us, and looks into our eyes, is not 
 so close to us as our Lord. 
 
 How full of reverent watchfulness, then, ought we 
 to be not to grieve His eye, to shock His piercing 
 gaze ! See what Jacob felt, when the glorious 
 throngs of angels attending upon God brought home 
 to him that God in all His greatness was close 
 to him ; he says, " How dreadful is this place ! Surely 
 the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." He 
 was full of fear. What ought we, then, to feel who 
 have our Lord so close to us ! How ought we to 
 move, act, and speak as if we felt that we were indeed 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 121 
 
 enfolded in this mighty presence ! And how is this 
 awe to be shown ? First, plainly by watching against 
 sin. Think only what a bad, or unkind, or untrue 
 word must be when spoken by one of us, and received 
 straight from our mouths into the mind of our Lord 
 Who is always by us. How it must afflict and affront 
 His loving presence ! Think again what uncharitable 
 feelings, or bitter contempt, or harsh pride, or reck- 
 less following of our own will must be to Him. His 
 presence is to us as it were a bright mirror, and every 
 unholy desire or feeling dims it, as the breath dims 
 the mirror ; not defiling it — that it could not do — but 
 overclouding the brightness of the joy with which 
 He watches those that are pure. Show, then, that 
 you feel how near He is, by most anxious watchful- 
 ness against all which He hates. 
 
 (b.) But, then, welcome His presence also by loving 
 adoration. Oh, if the angels descend to adore Him, 
 here present amongst us, how much more have we 
 reason to adore Him ! What has our Lord not been 
 to us ! What has He not done for us ! He never 
 died for angels. He never was made an angel. He 
 does not bear their nature. But He has been made 
 one with us : He has suffered for us. Let us show 
 by our every act here that we feel what He has 
 done — yea, what He is Who has done so much 
 for us. This is, I suppose, the real meaning of all 
 
122 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 that is done here in this holy place. Why do we 
 adorn the place of His sanctuary? Why do we 
 try to give it majesty and beauty ? Why do 
 we strive to perfect the music here ? Why, above 
 all, do we make the altar shine with its special 
 magnificence ? Is this done to please our own eyes 
 and ears? If so, perish every worthless ornament, 
 silence every strain of music. At least let us not 
 indulge ourselves, please ourselves, worship ourselves 
 here. But if everything is done here to make men 
 feel that there is One here Who deserves all, and 
 more than all that we can offer Him, then every sight 
 and sound of beauty will help to carry up the mind 
 to Him Whose beauty is fair above all. 
 
 (<?.) And so let us pass above these things, and 
 use them as aids to cherish faith in the unseen powers 
 of God that work in the Church. It is upon us 
 ourselves that the greatest wonders of God are 
 worked. For within the Church the Blood of Christ 
 is ever washing away sin, and the grace of Christ 
 is ever changing the soul, and the mind of Christ 
 is ever passing into our minds, and the Spirit of 
 Christ is ever transforming our spirits. Far, far 
 greater are all these revelations of God than those 
 which we have of Him in the works of nature. He 
 does, He does indeed show us something of what He 
 is by the glorious beauty of the whole world around 
 
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 123 
 
 us. He makes us feel something of His Presence 
 through these. But, after all, it is not the majesty of 
 the rolling sea ; it is not the dazzling light of the sun ; 
 it is not the vast, deep blue sky ; it is not the woods of 
 spring and autumn that stretch out in their thousand 
 hues before us ; it is not the towering height of the 
 mountain, nor the soft loveliness of the valley ; it 
 is not one, nor all of these that are the great things of 
 God. No, greater than these is that strange, 
 wondrous, loving power by which He takes possession 
 of the soul, knits it to Himself in His Church, imparts 
 His own life to it, lives in it, and makes it live with 
 His life. It is this that angels watch, and marvel 
 at, and bend down to adore ; it is from this that 
 they learn new reasons for adoration ; for it is " by 
 the Church," by what is done to the Church, that 
 " the manifold wisdom of God " is made known unto 
 the principalities and powers in heavenly places. 
 
 Brethren, dear brethren, take this thought into 
 your minds ; meditate upon it ; make it your own ; 
 live by it. Angels watch over you, minister to you, 
 love you, guard you. Why ? Because, in coming 
 down to aid you, they minister to the Son of Man, 
 The Powers of heaven must needs be on your side, 
 because you have been made one with the King 
 of Heaven. Press, then, ever to a closer union with 
 Him. Bring every sin to your Lord to be washed 
 
124 FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 away by Him. Speak to Him plainly, fully, earnestly 
 of every temptation, that He may overcome it in you. 
 Receive Him in the blessed Eucharist into your 
 souls ; and there, down in the secret depths of 
 your souls, seek to have your will united with His. 
 See what there is in you that you can bend to 
 His will ; in what you can thwart, deny yourselves ; 
 sacrifice yourselves to Him. And learn for yourselves 
 what He is able to do for you. It will be " exceeding 
 abundantly above all that " you " ask or think." 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 125 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 Preached at St. John Baptist Frome Dedication Feast, 1867. 
 
 St. John i. 22, 23. 
 
 " Then said they unto him, 'Who art thou ? that we may give 
 an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself ? ' 
 He said, ' I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make 
 straight the way of the Lord/ " 
 
 IT is a wise and holy plan of the Church, my brethren, 
 to make us think of the saints. From time to time 
 the Church brings the name of one of the great ser- 
 vants of God before us by keeping a day in memory 
 of him. She says to us, as it were, Look at that man ; 
 see what the grace of God did for him ; see how un- 
 like he was to the common run of men ; see how pure, 
 how holy, how unworldly, how blessed he was ; you 
 cannot help admiring him : well, what he was, that 
 you may be ; for it was by the grace of God that he 
 was what he was. This is a good plan, for it prevents 
 
126 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 us from falling in contentedly with the low standard 
 of the mass of the world. It shows us that there is 
 such a thing as holiness ; that in the midst of this 
 world, with all its snares, and dangers, and temptations, 
 and difficulties, men really have given themselves up 
 to God, and so loved Him, as to put Him before all 
 else in the world. And, amongst the great saints of 
 God, very few are greater than Saint John the Baptist. 
 And, amongst the strange things which have been 
 told us of the saints, very few are more strange than 
 what we read in the text of St. John the Baptist. And 
 yet perhaps you may be inclined to say, " I do not 
 see anything very strange in this history. What 
 does it come to ? A man is asked who he is, and he 
 answers: he gives a plain answer to a plain ques- 
 tion." You are right, my brethren ; that is all the 
 history. Yet look a little more closely into the 
 matter. Perhaps that plain answer to that plain 
 question is one of the rarest, strangest things that can 
 be. Perhaps it is one of the most astounding proofs 
 of the real holiness of St. John. Ah, if you would see 
 how hard it is to give a simple, true answer to that 
 question, imagine what you would say if the question 
 were put to you ? If you were asked, " Who art thou ?" 
 would you say neither more nor less than you really 
 are ? You know best, I cannot tell what your 
 answer would be. But this is certain, that it is a very 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 127 
 
 rare thing to know oneself. It is more rare still to be 
 humble and sincere enough to speak the simple truth 
 about ourselves. Yet at least one day we must know 
 ourselves. One day we must be known for what we 
 are. One day the light from God will come pouring 
 into our hearts with all its clear, searching, revealing 
 brightness. One day we must stand before the judg- 
 ment-seat of Christ, and each one of us give an 
 account of himself to God. One day the cloak of 
 self-deceit, which so many wrap round them, must 
 shrivel at the consuming fire of the unerring judg- 
 ment. One day to each one of us the question will 
 come, with a demand for an answer, " Who art thou ? 
 What hast thou done ? How hast thou lived ? What 
 is thy real character? What is thy true inner self?" 
 And, the whole man laid bare, the spirit, like an open 
 book before God with all its acts, thoughts, and 
 intentions printed on it, must give back its reply to 
 God. Ah, we must make a true confession then. 
 Why not, oh, why not now ? 
 
 You would wish to do so. You have perhaps tried 
 to do so. There is very much in the character of 
 this day which you are keeping to help you to do so. 
 Let me try to help you. 
 
 I. What is it which hides a man's real state from 
 him ? 
 
 1. Sometimes it is the fact that great things have 
 
128 
 
 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 been done for him. He comes, perhaps, of good pa- 
 rents, he is the child of a father and mother that are 
 well known and looked up to for their holy and 
 religious lives. Or it may be that he belongs to what 
 we call a noble family. Or possibly his father is 
 famous for learning, or eloquence, or skill and success 
 in business. And so the son is known and noticed for 
 the parent's sake, and he puts his father's fame down 
 to himself, as if it belonged to him. He prides him- 
 self upon it. He wraps himself up in it, as a man 
 may wrap himself up in fine clothes. He forgets 
 what he is in himself. 
 
 Sometimes, again, a man has been placed by God 
 above others. He has some particular work to do for 
 others. He is a teacher, or a priest, a guide or an 
 adviser. He is a leader in some particular set, or 
 has the control and management of affairs given into 
 his hand. And so he is tempted to look at himself 
 in his relation to others. And, again, he too forgets 
 what he is in himself. 
 
 Sometimes, again, a man has great powers. He has 
 great gifts. Mark the word. He knows things which 
 others do not know. He is in advance of his time 
 and age. Perhaps he is a great speaker. He has 
 that strange, marvellous power of moving and 
 persuading masses of men. He can so clothe his own 
 thoughts in words as to make them bring men to the 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 129 
 
 truth. He sees his own mind act upon others, and 
 pass into others, till they think, and feel with him, and 
 follow him. He feels his influence over others. And 
 so he dwells upon these powers which he has till he 
 forgets that they are not from himself, that they 
 are not himself. He is blinded by the greatness of 
 his gifts. He does not see what he is. 
 
 There is a still more subtle snare. Sometimes the 
 circumstances of a man's life, or what we call his disposi- 
 tion, or some unusual call from God, separate him from 
 his fellows. He does not care for the common pleasures 
 of the world. He can live without its comforts. He 
 withdraws himself from its business, its interests, and 
 its occupations. The things which are temptations to 
 others are no temptations to him. His tastes lead him 
 rather to delight in what is pure, and good, and 
 noble. There is perhaps no man who is more in 
 danger of not knowing himself. He may fancy that 
 the very fact that he is hedged round and guarded 
 from certain temptations is a proof that he has 
 conquered the temptations ; or, while he sees that he 
 does not fall just exactly in the same way that others 
 do, he may fancy that he does not fall at all. 
 , All this makes it really hard for a man to know 
 himself. 
 
 2. But we must add to this another great cause of 
 self-deceit. We are too apt to think ourselves to be 
 
 K 
 
130 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 what others take us for. And they perhaps think 
 highly of us either for the good that they really see 
 in us, but which does not come from ourselves ; or it 
 may be that they are utterly and entirely mistaken 
 about us. They take us for what we are not. 
 
 II. And now, my brethren, before we go any further, 
 see that there were all these reasons why St. John 
 should not have known himself simply and truly. 
 Master this, and you will see at least one excellence 
 which makes the Saint stand out so brightly in the 
 roll of the great servants of God. 
 
 I. Why, here indeed was one who was the son of 
 good parents, who were blameless in the ordinances of 
 God. Here was one who came of a high and 
 honoured race. Here was one who was the greatest 
 of the long line of Prophets, who was even more than 
 a Prophet. He was marked out by God as the one 
 special teacher of his nation. He spoke with com- 
 mand and authority, even to the chosen religious 
 leaders of the country. He was followed by crowds, 
 who were moved, and awed, and attracted by him. 
 He had secret revelations from God of things which 
 he alone was allowed to know. So strange was his 
 power as a teacher that he stirred the hearts of all 
 from the highest to the lowest. The mass of men 
 counted him for a prophet. Later on, even Herod, 
 while he quailed before his rebukes, heard him gladly, 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 131 
 
 and was awed into obeying him in many things. 
 It is strange how great men in the midst of their bad 
 lives do respect those who boldly tell them of their sin. 
 At least in this Church we cannot forget how Charles 
 the Second honoured Bishop Ken for rebuking his 
 vice. So it was with St. John. The bad King Herod 
 could not help feeling the force of his brave, pure, 
 true character. At one time or another, Court and 
 Camp, Village and Town, felt and owned his influence, 
 so great and high were his powers, so remarkable 
 the success of his work. And his life was as re- 
 markable as his work. Not only did the world do 
 him homage, but it left him urattracted by its 
 attractions. The world could praise him, follow him, 
 admire him. The world could not make him its 
 own. He lived above it. He did not care for it. 
 He would take nothing at its hands. He was its 
 master, not its hired servant. Oh, pattern of preachers ! 
 Amongst those born of women, almost single and 
 alone ! Severe in life, refusing all softness, and 
 luxury, and enjoyment ; condescending, as it were, 
 only to take the barest necessaries of existence, 
 separated from the haunts and companionship of 
 men, he seemed not to be open to the weaknesses, 
 scarcely even to the feeling of the wants of human 
 nature. Such was the character of almost super- 
 human sanctity which he bore. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 2. And then, almost as a natural consequence, men 
 looked up to him as one far above themselves. He 
 seemed to them as one who had stepped down 
 out of heaven to them, and they owned in him a 
 claim for entire submission. They flocked to him, 
 they laid bare the secrets of their hearts, they con- 
 fessed their sins to Him (never was a Confessional so 
 thronged with penitents). They asked for his advice 
 and guidance, they submitted themselves to him, and 
 took their rules of life from him ; they left themselves 
 in his hands (never was a Director on whom men so 
 implicitly hung). Aye, even more, so did they feel 
 His powers, His sanctity, His strange unearthly in- 
 fluence over them, that they took Him for the Christ. 
 They thought that only He for Whom all hearts were 
 waiting and longing could so move and subdue their 
 own hearts. 
 
 Ah, my brethren, was there ever such an oppor- 
 tunity for pride ? Was there ever a clothing of gifts 
 and powers which might so well have hidden from a 
 man what he really was ? Does it not almost make 
 us giddy to see one of ourselves at such a perilous 
 height ? Do we not almost seem to feel that he must 
 fall ? 
 
 3. And yet see. When they asked him who he 
 was, what did he answer? "He confessed, and 
 denied not, I am not the Christ. And they asked 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 133 
 
 Him, ' What then ? Art thou Elias ? ' And He saith, 
 4 I am not' ' Art thou that Prophet ? ' And he 
 answered, 1 No.' Then said they unto Him, 'Who art 
 thou ? that we may give an answer unto them that 
 sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?'" All. 
 listen to his answer. The probing, searching question 
 had been put — the question so sure to bring out 
 any lurking self-deceit, any pride, or vanity. And 
 what does he say ? It is a strange answer, strange for 
 its truth, strange for its lowly forgetfulness of self, — 
 but, oh, perhaps more strange still for the great 
 things which it says about self, only to put self down, 
 and to exalt God. 44 Who art thou ? Son of 
 Zacharias ! almost adoring crowds wait to hear, who 
 art thou ? " "I am the voice of one crying out in the 
 wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord." u I 
 am but a voice, a sound I am but an instrument of 
 God. He works, indeed ; He speaks through me ; 
 but not that you may think of me. No, look away 
 from me to Him for Whom I have to prepare you. 
 4 There standeth One amongst you, Whom ye know 
 not' Fix on Him your hearts, your faith, your 
 love." See here — here is true knowledge of self: 
 here is the simple, humble feeling that all gifts, all 
 powers, all work, all success come from God. Here is 
 strange sincerity, giving all glory to God, taking 
 nothing to self Here is the absorbing thought of 
 
134 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 God. Here is the clear sight of the greatness to which 
 God had raised the man, and yet all seen to come so 
 entirely from God that the man's own self is ab- 
 solutely lost and forgotten in the thought of God. 
 
 III. And now at once compare this true, simple, 
 humble answer which St. John gave about himself 
 with what we think and say about ourselves. If the 
 question were put to each one of you, " Who art 
 thou ? " what would you say ? what answer would 
 you give? Remember that the true answer is to 
 describe yourself as just that which you are in God's 
 sight, neither more nor less. Would that be your 
 first notion about yourself ? Is it your common 
 notion ? If you were to give an account of yourself, 
 would your account agree with what God knows you 
 to be ? Would you not make yourself out to be what 
 you wish others to think of you, and perhaps as 
 being what they actually do think you to be ? 
 
 I. " Who art thou ? " Listen to the answer of the 
 foolish heart : " I belong to such a noble family. I 
 am the son of such a well-known man. I am the 
 owner of such a house. I am the head of such a 
 firm. I am the master of one of our largest manu- 
 factories. I am one of the most skilful mechanics. 
 I am well known for honesty and respectability. I 
 am a marked man in the circle that I move in. My 
 cleverness, my learning, my ability are talked of on 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 135 
 
 every side." Or it may be, " I am the favourite of my 
 companions ; or the best singer in the choir; or the 
 most sparkling in conversation ; or, perchance, praised 
 for my beauty ; or for my dress ; or for my know- 
 ledge of the ways of the world. Or my character 
 stands high as that of a religious man. 
 
 It may be so. But what do you mean by your 
 answer ? Either you are exalting yourself, and 
 making yourself, as it were, a God to yourself and to 
 others ; or, at the least, you are turning away your 
 thoughts from your real self. You let the noise of 
 the praise of others drown the whisper of your own 
 heart. There is a whisper of self-reproach which you 
 do not wish to hear. There is, it may be, a secret sin 
 which you allow to be cloaked and covered over by 
 what others say of you. 
 
 2. Ah, brethren, away with the thought of man. 
 Remember the eye of God — it is fixed upon you. 
 It has followed you all through life. It reads, it 
 searches you now. The gaze of God pierces into 
 you as if you were alone before Him. He sees 
 us not as a mass, a crowd, a congregation, 
 but each man singly and alone. Take as if it came 
 from Him the question, " Who art thou ? " See rank, 
 wealth, pomp, show, cleverness, learning, reputation, 
 the praise of men fall off from us. What art 
 thou in the sight of God? Naked and bare we 
 
136 MAN RE VEA LED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 are before Him. And what do we feel ourselves 
 to be ? 
 
 We are His creatures. All that we are came from 
 Him. He brought us out of nothing. We are 
 nothing in His sight. Yes, dust and ashes, What 
 art thou ? 
 
 Aye, but thou feelest that now life is in thee — thou 
 art at least a living man. Live on, then ; canst thou ? 
 Thou didst not choose when to begin to live. Choose 
 how long thou wilt live. Thou canst not. " What is 
 your life ? It is even a vapour that passeth away, and 
 cometh not again." " He taketh away their breath ; 
 they die, and are turned again to their dust." Thou 
 art a poor beggar depending on the charity of God 
 for every breath. He alone holdeth your soul in life. 
 
 Ah, but at least, while life lasts, thou canst feel the 
 powers that thou hast. Poor man ! Who gave thee 
 every power ? " What hast thou that thou hast not 
 received ? " " Who maketh thee to differ from another 
 man ? " 
 
 Nay, let me change my voice. Steward of God ! 
 thou hast nothing of thine own. What art thou 
 doing with the property of God ? Every shilling that 
 thou hast is God's money, put into thy care to be 
 spent for Him. How art thou spending what He lends 
 thee ? Every power thou hast came from Him. It 
 was given thee that thou mightest do good work in the 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 137 
 
 household of God. How art thou using thy powers ? 
 "Who art thou?" What! a thief, spending thy 
 Lord's money on thyself? An impostor? Making 
 himself out to be the Master. 
 
 Perhaps with this thought will at last come the 
 feeling of what thou art. Who art thou ? Ah, let 
 us answer : — " Eye of God, close, look not at me ; 
 take off Thy fixed gaze ; do not so pierce me. What 
 am I ? A sinner — a sinner, foul in Thy sight, stained 
 and impure. Whatever man may think, I know 
 what I am before Thee. My rank, my wealth, my 
 fair name, the praise and opinion of men, what are 
 they ? Only like the ivy that hangs about a ruin. 
 Who am I ? What have I been ? What am I ? Past 
 sins rise up against me and accuse me. There is sin 
 working in me at this moment which makes me almost 
 hate myself, and long, if it only could be, to flee from 
 myself. Oh, the thoughts that have passed through 
 this mind —the words that have fallen from these lips — 
 the neglect and carelessness of God that has marked 
 this life. " W T ho art thou ? " Do not ask me, O my 
 God — do not make me think. Let me at least forget 
 my nothingness, my misery, and my sin. Leave me 
 in the darkness and the gloom, where I may hide my 
 wretchedness. Do not bring me out into the light. 
 
 IV. Yes, dear brethren, out into the light you must 
 come — out into the clear, soft light of the love of God. 
 
138 MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 Let it gleam on you. Let it fall on you till it cheers 
 and gladdens you. You have wondered that I have 
 drawn so sad a picture for so bright a day. Have I 
 done amiss ? I have tried to show you what you are 
 in yourselves, that you may see and wonder more at 
 what you are, what you may be in God, in Christ, in 
 the Church of Christ, in the Kingdom of Heaven, in 
 that strange system in which the nature of God trans- 
 forms the nature of men, in which man becomes a new 
 creature. Thou art the purchase of the Blood of God's 
 own Son. Thou art the child of God, loved, guarded, 
 blessed, and kept by Him. Thou art a member of 
 Christ — His life works in thee. Thou hast been 
 taken out of the power of Satan, and translated into 
 the Kingdom of God's dear Son. God's angels love 
 to watch and minister to thee for His sake. God's 
 Saints in one vast band, both on this side and on the 
 other side of the grave, pray for thee, and aid thee with 
 their prayers. " Who art s thou ? " I scarcely dare to 
 say. Either I must say too little, or I must say what 
 seems far, far too much for such as we are. Thou art 
 the brother of the Son of God. Thou art the temple 
 of the Holy Ghost. Thou art a partaker of the Divine 
 Nature. Thou art Christ's and Christ is God's. 
 Christ is made unto thee wisdom, and righteousness, 
 and sanctification, and redemption. 
 
 Who art thou ? In thyself nothing, worse than 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 139 
 
 nothing — a worm, dust and ashes, a blot and an 
 offence on the face of the Creation of God. In 
 Christ, through the power of His passion cleansing 
 thee, through the force of His grace working in thee, 
 thou may est be a joy and a delight to God, His 
 loved and cherished child, and growing into the image 
 of His Own dearly loved Son. 
 
 Is not this, my brethren, the very lesson of to-day, 
 the very lesson which echoes out to us on all sides 
 from this church ? You who love this church, and 
 have laboured with a labour of love to make it what 
 it is, know best what it was. It is likely enough that 
 it was once, as so many churches have been in the 
 days when the love of God was so cold that anything 
 was thought good enough for Him, ruined, and marred, 
 and stained, and discoloured. And what is it now ? 
 Perhaps there is scarcely another church in all the 
 country so full of beauty. And you were delighted to 
 see it growing out of the state into which it had fallen 
 into this new beauty. Have you remembered that all 
 this time you were engraving a parable in stones? 
 Yes, you have been raising a monument of the love of 
 God in the midst of you. Ruined and decayed 
 churches, they are types and representations of fallen 
 man. And churches restored are types of man 
 restored. And God loves to restore His churches. 
 God loves to restore us, who are the temples in which 
 
i4o MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. 
 
 He dwells. And as they grow into beauty — the beauty 
 of holiness, before His eye He rejoices over them. 
 And this work He has been seeking to do on you. 
 He has been seeking to change you from glory to 
 glory. Look round this church, then. See how it 
 speaks of the restoring love of God. There is the Cross, 
 which tells us how God gave His Own Son to die that 
 we might be forgiven. There is the Font at which 
 our sins were washed away, and we v/ere made God's 
 children, and the new life of Christ passed into us. 
 There is the Church itself, the House of Prayer, where 
 our Blessed Lord is present with us to give our prayers 
 their prevailing power. There are the Figures of the 
 Saints gleaming out upon us from the Windows to 
 remind us what the grace of God can do. There is 
 this Pulpit, from which God has guided you, His 
 children, by him whose firm and loving wisdom has 
 been a guide to hundreds in our days of trial and 
 difficulty. There is the Altar at which the One 
 priceless Sacrifice is pleaded, and from which our 
 Blessed Lord has given Himself to be the Food and 
 Life of our souls. 
 
 In the sight of these, while the memories of all the 
 tender acts of God's love to you, float round these 
 walls, while the air breathes of holy lessons that you 
 have listened to here, while angels perhaps are 
 adoring God for miracles of mercy done on you which 
 
MAN REVEALED TO HIMSELF. \\\ 
 
 you have almost forgotten, I ask you, " Who art 
 thou ? " 
 
 And now, then, I make my claim for Him Who has 
 poured out His love so richly on thee. Think of 
 what thou hast been, of what thou art, of what thou 
 mayest be. Think of what God has given thee, and 
 calculate what it is right to give to Him to-day. 
 Count the mercies triat God has shown you. Count 
 the graces that He has given you. Count the 
 moments in which you have tasted of His love. 
 Count the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, the tears that 
 He shed for us, the throbs that racked His Body on 
 the Cross. Count the lights, the inspirations, the 
 warnings, the persuasions, which He has granted to 
 you in His Church. If these are few and small, then 
 let your gift be small ; but, if they outnumber the stars 
 of heaven, give to God as with a trusting heart that 
 knows not how to give too much. Hear Him, as you 
 make that offering, say, " Who art thou ? " and 
 answer Him, " I am one who owes Thee all, who owes 
 Thee himself, and who would fain give Thee a token 
 of his love, as a child may give to its Father and a 
 creature to His God." 
 
 Give Him what? All thou hast —time, talents, 
 powers, money, yes, but thyself. 
 
142 
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST 
 
 IX. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST THE STRENGTH OF 
 WORK FOR HIM. 
 
 Preached at Wantage. June 30, 1 868 . 
 
 St. Matthew xvi. 15. 
 u He saith unto them, * But whom say ye that I am ? ' " 
 
 I AM ashamed that I should have to stand here to- 
 day, dear brethren, to speak on the subject of Sister- 
 hood life. I am ashamed, deeply ashamed for 
 myself, for every word of praise, and of admiration of 
 that high and devoted life sounds at least as 
 something of a reproach to those who are content 
 with less devotion. I am ashamed too that it should 
 in any way be forced upon me to advise those who 
 have undertaken this life. But still more am I 
 ashamed that such a cause should need to be pleaded 
 at all. Brethren, a thousand voices plead it daily ; a 
 thousand voices, that speak with a mighty and yet 
 
THE STRENGTH OF WORK FOR HIM. 143 
 
 most touching eloquence. All the sorrows of human- 
 ity plead the cause of these who have banded them- 
 selves together to be the comforters of those in sorrow. 
 The ignorance of humanity pleads the cause of those 
 who are ready to turn that ignorance into the blessed 
 knowledge of God. Yes, the very sins of men plead 
 the cause of those whose task, whose work, whose 
 vow, whose happiness it is to rescue sinners from 
 their sins. The tears of the sorrowing, the sighs of 
 the distressed, the groans of those in anguish, the 
 downcast look of the desolate, the aching of the broken 
 heart, the speechless and unspeakable misery of those 
 who have lost, or almost lost, God, the deepening gloom 
 of despondency that knows not how to find a way of 
 return to God, the black darkness of a despair 
 trembling on the edge of the still more awful darkness 
 of eternal rejection — all these speak to us, move us, 
 urge us to help those who are living for the work of 
 soothing these sorrows, and lightening this darkness. 
 " Sisters of Mercy ! " the very name alone is the most 
 moving sermon. Ah, we have known ourselves 
 what the sorrows of life are. We have seen them in 
 others, we have felt, we have tasted them ourselves. 
 In some form or other we have been pierced by them. 
 Perhaps at times the sense of the multitude of griefs 
 all round about us has so grown upon the sight of our 
 souls, that they have seemed to come bearing up 
 
144 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST 
 
 against us, wave upon wave, like a great ocean 
 threatening to overwhelm us. Well, then, every 
 separate sorrow pleads for these who long to be the 
 comforters of those who are sinking in the sorrows of 
 life. 
 
 But there are other voices that speak for these 
 sisters, still a thousand more. In your perplexities, 
 dear brethren, you have doubtless known again and 
 again what it was to meet with a kind and loving 
 guide who has shown you the way out of a maze 
 of difficulties. In some old hour of gloom you can 
 remember how one loving smile gleamed in upon 
 your darkness and lighted it up. When you were 
 almost broken down under some heavy burthen 
 of grief, there may have been some one whose ready 
 sympathy shared the burthen with you. When you 
 had yourself gone astray, there may have been some 
 gentle, loving voice that won you back. Stranger 
 still, when you seemed to be an outcast from the 
 world, and your heart was almost fierce in its 
 rebellion against what appeared to you the harsh 
 sentence of others, or when perhaps your heart 
 was almost dead as a stone within you, some one 
 may have come, and sat down by your side, and 
 taken your hand, and looked into your eyes, and 
 shown you that you were understood, that you were 
 pitied, — ah, better, that you were loved — and the dull 
 
THE STRENGTH OF WORK FOR HIM. 145 
 
 stone melted within you, and the fountains of the 
 great deep of a new sorrow were broken up in 
 you, and a new light dawned on you, — yes, a new 
 life beat within you, — and you saw that you were 
 not lost to God. Such are the triumphs of sympathy, 
 of compassion, of tenderness, of love. Such are the 
 ways in which a brother, a sister, a wife, above all 
 a mother, by voice, by look, by smile, by touch, 
 by whisper, by glance, have turned our sorrows 
 into joy. These memories of the past, these words, 
 these tones, these whispers of those that have loved 
 us, and helped us in the battle and stress of life, 
 they live in our hearts, and plead for these Sisters of 
 Mercy, For, dear brethren, there are those — too, too 
 many — who have neither mother, nor friend, nor wife 
 to care for them ; and the Sister of Mercy becomes 
 to all these what those who have loved and felt 
 for you have been to you. She is bound to live, 
 to labour, to suffer for, and with, all sufferers whose 
 path she crosses. 
 
 And, now, how is the Sister of Mercy to learn this ? 
 It is a work above the nature, above the power, of 
 man. It can only be learnt by driving out the 
 principle of selfishness, and making love the moving 
 power of the whole life. And how can this be 
 brought about ? Only by a close, constant, personal 
 union and communion with our Blessed Lord ; by 
 
 L 
 
146 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST 
 
 such a severance from the world, and even from the 
 common ties of life, as will make the Sister live in the 
 constant presence of One Person, — so that the thought 
 of Him, and the knowledge of Him, grows upon 
 the soul, and takes possession of it, and transforms it. 
 See how our Lord Himself teaches us in the text 
 how blessed it is to be so severed from the world, 
 and what lessons are learnt about Himself by those 
 who live in close and constant intercourse with Him ? 
 He asked the disciples, " Whom do men say that 
 I, the Son of Man, am? What is the opinion of 
 the world about Me ? Those who see Me from time 
 to time, who hear now and then some of the wonders 
 that I have worked, who listen occasionally to My 
 teaching, what do they say of Me ? " Listen to the 
 answer ; " Some say that Thou art John the Baptist ; 
 some Elias ; and others Jeremias, or one of the 
 prophets." They rank Thee among the great 
 teachers that have moved the minds of men. They 
 admire, they are awed by Thee, they acknowledge 
 that Thou sharest something of power, of influence, 
 of greatness, with the great prophets that have gone 
 before. They see no more in Thee than this. " But 
 whom say ye, then, that Lam? " says our Lord. He 
 expects more, you see, from the disciples. It is 
 as if He said, "You have been constantly with Me, 
 I called you, I separated you from your fellows, I 
 
THE STRENGTH OF WORK FOR HIM. 147 
 
 drew you out of your homes, I fixed on you the power 
 of my attractions, I spoke to you from without, and 
 from within. I brought you to Myself ; you have 
 lived within a charmed and Divine circle, in the 
 inner sanctuary from which the manifestations of Me 
 have gone forth. You have been My privileged 
 friends. I have called you not servants, but friends. 
 The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. You 
 have seen My miracles, and in seeing them have 
 learnt not only the Divine power that has gone 
 forth from Me, but the love that has been ever 
 moving Me to heal the sorrows of men in a thousand 
 Redemptive Acts. You have watched My life. You 
 have seen its marvellous perfections, and have been 
 in the way of learning what was the source from 
 which the perfections flowed, and whether My life is 
 the life of One Who is only Man, or of One Who is 
 more than man. You have seen what I have been to 
 yourselves. You know how I have read your thoughts, 
 and made you able to read them ; how I have 
 opened to you what you are in yourselves, and what 
 God is, and may be to you. You have had your 
 sorrows ; is there anything in Me that has shown you 
 where to find comfort under them ? You have had 
 your difficulties ; have I guided you out of them ? 
 You have had your longings for something beyond 
 your own reach, for higher aims than you had known 
 
 L 2 
 
148 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST 
 
 before, for joys above this earth which you are only 
 yet beginning to understand ; have I satisfied them 
 in any measure? Do you feel that there is in Me 
 the power to satisfy them more still ? You, to whom 
 I have done so much, to whom I can do so much 
 more, whom say ye that I am ? " 
 
 Hear again the answer, brethren, from the lips — 
 from the heart of the warm, ardent saint whom we 
 were commemorating only yesterday. Simon Peter 
 answered and said, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
 the living God." 
 
 You see now why our Blessed Lord had called 
 them to that close and blessed fellowship with 
 Himself. It was that they might learn Who and 
 what He was to them. 
 
 Was this all ? Was it only that they might learn 
 that for themselves ? Ah, no, brethren. Who were 
 these ? These were they who were to go out into the 
 world to be its guides, its leaders, its comforters. 
 They were to bear the image, the likeness of their 
 Master, to stand in His place, to be the organs by 
 which He was to work. All this is wrapped up in 
 these words : "As My Father hath sent Me, even so 
 send I you." How, I ask you, could they be to the 
 thousands of sufferers round them in any way 
 ministers for our Blessed Lord, unless they had learnt 
 what He was Himself, His tenderness, His sympathy, 
 
THE STRENGTH OF WORK FOR HIM. i49 
 
 His yearning over the sorrows of men, His power to 
 heal and to deliver? How could they learn that 
 better than by finding out in the closeness of their 
 intimate communion with Him what He was to them — 
 that He was worth more than all the world besides ? 
 Is not this what comes out in those words of St John : 
 " That which was from the beginning, which we have 
 heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we 
 have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of 
 the Word of life ; (for the life was manifested, and 
 we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto 
 you that eternal life, which was with the Father, 
 and was manifested unto us). That which we have 
 seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also 
 may have fellowship with us ; and truly our fellow- 
 ship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus 
 Christ And these things write we unto you, that 
 your joy may be full." Here is the heart filled with 
 light, and joy in itself from close communion with our 
 Lord, and longing to pour into other hearts the joy it 
 has tasted of in itself. 
 
 Now, my brethren, it is not, I think, saying too 
 much to say that we have here the whole plan, 
 purpose, and meaning of Sisterhood life, and the 
 secret of its success — nay, more, the reason why 
 Sisters are so peculiarly fitted for the work which they 
 have to do. 
 
150 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST 
 
 First, it is not — or at any rate it should not be — all 
 persons who are allowed to undertake this work, but 
 only those who seem to have a special call for it ; 
 only those who seern to be drawn by God aside from 
 the common duties of life. There must be in some 
 sense a clear call from God, saying, as to the apostles, 
 " Follow Me." 
 
 Then, next, when this call is recognised, the 
 Sisterhood life should be so planned as to bring the 
 Sisters into a special closeness with God. They must 
 learn what He is in Himself, what He is to them, 
 that they may leave all for Him, choose Him before 
 all, bind themselves to Him, live for Him, make His 
 love the one object of life, find their own secret heart 
 joy in the thought of Him ; and then go forth to 
 make others know Him. They must taste to the full 
 His consolations, the happiness of communion with 
 Him, that they may see that every sorrow of others 
 can be relieved by Him, every sin conquered through 
 Him, every grace, even what seems the most un- 
 attainable, reached through Him. "Whom say ye 
 that I am?" is our Lord's question to the band of 
 Sisters. This should be their answer : " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God. Thou art the 
 Hope of sorrowing, suffering, fallen, tempted men. 
 Thou art the Ransom of sin-stained souls. Thou art 
 the Redeemer of the lost. Thou art Strength in 
 
THE STRENGTH OF WORK FOR HIM, 151 
 
 weakness, and Light in darkness, and Life in death. 
 Thou art our joy, and our all. Thou art the One for 
 Whom all hearts long. If we can make Thee known, 
 the world will be changed. To know Thee, and to 
 find Thee, and to lose Thee no more, will be Heaven 
 itself." 
 
 Now see how the Rule of Sisterhood life trains 
 the Sisters in this close, personal knowledge of our 
 Blessed Lord. They are withdrawn, as the apostles 
 were, from the outer world. It is not too much to 
 say that they live, as the apostles lived, in a special 
 nearness to our Lord. They have their constant 
 round of holy offices, which again and again bring them 
 consciously into His presence. The very hours of 
 those offices are memorials of the sufferings of our 
 Blessed Lord, so that the thought of His passion is 
 worked into their life. They are taught to be constant 
 in the practice of meditation, so that the truths, the 
 acts, and the words of our Blessed Lord may fix 
 themselves in their souls. Above all, they live in 
 continual and unbroken communion with our Lord 
 in the Blessed Sacrament. And so they come to 
 know Him, not as a mere Teacher of Religion, not as 
 one in a long line of Prophets, however eminent, but 
 as their heart's Life and Stay. " Whom say ye that 
 I am?" Sisters, He asks you. Sisters, what is your 
 answer, your heart's answer, to Him ? The Teacher 
 
152 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST 
 
 of the Christian Religion, the Christ of the Gospels, 
 the greatest of all moralists, the purest of the 
 sons of men, the original of the many pictures that 
 I have admired, the theme of Christian poetry, the 
 pattern of sublime patience. Ah, He is all this, but 
 God forbid that He should be no more than this 
 to you. " Whom say ye that I am?" When 
 He asks, I dare not, I could not answer for 
 you. But you will answer for yourselves : " Thou art 
 the Christ, the Son of the living God." Through 
 Thee, through Thee alone we have known the 
 possibility of finding peace with God. From Thee 
 
 4 
 
 has come our every grace. On Thee hangs our every 
 hope. In a thousand sorrows we have known Thee 
 as our Comforter. In a thousand joys we have 
 recognised our happiness as Thy gift. We have 
 seen in Thy life what love is. We have seen in 
 Thy death how love can give itself to others. " Whom 
 say ye that I am ? " No tongue could tell what Thou 
 hast been to us. A whole life sacrificed to Thee could 
 not show what we owe Thee. Thou art the light of 
 the world, and, if we might ask one favour of Thee, it 
 would be that we might carry some gleams of that 
 light, and shed it into some of the poor dark hearts 
 round us, that Thou mayest be to them what Thou 
 hast been, what Thou art to us. 
 
 And here last we touch upon the secret of the 
 
THE STRENGTH OF WORK FOR HIM. 153 
 
 Success of Sisterhood work. If these Sisters, 
 dear brethren, go forth to try and rescue the fallen, 
 they go to work for Him to whom these fallen ones 
 are so dear. They go fresh from the revelations of 
 the tenderness and compassion of our Blessed Lord 
 to be tender to others as He was tender, who said, 
 " I came to seek and to save that which was lost." 
 
 If they go to teach the young, they know how 
 our Blessed Lord loved children. They see in those 
 children images of the Child at Nazareth, and they 
 minister to Him in them. 
 
 If they sit by the sick-bed, the pains of sickness, 
 its weakness, and its exhaustion are memorials to 
 them of the hard bed of the Cross on which an 
 anguish was borne for them by One to whom no man 
 ministered in that moment, but to Whom it is their 
 privilege to minister now. 
 
 " Whom say ye that I am ?" Oh, wonder of love, 
 wonder of privilege, and of joy for me, Thou art the 
 Sufferer whom I soothe, Thou art the Child whom I 
 teach, Thou art the Man of Sorrows reproduced in 
 each aspect of human sorrow, to give me the oppor- 
 tunity of spending some love on Thee. 
 
 I commend to you, then, the cause of the Sisters ; 
 I ask your prayers, your sympathy, your alms for 
 them. And I ask you to remember that in com- 
 mending this to your notice I am pleading not for 
 
154 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 
 
 them, but for a thousand sufferers whom they may 
 soothe with the knowledge of the love of Christ. 
 Yet no, not even for them, but for Him who allows 
 us to-day to help those whom He calls to work with 
 Him. To you too; to me too, He puts the question, 
 " Whom say ye that I am ? " Am I the Light of your 
 hearts, your One hope, and Joy? Show that you 
 believe this. There are others waiting for the 
 consolations that you have had from Me. I ask you 
 to aid them. Shall I, can I, ask in vain ? 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, 155 
 
 X. 
 
 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 Preached at St. Mary's, Cambridge. Trinity Sunday, 1887. 
 
 1 Corinthians xiii. 12. 
 
 " Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : 
 now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am 
 known." 
 
 " Now we see in a mirror, darkly ; but then face to face. 
 Now I know in part, but then shall I know fully, even 
 as also I am known fully." What joy, what exulta- 
 tion, what ardour, what longing there is in these 
 words ! They carry us far on — and far away — far on 
 beyond the present time of this passing world, far 
 ^away from the scene of this present life. " Then," 
 when time, and change, and varying seasons are past ; 
 then, when the alternations of cloud and sunshine are 
 over ; when doubt, and difficulty, and perplexity have 
 been left behind ; when the strife, and struggle, and 
 toil of the mind in its effort to reach the truth has 
 
156 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 come to an end, then I shall know fully. Then, in a 
 sense more complete than the words have ever yet 
 borne, I shall be able to say, " The Darkness is past, 
 and the true Light now shineth." Then and there 
 in the place, wherever it may be, where God shall 
 let me see His face, then I shall see face to face. 
 For a moment we almost seem to be side by side with 
 the apostle, and to be following his upturned eye 
 and to be fixing our gaze where his is fixed. Already 
 that eye has pierced the veil. His vision has reached 
 the innermost shrine. Like another St. John " a door 
 has been opened to him in heaven." A voice has said 
 to him, " Come up, hither, and I will show thee 
 things which must be hereafter." Already for him 
 " the throne is set in Heaven," and he is on the steps 
 of the throne ; and One sits on the throne, like a 
 jasper and a sardine stone. Round about the 
 throne are the four-and-twenty elders with their 
 white raiment, and their heads crowned with golden 
 crowns. The majesty, the glory, the beauty, the 
 saintly purity of the heavenly court are gathered 
 together in all the marvel of their perfection, but the 
 apostle's eager gaze has passed beyond them. It 
 has fixed itself on God. It cannot rest on anything 
 short of Him. His spirit is crying out with the 
 Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and 
 there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 157 
 
 of Thee ? My flesh, and my heart faileth, but God 
 is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." 
 Then, and there, shall I see face to face ; then and 
 there shall I know fully, even as also I have been 
 known fully. This is the ardour of his longing. The 
 same longing was stirring in him which filled the 
 hearts of St. Augustine and St. Monica, when they 
 sat, the dear son's hand resting in his mother's hand, 
 when, after all his wanderings and battlings to reach 
 the Truth, the son had come home to God, and both 
 looked out over the sea, their eyes and their souls 
 straining after the shore of everlasting life and light. 
 
 But for what was the Apostle's heart yearning ? 
 He was yearning for the full knowledge of God. 
 (eVr/i/ww). Yes, but what made him yearn for that 
 knowledge ? Because he had known the joy of 
 knowledge, " Now I know in part, but then shall I 
 know fully." He had tasted of the joy of knowledge, 
 but every draught only made him thirst the more after 
 streams more satisfying than any which this world 
 can give : " My soul is athirst for God, yea even for 
 the living God. When shall I come to appear before 
 the presence of God ? " 
 
 But is, then, knowledge a joy ? Can it be necessary 
 to ask this here, in this place consecrated to knowledge? 
 All things round us witness to the fact that knowledge 
 is believed to be a source of happiness. These colleges, 
 
158 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 this University, the course of study, the tradition of 
 generations of toil, the gathering of students, the 
 labours of teachers, the prizes to encourage the 
 acquirement of knowledge, the libraries with their 
 stores of accumulated learning. And has not many 
 a one here felt the keen joy, the -real sense of positive 
 happiness that comes with knowledge acquired or 
 increased ? The problem solved — the fresh discovery 
 — or the opening of a path leading to a fresh discovery ; 
 the learning of a new language, the finer sense of the 
 power and force of an old language ; the unravelling 
 of the history of the past ; the first acquaintance with 
 a new branch of science ; the clearing up of some 
 obscurity ; the breaking in of new light ; are not all 
 these fraught with the keenest enjoyment ? And yet 
 does not every advance in knowledge make us eager 
 for a further advance still, as mountain climbers find 
 fresh peaks still luring them on to the delight of 
 further efforts ? Are we not ready to cry out again 
 and again with the apostle, " We know only in part " ? 
 
 And, if this be so with all forms of mere earthly 
 knowledge, must it not be far more so with heavenly 
 knowledge ? Does the knowledge of earthly things 
 bring the highest joy to the mind that the heart can 
 taste of ? Oh, not so, not so indeed. Those strange 
 powers which we possess of thought, of reflection, of 
 consideration, of meditation, of insight, of memory, 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 159 
 
 of intuition, of investigation, were not given us that 
 they might be spent only on what one of our poets 
 calls so well " these earth-born idols of this lower 
 air." Man was not made only that he might know 
 the records of history, the niceties of language, the 
 wonders of physical science, the conclusions of 
 mathematics. These studies may indeed do much 
 to enlarge the heart, to widen the sympathies, to 
 brace the powers of mind, to cultivate the character. 
 They interest, they stimulate, they carry us out of 
 and beyond ourselves. Possibly at times they 
 almost dangerously delight and entrance us. But 
 there is a point beyond all these to which all these 
 various kinds of knowledge should lead us. We were 
 created with all our powers of mind that we might 
 know God. Not in vain has theology been called 
 Scientiarum Scientia. The science of all sciences is 
 the knowledge of God. To know Him, what He has 
 done for man, what He is to man, what man is to 
 Him, — nay, what He is in Himself, to know at once the 
 Tenderness of His love and the Mystery of His Being — 
 this is the highest exercise of man's mind ; this is the 
 purest joy of man's heart, this is the only one true 
 aim of life, this alone can be called life, this is the 
 life the pulses of which begin to beat within us in 
 this world ; this is the life which swells out into its 
 full perfection in the world to come ; for " this is life 
 
160 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 eternal to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
 Whom He has sent." 
 
 Aye, and it was the joy of this knowledge which 
 was filling the apostle's heart when he wrote these 
 words, " Then shall I know fully, even as also I am 
 known fully." His whole being was thrilling with a 
 joy of the past and of the present, and he was being 
 borne, as it were, on the crest of this wave of joy, on 
 to the shore of a fuller, and an unending joy. Already 
 he knows God in the tenderness of His Fatherhood, 
 in the fulness of His pardoning love, in the atone- 
 ment wrought out by the Son of God, in the might of 
 the indwelling Spirit, in the richness of the gifts 
 poured out on, poured into, the Church. That know- 
 ledge has grown upon him more and more since the 
 day when the pleading voice of his Lord broke in 
 upon him with the question, " Saul, Saul, why perse- 
 cutest thou Me ? " and won his heart to the service of 
 the Crucified. Toil and suffering, labours among the 
 multitude, and solitary wrestlings of his own soul in 
 prayer, have brought home to him with increasing 
 clearness the love, the strength, the supporting power, 
 the majesty of God, and of God's claims upon him. 
 In speaking, in writing, in winning others to the faith, 
 in opening out to them the mysteries of the faith, the 
 fulness and glory of the revelation has filled him 
 more and more with light ; " God, who commanded 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 161 
 
 the u light to shine out of darkness," has " shined in his 
 heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory 
 of God, in the face of Jesus Christ." Every past revela- 
 tion has brought to him an increase of faith, of hope, 
 of love, of peace, of happiness, and joy, and has 
 taught him to realise more fully what will be the 
 exceeding bliss of the complete revelation of God to 
 those who are brought to see Him face to face. So 
 rejoicing, so hoping, so exulting, so expecting, so 
 yearning, he cries out, " Then shall I know fully, even 
 as also I am fully known." All bars, all hindrances 
 all veils will be withdrawn, all clouds of error, of mis- 
 take, of misapprehension will be swept away as mists 
 are drawn up and dispelled by the outshining of the 
 sun, and at last I shall see God in all, and all in God, 
 know what He has been to me, what has been the 
 meaning of His dealing with me all through life, yea 
 even know Himself as He knows me. 
 
 And now let us see how the joy of this knowledge 
 came so to grow in the mind of St. Paul. First, 
 clearly because he set himself with intense earnestness 
 to receive in all its vividness and distinctness the 
 Revelation that came from God. He felt deeply the 
 Tenderness of God in making known the Truth. He 
 felt as strongly the responsibility of man for receiving 
 into his mind the fulness of Truth in all its purity, and 
 preserving it from all error that might dim or disturb 
 
 M 
 
162 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 it. No doubt ever crossed his mind that God could 
 be known. Still less did he question the power of 
 God to reveal Himself. How shall not the best of all 
 Fathers teach His children ? How shall He not yearn 
 more than any human teacher to impart knowledge 
 to those who were willing to learn ? The apostle 
 might have conceived it possible that in a place like 
 this some human teachers might keep their stores of 
 knowledge to themselves, and not use them to help 
 others. Human selfishness might make this con- 
 ceivable. But the yearning Love of God for His 
 children would not let Him leave them without the 
 light of Truth. 
 
 Then, quick upon the thought of this love of God, 
 came the feeling that, if God is so loving as to tell to 
 His children the secrets of their own nature, their sin, 
 their fall, the way of their recovery, and of their union 
 with Himself, nay, if God goes further still and tells 
 them even the secrets of the Mystery of His own 
 Being, then the children in very gratitude must be 
 ready to learn in its fulness the lessons which the 
 heavenly Father has given them. 
 
 So see how jealously St. Paul ever guards the truth. 
 Not an angel from heaven is to persuade us to receive 
 any other Gospel than that which we have received. 
 Alike teachers and taught are ever to " hold fast the 
 form of sound words which they have received in faith 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 163 
 
 and love which is in Christ Jesus." "That good thing 
 which was committed unto them," the Truths of the 
 Faith, they are u to keep," as a wondrous treasure, for 
 which they must surely give account, " by the Holy 
 Ghost Which dwelleth in them." So loyal, so grateful, so 
 true is the apostle to God as the Revealer. So careful 
 is he to keep the aspect of his soul turned towards 
 the channels of the Revelation. So faithfully does he 
 look to the Church, which is " the pillar and ground of 
 the Truth." So earnestly does he point to the 
 Scriptures as the fount of that knowledge which makes 
 " wise unto salvation." So constantly does he build up 
 the whole purity of Christian morality on the dogmata 
 of the Christian faith. Yes, indeed the knowledge 
 of God grew upon his soul because he set himself to 
 use in their fulness, and completeness, and exactness, 
 and clearness, all the Divine utterances of Truth. He 
 was the unswerving disciple of a master that spake 
 with Authority, and he taught men to observe all 
 things which that Master had commanded. 
 
 See how the preciousness of Divine truth, and the 
 duty of receiving it comes out in all that he writes. 
 He warns the Roman Christians to "mark those 
 which cause divisions and offences contrary to the 
 doctrine which they have learned, and to avoid them." 
 He tells the Corinthians that the stamp of a faithful 
 ministry is the holding "the word of Truth." He 
 
 M 2 
 
164 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 warns them " not to receive another gospel," " to ex- 
 amine themselves whether they be in the Faith." He 
 reminds the Galatians how firm and unflinching he 
 had been to make sure " that the Truth of the Gospel 
 might continue with them." He blames them for not 
 " obeying the Truth." He presses on the Ephesians 
 that the "one Faith," "the unity of the Faith" is to 
 keep them from being " carried away with every wind 
 of doctrine." He exhorts the Colossians to " continue 
 in the Faith grounded and settled," and to be 
 Established in the Faith as they have been taught." 
 " The word of Christ is to dwell in them richly in all 
 wisdom." He praises the Thessalonians because, when 
 they received the word of God which they heard of 
 him, they " received it not as the word of man, but, as 
 it is in truth, the word of God." Everywhere in his 
 Epistles he impresses on all the supreme importance 
 of receiving into mind and heart the Revelation that 
 has come from God. 
 
 Is not this the secret of the growth of knowledge 
 of God, the getting clearly before the soul the things 
 which He has taught ? And is not this the very aim of 
 the Church in her creeds, in her sacred canticles, in 
 that round of solemn seasons which runs to its close 
 to-day ? Through all these she seeks to make the 
 knowledge of God sink deeper into our hearts. In 
 her Creeds she places us before God as the great 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 165 
 
 Revealer, and leads us to make our act of Faith, and to 
 declare to God that we receive and believe in a child- 
 like and docile spirit the Truths which God has so 
 lovingly made known to us. And to carry out this 
 purpose she sets the great Truths about God before us 
 in dogmatic form, not in a hazy, misty, undefined 
 fashion, in feeble phrases of vague religious sentiment, 
 but in a clear, well-defined dogma such as the mind 
 can take hold of. 
 
 For what are the Dogmata of the Church ? " They 
 are, as one has well said, the great Facts of the 
 spiritual world, which are made known to us in 
 the Christian Revelation, embodied in words which 
 express them accurately. What the highest mathe- 
 matical, and scientific formulae are to their separate 
 sciences, the records in a brief summary of the long 
 conclusion of a multitude of experiments or problems, 
 these are the Dogmata of our Faith in the realm of 
 Revelation. They are points gained, points of light, 
 i luminating and enlarging all knowledge — gifts to 
 the intellect, like the gift of the sun, and moon, and 
 stars in the heavens, not restrictions upon the action of 
 the intellect, but the gathering up into the mind of new 
 and ever-welling fountains of fresh life and vigour." 
 " They are restrictions only as a Truth gained is a 
 restriction upon error. In real fact, they free us from 
 the bondage of error, and open the way to other 
 
166 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 Truths which could never have been reached but from 
 the vantage-ground which each clear definition gives 
 to one who would grow in knowledge. This is the 
 dogmatic teaching of the Church in her Creeds, the 
 mere records of faith in the mighty spirit-world ; not 
 a set of speculations, like the tentative Teachings forth 
 of a bold and ambitious philosophy, not a number of 
 refinements, like the subtle mind-play of the meta- 
 physician or the casuist ; not even in themselves 
 appeals to feeling, though the root of all true and 
 deep feeling, but a declaring of God." * True it is 
 that from this declaring of God all else may follow : 
 intellectual advancement, moral obligation, the re- 
 newing of the affections, when their truest object is 
 set before them. These are the inevitable conse- 
 quences of receiving the Truth ; but the object of the 
 Church in defining the Truth is to set God clearly 
 before us. Her Dogmata are like the sharp and 
 clearly defined peaks of the great mountain range, 
 which arrest the eye, which fixe the gaze. Down 
 their sides pour the streams which water the earth, 
 but they themselves tower into an atmosphere high 
 above ours. So are the Creeds of the Church the 
 Record of the Revelation of God. 
 
 It is as we use these Creeds morning by morning, 
 and night by night in our prayers at home, as we join 
 
 * Bishop Wilberforce, in a sermon on Dogmatic Teaching. 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 167 
 
 here in Church with the gathered companies of faithful 
 worshippers, who tell forth into the ear of God their 
 glad acceptance of what He has been pleased to teach 
 them, that this knowledge of God grows upon the 
 soul. 
 
 Nay, more, as year after year we worship the In- 
 carnate God at Christmas, and are moved to love and 
 wonder at His atoning Death on Good Friday, and 
 rejoice in His mighty Victory over Death at Easter, 
 and exult in the hope of sharing one day the Glory of 
 His Ascension, and recognise His continued Presence 
 with His Church through the descent of the Holy 
 Ghost at Whitsuntide, and adore with deepest awe and 
 reverence, as on this day, the mystery of the Three 
 Persons in the Godhead, which our Lord's own lips 
 have declared to us, the knowledge of God will more 
 and more fill our souls, as it filled the soul of St. Paul. 
 To us, as to him, it will bring a higher joy than any 
 other kind of knowledge can bring. In us, as in him, 
 it will waken up a thirst for a fuller, a more complete 
 knowledge. To us, as to him, the knowledge which 
 we have already as a gift from God will be a pledge 
 that it is the will of God to carry to the highest 
 perfection the Revelations which even here have been 
 so full of joy. And we too, looking on beyond the 
 sorrows and the trials — the toils of mind and the 
 sinkings of heart which fall to our lot now — beyond 
 
i63 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 our mistakes, our infirmities of faith, our failings, our 
 falls, our sins, and our penitences — shall dare to say : 
 " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face 
 to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I 
 know fully, even as also I am fully known." 
 
 " Even as also I am fully known." As we hear 
 these words, a new thought comes breathing out 
 through them. It was not only because he had been 
 so careful to receive the Revelation that came from 
 God that the knowledge of God had grown in the 
 soul of the apostle. No, he had known God 
 personally, something as one friend knows another ; 
 nay, with a knowledge more intimate, more complete 
 than that with which one friend knows another. 
 There had been between him and God the close 
 Communion of the Creature with the Creator, of the 
 redeemed with the Redeemer, of the spirit of man 
 with the indwelling and sanctifying Spirit. " Even 
 as I am fully known : " what do these words tell us 
 of his being known and understood, and borne with in 
 mercy and long-suffering, when in ignorance and 
 unbelief he was doing those " many things contrary to 
 the name of Jesus of Nazareth " which he " thought " 
 in his blindness he yet " ought to do ? " What do they 
 tell us of his being known, when, in the moment of 
 absolute surrender of himself to his Blessed Master, 
 he had said, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 169 
 
 What do they reveal to us of his learning the Power 
 of the Sacrifice of the Cross to save even him, the 
 chief of sinners ! How do they carry us back to 
 toils in which he was always supported, — to sufferings 
 in which One ever cheered him, — to infirmities in 
 which he was even taught to glory, — to loneliness in 
 which he became the more conscious of the presence of 
 One Who was ever near, — to that sense of the blessed 
 assistance of One Who never failed him, which comes 
 out in the triumphant declaration, " I can do all things 
 through Christ, which strengthened me," to that trust 
 in the prevailing Power of Grace that finds expression 
 in the paradox, " When I am weak then am I strong " ! 
 Yes, he had been fully known in every crisis of his 
 life, whether there were "fightings without," or fears 
 within," in joy and in sorrow, in brightness and in tears, 
 in days of triumph, and in days of weakness and much 
 trembling ; and, as he had been fully known, so 
 he had been ever learning more fully to know his 
 Lord. Filled with the sense of the fatherly, redeeming 
 sanctifying Love which he had known in a thousand 
 varying circumstances of life, he looks on to the full, 
 final, unending manifestation of that love, and exclaims, 
 " Now I know in part, then shall I fully know." 
 
 Here surely is our last lesson. There is no 
 knowledge which so grows, which so thrives as the 
 knowledge which the soul gains by living in close 
 
170 JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 communion with God. Oh, live, move, act, speak, 
 think as in His sacred, loving, penetrating presence, 
 " Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts." Live with 
 souls kept consciously ever open to His influences. 
 Carry to Him in your prayers every study, every aim* 
 every undertaking, — yes, but every sorrow, every 
 temptation, nay, every committed and regretted sin. 
 So learn to know what a Father's Love, a Father's 
 Care, a Father's Guardianship can do for you. Bring 
 to the foot of the Cross all stains that have fallen 
 upon your souls, all the guilt of lost opportunities, 
 and of unloving transgressions, and learn the Power of 
 the Divine Love and of the Divine Sacrifice to cleanse 
 from all sin. In the Power of the Holy Ghost press 
 into an ever closer union with the living Christ till 
 He lives more wholly in you, and you more wholly in 
 Him. Then, then indeed the joy of knowing God 
 will grow more and more upon you. The sacred 
 doctrine of the Trinity — the name of the Father, and 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost — will be no mere 
 abstract Truth to you. It will be a Revelation of a 
 Love personal to yourself, in the light of which you 
 will live. " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
 love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost " 
 will be to you the blissful realities of your daily life. 
 As more of the tenderness, more of the compassion, 
 more of the watchfulness, more of the mercy, more of 
 
JOY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 171 
 
 the ever-ready support, more of the holiness, the 
 purity, the perfection of God comes home to you, 
 you will long more for that moment of supreme 
 and perfected happiness in which at last, in the 
 very presence of God, you shall see all that He has 
 been, all that He has done for you in this life, — nay, 
 so far as you are able to bear it — when you shall see all 
 that He is in Himself. And so you too shall take up 
 the apostle's words : " Then shall I know fully, even 
 as also I am fully known." 
 
 I am told to remind you that you are asked to aid 
 with your alms to-day Addenbrook's Hospital. The 
 sick and the suffering make this appeal to your pity, 
 to your compassion, to your love. You will not 
 forget that in real love for others is to be found the 
 surest proof that we have a real knowledge of God, 
 Who is love : " Every one that loveth is born of God 
 and knoweth God." 
 
172 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 XL 
 
 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE CONSEQUENCE 
 OF FEEDING OX CHRIST. 
 
 Preached at St. John the Divine, Kennington. May 27, 1875. 
 
 1 Corinthians x. 17. 
 
 " We being many are one bread, and one body ; for we are all 
 partakers of that one bread." 
 
 If there is one feeling which is strong in the hearts of 
 all members of the Confraternity of the Blessed 
 Sacrament, it must be that of intense love to our 
 Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ. Whatever we may feel 
 as to the depth of the Mystery of the holy Eucharist, 
 and its being beyond the reach of our understanding, 
 one thing at least we know. We know that our 
 Blessed Lord feeds us with Himself in that Blessed 
 Sacrament. He is Himself our food. By feeding on 
 Him our life is kept up within us, that true life by 
 which we live to God. We have our Blessed Lord's 
 own word for this : " I am the Bread of Life." " The 
 Bread which I will give is my Flesh, which I will give 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING OX CHRIST. 173 
 
 for the life of the world." "Whoso eateth my Flesh, 
 and drinketh my Blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him." 
 And " He that eateth Me, even he shall live by me." 
 And, just as our Blessed Lord teaches us in these words 
 that the soul is to draw its life out of Him by feeding 
 upon Him, so the Church teaches us, in the words 
 by which she prepares us for our communion, that 
 we are to thank God not only for giving His Son to 
 die for us, but also for giving Him "to be our spiritual 
 Food and Sustenance in that holy Sacrament." From 
 our childhood we have been taught that, just as our 
 bodies are strengthened by the natural food of bread 
 and wine, so our souls are strengthened and refreshed 
 by the Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and 
 indeed taken and received by the Faithful in the 
 Lord's Supper. 
 
 How could we, then, help loving our Blessed Lord ? 
 He has so longed to be one with us that he has 
 invented in the blessed Sacrament a way for giving 
 Himself to us. 
 
 He knows what we want, the cleansing away of 
 the stains of sin, the changing of our hearts, — a strength 
 above our own, — a power, and force, and principle of 
 life to be put into us. All this we need to undo the 
 harm that has happened to us, through man's falling 
 away from God, and to make our nature what God 
 intended that it should be, to make us able to live 
 
174 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 our true life. And all this our blessed Lord offers us 
 in the Blessed Sacrament. Because I live ye " shall 
 live also," is what He says to us, as we draw near. 
 He offers us all the Pardon, and Grace that are to be 
 had through the Merits of His Death, and through 
 the Power of His Life ; for He knows that we want 
 these. But He knows that we want more than these 
 gifts ; that we want Himself, that we were made for 
 Himself, that our hearth are too large to be filled with 
 anything short of Himself. And so He gives Him- 
 self to us to be the Bread of Life, to fill, rejoice, gladden, 
 and satisfy our souls. 
 
 Nay, He knows far more than our own wants and 
 desires. He knows His Own desires ; and His desire 
 and delight is to be with the sons of men. And so, 
 when we have come with faith, hungering and 
 thirsting for Him, and in penitence banishing and 
 turning out of our hearts whatever might shut Him 
 out, we have possessed ourselves of Him. He has 
 given Himself to us, and we have taken and received 
 Him. We have eaten Him, and fed upon Him, after 
 a heavenly and spiritual manner, but in a manner as 
 true and real as the joys of heaven are true and real. 
 We have had Him for our own ; our own Lord, our 
 own God, our own Life. We have been partakers of 
 that One Bread which came down from heaven to 
 give life to the world. 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING ON CHRIST. 175 
 
 Again, then, could we help loving Him ? The 
 thought of Him, the sense of what He is in Himself, 
 of what He is to us, has grown into us ; nay, He 
 Himself has grown into us, and we have grown into 
 Him, His life mingling itself with ours, as the life of 
 the vine runs through all the branches, so that both 
 stock and branches live by one common life. Yes, 
 intense love for our Blessed Lord is the predominant 
 feeling in the heart of every one of us who fulfils the 
 purpose of this Society. Surely this is what makes 
 you wish to give Him the honour due to Him for being 
 present with us in His Sacrament, for being so 
 strangely, mysteriously, lovingly near. This is the 
 reason for aiming at more careful Preparation for 
 your communions, that you may welcome Him. This 
 is what calls for more ardent Thanksgivings, that we 
 may dwell on the Blessedness of His Presence. This 
 is the motive of all outward and inward reverence, 
 that we may treat Him as He ought to be treated, 
 with devout, tender, loyal, reverent love. As the 
 glance of His eye, and the tones of His voice, and the 
 pointed question that searched the heart, and the apt 
 warning that revealed His tender watchfulness, all 
 shewed the apostles of old that they were known, 
 understood, cared for, guarded, and loved individually ; 
 and, as by all these marks of their Lord's peculiar and 
 fond interest in them one by one, their hearts were 
 
176 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 drawn to, and fixed on Him, till they could say, 
 " Lord, to whom shall we go ? " when the falling 
 away of others seemed to make it possible that they 
 too might be drawn off from their Lord, so it has 
 been with us. In our Communions we have seen how 
 He has dealt with us. His special tenderness towards 
 us has come out. And, as life goes on, we feel that He 
 is more to usTKan all the world beside. Without this 
 Bread the world would starve us. Whence should 
 so many men be satisfied without Him here in the 
 wilderness ? On Him alone our hunger has been 
 fed to the full. In Him alone the largest of our 
 longings has been more than satisfied. And so I 
 have taken it for granted that we love Him beyond 
 all else. 
 
 II. But there is another love that should spring out 
 of this intense love for Him Who so feeds us. I 
 mean, the love for all who feed on Him together with 
 us. Brethren, if we are one with Him, ve are one with 
 each other, in and through him : " We, being many, 
 are one bread, and one body, for we are all partakers 
 of that one bread." It was quite as much part of 
 His purpose to draw us to one another as to draw us 
 to Himself; to make us. live in, and for one another 
 as for Himself. We are members one of another, as 
 we are members of Him ; yes, because we are 
 members of Him. All of us drew life from Him 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING ON CHRIST. 177 
 
 when "by one Spirit we were all baptized into one 
 body." All of us draw life from Him afresh in 
 every Communion. We are actually one bread 
 kneaded into one mass, because partakers of that 
 one bread. You will remember how St. Cyprian 
 says that the very creatures of bread and wine, which 
 are the elements of the holy Communion, that out of 
 which the Sacrament is made, show us that we ought 
 all to be fast joined together in unity. As many 
 grains go to make up one loaf, and many grapes to 
 produce the wine for one cup, so we being many are 
 bound to be one. But why ? Because we are ac- 
 tually one body, one Spiritual Mystical Body of 
 Christ, and this because, as we are nourished with 
 our Lord, who is the bread of all of us, one and fche 
 same life, His life, passes through all of us, the 
 cleansing powers of the same blood rest on all, the 
 healing influence of the same Divine touch works in 
 all. The multitudes throng Him, and press Him, 
 and virtue goes out of Him to heal every one that 
 has faith to draw it out. The same heavenly might 
 succours all. The same life of God mingles with 
 our individual lives ; as one and the same water of 
 the sea flows into all gulfs and bays. 
 
 There are natural causes without number for our 
 being drawn together. They are these : we share 
 the same dangers ; and weep over the same sorrows ; 
 
178 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 and smart under the same sufferings ; and have to 
 make way against the same difficulties ; and are 
 beset by the same perplexities ; and experience the 
 same trials ; and are assaulted by the same tempta- 
 tions ; and are engaged in the same keen strife ; and 
 are waging the same fierce battle. Yes, and our 
 souls are comforted with the same consolations ; and 
 our hearts brightened with gleams of the same 
 hopes ; and gladdened with the same successes ; and 
 we are surprised almost out of ourselves by the same 
 unlooked-for victories ; and overcome from time to 
 time by the same unexpected, unimaginable inward 
 peace and joy. We live like children under the eye 
 and care of one Father and God. We are ranged 
 under the protecting Cross of one Lord. We are 
 gathered into the same sacred family. We are 
 bound to receive the same faith. We have pledged 
 ourselves to observe the same laws of the Church of 
 God. All these things are enough, and more than 
 enough, to bind us heart with heart together. But we 
 have an inward bond of supernatural union which 
 goes far beyond these in strength and power, if we 
 would but realise its force. There is actually the 
 same supernatural life at work within us all, inter- 
 mingling us one wich another, and making us 
 dependent one on another : " The whole body, knit 
 together, and compacted by that which every joint 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING ON CHRIST. 179 
 
 supplieth, maketh increase of the body unto the 
 edifying of itself in love." 
 
 The uniting Force of God Who is Unity — the 
 Trinity in Unity — is brought to bear upon us that we 
 may be one. God, Who is love, dwells in us, that 
 we may love. 
 
 Ah, brethren, are we most moved as the loveliness 
 of this truth shines out before us ; or abashed at its 
 high and mysterious majesty, or ashamed and con- 
 founded as we feel how we have resisted those mighty 
 forces that have been put forth upon us ? 
 
 Is this intense love for one another felt among us ? 
 Love makes of the many one. " We being many are 
 one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of 
 that one bread." Can we, may we, dare we say this 
 of ourselves ? Not only are there no jealousies, 
 suspicions, unkindnesses amongst us, but we are one, 
 one in the strength of love that makes all hearts beat 
 together, one in the embrace of an affection that 
 encircles all whom God loves, one in the light of a 
 tenderness that throws its one glow of beauty on all 
 that comes across it, one in the pulses of a common 
 life that are stirred by a sense of true brotherhood on 
 all sides — one in heart and soul. 
 
 Ah, it was so at Pentecost : " The multitude of them 
 that believed were of one heart, and of one soul ; 
 neither said any of them that aught of the things 
 
 N 2 
 
I So LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 which he possessed was his own, but they had all 
 things common." They were many then, as we are 
 many now. There were amongst them what might 
 have been conflicting interests. There were different 
 ranks, and classes, and positions, and endowments. 
 There met together in that charmed circle of unity 
 the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, 
 those who were advanced in religious knowledge, and 
 those who were beginners, the governors and the 
 governed. As the natural man might judge, there 
 were all things that might have kept them apart. 
 What welded them together ? Or, rather, what fused 
 them into one golden mass of burning, glowing love ? 
 Doubtless it was the fire of the Holy Ghost which 
 fell into them from heaven as they were baptized into 
 the one body of our Lord. But what kept up in 
 them the uniting forces of this Divine life ? Was it 
 not the power of the one Bread of which they were 
 partakers, the transforming power of that force 
 which turned man's selfishness into a likeness of the 
 all-embracing love of God ? At least we read that it 
 was they who " continued steadfastly in the breaking 
 of bread " who also continued in that sacred closeness 
 of fellowship with the apostolic band that made 
 them feel that all things were common to them, alike 
 outward possessions, and inward hopes, and joys, and 
 blessings, and gifts from heaven. 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING ON CHRIST. 181 
 
 Again, then, is this so now ? One's heart aches as 
 one puts the question. One's head is ready to droop 
 and one's cheek to blush for very shame. How are 
 our days marked by divisions, separations, or mis- 
 understandings ! Divisions even gloried in'psepara- 
 tions stoutly maintained ; misunderstandings scarcely 
 even sought to be removed. 
 
 Rich and poor seem to dwell even more and more 
 widely apart ; to come less and less into contact with 
 each other in the kindly intercourse of life ; to dwell 
 almost in separate spheres. 
 
 Schools and parties in the Church seem too often 
 bent on exaggerating their differences ; to look fixedly 
 on the points on which they are out of harmony with 
 each other, instead of considering the vast body of 
 truths in which they are thoroughly at one ; nay, 
 to overlook the fact that in their very manner of 
 stating the truths which they cherish they often make 
 them seem to conflict with other truths, equally 
 taught by God, and therefore in thorough harmony 
 with the rest of the body of revealed truths. If men 
 were but determined to understand one another, how 
 many needless separations might disappear ! The 
 steady burning of the sun of Christian charity 
 would disperse a whole cloud of the mists of 
 prejudice. 
 
 And there are other instances where the love that 
 
1 82 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 should spring from a deep sense of the blessed union 
 in which all Christians should live has been most 
 sadly enfeebled. Only think of the reverent, filial, 
 tender love which we ought to feel towards every 
 Bishop, the love excited in us by the very title which 
 each Bishop bears, of a Father in God, his greatest 
 noblest, tenderest title, so far beyond all other titles 
 which we give him, in its appeal to our hearts. Only 
 think of the love, and tenderness, and sympathy, the 
 warmth of interest in all that concerns the spiritual 
 life of their children, which these our Fathers in God 
 should feel for us, for every single child of God and 
 of the Church. Imagine the sympathy, the interest 
 that should be felt, and shown, and acted upon by 
 every single communicant in all who partake of the 
 One Bread of life. Or think for yourselves what 
 should be the feeling of those who kneel side by side 
 in the same church, who are fed almost at the same 
 minute at the same altar by the same Lord. And, 
 then, think what is the actual love felt in all these 
 cases. God forbid that we should say that there is 
 no love, that there is not even great love between 
 Bishop and People, between one congregation and 
 another, between the communicants at the same altar, 
 aye, even great and growing love, with increasing 
 forbearance and mutual consideration between those 
 who are of different ways of thinking in the Church. 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING ON CHRIST. 183 
 
 Least of all, God forbid that I should seem to imply 
 that you, dear brethen, have been unkindly or un- 
 loving towards others ! But is there the love that 
 there should be amongst us ? Surely we shall not 
 say this while we remember what a love our Lord 
 must look for, when He gives Himself to be the 
 source of love within us by making us partakers of 
 Himself, the One Bread. Oh, let us think deeply 
 of this. Our love is to be like His own, broad, tender, 
 gentle, forgiving, healing, soothing, blessing all around. 
 And here, then, is a noble work set before us, to 
 remove all barriers that keep heart from heart. Let 
 us, then, aim at this. 
 
 1. Keep up in your minds the sense of inward 
 communion with others. Realise this. Love, respect, 
 honour the life of Christ in others. 
 
 2. Pray for the power to understand others better ; 
 for deeper, true, heartier sympathy with them. 
 
 3. Extend the range of your intercessions. 
 
 4. Cultivate the spirit of fellowship by acts of 
 loving-kindness. Take your part in the sorrows and 
 joys of others. ft Rejoice with them that do rejoice, 
 and weep with them that weep." 
 
 5. Put the best possible construction on the acts 
 and words of others. 
 
 6. Avoid on your own part what is likely to be 
 misunderstood. 
 
i84 LOVE FOR THE FAITHFUL THE 
 
 7. If you have to speak on matters of faith, re- 
 commend the truth by stating it in the form likeliest 
 to ensure its reception. 
 
 8. If you have to deal with those who are in error, 
 look for the truth that underlies this error. 
 
 , 9. Avoid, on your own part, the error who springs 
 from exaggeration of the truth. 
 
 10. Most of all, honour the life of Jesus Christ 
 within yourself. His was a life of unbounded love, of 
 tenderness, forbearance, long-suffering, gentleness. It 
 was a life that drew others together, that gathered 
 together in one the children of God that were 
 scattered abroad. It was the life of One Who was 
 firm, uncompromising, Who had a single eye to God 
 and His truth, but who was never harsh, nor 
 aggravating. It was the life of One Who, under the 
 sins, and faults, and shortcomings of men, was quick 
 and eager to see the wish to be nearer to God So 
 let your life be. As you feed upon Christ, let the 
 character of His life and His love for others come 
 out in you. How great a thought is that of a living 
 French bishop,* that, if our communions be true, we 
 shall in our measure become a Bread of life to 
 others ! We may, he says, receive Christ at the 
 holy table, and then become ourselves an Eucharistic 
 table to those around us. We may make our friends 
 * Monseigneur Landriot, " La Sainte Communion." 
 
CONSEQUENCE OF FEEDING ON CHRIST. 185 
 
 sit down at the banquet of our heart, our words, our 
 acts, and so help to transform them little by little into 
 Christ. If only He be in us, each one that comes 
 near us will be soothed, comforted, brightened, ^tdcd, 
 cheered. The very sweetness of our love will draw 
 our friends to Him from Whom we gathered the power 
 of loving into our own souls. And they will be made 
 to hunger after Him, Who alone can fill our souls, till 
 they find their joys where we have found ours. 
 
1 86 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE SAFEGUARD OF 
 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 Preached at St. Peter's, London Docks. May 30, 1872. 
 
 St. Luke xxii. 19. 
 " This do in remembrance of Me." 
 
 At the celebration of the holy Eucharist one Name, 
 one Person, is in the hearts and minds of all of us. 
 Our worship is full of Him. It becomes more full of 
 Him still as this sacred service mounts to its height. 
 Our sense and feeling of His Presence grows more 
 intense as the reality of that Presence is brought home 
 to us, and presented to us in its distinctness. As, 
 when our Blessed Lord made Mary Magdalene feel 
 and know that He was really present with her, she 
 poured out her whole heart in the burning fervour of 
 that acknowledgment, " Rabboni," my master, my 
 Lord, my All, so by our every act and word we try 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 187 
 
 to express to the Blessed Jesus what He is to us. 
 Our whole soul fastens on Him. Our spirit has no 
 eye for any one, or anything else. Our gaze is fixed 
 on Him. He is with us, and we are with Him. We 
 know what He is in Himself, how pure, how fair, how 
 holy, how perfect. We know what He has been 
 to us, how loving, how tender, how compassionate, 
 how full of healing, and pardon, and peace. And so 
 every hymn is full of His praises ; and every gesture 
 is an act of loving reverence to Him ; and every 
 sacred rite speaks of Him. We are in His court, and 
 under His eye, and there is an interchange of love 
 between Him and us. On our side there is the love 
 of reverence. On His side there is the love of a gentle, 
 fostering, soothing protection. 
 
 Now, why is this ? It is just possible that this 
 might not be the case with every one here. There 
 might be some one here who does not understand 
 what our Blessed Lord is to the soul. Why is He all 
 in all to us ? 
 
 There is, I think, but one answer. We have obeyed 
 Him in a faithful use of the Sacrament of love, the 
 holy Eucharist, and so love for Him has become the 
 ruling passion of our hearts. He has said to us, 
 " This do in remembrance of me," and we have 
 acted on His words, we have celebrated the Sacrament 
 which is the memorial of Him. And what has 
 
1 88 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 followed ? His whole life has been lived, as it were, 
 again and again before us, or rather He Himself 
 personally has lived before us, with us, as though He 
 were our companion, and we were His. His words, 
 His acts, His sufferings have sunk into our minds, 
 and won and attracted us, and fixed our whole affec- 
 tions upon Him as upon one whom the heart must 
 love beyond all others. Every remembrance of Him 
 in each earnest communion has made us more 
 conscious of what He really is, and we have become 
 wrapped up in Him. 
 
 But there is no need to tell you that the blessed 
 Sacrament has done far more for us than this. It is 
 a memorial not only of His Perfections, but of His 
 Death for us. It has brought out to us how dear we 
 are to Him Who gave His very self for us. It has 
 comforted us with the hope of all the pardon that is 
 to be had even for us sinners through His Precious 
 Blood. It has shown us what we owe to Him, and 
 so has bound us to Him Who endured the Cross for 
 us. 
 
 But, again, while I say this, you are quick to feel 
 that I have understated the truth. " This do in 
 remembrance of Me," — what do those words mean ? 
 If they only mean that the holy Eucharist was to be 
 a memorial of our Blessed Lord to us, we could see at 
 once how much the soul would gain from the Institution 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 189 
 
 of the holy Eucharist. What a thing it is in this 
 world of sin and imperfection, in the midst of earthli- 
 ness, and selfishness, and pollution, to be brought 
 face to face with that pure, spotless, noble, perfect 
 life, and to be drawn out of, and above, ourselves by 
 such an example ! What a thing it is when our 
 hearts condemn us for our sins, and we are ready to 
 lose all hope ; as we feel what we have been, and 
 what we are, to be led, as it were, in memory to the 
 foot of that Cross, and to know that there is a 
 fountain which has been opened to cleanse even such 
 uncleanness as ours ! What hope and energy this 
 gives to repentance ! But you know that the holy 
 Eucharist is not only a Memorial to us ; it is a 
 Memorial also to God. " Do this in remembrance of 
 Me," make the appointed offering of Me, lay before 
 the eye of My Father the Memorial of Me. Plead 
 before him all that I am, all that I have done, all 
 that I have suffered. So that in the holy Eucharist 
 the whole person and character of our Blessed Lord 
 is presented to God. That perfect life of Him in 
 Whom the Father was well pleased lives on with the 
 glory and beauty of every smile and tear, every 
 glance and look, every thought and imagination, every 
 word and discourse, every act of obedience, every 
 willing, patient, trustful suffering. That precious 
 death and passion, in all its power to atone, is not 
 
190 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 renewed and repeated in any bloody suffering. 
 That could not be, that cannot be again. Yet in very 
 deed and truth that Death of the Cross is pleaded 
 before God with all its prevailing force to draw down 
 pardon and blessing. 
 
 This is how we have come to be wrapped up so 
 much in our Blessed Lord. The Celebration again 
 and again of the Blessed Sacrament has made His 
 fairness, and beauty, and perfection, His love and 
 Tenderness to ourselves sink more and more into our 
 souls. Adoring love for Him has grown as we learnt 
 more truly Who and What He is. And then, again, 
 as in each Celebration we have pleaded his Sacrifice 
 before God, we have seen more and more what gifts 
 for the soul come through Him, and how our every 
 hope hangs on Him, and so we have held to Him with 
 the faith and devotion of the whole heart. And this, 
 too, accounts for the existence of our Confraternity. 
 We must long to honour Him in His Blessed Sacra- 
 ment Who has so blessed us. We cannot but use 
 every effort to increase Celebrations of that Sacrament 
 when we know what its power is to our own selves. 
 And, as a matter of course, we must aim at making 
 those Celebrations reverent, both that we may honour 
 our Lord ourselves, and lead others to honour Him. 
 
 But now there is one objection which may be made 
 to our Society. It may be said that its aim is 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 191 
 
 narrowed to too small a point. If you love Him, 
 it may be said, form yourselves into a Society with a 
 larger sphere for work. In the very name and objects 
 of your Society there is a danger of fixing the mind 
 on something short of our Blessed Lord Himself, 
 or losing in reverence for an ordinance, however 
 sacred that ordinance may be, the thought of Him 
 Whom that ordinance was meant to place as a living 
 person before the soul. Probably you do see this 
 danger yourselves. Certainly it has been most 
 carefully guarded against in the statement of the first 
 " object " of the Confraternity, " the honour due to 
 the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ in the blessed 
 Sacrament of His body and blood." But is our 
 object a small one ? If our aim is narrowed to a 
 single point, is not that single point the very centre 
 from which the whole series of Christian truths 
 radiate ? 
 
 Is there any one here who loves our Blessed Lord 
 with his whole heart ? Is there any one who does 
 not so love Him, or at least desire to love Him ? I 
 speak to those whom He has fed with His Body and 
 Blood ; in whom He dwells, who dwell in Him. 
 Brethren, of you it has been said by Himself, " He 
 that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." His Life 
 is in you. You live by His life more than by your 
 own. If it can be said, even of men who have only 
 
192 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 natural life in them, that yet they "live, and move, 
 and have their being " in God, Who sustains them, how 
 much more is this true of those who have received 
 His own life into them ! His life circulates, as it 
 were, through you, and with His life must come love 
 for what He loves, pity for those whom He pities, joy 
 in what is a joy to Him. He has identified you with 
 Himself. Well, then, His interests are yours, as 
 yours are certainly His. His cause is your cause ; 
 His victories your victories ; His honour your honour. 
 You would long to do some work for Him, to strike a 
 blow for Him, to defend what is dear to Him, to 
 promote what He has at heart. You have had 
 wishes, longings, desires to do something for Him, 
 at least some little thing before you die, for Him Who 
 lived and died for you. 
 
 Well, now, how is the cause of our Blessed Lord most 
 imperilled at this time ? Is it not by indifference to 
 the truth which He taught ? Is it not by men's 
 thinking that it matters not what they believe ? One 
 who is in heart and soul loyal to our Blessed Lord 
 could hardly ask for a greater favour than to be 
 allowed to do something towards preserving in their 
 fulness and exactness the truths which He taught 
 Himself on earth. 
 
 See, now, whether every one of these truths, every 
 article of the faith, do not range itself around the 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 193 
 
 Blessed Sacrament. See whether a right faith 
 concerning the Blessed Sacrament is not a safeguard 
 against every form of error into which men are being 
 led around us. There is no time to go into this in 
 detail. But let us test the matter in this way. 
 
 Is there any one here who has any doubt as to the 
 personal existence of his own soul, of himself, or of 
 the immortality of that soul ? 
 
 Have we any doubts about the existence of God ? 
 The world is full of such doubts, or of the profession 
 of such doubts. It puts forth as the proof of its 
 intellectual power that it knows nothing of its own 
 existence, or of the existence of any other being. Are 
 we in this state ? 
 
 Have we any doubt that our Blessed Lord is really 
 God and really man, that He did actually die for 
 our sins, and rise again, or that He is in heaven our 
 Advocate, or that He will come again to judge us ? 
 Do we doubt the existence or the work of God the 
 Holy Ghost ? Have we any doubt that there is such 
 a body as the Catholic Church, or that our salvation 
 depends on being members of it ? Are we uncertain 
 as to whether the Saints have communion with each 
 other or whether there is such a thing as sin. or 
 whether it can be forgiven, or how it can be forgiven ? 
 Do we debate whether the body will rise again, or 
 whether we shall live for ever hereafter ? 
 
 o 
 
194 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 Do I affirm too much when I say that one devout 
 communion, with a right faith in the Blessed Sacrament, 
 is an act directly contradictory of all such doubts ? 
 
 In such a communion the soul, conscious of its own 
 existence, comes into direct communion with God. 
 Yes, but how ? Not through its own act, or its own 
 powers alone, but through the mediation of our 
 Blessed Lord. It acknowledges Him as God and 
 man As St. Ignatius says, it confesses a true 
 Eucharist in His flesh. It depends on His passion for 
 pardon. It seeks fresh life from its risen Lord. It seeks 
 for His intercession. It looks to be prepared for His 
 coming again. It acknowledges that sacramental 
 union is wrought through the Holy Ghost. It desires 
 to maintain its union with the Church as the body of 
 our Lord — as St. Augustine says, to become that body 
 on which it feeds. It knows that a real communication 
 between saints living and departed is effected through 
 communion with our Lord. It comes for the freeing 
 from its sins. It claims our Lord's promise of 
 resurrection and of eternal life through Him. 
 
 See whether this be not so. Analyse, if you will, 
 the working of your own minds in communion, and 
 see what is their firm acceptance of all these truths. 
 See how readily all sceptical doubts fall off from the 
 mind of the communicant. He has made proof of the 
 reality of what sceptics discuss. To him doubt 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. ix,$ 
 
 seems to have become a blessed impossibility. And 
 when men tempt him to turn to this or that so- 
 called philosophical system, He turns, like St. Peter, 
 with a calm certainty to our Blessed Lord, and says : 
 * Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of 
 eternal life, and we believe and are sure that Thou 
 earnest forth from God." 
 
 Ah, but there is yet another way in which faith in 
 the blessed Sacrament guards the soul against error. 
 Would to God that men would see it ! The holy 
 Eucharist might then indeed be in very truth the 
 Sacrament of love, and minds that have been too long 
 and too sadly parted might find their bond of union 
 in the use of it. 
 
 There are those who value highly — they cannot 
 value too highly — the doctrine of the Atonement, of 
 our Blessed Lord's priesthood, of the justification, of the 
 soul through faith, of the need of grace — in one word, 
 of salvation through Christ. Where and how are 
 these great truths worked into the soul ? In the 
 receiving of the Blessed Sacrament. How have you 
 and I learnt that our Blessed Lord is all in all to us, 
 that from without, not from within us must come the 
 change which is absolutely necessary for our simple 
 nature, that His Sacrifice alone can cleanse us, that 
 He is our only Priest, that the soul must take hold 
 of Him, and deal personally with Him and He with it ? 
 
 0 2 
 
196 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 We have had these truths more and more worked 
 into souls by every communion. And who are they 
 that have learnt to doubt all these truths? Those 
 that have been taught to look to the working of 
 their own minds, to their own faith, to something 
 within themselves for salvation. 
 
 In a word, in the blessed Sacrament there is a 
 meeting between God and the soul, and the soul is 
 taught to find its satisfaction in God. It is taught to 
 look out of itself, beyond itself for all that can 
 change, and bless, and exalt, and ennoble it, and give 
 it happiness. It is not taught to depend upon its 
 own feelings, its earnestness of faith, its power of 
 hope, its strength of love, or even its utter abnegation 
 of self. It is not left to imagine that it can raise 
 itself from its fallen state, and effect its own union 
 with God. No, it is presented as in a state of 
 hunger in this mysterious feast, craving for God, 
 longing for the powers that are in God to be exer- 
 cised upon it, and depending upon God's own act to 
 unite Himself to the soul. And the soul knows that 
 this union is possible, that it can be made one with 
 God through God the Son having been made man, 
 and having died, and risen, through the working of 
 His life in itself. The faith of the communicant 
 may be expressed in one single sentence, " Christ in 
 me, the hope of glory," — I come to feed on my 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 197 
 
 Blessed Lord in His Own Sacrament, I receive Him, 
 Who is both God and man, and with Him all His 
 merits are applied to me, and my sin forgiven through 
 His passion, and His Own risen life mingles with mine, 
 and in Him I am united to God and to all that 
 is in God, and the weakness and corruption into 
 which I fell by separation from God is overcome, 
 and I pass on to the glory of everlasting life in 
 God. Here, again, is the whole Creed brought into 
 action. And here, again, is the whole principle 
 of the Fall, the wilful eating of the forbidden 
 food, by which the soul of the first man tore 
 itself out of the hand of God, counter-worked by the 
 adcring feeding of man on God, Who gives Himself 
 to satisfy the soul. 
 
 We may well think of this to-day. Great as is the 
 joy of our communions to ourselves, they may yet 
 also be a joy to our Lord. Wonderful as is the 
 work that is done in us through them, they yet also 
 do a work for Him, His Cause, His Truth, His Person. 
 They preserve, they evidence, they bring into action, 
 they proclaim before men all the circle of truths 
 which He taught. 
 
 Dear brethren, you will rejoice in this. While 
 faith seems to fail in so many round us, and doubts 
 and perplexities abound, it is no little thing to have 
 been draivn together by God into a society which may 
 
19S THE BLESSED SACRAMENT THE 
 
 do its little towards preserving those truths which 
 alone can save a poor, blind, wandering, fallen world. 
 But see that you do not miss your part in this joy. 
 Prolong your communions into your lives. Clear as is 
 the witness that is borne for each article of the faith 
 by a devout act of communion, clearer still is the 
 witness of a transformed life, the life of one who has 
 passed into union with God. 
 
 Would you witness for the existence of your own 
 souls ? Live like those who would not throw away by 
 act or word of sin, by frivolity or carelessness, those 
 souls, and their undying interests. 
 
 Would you witness for God ? Live as if your 
 communion with Him was unbroken. Live, act, 
 speak, behave, ah, even move as if you were en- 
 tranced by Him, living in Him, He living in you. 
 By a whisper, by a smile, by an imagination we may 
 confess God. By a sneer, by a mere look of apathy 
 or of disgust, by a scornful laugh we may deny Him. 
 
 Would you witness for an incarnate God ? Be 
 yourselves His living witnesses. Let men then see 
 that the life that you now live in the flesh you live by 
 the faith of the Son of God, Who loved you and gave 
 Himself for you, nay, that not you live, but He liveth 
 in you. Let them say, the life of these men passes 
 the power of men. It is supernatural, it is heavenly, 
 it is Divine. Fresh from the memory of His death, die 
 
SAFEGUARD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 199 
 
 with your Lord to what your Lord hates. Fresh 
 from taking part in His sacrifice, sacrifice your 
 pleasures, your time, your money, your inclinations, 
 your lives, your duties. Spring with Him from the 
 grave of corruption, of sloth, of worldliness. Ascend 
 with Him till your every aim is at the things which 
 are above. 
 
 Breathe His spirit of love, tenderness, patience, 
 consideration for others, gentleness, and purity. 
 
 Make men to pant for everlasting life by the 
 winning loveliness of your own heavenly lives on earth. 
 Let them not shrink from heaven as they see the 
 dull, dreary emptiness, and unlovingness of those who 
 talk of heaven. 
 
 Ah, do this. Do it in remembrance of Him who 
 makes Himself your food that in the marvel of His 
 Blessed Sacrament He may reproduce Himself in 
 you, and display still before the eyes of man at least 
 some gleams of that fair life of His which made Him 
 grow " in wisdom and stature, and in favour with 
 God and man."' 
 
2oo THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING WITH GOD 
 FOR HIS CHURCH. 
 
 Preached at St. Michael's, Shoreditch. June 22, 1870. 
 
 Acts iv. 29, 30. 
 
 " And now, Lord, behold their threatenings : and grant unto 
 Thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak Thy 
 Word, by stretching forth Thine hand to heal ; and that signs 
 and wonders may be done by the name of Thy Holy Child 
 Jesus." 
 
 We are met together to ask God's pardon for all the 
 sins, mistakes, and shortcomings of ourselves, and of 
 the other members of our Society in doing the work 
 of the Church Union. We have to beg His forgive- 
 ness for what we have left undone, for what we have 
 done amiss, and for any failings as to the spirit in 
 which our work has been done. 
 
 We are met also to thank God for letting us do 
 any work at all for Him, for His honour and glory, and 
 for His holy Church, which is so dear to Him. And 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 
 
 20I 
 
 we are met to beg Him to guide and strengthen us 
 to do whatever fresh work He may put into our 
 hands for the coming year. 
 
 This has probably put a new meaning into the 
 Kyrie which has followed each Commandment this 
 morning, and it will add intenseness to our use of the 
 Prayer for the Church Militant, the words of which 
 embrace, and express so wonderfully, all the wants of 
 the Church of God. 
 
 But, more than this, the thought of the purpose for 
 which we are met together will ally us in heart and 
 soul with the Church of God in all ages. It will 
 piace us at once amongst the company of the first 
 believers, of whom the text speaks, and show us that 
 we have one common cause with them, one aim and 
 object ; that we are surrounded with the same diffi- 
 cuties ; that we are beset by the same enemies ; that 
 •we are called and bound over to the same sufferings ; 
 that we should be animated by the same spirit ; that 
 we have the same refuge to flee to ; that we are work- 
 ing for the same Master ; and can make an appeal to 
 the same Lord. 
 
 Fresh from the threats of the council of the Jews, 
 and from the new hindrances that had sprung up 
 round their work, St. Peter and St. John go to their own 
 company, to those who were banded together with 
 them in the cause of our Blessed Lord. They make 
 
202 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 their report. They confide to one another their dan- 
 gers and their difficulties. At once, with one heart, 
 with one voice, they turn to Him, for Whom and with 
 Whom they are working. They commit themselves, 
 their work, their aims to Him. It is the meeting of a 
 Church Union in the presence of the Church's Lord. 
 
 Is the scene changed ? Is the time changed ? Is 
 the work changed ? Are the dangers and difficulties 
 changed ? Is the hope and strength of the faithful 
 changed ? Rather time and space are annihilated to 
 the eye of faith this morning, and we are still in that 
 company, and still surrounded with the same dangers, 
 and still doing the same acts of faith, and still banded 
 in the same union, and still appealing to the same 
 Lord, and still sure of the same aid. 
 
 It is easy enough to see and to trace the similarity 
 in the sufferings and difficulties of the Church 
 at all periods. But now let us go one step further 
 and ask why it is that constant struggle and constant 
 difficulty besets the Church. It is simply because 
 of her Divine character that she is so beset. We are 
 sometimes tempted to think that, because our 
 Blessed Lord has pledged His presence to His 
 Church, therefore she is to be free from sufferings, 
 from humiliations, from perils. Her course is to be 
 nothing but a course of glory, and power, and open, 
 manifest success. She is to be recognised every- 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 203 
 
 where, understood everywhere, welcomed everywhere. 
 Or at the least, if she is not to have this brilliant success 
 immediately, it will come after a year or two more of 
 difficulty. We almost expect to live and see it 
 Could this be ? Was it so with her Divine Head ? 
 Was He not despised and rejected of men ? If now 
 and then the signs of His glory and power compelled 
 men to recognise Him, or to suspect His greatness, or 
 attracted them to Him, were there not the strangest 
 alternations of humiliation and majesty, of weakness 
 and power in His life ? And is not the same thing 
 to be traced in the history of His Church ? So much 
 is this so, that men have thought that His whole 
 course in the world, from His birth to His resurrection, 
 has been, or is being, reproduced in the history of His 
 mystical body. And this really must be so. The 
 Church is the kingdom of heaven. In her the powers of 
 heaven are brought to bear on this fallen world ; the 
 light of heaven to lighten this world's darkness ; the 
 purity of heaven to deliver from this world's sin ; the 
 peace of heaven to relieve this world's misery. Say, 
 rather, the King or Lord of heaven has stooped to com- 
 fort, redeem, aid, sanctify His Own creation through the 
 Church. And so it is said of those who are brought 
 into the Church that they are " translated out of the 
 kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear 
 Son." There are, then, personal powers of good in 
 
204 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 conflict with personal powers of evil, Our Lord and 
 His Church in conflict with Satan and the world. 
 And so there is an unceasing strife being waged. 
 
 And, if this be so, what should we expect ? Why, 
 that every success of the Church would be followed 
 by some new form of trial or of attack made upon 
 her. By every victory won the Church invades the 
 territories of the Evil One, plants an outpost in them 
 and impinges upon the kingdom of darkness, and so 
 arouses the powers of evil to contend with greater 
 force and malice against the powers that are of God. 
 
 This is exactly what we see in the history of the 
 Church at Pentecost. The Holy Ghost comes down 
 upon the Church, and fills her with His divine life and 
 ppwer. He gives proofs of His Divine presence. By 
 the gift of tongues, by the force, fire, and energy of 
 the apostles, by their boldness and fervent zeal thou- 
 sands are joined to the Church. The strange moving 
 of men's hearts shows that God is working through 
 the Church. Even outward signs of His presence are 
 given in the miraculous healing of the lame man. 
 These signs of God's presence were given, doubtless, 
 both to draw unbelievers to the Church, and to give 
 boldness and trust to those who had to be leaders 
 in the Church's work : just as Bishop Taylor says that 
 the first beginnings of repentance are often sweetened 
 with comforts and evident tokens of the favour of God. 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 205 
 
 But as with the individual, so with the Church, after 
 the time of joy and triumph comes the time of 
 suffering. The Sadducees, the easy religionists of 
 the day, the calm, philosophic party, who were 
 especially opposed to all extravagancies, who felt, we 
 may suppose, keenly that this new form of religion, 
 which claimed supernatural powers, brought the 
 unseen world into such strange connection with the 
 visible world, these men rose against the Apostles. 
 They were moved (can we doubt who moved them, 
 who used them ?), they were moved to grapple with this 
 new zeal, with this troublesome form of earnestness, 
 to stifle it in its infancy. It was already becoming 
 popular. No time must be lost. The fire of the new 
 enthusiasm was catching. It must be quenched. 
 
 The leading Apostles were seized. They were im- 
 prisoned. They were called up before the religious 
 Court of the day. Who were these unlearned and 
 ignorant men, these unenlightened fanatics, who were 
 interfering with the established religion, and dis- 
 turbing the peace of the country ? Such a thing was 
 not to be endured. It must be put down. The 
 Apostles were set in the midst. They were asked 
 what right they had to act in this way. " By what 
 power or by what name have ye done this ? " 
 
 There they stand. You feel, you feel, dear brethren, 
 what an unequal contest it is. Why, all the powers 
 
206 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 of heaven, the powers of God are on the Apostles' side. 
 What issue could there be but one ? Yes ; but throw 
 yourselves into the Apostles' state of mind. They 
 had taken up our blessed Lord's work, they had been 
 baptized with His spirit, they had felt His powers 
 working in them, they were speaking His message, 
 they were telling a poor, lost world of the way in 
 which to reach through that Lord a light, and peace, 
 and joy, a deliverance, and a happiness for which that 
 world had been feeling in vain. They had unfolded 
 those glories to which every rite and ceremony, every 
 prophecy or revelation of the Jewish Church had been 
 leading men up. To them it must have seemed as if 
 all hearts ought to catch and welcome the truth at 
 once, most of all, the hearts of the professed religious 
 leaders of their country. And here they are mis- 
 understood, misrepresented, opposed, hindered, threat- 
 ened, and this by those religious leaders themselves. 
 The very laws of religion are to be turned against them. 
 What ? Has their Lord forsaken them already ? No. 
 Their hour of need is His hour of help. Only when 
 the world's power rears itself against Him, could they 
 learn what His power is. " Filled with the Holy 
 Ghost, " Peter boldly and firmly tells his judges that 
 it is through our Blessed Lord that the lame man has 
 been healed, and through Him alone that salvation is 
 to be had. 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 207 
 
 His very judges marvel. They seem to feel a super- 
 natural presence about them in spite of their 
 determination not to acknowledge it. They cannot 
 deny the miracle that has been worked. They dare 
 not proceed to greater lengths in their persecution. 
 Something holds them back ; they know not what ; 
 they know not who. Nay, even public opinion is too 
 much for them. They would be ready to punish, 
 perhaps to get rid of, these enthusiasts who will believe 
 more than themselves. But they must tolerate them. 
 And the most that they can do is to call them, and 
 threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man 
 in this name. 
 
 Alas ! for them, a new chance has been offered 
 them only to be thrown away. They have seen the 
 signs of our Lord's power. They have listened to His 
 messages. They have almost felt His presence. And 
 they have rejected Him. We will turn sadly from 
 them. 
 
 But the Apostles too have had a revelation. They 
 also have felt our Lord's nearness. And they at 
 least have learnt more than one lesson for themselves, 
 and for the Church in all times. They have seen how 
 they are identified with our Lord. It is not enough 
 to say that their case is like His, their sorrows like 
 His, their weakness and their shame like His. It is 
 verily and indeed His cause, not theirs, which is being 
 
2o8 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 tried before the world. They do not belong to them- 
 selves, but to Him. By the strange baptism of fire, 
 when the Holy Ghost came upon them, He melted 
 them, as it were, into Himself. He wrought and welded 
 them into the Church, which is His mystical body. 
 They have been taken up out of the mere natural 
 order of men in the flesh, and lifted into the super- 
 natural order of men who have been born again 
 through the Spirit. They are one with God. God 
 works in them, through them, by them, and uses them 
 to do His work in the world. They are fellow 
 labourers with God. And, if this is full of blessedness, 
 it is full of awe. It must be that the forces of Hell 
 must move up against them. All instruments that 
 Satan can use against the kingdom of light and peace 
 will be used against them ; attacks of men, misrepre- 
 sentations of men, lies of men, persecutions of men, 
 all these were used against their Master, and they 
 are one with their Master. Peace and unbroken 
 success, and the world's praise and ease in their work 
 are not things to be looked for by them. They are 
 bound over to conflict and strife. And so they ex- 
 press this in their prayer ; " Being let go, they went 
 to their own company, and reported all that the chief 
 priests and elders had said unto them. And when 
 they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God 
 with one accord, and said, Lord, Thou art God, 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 209 
 
 Which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and 
 all that in them is ; Who by the mouth of thy servant 
 David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the 
 people imagine vain things ? The kings of the earth 
 stood up, and the rulers were gathered together 
 against the Lord, and against His Christ. For of a 
 truth against Thy Holy Child Jesus, Whom Thou hast 
 anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the 
 Gentiles and people of Israel, were gathered together, 
 for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel 
 determined before to be done. And now, Lord, 
 behold their threatenings, and grant unto Thy 
 servants, that with all boldness they may speak Thy 
 word." So they unite themselves with their Lord. 
 They feel that they have but one cause with Him. 
 Their work is a prolongation of His. The very same 
 band of unseen, vigilant, persevering enemies beset 
 them. And as in His case, so in theirs, these enemies 
 can go just as far and no further than the purpose of 
 God will allow. Therefore they appeal to God. 
 They invite Him to see what was being done against 
 Himself. They are prepared for onslaught, for 
 hindrances, for opposition, for attack. They are not 
 surprised, nor cast down, nor impatient and fretful 
 because of opposition. They are calm bold, and 
 determined. They do not doubt their Master's 
 presence because the powers of evil are aroused 
 
 P 
 
210 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 against them. They would doubt His presence if all 
 was smooth and easy round them. The waters rage, 
 and swell, and foam in their madness round them just 
 because the rock of God's truth is planted in the midst 
 of the waves. 
 
 But there is another proof of their sense of the 
 Divine and supernatural character of their work quite 
 as remarkable as their calm expectation of difficulty 
 and opposition. There is no vindictiveness against 
 their opponents — against their fellow-men who are 
 opposing them. This was not always so. We know 
 that St. James and St. John were once so touched to 
 the quick by the opposition to their Master that they 
 would have called down fire from heaven on their 
 adversaries and His. There is no sign of such un- 
 chastened indignation here. The disciples are as full 
 of the Divine pity as of the Divine calm. And why ? 
 Is it not that they feel that the battle is not with their 
 fellow-men, — not with those who are weak and blind, 
 and ready to go wrong as themselves, but with the 
 powers of evil, who are using men, directing, urging 
 them on, moving them as on a great chess-board of 
 the world. And so the disciples pity those who are 
 raging against them. They feel for their delusions. 
 They beg that the healing powers of Him Who went 
 about doing good may be put forth that men may be 
 won to the truth, to the Lord, to the Church, by seeing 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 211 
 
 what ministries of mercy go forth from the Church. 
 They had caught the compassion of their Lord for 
 those who were oppressed of the Devil. 
 
 And what followed on this ? New spiritual powers 
 were given to those who had so faithfully used the 
 powers which had been bestowed before. Again 
 " they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they 
 spake the word with boldness." They were knit to- 
 gether even in a firmer unity, for then it was that we 
 read that " the multitudes of them that believed were 
 of one heart and of one soul " ; and a tender love 
 towards each other showed itself in their sharing all 
 that they had together. Never was such a Church 
 Union. The common danger to the common cause 
 and work of their Lord was the highest of all bless- 
 ings. It cemented this union. As sheep press to- 
 gether when the wolf attacks them, they drew closer 
 to each other as the world threatened to hem them 
 in. Their faith in the mighty presence among them 
 was quickened ; their conception of the character of 
 the work was raised. They cast themselves on Him 
 on whom the attack was made. They found His 
 strength made perfect in their weakness. With great 
 power they gave witness to His resurrection, and 
 great grace was upon them all. 
 
 Brethren, this is not a case for applying Holy 
 Scripture. It is said that history is always repeating 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 itself. At least this is true of the history of the 
 Church. For the work, the powers, the office of the 
 Church are unchanging. She is still, as ever, the 
 mystical body of our Lord. St. Paul does not shrink 
 from calling her by the name of her Lord and Head ; 
 and, as the Prince of the World has always treated 
 the Church, so he treats her still. He at least is not 
 changed, nor worn out, nor is his hatred diminished. 
 And therefore still he raises hindrances and diffi- 
 culties, and wakens up persecutions against the 
 Church of God. They shift and change with a world 
 which shifts and changes. The plans of operations 
 differ. The spirit of opposition is the same. Again 
 and again, as we have been sketching the history of 
 the assault on the Apostles, it has almost read like a 
 tale of our own days. Just as the Apostles were 
 weaned from their dreams that our Blessed Lord's 
 kingdom was to be one of earthly power, and force, 
 and splendour, and were taught its spiritual character, 
 so, as more and more of temporal support has been 
 withdrawn from the Church, we have learnt that the 
 real power, and might, and glory of the Church lie in 
 her being the body of our Lord. Faith in the 
 presence of our Blessed Lord, and in the power of 
 that presence has grown into our hearts and minds. 
 Numbers have been attracted by these truths. The 
 supernatural character of the Church has been felt 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 213 
 
 and realised, and, as the members of the Church 
 have become more earnest, the kingdom of heaven 
 has asserted itself. It has claimed to be God's 
 instrument, to speak for God, to act for God, to be 
 the channel for God's graces to the world. What 
 must follow ? The opposition of those powers of evil 
 that underlie the powers of the world Just as it was 
 with the Apostles, so it must have been, so it has 
 been with us. Strife and struggle, scorn and mockery, 
 misrepresentation and false accusation, threats and 
 opposition were sure to come. They have come. 
 But what have we done ? Some have been surprised 
 and disheartened. Some have grown fretful and 
 impatient. Some have lost hope and faith. They 
 have begun with dreams and ideals of a Church free 
 from trial and difficulty, such as the world never has 
 seen and never will see. They have pondered on the 
 mighty gifts which are promised to the Church, but 
 left out of their calculations the forces that are opposed 
 to her. As troubles thickened on all sides, they have 
 asked whether God could be with a spiritual body, so 
 thwarted, so hindered, so obstructed, instead of 
 remembering that conflict is the seal of the presence 
 of the kingdom of heaven ; that the King Himself 
 said, " In the world ye shall have tribulation ; but be 
 of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 
 
 Brethren, let us wake up from these dreams, and be 
 
214 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING 
 
 content to learn what the Apostles learnt, and to learn 
 as they learnt. The stress of the conflict is only a 
 proof of the greatness of our cause. The eagerness 
 of the hosts that would rob us proves all the more 
 the riches of the Church's treasury of truth, of grace, 
 of sanctity. Let us make sure indeed that it is the 
 real truth which came from our Lord that we are 
 defending, that it is His work that we are doing. Let 
 us have a watchful fear of following our own fancies, 
 of indulging our own tastes, of teaching for doctrines 
 the commandments of men. But, when we have 
 made sure of this, in the midst of all opposition, let 
 us calmly make our appeal where the Apostles made 
 theirs. There is one Court of final appeal to which all 
 causes are safely referred, in which there are no 
 errors, and no possibility of injustice. It is that 
 Court to which the Apostles appealed from the errors of 
 men, and to whose decision they so calmly left their 
 cause, " And now, Lord, behold their threatenings." 
 
 Only, while we calmly make that appeal, let us 
 not appeal against men, but for men, against the 
 powers of evil that oppress them. Men are not our 
 opponents. They may be used, marshalled, misled, 
 stirred up to oppose God, His Church, and His 
 truth. But the real attack is planned and laid by 
 the inveterate, undying enemy of our Lord. Let us 
 pity those who are misled and deluded by him. 
 
WITH GOD FOR HIS CHURCH. 215 
 
 The Apostles prayed that miracles of healing might 
 be worked to convince a suffering world that the 
 Healer of all its sorrows dwelt in the Church. Let 
 us pray that miracles of grace may teach men what 
 powers of healing for every suffering of the soul are 
 brought by our Lord to bear on the world through 
 His Church. 
 
 Surely such union with our Blessed Lord as this — the 
 union of determination to be on His side, even to the 
 endurance of suffering and scorn ; the union of a 
 jealous regard for His truth in its exactness, and His 
 Church in its integrity ; the union of hearts that 
 distrust themselves, but leave all to Him ; the union 
 of our weakness with His might ; the union with Him 
 in compassion for a poor, erring world — would bring 
 on us new gifts as it brought new gifts on the Apostles. 
 New difficulties and new dangers would be only 
 opportunities for new boldness and new successes. 
 New attacks from without would only band us more 
 closely together within. The majesty, the vastness 
 of the Church cause would grow upon us as we 
 realized Whose cause it was. As we felt ourselves to 
 be gathered round our Lord, and were all bent on one 
 object, the doing of His work, and all sworn to one 
 allegiance, allegiance to His honour in the minutest 
 particularities of the Creed that came from Him, in 
 the purest worship that could be offered to Him, in the 
 
216 THE BLESSEDNESS OF WORKING. 
 
 submission of our souls to the law and discipline of 
 the Church as His kingdom, the firmest of all 
 Church unions would be formed. As we spoke the 
 truth in love, we should " grow up into Him in all 
 things Who is Head, even Christ ; from Whom the 
 whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by 
 that which every joint supplieth, according to the 
 effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh 
 increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in 
 love." 
 
( 217 ) 
 
 XIV. 
 
 CHRIST OUR FOOD IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 
 Preached at St. Barnabas, Pinilico. May 27, 1869. 
 St. John vi. 57. 
 
 " As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father ; 
 so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." 
 
 These words show us the wonders that are worked 
 by our Blessed Lord in the souls of those who receive 
 Him in the blessed Sacrament. It would perhaps be 
 more true to say that they give us a glimpse of those 
 wonders. Xo mind of man could take them in in all 
 their fulness. It needs the mind of God Himself to 
 understand them to the uttermost. For see what is 
 wrapped up in these words of the text. They speak 
 of the life of God, the life that is in God Himself, the 
 life that is the source and origin of all life, the very 
 fountain of all energy, and power, and being. And 
 then they tell us how this life which is in God, or the 
 life which God is, can pass into those whom God has 
 
2lS 
 
 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 made, how the Creator's life may be given to the 
 creature, so that the creature may live by God, and 
 through God, and in God, or, perhaps to state it more 
 marvellously, how God may live in the creature : 
 " With Thee is the well of life," — and in Thee " we 
 live, and move, and have our being." Have I not said 
 enough, more than enough, in saying this, to send you 
 back to your last communion pondering, adoring, 
 moved to speechless and unutterable thankfulness ; 
 or to lead you on to your next communion full of awe, 
 yet full of longing — full of awe as you think what He 
 is whom you invite to visit you, what you are to 
 whom He comes — full of longing as you think what 
 He can do in you ? 
 
 I might well ask to be allowed to say no more. 
 There must be many a priest here who has given our 
 Blessed Lord's Body and Blood to others, and then 
 felt at times a kind of awe and reverence even for the 
 persons of those who have just received their Lord 
 and been made one with Him. Think, then, what I 
 must feel towards you. Each one of you has, I take 
 it for granted, received our Blessed Lord to-day. 
 You are fresh from communion with Him. You have 
 opened out your hearts to Him, and He has entered 
 in to dwell in you. He has spoken Spirit to spirit 
 with you ; for to hold communion with Him is 
 nothing less than this ; indeed, it is far, far more. 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 219 
 
 St. Chrysostom, in speaking of the meaning of that 
 word " Communion " (Koivwvla), says that it is far 
 more than " Communication," that it means our 
 Blessed Lord taking to Himself all that belongs to us, 
 and giving to us all that belongs to Him. He has 
 held this morning this closeness of communion with 
 you ; and now, if I speak, I seem to be interfering with 
 His voice, and interrupting the whispers of His Own 
 inward teaching. For this reason I have shrunk, I 
 do shrink now, from speaking to you. 
 
 And, besides this, it seems to be an impertinence 
 for me especially to speak to you, some of whom at 
 least are theologians, at whose feet I ought to be 
 sitting. And, again, it is an impertinence, because, 
 whatever some may say, the Church does speak so 
 plainly, simply, fully about the Blessed Sacrament, 
 especially in her Catechism, to those who take plain 
 words in the Church's own plain meaning, that there 
 is no need to look beyond them for the truth. 
 
 All that remains for me to do, then, is to ask you 
 to think of what our Blessed Lord says. 
 
 I. He tells us that one common life is in His Father 
 and in Himself: "As the living Father hath sent Me, 
 and I live by the Father." What is this life ? May 
 He forgive me, if I presume too far in trying to say 
 what it is ! It is all the full force, power, and energy 
 which is in God. And yet, at the same time, it is the 
 
220 
 
 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 peace, calm, and bliss in which He exists. The life 
 of God is purity, and holiness, and perfection. It is 
 wisdom, knowledge, and light. It is love, working, 
 blessing, enriching others ; love, enjoying the effects 
 of its own works in others, rejoicing in the joy which 
 it has given to others power to taste. All this is in 
 God, as much in the Son as in the Father. There is 
 this one common life in both, so that the Son lives by 
 the life that is in the Father ; the Son is wise with 
 the Father's wisdom, pure in His purity, strong in 
 His strength. And the perfections of the Godhead are 
 common to both the blessed Persons ; they pervade 
 both. " All things that the Father hath are Mine," 
 says our Blessed Lord. They act with one common 
 energy, with one will. " The Son can do nothing of 
 Himself, but whatsoever He seeth the Father do, that 
 He doeth likewise." " The Son is the brightness of 
 the Father's glory, and the express image of His 
 Person." Our words fail us ; our thoughts are too 
 feeble when we attempt to describe, or even to 
 imagine, this wonderful and entire union between the 
 Father and the Son. It is the highest of all unions. 
 
 II. And now see the man-el of what our Lord 
 declares : " As the living Father hath sent Me, and 
 I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, even he 
 shall live by Me." We could not have dared to say 
 such a thing or to conceive it possible. Close, and 
 
IX THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 221 
 
 intimate, and perfect, and heavenly, and Divine as is 
 the union and communion between the Father and 
 the Son, there may be a likeness of this communion 
 between us and our Blessed Lord. Our Lord knows 
 what that communion of life between Himself and 
 His Father is. He knows its closeness, its blessedness, 
 and its power. He knows all that His Father is to 
 Him, and all that He is to His Father. And it is 
 He who says, "As the living Father sent Me, and I 
 live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, even 
 he shall live by Me." He uses the highest of all 
 unions to express to us what our union with Himself 
 is. If we feed upon our Lord, then, His life passes 
 into us, so that we draw all our powers from Him 
 or draw all His powers into us. We become wise 
 with His wisdom, learning to see things as He sees 
 them, understanding all mysteries and all knowledge 
 because He understands them, knowing the deep 
 things of God because He knows them : " We have an 
 unction from the Holy One, and we know all things." 
 We grow strong in His strength, * strengthened with 
 His might in the inner man," so that we " can do all 
 things through Christ in strengthening us." We grow 
 pure with His purity, as He recreates us from within 
 and makes us new creatures in Himself. We love with 
 His love, with those strange powers of love, which 
 He can give Who is Himself love. 
 
222 
 
 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 Need I say how blessed this is? Or, rather, could 
 I say how blessed it is ? As there are so many of 
 you here now who know what happiness and peace 
 union with Christ gives, I need only say, Contrast this 
 with what we call the death of the soul. You have 
 known perhaps at some moment of your lives what 
 it was to realise the power of sin, to see how the 
 sense of guilt alienates and cuts off from God, so that 
 a man dreads, and fears, and shrinks from, and cowers 
 before God. You have seen, it may be, how sin makes 
 a wreck and ruin of a man, so that all his powers are 
 broken down, and all high aims gone, and his very 
 being so shattered, that he could not be said to live. 
 In such an one the spring of hope seems snapped, and 
 love seems like an impossibility, and peace is lost and 
 gone. We have known such a state, it may be, in 
 ourselves and others. What is it but death ? 
 
 And, instead of this, feeding on our Blessed Lord 
 brings life. To feed on Him gives us a part in His 
 Passion, which cleanses us from the stains of guilt, 
 and in His Sacrifice, which makes us one with God. 
 Through Him, on Whom we feed, we are consciously 
 made one with God, we are " accepted in the Beloved." 
 We may offer ourselves up to God in and through 
 Christ, in a calm, glad, trustful service of God. But, 
 far more than this, feeding on Christ sustains our 
 powers of serving God. As the powers of the 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 223 
 
 spiritual life are worn out and exhausted in the 
 midst of trial, and strife, and temptation, in the 
 stress and battle of life, so they are renewed, 
 strengthened, and replaced by the supernatural food 
 which is Christ Himself. There is a supernatural life 
 which is imparted to the soul by the Spirit in our 
 Baptism when we are united to Christ, and for that 
 supernatural life in the holy Eucharist there is a 
 supernatural food which is Christ Himself. It is 
 simply impossible to exaggerate the comfort of this 
 truth. Well may the Blessed Sacrament be called 
 a " divine and comfortable thing to those that will 
 receive it worthily." Think what it is in moments of 
 reawakened penitence, when one of us sees all the 
 ravages which the corruption of sin has worked 
 within him, to say : " Dead as I am, I may yet live 
 by Christ." u Weak as I am, there is a power of Divine 
 life in my Blessed Lord, and I may receive that 
 life into myself, as I feed on Him, and in the strength 
 of it I may live to God, and the very life which I 
 live will be seen by God, and it will be His own Son's 
 life within me. He will see me in His Son, and His 
 Son in me ; and I shall be embraced in the fulness of 
 His love." " I live, henceforth, yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh 
 I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, 
 and gave Himself for me." 
 
224 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 Forgive me, my brethren. I know how far short 
 this falls of what you have seen, and known, and 
 tasted in yourselves, and have worked out in your 
 own lives through communion with our Blessed 
 Lord. It will only serve to remind you how He has 
 cheered you with forgiveness in your penitence, and 
 rescued you from evil, and put forth His might in 
 ) ou, and stirred you to a higher life, and kindled the 
 fire of His Own love in your hearts, and fought in 
 your battles, and conquered in your victories, and 
 identified Himself with your sorrows and your joys, 
 and made you wonder at His tenderness, and the 
 power and inventiveness of His love, as He made you 
 partakers of the Divine nature, and left you only one 
 thing to doubt about, whether to shrink under the sense 
 of your unworthiness from the closeness of His com- 
 munion with you, or to press nearer to Him from the 
 sweetness of His own attractions which drew you 
 irresistibly out of yourselves to Him. 
 
 III. And now the blessedness of this gift of life in 
 the holy Eucharist shows what the object of your 
 Society should be. It must be to make known to 
 others the blessedness of union with our Lord. You 
 might take as your invitation to those whom you 
 would draw to our Blessed Lord in the holy Eu- 
 charist the comfortable words, which the Church uses 
 to encourage us to draw near to our Lord. You may 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 225 
 
 say to others, "The world is full of troubles, perplex- 
 ities, cares, sorrows, toils, contests." In the holy 
 Eucharist our Lord is full of peace and calm for 
 those who seek Him : " Come unto Me all ye that 
 travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 The world is full of death. Men are perishing on all 
 sides in guilt and sin. In the holy Eucharist our 
 Blessed Lord is full of life : " God so loved the 
 world that He gave his Only Begotten Son, that who- 
 soever believeth in Him should not perish, but have 
 everlasting life." Ah, there is a light which streams 
 in upon the soul from the altar, a spiritual light which 
 no power of man can put out. There is a clothing of 
 the soul in the pure vestments of the Redeemer 
 which no one can rob us of. There is a hushed 
 posture of adoration of the spirit as it welcomes its 
 Lord, which the world cannot interfere with. All 
 these depend upon an inner life of purity and holiness, 
 which is the true joy of a soul in communion with its 
 Lord, and which nothing from without can touch. 
 " I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, 
 and your joy no man taketh from you." The more 
 you have found that our Lord has been full of bless- 
 ing to yourselves, the more you must long that others 
 may share those blessings. 
 
 IV. But in what way are you to lead people to 
 seek our Blessed Lord in this holy Sacrament ? 
 
 Q 
 
226 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 1. Your own rules are most wisely planned for 
 effecting this. More frequent celebrations will lead 
 people to see what a value we set upon feeding upon 
 our Blessed Lord, and we ought not to rest till He is 
 to us what, in St. Cyprian's days, He was to so many, 
 " Our daily bread " — the day's food by which we live 
 the day's life, and meet the day's temptations and 
 duties. 
 
 2. Greater reverence in your outward acts of adora- 
 tion, again, will witness to the Majesty of Him Who 
 is so close to us in that holy Sacrament. 
 
 3. Greater solemnity in the celebration of the 
 Divine mysteries will show how much we feel that we 
 owe to Him on Whom we love to wait with such 
 devotion. 
 
 4. But there is a higher and more Divine way of 
 restoring faith in our Blessed Lord's work through 
 the holy Eucharist. Begin, dear brethren, with a 
 deep, tender, compassionate love for those who can- 
 not see that Truth as yet, nor receive it in its fulness. 
 This will attract those who are in error to you. It 
 will melt, move, win them. We have had far too 
 much of argument, hard logical argument, and of 
 strife and debate about the blessed truths of our 
 faith. We have had far too little of tenderness and 
 consideration for others. Alas, the Sacrament of 
 love and unity has been turned into a very symbol 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 227 
 
 and badge of difference. Do not think that I would 
 have you undervalue theological science, and accuracy 
 of statement of the truth, and keenness of apprehen- 
 sion to discern the exactness of the definition by 
 which the Church has taught us to identify what reall> 
 is our heritage of truth in the midst of the vary- 
 ing and conflicting views which men take of the truth 
 It is the truest loyalty to our Blessed Lord to be 
 jealous about all which He taught, and to be exact in 
 teaching men to observe all things whatsoever He has 
 commanded us. And, amongst all the various forms 
 of charity with which God has adorned His Church, 
 there is no greater charity than the charity of dog- 
 matism, which teaches men to see clearly and 
 exactly what God has said. And so, amongst the 
 man-els which God has brought out in His Church, 
 there are few for which I adore Him more profoundly 
 than for His illuminating the great teachers, whose 
 minds and words He has used to expand and unfold 
 His own revelations, or for the clear expressions of 
 the Church's Creeds, in which we learn, from an 
 authority appointed by God Himself, what is truth. 
 But it is one thing to value this Divine guidance for 
 ourselves, to bless and praise God for leading us into 
 truth, and quite another thing to set about forcing 
 these definitions upon others by way of argument, 
 and to make it, as it were, a point of honour to win a 
 
 Q 2 
 
22S 
 
 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 battle in a controversy. Let me ask you to look 
 back, and remember what has been in most cases 
 the issue of such an over-eager and mistaken con- 
 tention. It begins by being an encounter of oppo- 
 nents instead of a conference of brothers. Each of 
 the disputants puts himself on his guard to defend an 
 opinion which he looks upon as part of his own 
 property, and he shrinks from the slightest concession 
 as though he were allowing a trespass on his own 
 ground. In such a discussion too many things 
 besides the truth are apt to be lost, and he who 
 seems to win most in point of intellectual superiority 
 often loses most in charity, and in any real reverence 
 for truth as a thing that belongs to God. Ah, brethren, 
 reverse the whole plan of discussion. Instead of put- 
 ting victory as the point first to be aimed at, and, 
 putting love last, or nowhere at all, put victory out of 
 sight altogether, and let love for others be the one 
 ruling principle in all efforts to restore the truth. 
 
 One of the greatest of controversialists (Bellarmine) 
 has said, " An ounce of charity is worth a pound of 
 controversy." 
 
 Begin, then, with wonder, deep wonder at the good- 
 ness of God, who has let you see and know any portion 
 of His truth. Adore Him inwardly for all the com- 
 fort and strength which that truth has given you. 
 Look at it as His truth, His Own undeserved, sacred 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 229 
 
 gift to you, by which He has led your soul to Him- 
 self, healed your suffering, sinful nature, and let you 
 know Him in His Own fairness. Then look upon 
 those who do not know the truth as weak and suf- 
 fering brethren, whom you would give the whole world 
 to see healed. Pity them as you would pity a sick 
 man. Seek to recommend to them the Divine truths 
 which have been such a blessing to you. And ask 
 God, Who has blessed you so richly, to use you, if He 
 will deign to do so, in imparting the same blessings 
 to others. 
 
 See what effect this will have at once on the 
 manner of dealing with the particular truths which 
 concern the Blessed Sacrament. It will make you 
 watchful not to use expressions that are likely to be 
 misunderstood. You will avoid needless offence. 
 You will feel that you are intrusted with God's truth, 
 and that your great effort must be to recommend that 
 to your brother who so needs to receive it. You 
 will not shock his prejudices. You will do more. You 
 will hinder his prejudices. You will feel that he is 
 prejudiced, not against the truth itself, but against 
 some perversion of it in his mind, which seems to 
 contradict what he knows to be the truth. You will 
 see from this that he is on God's side, and that he 
 loves God's truth. You will love him the more for 
 this. It will be a bond of union between you. Now 
 
230 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 you will take that truth which he does hold as a 
 starting-point. You are one with him in that. It 
 may be the doctrine of our blessed Lord's atonement 
 or of His one Sacrifice for the sins of the world, or 
 that blessed and Catholic doctrine of justification by 
 faith. You will show him how you hold and value 
 these truths. Tenderly, gently you will lead him on 
 to see how the truths about Communion with our 
 Blessed Lord in the Blessed Sacrament rise out of the 
 truths which he holds, how they give its proper ex- 
 ercise to faith in Christ, how they stamp into the soul 
 the doctrine of the atonement, how they lead us to 
 live under the prevailing power of the one Sacrifice, 
 how they are the safeguards of the whole sphere of 
 doctrine of our Lord's Mediation which he holds so 
 dear. And so you will lead him from truth to truth 
 till he embraces the whole circle of the Revelation, 
 and blesses you for so guiding him. 
 
 Is this impossible, dear brethren ? I do not believe 
 that it is. I believe that nothing is impossible to 
 love. I am ready to say with St. Augustine : " Ama, 
 et fac quod vis." And it is to the triumphs of such 
 love that I dare to invite you all. 
 
 Ah, I have thought sometimes what a mission 
 there is at this moment for any one who is possessed 
 with the spirit of love to draw together those who are 
 kept apart by misunderstanding now ! Could one ask 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 231 
 
 for a nobler work than to heal the distractions of our 
 own communion, to save it from disruption, to make 
 it, with its high gifts, a blessing even to a divided 
 Christendom ? " Exoriare aliquis ! " But all hope of 
 this seems to depend on real love. 
 
 5. And where are you to learn such love ? Surely 
 in the celebration of the Blessed Sacrament itself. 
 There it is the very purpose of that holy mystery to 
 raise before the eye of your soul Him Who died on 
 the Cross. There therefore you learn the value of 
 souls, and what your Lord must have felt of ardent 
 desire to draw them to Himself, and through Himself 
 to God. And, the more you see how dear souls are 
 to Him, the more you must long to guide them to 
 Him. There you will learn to sacrifice self, and to 
 suffer patiently in the effort of winning others. But, 
 much more than this, there you will plead the price- 
 less Sacrifice for the weak, the lost, the blind, the 
 ignorant, and then you will go forth with a quickened 
 watchfulness in dealing with others not to make that 
 Sacrifice of no avail. More still, there you will 
 receive ever fresh lights of Revelation from our 
 Blessed Lord's love into your own soul, and as you 
 feel what the truth is to you, and realise that it is 
 His truth, you will be the more awfully anxious not 
 to misrepresent it, not to distort it, not to use ex- 
 pressions about it which He has not authorised, either 
 
232 CHRIST OUR FOOD 
 
 by His own voice or by the voice of His Church. And 
 surely this is a special characteristic of the Church of 
 England. She is reverently cautious not to pronounce 
 infallibly on what has not been defined by the whole 
 Church, not to set others against what it would be 
 such a vast gain for them to receive, and what your 
 Lord so longs that they should receive. But, most of 
 all, there, in the blessed Sacrament, you will receive 
 His life into yourself. You will eat Him, and live by 
 Him, and that inward life of Christ, taken into the 
 soul, will show itself in outward acts in you. Some- 
 thing of His character will be formed in you, and, 
 as you catch His divine compassion, the compassion 
 of Him who sighed forth, " Ye will not come unto Me 
 that ye might have life," you will yearn more to be of 
 use to others, to be eyes to the blind and feet to the 
 lame. Your very manner will become meek and 
 lowly, after the fashion of your Lord ; and your very 
 voice gentle, like that of Him who did not strive nor 
 cry ; your very tenderness visible, like that of Him 
 who said, "They that be whole need not a physician, 
 but they that be sick : " and as you are transformed 
 into His image, and as something of the fairness of 
 His own likeness shines out in you, men will take 
 knowledge that you have been with Jesus. And the 
 reproduction of His life in you will speak more of the 
 reality of His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, and 
 
IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. 233 
 
 in you through the Blessed Sacrament, than whole 
 volumes of controversy, or the most moving of the 
 rites of the Church. Think me extravagant, if you 
 will, dear brethren, but I believe intensely in the 
 power of love to work such miracles, and in the 
 Blessed Sacrament as the source of love to those who 
 hold real communion with our Lord, the Pattern, the 
 Incarnation, the Source, and Fount, the Heart from 
 which flow out the pulses of love through the Church. 
 And so I would implore you that you may at once 
 test the reality of your own communions, and ensure 
 the success of the work of your Confraternity by seeing 
 how far the life of Christ (which is the love of Christ, 
 for His whole life was love, and love is His very life and 
 being) is produced in you. " Love is life's only sign." 
 See, I beseech you, who is the theologian of the Blessed 
 Sacrament, who is the chosen mouthpiece of those 
 great utterances of our blessed Lord concerning the 
 holy Eucharist, who recorded the words of our text ? 
 It was the disciple who leaned on our Lord's breast 
 who was brought into such close communion with 
 Him, who drew His Master's own life into himself, 
 and whose whole writings breathe of love to the 
 brethren. Learn, learn of him ; or, rather, learn where 
 he learnt. "A Confraternity of the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment," what is it ? what should it be ? A brotherhood 
 instinct with the tender compassion for all failing, 
 
234 CHRIST OUR FOOD. 
 
 famishing, worn-out souls, the compassion of Him 
 who said, " I will not send them away fasting, lest 
 they faint by the way ; " a brotherhood which stands 
 in a world on which the pangs of death are seizing, 
 and echoes the words of heavenly mercy : " Pie that 
 eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." 
 
XV. 
 
 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION AND THE 
 VICTORY. 
 
 Preached at Oxford. Lent, 1873. 
 
 Genesis iii. 5. 
 " Ye shall be as gods." 
 
 OUR subject to-night is Temptation. In one sense it 
 ought not to be a hard thing to speak about temptation 
 in Oxford. You must feel some interest — perhaps a 
 very deep interest — in the subject. No one can believe 
 that there is a God to be loved and followed, that to 
 love and follow God is the one true happiness of the 
 soul, and that there are hosts of evil spirits whose one 
 work is to cut us off from God — no one can believe 
 this, and not feel the deepest interest in learning how 
 to stand against these evil ones so as not to lose his 
 soul, himself, his God, his all. So the subject must 
 interest you. And it is one that you can under- 
 stand. I do not mean that it is not full of mysteries. 
 
236 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 It is full of mysteries ; but so is all that we know of 
 the nature of God or the nature of man, of the state 
 of this world or the state of the next, of our own 
 bodies or our own souls, of the existence of good and 
 evil in the world. All things are not naked and 
 open to our eyes. We know only in part. We can 
 see only a portion of the truth. But there is at least 
 no need to tell you what temptation is — you know 
 it only too well. It meets you on all sides, and in all 
 shapes and forms. You are tempted in your studies 
 and amusements, alone and in company, through 
 those older and those younger than yourselves, through 
 the books that you read and the persons that you 
 meet, in the things of God and in the things of men, 
 through the body, soul, and spirit, through your 
 passions, your intellect, and that higher part of your 
 being through which you hold intercourse with God, 
 in the use of all your faculties, through all your 
 senses, in the use of all that God has given you — 
 your money, time, talents, influence over others. You 
 yourselves, all that you are and all that you have, 
 may be used for God or against Him, and you are 
 being tempted, tried, put to the proof continually as 
 to whether you will be true to God or false to Him. 
 From morning till night a thousand things are brought 
 to bear upon you to draw you away from God. And 
 you feel the stress of this conflict. There is no more 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 237 
 
 need to tell you what temptation is than there would 
 be to tell a man what a battle is when he is in the 
 thick of the fight, and feels the blows falling fast upon 
 him, and is in peril of his life ; or to tell a man what 
 a swift stream is when his muscles are aching with 
 the effort to breast it, or when he is being whirled 
 hopelessly along by it, without a thought of with- 
 standing its force. No ; as far as the force and 
 power, the variety, the soreness of the temptation is 
 concerned (unless this place is changed for the 
 better), you know only too well what temptation 
 means. 
 
 But there is a reason why there is more need to 
 speak about temptation here than in any other place. 
 The fiercer the battle, the more need to understand 
 the character of the enemy, his aim and object, and 
 the way in which to resist him. And here is the real 
 difficulty in our subject of to-night. Our great 
 enemy's whole effort is to prevent us from under- 
 standing him. He disguises himself and goes into 
 the battle. He strives to hide his aims and objects, 
 and the mode of his attack. The more determined 
 is his assault, the more it is veiled. So he will be 
 against me in speaking, and will try to make my 
 words useless to you. And he will be against you 
 while you listen, and will try to shut out from your 
 hearts any thought that might make you stronger in 
 
238 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 resisting him. We can, then, but turn to God and 
 ask Him in our hearts to help us to see what His 
 enemy and ours is seeking to do to us. 
 
 The whole nature of temptation is laid bare to 
 our eyes in the history of the attack of the Evil One 
 on our first parents. And the first thing that we 
 notice is that the temptation is carried on by a 
 personal enemy from without. There are temptations 
 from within : " Every man is tempted when he is 
 drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." " From 
 within, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts." There 
 is a " lusting of the flesh against the Spirit," a working 
 of the heart and mind in the fallen man against God. 
 There is a corruption within the very soul. But evil 
 may be, and is, suggested from without. It is taught 
 and insinuated into the mind by others. Alas ! there 
 is no need to tell you that. Words and conversations, 
 jests and innuendos will instil into a pure and holy 
 mind thoughts which may be a misery to it for years. 
 There are men who are haunted, and perhaps will be 
 haunted to their dying day, by imaginations of evil, 
 or sceptical doubts, which are ruthlessly cast into 
 their minds in the midst of the cruel carelessness of 
 their companions' talk in this place. You can sow 
 the seeds. You cannot uproot them. And what 
 we can do for each other, that the tempter can do 
 to all of us. He has a power of suggesting evil to 
 
AXD THE VICTORY. 
 
 239 
 
 us.* He cannot indeed force it upon us, but he can 
 throw the shadow of it across our minds. He can 
 suggest doubts of the goodness of God, stir us to dis- 
 content, urge us to aim at something which God has 
 not thought fit to give us, make us offers of advance- 
 ment and gain if we will act on his suggestions. He 
 can whisper as he did to Eve, " Ye shall be as gods." 
 
 1. All this comes out in the history of the first 
 temptation. In the very earliest revelation from 
 God, the great Enemy is shown to us, seeking to 
 overcloud the mind, and to separate the heart from 
 God. 
 
 2. But this is only a small part of what God has 
 
 * John Smith, Queen's College, Cambridge, 1673, p. 448 : " I 
 doubt not but there are many more Divine impressions upon 
 the minds of men both good and bad, from the good Spirit of 
 God, than are ordinarily observed ; there are many soft and 
 silent impulses, gentle motions, like our Saviour putting in His 
 hand by the hole of the door (Cant, v.), soliciting and exciting 
 men to religion and holiness ; which they many times regard 
 not, and take little notice of. There are such secret messages 
 often brought from heaven to the souls of men by an unknown 
 and unseen hand. And as there are such Divine ministrations 
 sliding into the souls of men from God, so there are, no question, 
 many and frequent suggestions to the fallacies and imaginations 
 of men arising from the Evil Spirit ; and a watchful observer of 
 his own heart and life shall often hear the voice of Wisdom, 
 and the voice of Folly speaking to him. He that hath his eyes 
 opened may see both the visions of God falling upon him, and 
 discern the false and foolish fires of Satan that would draw 
 away his mind from God." 
 
240 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 shown us. As the revelation of God becomes fuller, 
 the powers of evil are brought out into clearer light. 
 Contrast the New Testament with the Old, and you 
 will see this at once. 
 
 It is our Blessed Lord Who tells us that He 
 " beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." It is 
 He Who tells us that the Devil not only did not 
 abide in the truth himself, and fell from the perfection 
 of being which God had given to him, but that he is a 
 "murderer," a destroyer of the souls of others. So 
 our Lord describes to us the terrible work of the 
 wicked one. A man hears the truth of God, but he 
 is none the better for it. We should have said, 
 perhaps, that his mind was full of other things, that he 
 was careless, or inattentive, or worldly. But our Lord 
 says that the Devil has taken the word out of his 
 heart. 
 
 Men fall away from the truth of God. They give 
 up the old truths which God taught to His Church. 
 They bring in novelties. They speculate and fall into 
 error. They become heretics, schismatics, or un- 
 believers. Members of the Church fall away from the 
 holiness of life to which they were bound. The lives 
 of Christians become lax, careless, sinful. Men mourn 
 as they see the increase of unbelief, the growth of 
 wickedness amongst those who call themselves 
 Christians. 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 241 
 
 Our Lord lifts the veil. He shows us that the 
 tempter has been at work. He says, "An enemy 
 has done this." The Devil has sown tares among the 
 wheat of God's harvest-field, the Church. 
 
 The masses of the Jews reject our Lord while He 
 is living on earth. They will not be won by His 
 fairness. They will not accept His offers of mercy. 
 He shows us that they have yielded to the power of 
 the Evil One. " Ye are of your father the Devil, and 
 the works of your father ye will do." 
 
 Not on the masses only, not on those far off from 
 Him is the attack made. It is most determined, 
 most eager, most full of malice, as it is brought to bear 
 on the chosen twelve, so close, so dear to Him : 
 " Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have 
 you that he may sift you as wheat." So deadly, so 
 personal is the conflict. 
 
 Nay, one is even torn from the band, the unhappy 
 Judas. You tell me that he was covetous, that his 
 mind was set on money, that he was dishonest, that 
 he cared so for the world that he could not care for 
 our Lord. Yes, but our Lord speaks of him as being 
 under the power of the Devil, and the evangelist 
 reveals the success of the tempter in those awful 
 words : " After the sop Satan entered into him." 
 
 Such were our Lord's revelations of the personal 
 attack, of the power and craft of the Evil One. It may 
 
242 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 be that He permitted the existence and conflict with 
 the powers of evil to be made audible, and almost 
 visible — visible at least in their effects, when He spoke 
 to, and answered, and cast out, and controlled the 
 evil spirits in His cures of those possessed by devils. 
 
 3. But, clear as this teaching is, it is brought home 
 with a still greater clearness of application to the case 
 of individuals in the inspired writings of the apostles. 
 As those who had been brought into the Church had 
 been delivered from the power of darkness, the Prince 
 of the power of the air, and were translated into the 
 kingdom of God's dear Son, with all His love, and 
 strength, and wisdom, and power pledged to them 
 to shield and guard them, so the battle which they 
 will have to fight is set before them in all its awful 
 clearness. They have to wrestle, not with man, but 
 " with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the 
 darkness of this world, with spiritual wickedness in 
 high places." Hand to hand, face to face, unseen by 
 us indeed, but only therefore all the more dangerous, 
 we have to meet these enemies. Fallen from their 
 first estate, but still with the vast powers of fallen 
 angels, they work in the children of disobedience. 
 Alienated from God, they work against Him, and 
 especially against us who belong to Him. So St. 
 Peter describes their chief and leader as our special 
 adversary, and warns us that he walks about as a 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 243 
 
 roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. What a 
 strife is this ! Such power, such craft (the wiles of 
 the Devil, as the apostle describes them), such malice, 
 such untiring, persevering onset, brought to bear on 
 our poor souls, and the issue, death — the death with 
 which the great murderer slays those who let them- 
 selves be conquered by him. Is there not enough 
 here to make us understand the cry of the apostle, 
 spoken as with the passionate earnestness of a mother 
 who sees her children about to become the prey of a 
 ravenous beast that comes sweeping down upon them, 
 " Be sober, be vigilant " ? Oh, if anything could wake 
 us, young and old, from giddiness and thought- 
 lessness, from hurrying through life without thinking 
 to what our steps are leading us, or what snares 
 and pitfalls are spread around us, or what deadly 
 blows are being aimed at us, it would be the re- 
 membrance of the spiritual enemies that we have to 
 deal with, and the keen eyes that are bent upon us, 
 and the fiery darts of scorn, or passion, or contempt 
 of God, or unbelief, that are being hurled at us. Surely 
 one steady thought of what temptation means might 
 well sober the maddest of us all. It would make us 
 even understand the somewhat over-stern saying of 
 the Saint to those whose merriment seemed to show 
 him that they did not feel the dangers that were 
 threatening them : " What ! you can laugh, and the 
 
 R 2 
 
244 . THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 Devil's eye is on you, and he is bent on slaying your 
 soul." Here, then, are the enemies against whom we 
 have to stand. These are our tempters. 
 
 II. But now, if we wish to be on our guard, what 
 are the temptations that are brought to bear upon 
 us ? Rather, what are they not ? A spiritual writer 
 says, " We have almost as many temptations as we 
 have thoughts." Every passion may be a field for 
 temptation. Almost every friend may be used to 
 tempt us, as Eve was used by the Serpent to tempt 
 Adam. The Evil One has thousands of bribes, and 
 inducements, and offers, and allurements for the 
 thousands of souls that he seeks to win. He offered 
 our Blessed Lord all the kingdoms of the world ; and 
 his offer was worthless, for the love of the Father 
 outshone all else. He offered Judas thirty pieces of 
 silver, and he won the poor mean soul, for the silver 
 looked brighter than the face of Jesus. He has his 
 price for the scholar, for the man of pleasure, for the 
 young and warm-hearted, for the old and cautious. 
 The coins are poured out fast from his mint, and 
 they are of all values. There is the fair-seeming 
 gold of a great spiritual temptation to vain-glory 
 and self-complacency, or to leadership among the 
 servants of God, or to skill in theology, or to a 
 reputation for spiritual knowledge. There is the 
 silver, the bright, shining silver, that looks so pure 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 245 
 
 and white, that shows no sign of alloy, of high in- 
 tellectual power, the fascination of being looked up 
 to as large-minded and liberal, and as one who can 
 break down old barriers of thought. There is the 
 baser metal of sensuality, self-indulgence, softness, 
 extravagance, debauch. The coins are of all values. 
 One sweet draught more will win a drunkard's soul, 
 and the satisfaction of the closing sentence in a well- 
 wrought argument against God will win a sceptic's. 
 The applause of a senate, of a parliament, of a 
 nation — yes, even of a synod — or of the voice of the 
 people, or of the Press, will buy one man ; a single 
 smile of a woman will make sure of another. The 
 ringing laugh that followed the first unholy jest, or 
 the first breach of modesty in speech, or the first 
 ribald song, has been found enough to pay for a 
 young man's soul ; and the praise for liberality in 
 giving up some ancient safeguard of the truth of 
 God, and throwing off the prejudices of childhood, 
 whether the childhood of the man or of the Church, 
 has been found enough to pay for some old man's 
 soul. The coins are of all values. Yes ; but they 
 are marked with one stamp — the stamp of lifting up 
 the soul against God. Rather, perhaps, it would be 
 truer to say there is a stamp which ought to be there 
 and is not — there is no image or likeness of the King 
 upon them. The sovereignty of God is effaced. This 
 
246 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 marks the temptation. God is to be kept out of 
 sight, to be disregarded, forgotten, dethroned. And 
 man is to be put into His place. Man is to become 
 a god to himself. It is the old first temptation re- 
 produced in a thousand forms, under a thousand 
 disguises, but still the same : " Ye shall be as gods." 
 Has God forbidden this ? Has He commanded that ? 
 Does He warn you that you will suffer by dis- 
 obedience ? Has he said that you will surely die ? 
 Do not be restrained by such idle fears, or submit 
 yourselves to such a bondage of restraint. You can 
 choose better for yourselves than God has chosen for 
 you. Take what He has forbidden, break off these 
 bands which fetter you, and "ye shall be as gods." 
 Choose for yourselves ; be independent of God. 
 
 This is the work of him r who abode not in the 
 truth, who kept not his first estate, because he threw 
 off the authority of God, and who has been ever since 
 a liar against God and a murderer of souls. Ah, 
 could he say this — " ye shall be as gods " — and not 
 betray by a groan the misery into which he has 
 fallen ? 
 
 Independence of God. This has, as it were, the 
 mark of the heel of the Evil One burnt into it, and 
 shows itself to be the weapon which he has handled 
 against our souls. All his temptations take the form 
 of independence of God. What a thought for this 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 247 
 
 time, for this age in which we live ! The constant 
 whisper of the tempter is : Throw off these restraints 
 — the restraints of a father's wishes, of the habits of a 
 religious home and childhood, of college rule and 
 discipline, of the opinion of the soberer members of 
 society, of practices of devotion and piety, of holy 
 places and holy seasons, of the law, and will, and 
 commandments of God, of all that has been gathered 
 up into the Creeds and teaching of the Church of His 
 Revelation. Throw off these trammels upon your 
 passions, your enjoyments, your pleasures, your 
 thoughts. You will know what true freedom of the 
 Spirit is. You will be above conventionalities, and 
 prejudices, and rules, and fears of the displeasure of 
 God— " Ye shall be as gods." 
 
 Ah, so he whispered to Eve ; and what has followed ? 
 Every sorrow that the world has known ; a flood of 
 sorrows that poured into a world that had thrown off 
 the encircling arms of God, to be protected by Him 
 no longer ; every sad spiritual defeat ; the alienation 
 of a host of souls from God ; the slavery of darkened 
 intellects, and impure affections, and perverted wills. 
 
 What followed in the case of the Evil One himself? 
 If he could tell us what it has been to fall from his 
 first estate, we should see what it is to be independent 
 of God. 
 
 Is there any one here to whom he has made that 
 
243 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 lying promise, " Thou shalt be as God " ? Would 
 that poor wretch not say, " Ah, so I have indeed 
 become a god to myself! I have followed my own 
 will, indulged myself, lived for myself, till I have 
 become the slave of self — selfish, and narrow, and 
 weak, and purposeless, and aimless, with nothing to 
 draw me out of self, or lift me above self ; no con- 
 sideration for others, no generosity of spirit, no nobility 
 of nature. Ah, this is the independence of God into 
 which the Evil One has seduced me. The law of 
 God no more restrains my passions ; they tyrannise 
 over me. His truth no more enlightens my mind ; 
 I am lost in my own darkness. His grace no more 
 acts upon my will ; I am driven helplessly as each 
 gust of temptation sweeps down upon me." 
 
 Such are the full consequences of yielding to tempta- 
 tion — an utter wreck of the whole being in separation 
 from God. It is not often that such depths of misery 
 can be reached in this life, but it is well to look right 
 down into these depths of woe, that, if we have gone 
 ever so few steps down into that darkness, we may 
 turn and fly upwards to the light. 
 
 III. See, then, how to resist your temptations. 
 Independence of God is the evil that lurks under all 
 forms of temptation. Then dependence on God is 
 the safeguard against it 
 
 There are two tempers of mind to foster in our- 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 249 
 
 selves : great distrust of self, great trust in God. 
 Look at the real character of your enemies as we 
 have considered it — their strange spiritual powers, 
 their craft, their untiring malice, their experience in 
 the force of temptation practised on the hearts of 
 men for thousands of years, the energy which their 
 hatred of God lends to their attack upon us, and you 
 cannot but distrust yourselves. The spirit indeed 
 may be willing, but at least the flesh is weak. 
 Remember how dear you are to our Blessed Lord, 
 how for you He was made man, and endured tempta- 
 tion in His own Person, that He might know what 
 you have to bear, how He conquered that you might 
 conquer. Think how the memory of His own tempta- 
 tion is in His mind still, and that He can be touched 
 with the feeling of your infirmities, and, in that He 
 hath suffered being tempted, is able to succour you 
 when you are tempted. See Him wrestling out the 
 great strife for your soul on His Cross, yourself and 
 all your perils thought of in the midst of His pangs, 
 and death itself borne rather than you should be lost. 
 Think how He loved you, and gave Himself for you. 
 And so trust largely in that love. Appeal to it by 
 prayer. Shelter yourself under it. Dare not, wish 
 not, to live without it. As the enemies press around 
 you, and seek to hem you in on every side, flee to 
 Him to hide you. Live in constant communion with 
 
250 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION 
 
 your Lord. Long and hunger after Him. Receive 
 Him into your soul again and again. You will soon 
 know the meaning of those words : " Greater is He 
 that is in you than he that is in the world," as the 
 light, and purity, and strength which you draw into 
 your soul make you able to cast off the darts of 
 temptation. The very fierceness and continuance of 
 the attack will only make you press into a closer 
 union with our Lord. 
 
 I am not saying that you will have no difficulties. 
 You will have them in abundance. The very fact 
 that we feel the sharpness of the battle going on 
 shows that we are not yet conquered. And a Saint 
 has said : " the greatest of all temptations is not to be 
 tempted." But what are difficulties ? They are 
 opportunities for a man to show his courage, his 
 firmness, his determination, his faithfulness. You 
 have felt this in the contests in which the strength of 
 your bodies or the powers of your minds have been 
 put to the proof. Is it only when the soul is put to 
 the proof, in the contest for life and death eternal, 
 when angels surround you, at once to guard, and re- 
 joice over you in your victory, when God watches 
 and smiles upon your faithfulness, is it only then that 
 your coward heart is to be ready to make too much 
 of difficulties, and too little of the joy of being true 
 to God ? It cannot, it must not be. Nay, these 
 
AND THE VICTORY. 251 
 
 difficulties of temptation, which are opportunities for 
 you to show how you love God, are they not also 
 opportunities for God? His love for you, His care, 
 the strength of His grace, the power of His presence, 
 all these will come out in the midst of the sore strife. 
 As He walked with the three children in the burning 
 fiery furnace, so He will walk with you. You will 
 know more of Him than you would ever have known 
 but for the stress of the conflict in which He has 
 nerved your soul. Hear His own words : " I am 
 with him in trouble. I will deliver him, and bring 
 him to honour. With long life will I satisfy him and 
 show him my salvation " ; " My grace is sufficient for 
 thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness ; " 
 " God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted 
 above that ye are able, but will with the temptation 
 make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear 
 it." 
 
 So He cheers thee, strengthens thee. He almost 
 shows thee what is ready for thee at the end of thy 
 brave, bold strife : " Be thou faithful unto death, and 
 I will give thee a crown of life." Ah, will not thine 
 own heart answer : If it be His will, let the strife come, 
 the fiery darts of the wicked, the onset of His enemies 
 and mine, the battle which is to try my loyalty, the 
 force of bad example round me, the ridicule and 
 mockery of those who care not for God. Let me 
 
252 THE FIERCENESS OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 have something to bear, to suffer, to do for His dear 
 sake, that it may be seen that, whatever its weakness, 
 my poor soul is at least true to Him. What did He 
 not bear for me ? That Form that stoops under the 
 Cross, that is nailed to it, that pale Face, those 
 bleeding Brows, they demand some answering love 
 from me ; I dare to say with one, who could look on 
 through the very strife itself to the moment of 
 supreme joy when God shall approve those who 
 have been true to Him : " Blessed is the man that 
 endureth temptation, for when he is tried he shall 
 receive the crown of life." 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 
 
 253 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 
 Preached at St. Giles, Oxford. March 23, 1866. 
 St. John xii. 31. 
 
 " Now is the judgment of this world ; now shall the Prince of 
 this world be cast out." 
 
 Soldiers of Christ, we are leading you to the battle. 
 If you will, we may lead you to the victory. You 
 have been sworn to take your part in the great strife 
 between the powers of light and darkness. The Great 
 King has taken you into His army. The Captain of 
 your salvation, out of His pure love, has given you 
 your place in the ranks of His hosts. Ye did not 
 choose Him, but He chose you ; and, as I look 
 round, I seem to see glistening on your brows the 
 cross of light which was traced there, as if by His 
 finger, at the moment of your baptism, when you 
 were enrolled by Him, and pledged to fight manfully 
 under His banner, against Sin, the World, and the 
 
254 THE GREA T O VERTHRO W. 
 
 Devil, and to continue His faithful soldiers and ser- 
 vants unto your life's end. As I look back into the 
 past, I seem to see written in His book the vows by 
 which you were bound to fight the good fight of faith. 
 As I look on into the future, I seem to see in His 
 hand the crowns, the radiant crowns of life which 
 the Lord hath promised to give to them that have 
 been tried in the strife, and have been shown to have 
 loved Him. But I see no names written on the 
 crowns. I cannot tell who shall wear them, on 
 whose brows they shall be placed ; nor if there be 
 any here who shall be such a coward in the battle of 
 life that another shall take his crown. I hear only 
 these words : " Endure hardship, as a good soldier of 
 Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth 
 himself with the affairs o r this life ; that he may 
 please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. 
 And, if a man also strive for mastery, yet he is not 
 crowned except he strive lawfully." 
 
 Lose not this crown, then, brethren. Throw it 
 not away. Strive, with all your hearts and souls, that 
 it may be yours. See what motives have been given 
 you to make the battle against evil the one great 
 earnest business of life. We have told you of the face 
 to face conflict with Satan and his angels ; of the 
 power that they have to darken the soul and steep it 
 in misery. We have told you also of the power of 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 255 
 
 our Blessed Lord, working with all His love in His 
 Church to redeem and save the soul. We have 
 counted up for you all the blessed aids that have 
 been provided for you. We have even dared to speak 
 plainly of the increased fierceness of the strife as it 
 mounts to its crisis, that you might see in all their 
 fulness the dangers that threaten you. Surely in all 
 this there is more than enough to make you watch 
 and live ever on your guard, and fight manfully and 
 warily, and claim earnestly the graces, and gifts, and 
 powers that are to be had from our Blessed Lord, that 
 you may be able to stand in the evil day. Can you 
 dare to sleep now, or to dream away life, while the 
 eyes of the angelic powers of darkness are bent upon 
 you with the steady gaze of malice watching to ruin 
 and destroy you ? Can you live without seeking 
 Christ, when to seek and to find Him is to find 
 strength, and safety, and union with God, and peace 
 — peace and real calm within, even in the very 
 midst of the outward conflict ? Surely you will not 
 so forget the lessons which this Lent has taught you. 
 You will fight, you will strive, you will stand against 
 the wiles of the Devil. 
 
 But perhaps you are ready to say to me : " It is 
 indeed our very hearts' wish to be true to God. We 
 hate and abhor the evil that sets us against Him. 
 We would not for a moment join ourselves wilfully 
 
256 THE GREA T 0 VERTHRO IV. 
 
 to those rebel hosts that have risen up against Him. 
 We can say with all our souls, ' Do not I hate them, 
 0 Lord, that hate Thee, and am not I grieved with 
 those that rise up against Thee ? Yea, I hate them 
 right sore, even as though they were mine enemies.' 
 We know what we owe to God ; we would not for 
 the world be untrue to Him. But, oh, the battle is so 
 fierce and so unceasing — and we are so weak, and we 
 grow so worn and weary in the strife." I know it 
 well, dear brethren, and therefore we bring before 
 you the subject of to-night. The battle is great — 
 great in the daring wickedness of those who are 
 fighting against God ; great in the vastness of power, 
 and craft, and experience, and malice, which the evil 
 ones bring to bear on you ; great in the tremendous 
 issues which hang on your conquering and being 
 conquered ; but, if the battle is great, how great will 
 be the overthrow at its close. It is of that I wish 
 you to think. Think of all evil being cast out of 
 God's kingdom at the last. Think of Satan being 
 bruised under your feet ; and the ceasing of the 
 strife ; and the contrast of the peace and rest with the 
 soreness of the present struggle. Think of the soul 
 gathered in to the calm safety of the presence of 
 God, to be folded in His embrace, and shielded and 
 guarded from all the bufferings of evil, and knowing 
 itself safe at last, and sure of His love for evermore, 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 257 
 
 and, what is almost greater, sure of being able to 
 love Him. 
 
 But, even while I speak, I seem to hear a cry of 
 suffering bursting from your hearts, as though you 
 said to me : " For pity's sake do not speak so of rest, 
 and peace, and calm, and safety. It tortures us to 
 hear of these, while the hot breath of Satan is almost 
 now burning on our cheek, and our knees are weak 
 with wrestling in prayer, and our spirits are smarting 
 with blow after blow from the Evil One." Nay, but, 
 my brethren, it is not I who bid you think of the 
 great overthrow ; it is our Blessed Lord Himself Who 
 turns your eyes towards it. More than 1800 years 
 ago He said, " Now is the judgment of this world ; 
 now shall the Prince of this world be cast out." Our 
 Blessed Lord knew the power and malice of the Evil 
 One, for His own pure soul had been beset and 
 harassed by him in the hour of His temptation. He 
 knew that He should still be fiercely assaulted again 
 by the tempter, for those last hours of His trial were 
 hastening on which He called the hours of the power 
 of darkness. He knew that for year after year, 
 through all the long warfare of the Church, the Devil 
 would still walk about seeking whom he might devour. 
 He could see all the wearing struggle that His elect 
 must pass through. There lay, as in an open book 
 before Him, all the sad history of our poor tempted 
 
 S 
 
258 THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 
 
 souls ; all our shuddering at the evil that forces itself 
 upon us ; the wrestling of the aching spirit, its 
 failings and faintings, its sighs and groans, its gasps 
 of exhaustion, its bleeding wounds, its dangers, its 
 passing almost under the chilling shadow of death. 
 And yet He could say, "Now is the Prince of this 
 world cast out." 
 And why ? 
 
 Because He could see the end from the beginning. 
 The first step was taken in that mighty march of the 
 triumph of good over evil. The Powers of heaven 
 had taken their side in the conflict with evil. There 
 could be but one issue. The overthrow of the enemy 
 was already as certain as if it had taken place. And 
 so our Blessed Lord directs our eyes to this end, that 
 throughout the strife we may fight as those who 
 know that they may have the victory through Him. 
 How wonderful is the spring of Hope ! Saint 
 Augustine says : " Love, and you may do what you 
 will." May we not almost say : " Hope, and you 
 may do what you will " ? 
 
 What, then, will the overthrow be ? 
 
 What was the beginning and nature of the rebellion ? 
 It has been thought that in Satan's case the rebellion 
 arose in his refusing his dependence on God. He 
 and the other fallen angels " kept not their first 
 estate." In some sense they wished to be u as the 
 
THE GREA T O VER THRO IV. 259 
 
 Most High." Either they were proudly discontented 
 with the rank in creation which God had allotted 
 them, and so they would not trust in His wisdom ; 
 or they thought to stand by their own power, instead 
 of being upheld in righteousness by God, and so they 
 refused the offer of His love. And thus they fell 
 away from God. 
 
 And next, fallen themselves, they sought to work 
 out the fall of man in the same manner. Satan 
 tempted man, too, to aim at a higher state than God 
 had given him. He moved our first parents to seek 
 by their own act to be as gods. He lured them 0:1 
 to disobey God by promising them that they would 
 gain new advantages for themselves. And so man, 
 unhappy man, fell away from God. He lost that 
 blessed union with God, through which his soul had 
 been kept, and guarded, and blessed. He found out, 
 indeed, what it was to be a god to himself, to be left 
 to his own feebleness, unaided, unsupported by any 
 higher power. He was stripped of the gift of original 
 righteousness. The light and strength of God was 
 gone from him, Naked and defenceless, he seemed 
 to be an easy prey for the malice of Satan. His 
 mind and understanding were darkened, and over- 
 clouded. His affections went wandering away from 
 God. His will was feeble and perverse. He was 
 ever fleeing from his true happiness, and hunting 
 
 S 2 
 
260 
 
 THE GREA T 0 VER THR 0 IV. 
 
 after new forms of misery. This was the overthrow 
 of man. Was it hopeless and without a remedy ? 
 Was it also the overthrow of God ? No ; it was the 
 occasion of the triumph of the love and grace of God : 
 "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." 
 Every misery of man was an appeal to the heart 
 of God. Man had become dark in soul, weak, corrupt. 
 He was wounded, suffering, sore beset, dying. So 
 then the Lord Himself became man. The Evil One 
 had led man astray from God, and made him his 
 slave, and was ever tempting him by some false bait 
 farther and farther from the way of happiness. The 
 Word was made flesh. He lived and dwelt among us 
 in His Own world. Full of grace and truth, He 
 attracted hearts to Himself by His Own purity and 
 holiness, by His powers of love and sympathy. He 
 drew men back to God. But, more than this, our 
 blessed Lord made Himself the source of all blessing 
 to us : " Out of His fulness have all we received, and 
 grace for grace." If we are dark, in Him is light. 
 If we are weak, in Him is strength. If we are corrupt, 
 in Him is purity. If we are wounded, through His 
 stripes we may be healed. If we are suffering, in Him 
 is health. If we are sore beset, in Him is might. If 
 we are dying, in Him is life. He is " made unto us 
 wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and 
 redemption." In His cross there is an atoning power 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 
 
 261 
 
 to take away all sin, for God has " made Him to be 
 sin for us Who knew no sin, that we may be made 
 the righteousness of God in Him." In Himself, in 
 His Person is a store of all graces that we can need ; 
 and we may be " complete in Him." See, then, how- 
 even now the overthrow of Satan is going on. We 
 may well say it with awe, for who knows whether some 
 of the evil ones may not be listening? But we may 
 still say it in a spirit of steadfast faith. It is the 
 simple truth. W T hat has the whole work of Satan 
 been from the moment of the first temptation ? 
 What but to cut us off from God ? What but to 
 make us seek to be independent of God ? What but 
 to persuade us that we shall be better without God ? 
 And what do all the miseries which Satan has 
 brought into the world accomplish ? They make us 
 flee to God. The power of the Evil One is put forth 
 against us, and, as we cast ourselves upon our Lord 
 for aid, we find that the words are true, " Greater is 
 He that is in you than he that is in the world." 
 We faint with weariness of heart as the blows of our 
 spiritual adversaries fall thick and fast upon us, and 
 again we cry to our Lord, and find that, when we arc- 
 weak in ourselves, then we are strong in Him. As 
 the forms of evil and fashions of sin are multiplied 
 and grow into a gathered cloud around us, we feel the 
 horror of the great darkness which threatens to hide 
 
262 THE GREA T O VER THRO W. 
 
 the purity of God from us, and we sigh forth, " 0 
 send out Thy light and Thy truth that they may lead 
 me," and the eyes of our understanding are lightened 
 with His light. The Evil One seeks to dazzle us 
 with the glitter and tinsel of the toys of the world, 
 and we grow bewildered, till we close our eyes that 
 at the least we may shut out all which is not God ; 
 and the image and fairness of God rises in vision 
 before us, as a voice speaks in our ear the words, " Be 
 of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Old 
 memories of sin come back upon us, and are intensified 
 in their blackness by the powers of evil, as if to drive 
 us from a God Whom we have so grieved, and the 
 very misery of the gloom that settles down upon us 
 makes us crave the more earnestly for the peace 
 which the love of God alone can give, and we learn 
 how "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth 
 from all sin." Touched by the love of God, we long 
 to love Him, but our soul seems to have no power to 
 love. We wish to rise above the world, and fix our 
 hearts on Him to Whom we owe all we have and all 
 we are, but we are beaten back by the gusts of 
 temptation, and sink down in utter feebleness, like a 
 poor bird whose fluttering wings can make no head 
 against the sweeping of the fierce storm, and then, in 
 this very feebleness, we look out of ourselves, away 
 from, above ourselves to Him Who has all the power 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 263 
 
 of God, and all the tender compassion of man for us 
 who are tempted as He was tempted of old. We cry 
 to Him, " I know that in me, that is in my flesh, 
 dwelleth no good thing ; I fail, I faint, I die without 
 Thee ; I am not myself unless Thou, Who didst give 
 me my being, dost hold my soul in life." And then 
 comes from our Lord the answer, so full of love and 
 blessing : " My grace is sufficient for thee, for My 
 strength is made perfect in weakness." And we 
 answer yet again : " Most gladly therefore will I 
 rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ 
 may rest upon me. Not by might, nor by power 
 of my own, but 1 by His Spirit,' let the work be done 
 in me, on me, by me. To know Him, His power, 
 His blessing, His love, all that He is and can be to 
 the soul, all that He is in Himself, His fairness, 
 wisdom, goodness, purity, perfection ; to lose the 
 thought of self, and live by Him, and for Him, and 
 in Him ; this is the peace, and rest, and joy, and 
 happiness, and only true life of my soul." 
 
 And so, even as life goes on, the soul unlearns its 
 independence, and learns the true blessedness of 
 dependence upon God, and the Devil's craft is foiled. 
 
 And is this, then, you will say, the great overthrow ? 
 Not in its perfection and fulness, my brethren, but 
 in its beginning and progress. And therefore, when 
 the nature of God and the nature of man had already 
 
264 THE GREA T O VER THRO W. 
 
 been united in His person, when the cross was almost 
 reached, and Himself prepared to be the sacrifice for 
 sin, our Lord said, " Now is the Prince of this world 
 cast out." 
 
 But what, then, will be the great overthrow in its 
 completion and fulness ? To us it will be the entire 
 reversal of all that Satan and his angels have planned 
 against us, in their hatred both of God and of us. 
 Satan's plan has been to alienate us from God ; to 
 make us mistrust God, and rebel against Him ; and 
 then to build up by the memory of our guilt a dark 
 wall of separation to bar our return to God. " The 
 Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of 
 the Devil." By His life on earth, by all the tenderness 
 of His compassion, by His thousand ministries of 
 mercy, by His patient restoration of the lost, He has 
 shown us that there is no love which we can trust in 
 like the love of God : of God the Son, Who came to 
 seek and to save that which was lost ; of God the 
 Father, Who sent His Only begotten Son into the world 
 that we might live through Him ; of God the Holy 
 Ghost, Who sheds abroad the Love of God in our 
 hearts. So He has banished from our hearts the 
 mistrust of God. By His death our Lord has 
 reconciled us to God, and thrown down the wall of 
 fear and dread which Satan had tried to build up 
 between us and God. 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 
 
 265 
 
 Again, the plan of Satan was to make us seek to be 
 independent of God. The Son of God has taught us 
 to find our whole joy and happiness in being united 
 to God, dwelt in by Him, transformed and changed 
 through Him, so that it is only because He lives that 
 we live also. Stranger still, so complete is the over- 
 throw of Satan's malice, so entirely has his plan of 
 hatred been counterworked by the overwhelming power 
 of Divine love, that the very words which Satan used 
 to seduce man from God, " Ye shall be as gods," have 
 been miraculously fulfilled for us by God Himself.* 
 In Satan's mouth they were a deadly lie, for to depart 
 from God was to lose all gifts of God that gave us any 
 
 * St. Aug., De Civitate Dei, xxii. 1 : " Qui cum praesciret 
 Angelos quosdam per elationem, qua ipsi sibi ad beatam vitam 
 sufficere vellent, tanti boni desertores futuros, non eis ademit 
 hanc potestatem ; potentius et melius esse judicans, etiam de 
 malis benefacere, quam mala esse non sinere." 
 
 St. Aug., vol. viii. 560. B (Bened. Ed.) : " Ideo necesse est, 
 ut qui malum alteri prius inferendo vincere videtur, amplius 
 ipse bonum amittendo vincatur . . . et quod ad tempus praeva- 
 luisse visus est diabolus homine superato, etiam sic in aeternum 
 victus est homine reparato" 
 
 St. Aug., De Civ. Dei, xxii. 4: " Ibi vacantes videbimus 
 quoniam Ipse est Deus : quod nobis ipsi esse voluimus, quando 
 ab illo cecidimus, audientes a seductore, ' Eritis sicut dii ' ; et 
 recedentes a vero Deo, quo faciente dii essemus Ejus partici- 
 patione non desertione. Quid enim sine Illo fecimus, nisi quod 
 in via. Ejus defecimus ? A Quo refecti, et gratia majore perfecti, 
 vacabimus in aeternum, videntes quia Ipse est Deus, Quo pleni 
 erimus, quando Ipse erit omnia in omnibus." 
 
266 THE GREA T 0 VER THROW. 
 
 likeness to Him. Yet how strange a truth is there 
 in them for us still ! How may we tremble with awe 
 and thrill with love and gratitude as we feel that 
 through Christ we have been actually made partakers 
 of the Divine nature, so that in some sense we are as 
 God ! We are wise with the wisdom that comes from 
 God ; we are strong with His own strength working 
 in us ; we love with the love that He sheds abroad 
 in our hearts ; " we are being changed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of 
 the Lord." We are His and He is ours. 
 
 Imagine, then, the meeting in the day of com- 
 pleted redemption, when our Lord shall come to 
 claim as His own for ever those on whom His work has 
 been done, and we may imagine the great overthrow. 
 There in the midst shall be the throne, and seated on 
 it the Second Adam, both God and man — man with 
 a perfection of nature beyond our power to conceive, 
 because in Him it is joined to the nature of God, and 
 filled with all the glory which that union can give. 
 Round Him are gathered the thousands of His saints, 
 their every affection fastened on Him ; their every 
 longing satisfied in Him ; their most ardent desires, 
 more than fulfilled — their highest hopes more than 
 realised. Trial, suffering, struggle, weakness, dark- 
 ness, even their very failings and falls have only 
 helped to bring them nearer and nearer to Him. As 
 
THE GREA T O VER THRO W. 267 
 
 life passed on they only hung upon Him more. The 
 old self died out of them. A new self passed into 
 them as they drew the strength and Spirit of Jesus 
 into them. They are new creatures in Christ Jesus. 
 They live with His life ; He in them, and they in 
 Him, as He is in His Father and His Father in Him. 
 The very warmth of love that throbs in them is but 
 the beating of a pulse that issues from the heart of 
 Jesus. As life ran on, they offered themselves up 
 more and more in sacrifice to God, and that sacrifice 
 of themselves was accepted through the priceless 
 sacrifice of our Lord. They have panted after God 
 and longed for Him, as each gift of His visited their 
 souls. And now, at last, the open vision of Him is to 
 be granted to them. They have longed to lose their 
 own will in doing His, and now they are to find their 
 joy in doing that will under His own eye. The 
 hour is come when, in the fulness of all the meaning 
 of those words, God is to be all in all ; God is to be 
 the whole joy, and happiness, and peace, and delight 
 of His children. And He is to be in all, their very 
 inward strength, the innermost core of their being, 
 filling, refreshing, satisfying them, making them to 
 love and live for Him with the love and life which He 
 gives. 
 
 Imagine that moment, and imagine Satan having 
 one glance — one moment's glance of that bliss of the 
 
268 
 
 THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 
 
 saints, one guess, one faint guess of all that they have 
 gained almost through his own malice, through the 
 very dependence on God which he would not have — 
 and all that he has lost ! We dare hardly imagine 
 what thoughts will pass through the minds of the lost 
 angels at that moment. As they see, perhaps for an 
 instant, the radiance of the glory of Heaven shining 
 out from Him that sits on the great white throne, 
 and His love beaming forth to welcome the saints 
 and their love answering His, will there come sweep- 
 ing over the memories of the lost the thought of the 
 time when they stood around the throne of the most 
 High, and when His light fell on their spirits, and 
 they lifted their own songs of adoration to Him, and 
 will this add a deeper tinge to the gloom of their 
 desolate outcast hearts? As they see the fruits of 
 the love of God in all the purity and joy of the re- 
 deemed, will they feel more bitterly the accursed 
 folly which cut them off from God ? Will they see 
 what God might have been for ever to them, as they 
 see what He is to those who are to be His Own for 
 evermore ? Will they read their own utter condemna- 
 tion for refusing to abide in God, as they learn what 
 marvels the love of God has done in raising fallen 
 men ? Will redeeming and sanctifying love testify 
 against them ? 
 
 When St. Paul says that the saints shall judge 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 269 
 
 angels, does he mean that those who have known 
 what God is, who have learnt in their hour of danger, 
 and weakness, and suffering, and corruption what He 
 can do for the soul, will now join in the sentence upon 
 those who could reject the love of God ? Will heaven 
 and earth together cast out into their self-chosen dark- 
 ness those whom the light of the love of God could 
 not move and win to itself by its fairness ? 
 
 It may be so. There are at least clear and startling 
 words spoken by the lips of Him Who was perfect 
 truth and perfect love, which tell us of an " everlasting 
 fire prepared for the Devil and his angels." These are 
 words which suggest rather than describe the woe of 
 the outcast angels when they shall have been driven 
 forth finally and for ever from even hovering round 
 the kingdom of God, to be preyed upon within by 
 the fierceness of the spirits' rebellion which shall find 
 vent for itself no more in the active strife against God.* 
 This side of the great overthrow must not be for- 
 gotten. But we have dwelt rather on the love of God 
 which is shown in delivering us from the Evil One. 
 And why? Because we would bind your hearts to 
 God. It is your only safety, as it is the only way to 
 
 * St. Augustine says of Satan that for a most malevolent 
 solace of his own damnation he seeks to have others condemned 
 with him (vol. vi. 292, Ed. Ben.). 
 
270 7 HE GREA T O VER THR 0 IV. 
 
 happiness. In the battle of life we must choose our 
 side. In the pride of a young heart we may trust to 
 our own integrity, depend on our own good intentions, 
 care for no knowledge that we cannot gain for our- 
 selves, and fancy that we can be as gods. This can 
 issue only in a great overthrow. Like Satan, in our 
 pride we shall fall as lightning from heaven, from hopes, 
 and graces, and from God. 
 
 In the humility of faith we may make God our all. 
 The constant aspiration of our hearts may be, " My 
 soul hangeth upon Thee ; Thy right hand hath up- 
 holden me." So we shall seek to know God through 
 the revelation which Christ has given to His Church. 
 We shall seek to have our souls cleansed through 
 Him Who gave Himself to die for our sins. We shall 
 seek for the life of holiness through communion with 
 Him Who said, " He that eateth Me, even he 
 shall live by Me." Christ shall be " made unto us " 
 "wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and 
 redemption." We shall grow ever more and more one 
 with our Lord. We shall be bound to Him the faster 
 by every gift which He gives us. We shall long for 
 Him the more as we taste of His goodness. Our will 
 and mind will more and more agree with Him. Our 
 face will be set more steadfastly against what He 
 hates. And when the hour of His triumph comes, it 
 
THE GREAT OVERTHROW. 271 
 
 will be the hour of our triumph too. We shall find 
 our place in His kingdom when He shall overthrow 
 all that exalts itself against Him, and shall reign 
 in every will that rejoices to submit itself to His, 
 when " the Prince of this world " shall be " cast out " 
 and the Prince of light and love shall reign. 
 
272 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE, 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 Preached at St. Mary's, Oxford. Lent, 1867. 
 
 Acts vii. 59. 
 u Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 
 
 If we ever set ourselves to think what it will be to 
 die, we must feel what a tremendous trial we shall 
 have to pass through at the hour of death. It will 
 be a very sore thing to have to bear the pangs and 
 sufferings of a wasting sickness, to pine away day 
 after day, and at last, all weak, and worn, and feeble, 
 to meet that sharp struggle in which soul and body 
 are parted asunder. And, over and above this, we 
 can hardly doubt that for most of us the time when 
 we lie dying will be a time of very great distress for 
 the soul. We must almost expect to be assaulted 
 then by fears, and doubts, and temptations of a 
 peculiar character. If ever the Evil One sets upon 
 
THE INTERMEDIA TE STA TE. 273 
 
 us to cut us off from God, he is likely to set upon us 
 then with all his force and craft He will know that 
 his time is short, and he will try to make sure of our 
 souls before the sand of life is run out. We shall 
 have to do battle with him in a deadly conflict. And 
 so we feel that our last moments in this world will 
 be moments of tremendous trial. We are right. 
 But, my brethren, do we feel that the first moment 
 after death, the first moment in the next world, the 
 first moment when we have closed our eyes on all 
 that we are used to in this world, the first moment 
 when we have opened the eyes of the soul on all 
 that is new, and strange, and unknown, will be more 
 tremendous still ? If we do not in some degree 
 realise how amazing and awful that moment will be, 
 we shall hardly see the need of believing in the power 
 that our Blessed Lord has to aid the soul which has 
 passed away from the world. 
 
 Let me ask you, then, to begin to-night by trying 
 to master the thought of a soul passing away from 
 this world. And first, to aid you in this, take the 
 case of St. Stephen, whose last dying moments are 
 described in the history from which the text is taken. 
 What do we think of as we read that story of the 
 first martyr's death, sketched for us by St. Luke with 
 the power as of a painter, so as to call up the whole 
 scene vividly before us ? We seem to see, perhaps, 
 
 T 
 
274 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 the raging crowd, gathering in fierceness round their 
 intended victim. With one mad onslaught they rush 
 upon him and hurl their stones at him. The very 
 violence with which they hurl stone after stone seems 
 to be at once a relief to their pent-up fury and also 
 to lash them into a fiercer cruelty. And . there is 
 St. Stephen, in the midst of those who are venting 
 their rage upon him, wherever he turns meeting the 
 glare of that rage, not a friend near to comfort or aid 
 him, mangled and wounded as blow follows blow. 
 And then we hear him call upon our Blessed Lord, 
 and we think in wonder of the steadfast faith which 
 made him see and feel how near our Blessed Lord 
 was to him. He seems to forget all else — the cries, 
 the blows, the noise, the fierceness. His gaze, his 
 heart, his soul is fixed on our Blessed Lord, as if he 
 were alone with Him ; and so he speaks to Him, and 
 says, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." It is indeed a 
 wonderful faith of which we have the history here. 
 It shows us the soul of the suffering disciple leaning 
 on the Lord Who had suffered. We see that the 
 secret of strength in all trials lies in appealing to the 
 love and power of the Blessed Jesus. In the death- 
 struggle St. Stephen had faith to hang upon his Lord, 
 and his Lord bore him through the agonies of that 
 hour. This is what we are most likely to think of 
 in reading of the martyr's death. But was this the 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 275 
 
 greatest proof of St. Stephen's faith ? Was his greatest 
 trial in this world ? Did it not lie beyond this world ? 
 The life was nearly crushed out of him. The pains 
 of death were coming thick and fast upon him. But 
 was death the end ? What was awaiting him after 
 death ? He was entering on the unseen state. All 
 was dim, unknown, untried before him. He must 
 have felt as if his whole being was giving way, as if 
 there were no ground beneath his feet, as if he were 
 sinking into a fathomless abyss. He was going — but 
 whither ? And, if he was passing into the world of 
 spirits, would he be safe from all enemies there? 
 We think of his falling asleep, and it soothes us to 
 read the words. We feel that the pelting of the bloody 
 storm of stones ceased at last, and that the spirit of 
 the martyr had left his enemies behind. They had 
 killed the body, and they had no more that they 
 could do. But were there not fiercer enemies that 
 were not left behind ? Had Satan and his angels 
 lost all power over that spirit ? Could the dying 
 martyr be sure that he should escape from these ? 
 And then, once more, if his spirit passed away, to 
 whom would it go ? It must return to God, Who 
 gave it. It must go before God, meet Him, and give 
 up its account to Him. It is such thoughts as these 
 which add so wonderful a power and force to those 
 words, " ' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' I know not 
 
276 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 where I go ; all nature seems to open out into vast 
 untried depths beneath me ; take me, hold me in 
 Thine everlasting arms ; I am safe with Thee. I 
 know not who may attack me, how the powers of 
 evil may gather against me ; take me, guard me. 
 I know not how to meet the Judgment. I know only 
 that I have been dear to Thee in this life. Thou 
 hast loved me, died for me, kept me. Take me now ; 
 to Thee do I commit my cause ; ' Lord Jesus, receive 
 my spirit.' " Here is indeed a strange, calm faith in 
 the power of our Blessed Lord to keep and bless the 
 soul in that unseen world. One who could speak 
 thus must have felt that our Lord had conquered in 
 that world, as in this, and emptied it of its horrors. 
 He looked, as it were, through the mist and darkness 
 that was gathering around him ; he pierced with the 
 steady gaze of his mind through the veil that was 
 drawn between him and the state on which he was 
 entering, and there he saw his Lord waiting and ready 
 for him. Or rather, with a surer faith, though he 
 did not see, he felt certain that our Lord was King 
 in that realm of the departed, and he was ready to 
 pass into it, because he knew that our Lord had 
 power to keep and uphold him there. Ah, brethren, 
 perhaps we shall never know the full force of those 
 calm words of St. Stephen till we are on the edge of 
 that unseen world ourselves. 
 
THE INTERMEDIA TE ST A TE. 277 
 
 And now the next thing I would ask you to do is 
 to try and bring before yourselves the peculiar trial of 
 passing into the unseen world. We can only try to 
 imagine it, but it may be of use to us to make the 
 effort. 
 
 Take, then, such points as these : 
 
 I. The moment will come when your soul will leave 
 the body. There are two moments before you, in the 
 first of which you will be still in this world, in the 
 second of which you will have passed out of the 
 world. This we all know well. But do we know 
 no more than this ? We cannot see into the world of 
 spirits, but our Lord can. All souls live under His 
 eye, whether they are in the body or out of the body. 
 And He has given us the history of two departed 
 souls. He tells us how the soul of the beggar 
 Lazarus, immediately after death, was carried by 
 the angels to Abraham's bosom, and there was soothed 
 and comforted after the sufferings of the world were 
 passed. He tells us also of the wretched soul of the 
 rich man, and of the torments into which it was cast. 
 Between the two a great gulph was fixed. One was 
 in misery, the other was in peace. Their state was 
 settled, as it could only be settled, by some secret 
 judgment of God. Our Lord speaks of both these 
 men as living still in the spirit, thinking, feeling, using 
 their powers and energies. One knew the comforts 
 
278 THE INTERMEDIA TE-STA TE. 
 
 with which he was visited. The other knew the 
 torments to which he had been condemned. And 
 both had memories of the past. One could look back 
 upon the sorrows from which he had been released. 
 The other could look back upon the sins which had 
 brought him to the " place of torment." 
 
 We have the histories of two other souls given to us 
 in Holy Scripture. We are told of the wretched Judas 
 in words pregnant with a terrible meaning, that " he 
 went to his own place." We are told of the penitent 
 thief that it was promised to him that on the very day 
 on which he died he should be with our Blessed Lord 
 in Paradise. And so we may gather what will be the 
 case with each one of us when we die. Each of us 
 will go to his own place, as God shall appoint, and fix 
 that place for us. And, if this be so, then, one by one, 
 we shall have to pass under the sentence of God. 
 My brethren, try and think what the effect upon us 
 of that one moment will be. Will it not seem like an 
 age ? How will all our past days and hours be 
 crowded into that moment, as we live them over 
 again in memory — no, not in memory, but in one 
 clear, vivid present ! And then, bear in mind, that all 
 outward things will be shut out from us. The sights 
 and sounds of this world will have been left behind. 
 In our present state a thousand things carry away our 
 thoughts from ourselves. We are always forgetting 
 
THE INTERMEDIA TE STA TE. 279 
 
 ourselves in what others do or say. The mind 
 wanders off to this thing or that, and finds relief in 
 change. But in that moment the whole powers of the 
 mind will be turned inwards, and bent upon itself. 
 There will be not a word, not a whisper, not a sound, 
 not a motion to distract it from itself. It will be 
 alone. And yet, again, in one sense it will not be 
 alone. The soul will feel that it is before God. Yes, 
 we — let us speak plainly, that we may realise what it 
 is that we shall have to pass through — we shall feel 
 that we are alone with God. We shall feel that we 
 are under His gaze, His piercing, searching gaze, and 
 that He is reading us through and through. He will 
 see us ; we shall feel that He sees us. And in some 
 sense we shall see Him. We shall probably know 
 what He is, as we have never known it before. We 
 shall have such a notion as a creature may have of 
 His pure, spotless holiness, of His bright and glorious 
 perfection. And, with this, what must come but a 
 sense of the abomination of sin in His sight ? We 
 have heard that He is of purer eyes than to behold 
 iniquity " ; we shall know then what this means, when 
 we are alone with Him, shut in from all created 
 beings, face to face with His purity, in the moment 
 when He has required our souls of us. What will our 
 life look like to Him then ? And what will it look 
 like to us ? There may be a hundred faults which we 
 
23o 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 have made ourselves easy about, because they are so 
 common, or because it is the way of the world to 
 excuse them. Alas, such excuses will shrivel like 
 tow before the fire, when we have to face the con- 
 suming brightness of the holiness of God ! What are 
 those faults to Him ? What will He think of the ease, 
 the carelessness, the forgetfulness of Him, the 
 ingratitude with which we have committed them, and 
 committed them again and again ? What shall we 
 think of having grieved Him by each separate sin 
 that we once made so light of? We shall see clearly 
 then what we know even now, if we would stop to 
 consider it, that by each bad act which we do we 
 scorn the love of God ; by each bad word which we 
 speak we affront His listening ear, by each bad 
 thought which we indulge we thrust our foulness upon 
 His sorrowing eye. What shall we feel when all this 
 comes vividly before us ? And, then, add to this, what 
 will be perhaps the most overwhelming feeling, the 
 remembrance of all that God has been to us, and all 
 that He has done for us. Imagine this bursting upon 
 us. Imagine God revealing to us all the whole 
 history of His acts of love towards us, so that we see 
 at a glance every grace that He has ever given us, all 
 His calls, and warnings and invitations, His lessons, 
 His drawing of our hearts to Him, His devices and 
 plans to win us, His many thousand aids bestowed on 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 281 
 
 us ; and so our wakening up to all that we might 
 have been, and to all that we are ; our seeing clearly 
 all His vast love, and all our ingenuity in thwarting 
 His purposes. Ah, my brethren, think deeply of all 
 this, and you will see that the moment in which 
 the soul passes before God is the most tremendous of 
 all moments. 
 
 2. But have we any reason to suppose that what 
 the soul feels and knows about itself in that moment 
 will pass away and be forgotten ? Surely all that we 
 know about our own powers, and all that we know 
 about the love of God would lead us to believe that 
 the memory of that meeting with God would live on 
 in the soul, and work most powerfully upon it for 
 good. Probably we ourselves, even now, rarely or 
 never forget altogether what has settled down in our 
 minds. At any rate, it is strange to see how a slight 
 circumstance will bring before us things which have 
 happened long years ago in all their most minute 
 particularity, when we fancied that we had forgotten 
 them. And certainly, when God calls, and warns, 
 and teaches us, He does not mean that we should 
 forget His revelation. It is part of our misery in this 
 world that so many things for a while cover over and 
 hide what He writes with His finger on the soul, as 
 dust gathers over an inscription until it cannot be 
 read. In the unseen world there will be nothing to 
 
282 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 turn away the mind from the thought of God and of 
 itself. Surely, then, the vision of God will live on in 
 us. The sight which we have of Him in that moment 
 when we pass beyond all the distractions of the world, 
 to see nothing but Him, will be stamped upon our 
 spirits. And the sight which we had of ourselves, in 
 our own true, real character, as shown to us by God, 
 with all our past sins, faults, failings, imperfections, 
 and corruption, will remain fixed there also. 
 
 3. Bat will not this be torture, and misery, and 
 wretchedness to the soul ? No ; for it will not be 
 alone in that state of the departed. Our Blessed Lord 
 will be present there. He has taken possession of 
 that realm. He has made it His own. He blessed it 
 with His visible presence when He descended into 
 hell. He claimed for His Own soul, as man, the 
 guardian care, the comforts, the support, the presence 
 of God with the departed, when He said, " Father, 
 into Thy hands I commend My spirit." He assured 
 the same protection and the same comforts of God, of 
 which He tasted Himself, to us, who are the members 
 of His body ; for all which He took for Himself as 
 the Head, He took that we might share it with Him. 
 He has claimed as part of His kingdom that abode 
 of souls ; for, when the penitent thief asked to be re- 
 membered by Him when He came into His kingdom, 
 He answered, " To-day shalt thou be with Me in 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 283 
 
 Paradise " — this very day thou shalt know what it is 
 to be with Me, to feel Me near thee, guiding, teaching, 
 comforting, assuring thee that thou art Mine for ever. 
 There is a mysterious passage which seems to tell us 
 how He Himself bore revelations of His love and 
 mercy to the spirits of those in that unseen world : 
 " The Gospel was preached to them that are dead." 
 And so, doubtless, He reveals Himself to them still. 
 The manner of His presence with the departed may 
 not be the same as when His soul was amongst them, 
 while His body lay in the grave, but we need not 
 doubt that He is there present still. The manner of 
 His presence with us on earth is different from what 
 it was when He was seen by men in the flesh, but we 
 know that He is with us even to the end of the world. 
 And so we cannot but believe that He is still present 
 with the departed, and puts forth His power and 
 Love to bless them. Nay, He seems Himself to 
 claim this power over the place of departed spirits as 
 part of the special fruits of His Own victory over 
 death when He says, " I am He that liveth, and was 
 dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and have 
 the Keys of Hell and of Death." 
 
 Pause here, then, and imagine what must be the 
 effect of that presence of our Blessed Lord upon the 
 departed spirits. As the sight of their past sins 
 broods upon their minds, how may we believe that He 
 
284 THE INTERMEDIA TE S TA TE. 
 
 makes them hate and abhor their old pollution ! As 
 the knowledge of the purity of God sinks down into 
 their being, and its beauty and fairness grows upon 
 them, how must He make that knowledge work in 
 them, till they crave and long to be made more and 
 more pure themselves ! As the memory of all God's 
 wondrous love to them melts and entrances them 
 more and more, how must our Lord give force to that 
 memory, and so quicken their longings to be brought 
 nearer and nearer to the very presence of God un- 
 veiled in heaven ! We may well trust that in His 
 conquering power our Lord will thus overrule all 
 that might hurt the soul, and turn it into a gain. We 
 may perhaps even venture to use His words by the 
 Prophet Hosea, as though they were spoken to the 
 spirit before the full and final triumph of the resur- 
 rection hour has arrived : " I will ransom thee from 
 the power of the grave ; I will redeem thee from 
 death. O death, I will be thy plagues ; O grave, I 
 will be thy destruction." 
 
 4. But this is not all which we may say of the 
 power of our Lord in the world of departed spirits. 
 There must be blessings and gifts which He bestows 
 upon the spirits there far beyond those which He 
 gives here. So great are those blessings that St. Paul 
 longed to depart and to be with our Lord. The 
 apostle had seen our Lord in glory while He was in this 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 285 
 
 world. He had had abundant revelations from Him. 
 He had heard His voice. He had felt the strength 
 of our Lord working in him so powerfully that it 
 overcame his own weakness. He had even learnt to 
 rejoice in suffering, because it gave an opportunity for 
 our Lord to show how near He was to His disciple. 
 So closely was he bound to our Lord that he says 
 that he lived by the life of Christ. And yet he felt 
 that after death our Blessed Lord would be still 
 nearer to him, and he would be still nearer to our 
 Lord. There was greater joy and happiness in store 
 for him when he should be set free from this world. 
 Can we not guess how this would be ? Think only 
 how all that is in the world comes between us and 
 our Lord, and draws away our hearts from Him, 
 or threatens to fill our hearts and leave no room 
 for Him to work in them. The grace of Christ 
 works within us. What should we be if it did 
 not ? But we live in the midst of coldness and care- 
 lessness, which check the love of God in us. The 
 frost of the world chills the soul, and keeps it from 
 putting out in full beauty the fruits of the Spirit. 
 What a gain, then, must it be to depart from this 
 world, and to be taken into that nearer Presence of 
 our Lord, where He shall foster and cherish the soul, 
 while there will be nothing to interfere any longer 
 with His loving influence over it ! There must be 
 
286 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 times in the lives of nearly all of us when the sore 
 struggle against temptation, or the sharpness of the 
 conflict in standing out against the bad example of 
 those around us, or the weight of the sorrows of life, 
 or the very comforts of grace with which God blesses 
 us now, make us turn our longing eyes towards the 
 peace, and calm, and safety of Paradise. We are 
 ready to cry out with St. Paul, " I have a desire to 
 depart, and to be with Christ ; " " Oh, that I had wings 
 like a dove, for then would I flee away " from the 
 strife, and din, and stress, and weariness of the battle 
 of life, " and be at rest." Even before our appointed 
 hour has come, when the storm of a great trial is 
 pelting ceaselessly upon us, we are tempted to cry out, 
 " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ; oh, take me, and 
 gather me unto Thyself. Hide me secretly in Thy 
 tabernacle from the strife of tongues ! n So do we 
 long to be sheltered and soothed by Him. 
 
 And will not this very longing of our hearts 
 suggest to us how He will deal with the faithful soul 
 when He has at last taken it to Himself? How will 
 he calm, and soothe, and refresh it after the trials of 
 life ! " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. 
 Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their 
 labours." When the souls under the altar cry out, 
 there are given unto them white robes. How full of 
 promise to all that have suffered in faith and patience 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. . 287 
 
 in this life are those words which our Lord spoke of 
 the soul of Lazarus : " Now he is comforted ! " He 
 received evil things in this life, but now he is com- 
 forted. How do they seem to tell us of our Blessed 
 Lord watching those who love Him in their sorrows 
 and sufferings here below, and waiting to bless them, 
 when the trial hour shall be past ! Surely His eye 
 marks every pang we bear for His sake, every struggle 
 we make to do His will, every faintness of our worn 
 spirit as the battle bears down hard upon us. He 
 marks, He remembers them all ; and He will comfort 
 us in His Own good time. As a mother takes up 
 her child after a night of agony, and folds it in her 
 arms and soothes it, so our Lord will take up our 
 spirits when the sufferings of life are past, and calm 
 and still every throb of anguish in them. Yes, when 
 He calls us from this world, it is as though He spoke 
 His own old words that have cheered us so often, 
 only with a deeper, fuller meaning : " Come unto Me, 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest." 
 
 But even rest and calm are not all that we shall 
 gain from being with Him in that unseen world. 
 How could it be ? If our Blessed Lord is in some 
 sense nearer to the soul there even than He is here, 
 so that St. Stephen could ask Him to take his spirit 
 to Himself, and St Paul could speak of his being 
 
288 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 more with Christ after he had departed from this 
 world, then that Presence must help to change, to 
 influence, to purify the soul. What must it be to be 
 brought in any way nearer to Him, to know more of 
 Him, of His wisdom, of His holiness, of His purity, 
 of His tenderness, of His love. We cannot live in 
 constant intercourse with a wise and holy friend 
 without feeling the force of his character and example. 
 He lifts and raises us out of and above ourselves. 
 His presence keeps down what is evil in us ; it draws 
 out all the better parts of our nature. How much 
 more will the presence of our Lord so act upon us ! 
 Even in this world, St. Paul teaches us that, by "be- 
 holding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are 
 changed into the same image from glory to glory." 
 If this be so here, where there is still so much to 
 distract, who can venture even to guess what may be 
 the power of the Presence of Christ to work upon the 
 soul in that world where it is gathered into a place of 
 secluded secrecy from which every evil influence is 
 banished ? How will our Lord Himself, Who began 
 the good work in the soul, perform and carry it on 
 until His day ! * How will He make it more and more 
 like Himself in love, and purity, and perfection ! 
 
 These, then, are the victories of our Blessed Lord in 
 the valley of the shadow of death. He has made 
 * Philippians i. 6. 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 289 
 
 that place of separation a safe and calm resting-place, 
 and a school of preparation for the glory of Heaven.* 
 He has received the souls that enter Paradise to 
 Himself. They are in His hand. They are " absent 
 from the body," and " present with the Lord." He 
 guards, guides, and sustains them. He has turned 
 their sad memories of the past into blessed and heal- 
 ing lessons of the hateful nature of sin. He quickens 
 their longings after God, and meets those longings 
 with fresh consolation. He soothes them after the 
 trials of life. He visits them, and blesses them with 
 His Presence, and so leads them onwards to the day 
 of their perfected joy at the Resurrection. And thus 
 He shows Himself to be the Lord both of the dead 
 and of the living. On Him all souls hang, in the 
 body or out of the body. He is the Strength, and 
 Hope, and Life of all. 
 
 And now, dear brethren, one great lesson rises out of 
 all that has been said. If God has given us but little 
 clear knowledge of that state of the departed, if we 
 have been obliged to guess at what passes in that 
 
 * Dr. Newman, in a sermon preached at Oxford, describes 
 the state of the departed as " a school-time of contemplation, as 
 this world is a discipline of active service." A Lutheran writer, 
 Martensen, speaks of the same state as a " kingdom of calm 
 thought, and self-fathoming, of remembrance." He calls it 
 " that cloister-like, that monastic, or conventual world." The 
 similarity of thought between these two writers is very remark- 
 able. 
 
 U 
 
290 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 state, and are not able to speak with absolute cer- 
 tainty, one thing at least is clear and certain. Every 
 hope of the soul as it passes from the body centres in 
 our blessed Lord. If, therefore, He is to be our hope 
 and stay after death, He must be our hope and stay 
 now. We must live in close, earnest, true communion 
 with Him. We must live with Him as our Friend 
 and Guide, our heart's inmost life. If we wish to 
 feel that we can commit ourselves to Him, and lean 
 upon Him, when our spirits shall have to venture 
 forth at His call into the dim, uncertain, untried 
 world beyond the grave, then we must familiarise 
 ourselves now with His love, His power, His gifts, 
 His might. If we hope to say with the calm, un- 
 doubting trust of St. Stephen, at that last moment, 
 " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," then we must learn 
 such trust beforehand by commending our spirits to 
 Him now. Aim at this, then. Dwell on the greatness 
 of that love which made our Lord die for us. Dwell on 
 that thought during this Lent, when your sins rise up 
 against you and accuse you. See how He died for 
 us while we were yet sinners. So, when you have to 
 go, all sinful as you are, to find your sins coming 
 back upon your mind in that tremendous moment 
 when you come to appear before the Presence of God, 
 you will have learnt to lean on the atoning power of the 
 Cross of your Lord. Let it be often your prayer now, 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE, 291 
 
 " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." " Stained as my 
 soul is, take it, count it as Thine Own, cleanse it, offer 
 it to God to be accepted through Thee." Make the 
 same prayer, the same offering of yourselves to your 
 Lord in all the dangers of life. As any fierce temp- 
 tation bears up against you, fly to Him for shelter 
 and safety, with the words, " Lord Jesus, receive my 
 spirit ; keep it, shield it, hold it, lest it be torn away 
 from Thee." As the hosts of the Evil One assault you, 
 lift up the same cry for help. In acts of faith, yield 
 up your souls to the Lord. In acts of self-denial, 
 and self-sacrifice, separate your souls from all else 
 that may interfere with your love of Him, and give to 
 Him, to Him only the right over them. In acts of 
 love, choose Him, bind yourselves to Him, fasten your 
 affections on Him. In acts of pain and suffering, lay 
 yourselves out, as it were, to be nailed to the cross 
 by Him, and leave yourselves in His hands. Above 
 all, in acts of communion offer up your souls to Him, 
 ask Him to come and take possession of them : " Lord 
 Jesus, receive my spirit, make it Thine Own, work in 
 it, bind it to Thyself, unite it, make it one with 
 Thee." 
 
 So you will find out more and more what He can 
 do, what He can be to the soul. As you live with 
 Him, you will be able to die with Him. As all through 
 life you will have found His love come out the more 
 
 U 2 
 
292 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 as the trial was the greater, so in that most tremendous 
 trial, when you are on the borders of the unseen 
 world, you will look for a greater love still. You will 
 feel, " He has been there in that world before me ; He 
 is there in power now ; He has the keys of hell and 
 of death ; I am not going out of the borders of His 
 kingdom ; nor where His love cannot bless ; no, but 
 nearer, nearer to Him ; Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. 
 ' Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
 death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.' ' I 
 know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that 
 He is able to keep that which I have committed unto 
 Him against that day.' " 
 
OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 293 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 OUR HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 Preached in the Church of St. Giles, Graffham, on the twenty- 
 third Sunday after Trinity, 1857. 
 
 Philippians iii. 20. 
 
 " Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look 
 for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 " We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 He Who is in the midst of us now, but unseen, shall 
 one day show Himself openly to us. "The Lord 
 Jesus shall be revealed from heaven." He Who now 
 sits at the right hand of the Father, and there dis- 
 plays His glory and majesty, rejoicing the angels 
 with the light of His countenance, shall at last in 
 like manner ,611 all His faithful servants on earth with 
 gladness by His appearance. For the present there 
 is a veil between us and our Blessed Lord. By faith 
 we see Him amongst us, but we cannot see Him with 
 the eye of the body. As surely as His Own word is 
 true, He is alway with us, even unto the end of the 
 
29-1 OUR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 world. He is present with His Church, and with 
 every faithful member of it. He is present in every 
 act of His Church, and of the ministers whom He has 
 appointed. At every Baptism Christ is there. Though 
 outwardly Jesus baptizes not, but His disciples, yet 
 in reality it fs He Who cleanses the soul by the 
 washing of water with the word. It is He Who then 
 joins, and knits, and takes us into Himself. It is He 
 Who makes us partakers of His Own Divine nature, 
 that He may change us from sin to holiness. At 
 every Confirmation Christ is amongst us ; and, as the 
 hands of the Bishop are laid upon our heads to bless 
 us in the Saviour's Name, the Saviour Himself spreads 
 over us those Hands which were once pierced on the 
 Cross for us, that we may receive fresh strength from 
 Him to do God's will. At every gathering together 
 for Public Prayer in church Christ is amongst us, 
 and our hymns and chants of praise, our cries for 
 pardon and help are heard on high, because they are 
 presented by One Who is " worthy to be heard." At 
 every Celebration of the Holy Communion Christ is 
 amongst us, to plead for us and with us that great 
 and precious Sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross, 
 which taketh away the sins of the world. The earthly 
 priest, who stands and ministers at the altar, is a 
 representative, not of an absent, but of a present God. 
 The earthly priest is but the mouthpiece by which 
 
OUR HE A VENLY CITIZENSHIP. 295 
 
 the whole fellowship of Christians, the Body of Christ, 
 gives utterance to that faith by which it casts itself 
 for forgiveness and grace upon the great atonement 
 made by its Divine Head. Rather, to state the truth 
 more awfully, the priest is the mouthpiece by which 
 on earth Christ Himself lays before His Father that 
 prevailing Offering of Himself which is the Source of 
 all pardon and grace, and in virtue of which He 
 presents His Church to serve the Father as His 
 accepted and beloved children. And, as Christ is 
 present at the Holy Communion as our only Priest 
 and continual Sacrifice, so is He also present to feed 
 with His Own Body and Blood the souls of all who 
 come to Him faithfully. 
 
 Thus, even now, even in this life of trial, our Lord 
 is with us at every moment. His eye is perpetually 
 upon us. He watches every weakness, every sin and 
 failing which afflicts us. He sees every earnest 
 struggle we make against temptation. He hears 
 every groan, every cry for help. He catches even- 
 sigh of sorrow we breathe. He meets us as we reach 
 after Him, dwells with us and in us, works in us to 
 make us purer, teaches us first to loathe the pollution 
 of sin, then cleanses us from it ; stirs us to long to be 
 holy, then satisfies us with the gift of holiness. He is 
 with us as our Guide, our Strength, our Mediator and 
 Intercessor, the Food and Refreshment of our souls* 
 
296 0 UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 All this our Lord is to us now, but He desires to 
 be even more to us. He desires to be our exceeding 
 great Reward, to bring us to be where He is, that we 
 may behold His Glory. " In His Presence is the 
 fulness of joy." There, where Christ is, every longing 
 of the soul shall be satisfied, every prayer more than 
 answered, every wish for happiness more than granted. 
 And for this we wait. The services of this time of 
 year invite us to cast our eyes onward. They remind 
 us that, great as our present blessings are, there are 
 greater things still in store for us. 
 
 Advent is drawing on, that Sacred season which 
 teaches us to look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. The last coming of Christ begins now to 
 dawn upon us. We are invited to lift up our heads 
 as those who know that their " redemption draweth 
 nigh." For the present, our life is a mixture of joy 
 and sorrow, of rest and labour, of peace and strife. 
 But this state of things is not to go on for ever. This 
 fallen world is passing away, passing on to its restor- 
 ation. One day all its sorrows will be over, as clouds 
 are driven away before the wind, or darkness before 
 the rising sun. One day all its change, and un- 
 certainty, and disappointment will be at an end. 
 " The times of refreshing shall come from the 
 presence of the Lord ; and He shall send Jesus 
 Christ, Which before was preached unto us, Whom 
 
0 UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 297 
 
 the heaven must receive until the times of restitution 
 of all things." 
 
 We look for the Saviour to perfect the great work 
 of His redeeming love ; to wipe away all tears from 
 all eyes, to comfort those that mourn, to banish 
 sickness, and suffering, and decay, and death, to purge 
 out the last stains of guilt, to subdue to the law of 
 God all the rebellions of our corrupt nature, to 
 stablish our hearts unblamable in holiness before 
 God and the Father. His last Advent will accomplish 
 this for us ; and, meanwhile, if we would not lose all 
 the gifts of glory which He will then bestow, we are 
 to remember that " our conversation is in heaven." 
 We are to live like those who belong to heaven, for 
 this is what St. Paul means. When he says your 
 " conversation is in heaven," it is the same as saying, 
 your state is that of Citizens of Heaven ; you do not 
 belong to this imperfect and fallen world ; your home 
 is in the glorious Kingdom of God, the blessings which 
 belong to that are pledged and promised to you ; 
 your life and ways should be such as are fit for one 
 who is a subject of such a high and holy Kingdom. 
 Therefore, " Brethren, be followers together of me, 
 and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an 
 ensample." So the Apostle writes. Join steadfastly 
 and earnestly with that faithful band who are 
 following Christ, and those who speak for Him ; "for 
 
298 OUR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now 
 tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the 
 Cross of Christ." It is with bitter sorrow that I tell 
 you that many live like those who have thrown off all 
 obedience and love for Christ and His Kingdom. 
 Nay, they even fight against and oppose the spread 
 of that Kingdom. Instead of worshipping Christ as 
 their Lord, and devoting all their strength and energy 
 to His service, "their god is their belly;" to pamper 
 and indulge their bodies with eating, and drinking, 
 and luxury, is their chief thought and care. Instead 
 of understanding that the true glory of their nature is 
 to be made by His grace ever more and more like 
 Christ, to be lifted higher and higher above their 
 mere animal passions, and, by the strength of the 
 nature of God working within them, to grow more 
 holy, pure, and spiritual, they " glory " in " their 
 shame ; " they make their boast of that very wild and 
 unrestrained following of their evil lusts and desires, 
 which lowers and degrades them into the state of 
 beasts. Instead of raising their souls and affections 
 above this world, and setting them where Christ 
 sitteth at the right hand of God, they " mind earthly 
 things : " they are taken up with this world, and with 
 what it has to give. The great thing that they set 
 before them is to get as much of the riches, and 
 comforts, and pleasures of this world as they can. 
 
OUR HE A VENLY CITIZENSHIP. 299 
 
 Their plans and schemes are laid out for this. They 
 live, and toil, and long, and seek after this as the one 
 thing worth having, the one thing that will satisfy 
 their hearts and make them happy. And, therefore, 
 the Apostle calls them " the enemies of the Cross of 
 Christ." All such sensual, worldly, self-indulgent, 
 slothful persons, he says, have plainly set themselves 
 against our Blessed Lord. There are "many" of 
 them, even among Christians, not merely among the 
 heathen, who know not God, nor the love of God, but 
 even among those who profess to believe in Christ, 
 there are " many " who " walk " in these ways. I 
 " tell you " this " weeping ; " I am cut to the heart to 
 see it ; to see these men forgetting that Lord to 
 Whom they belong ; forgetting all His love in dying 
 for them ; forgetting all the precious gifts He has 
 bestowed upon them, and making no use of them ; 
 forgetting the still greater blessings that He holds out 
 to them. But so it is ; they have turned their backs 
 upon Him ; they are the enemies of His Cross. 
 He was lifted up upon the Cross that He might 
 draw all men to Him, draw them from sin and 
 rebellion in penitence back to God ; and these 
 men are giving themselves over to sin. He was 
 crucified, that we might with Him be crucified to the 
 world, and turn from its snares and temptations to 
 follow Him ; and these men have bound themselves 
 
300 OUR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 afresh to serve the world. He was crucified, that they 
 who are His might crucify the flesh with its affections 
 and lusts ; and these men wantonly indulge those 
 foul lusts, which they ought to have striven against, 
 though the strife had been painful as death itself. 
 When Christ gave Himself to die for them, He bound 
 them to love Him, to offer themselves to be His 
 servants, to cleave and hold fast to Him, to be 
 witnesses of His compassion and tender love, of His 
 purity and Holiness, of His majesty and power in the 
 midst of a world that was rebelling against Him. 
 And now they have broken every tie by which their 
 Lord would have held them to Himself ; they have 
 deserted Him to go over and range themselves on 
 the side of those who are doing their utmost to bring 
 to nothing the work of Christ's redeeming love. Oh, 
 " brethren," writes St. Paul, " do not fall in with this 
 band of rebels, ' for our conversation is in heaven.' 
 We belong to heaven, not to the world, and therefore 
 the world's ungodly ways are not such as we can 
 walk in. The happiness and glorious state of heaven 
 is what we should be preparing for, and it is but 
 throwing away our time to hunt after such things as 
 will perish with this perishing world. The King of 
 heaven is our King, and the rule of our life must be, 
 not to please ourselves, but to please Him." 
 
 So far the words of the Epistle for this twenty- 
 
0 UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 30 1 
 
 third Sunday after Trinity are a solemn warning 
 against a worldly spirit. We are to take care 
 that this world does not so fill our hearts as to 
 shut out from them the remembrance of that better 
 and purer world for which we should be preparing. 
 We are to be on our guard lest the rules, and maxims, 
 and habits of those who make this world their all 
 become the guides of our life, and so seduce us from 
 the service of Christ. But we want some further 
 direction still, for we have to live in this world. For 
 the present, at least, it is our appointed place. God 
 has set us here, and given us our duties in this world ; 
 we cannot, and ought not to try and escape from 
 them. We must be more or less mixed up with that 
 present course of things which is called this world. 
 We have work to do, absolutely necessary work, which 
 seems to be altogether earthly. We have to provide 
 for ourselves and our families, and we are commanded 
 to do this by God Himself. By the very ordinance 
 of God there must be labour and toil in the earning 
 of our bread, giving and taking of wages, buying and 
 selling, exchanging and bargaining; and much care 
 and forethought must, of course, be spent on these 
 matters. Moreover, we stand in such relation to each 
 other, that the time of many of us must be much 
 occupied in the bringing up of children, and teaching 
 them such things as appear only to be fitting them 
 
302 0 UR HE A VENL V CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 for taking their place in this world ; or, again, in 
 making laws for the government of the country, or 
 arranging disputes and mistakes about the possession of 
 property. As parents or children, masters or servants, 
 governors or governed, manufacturers or mechanics, 
 a very large portion of our days, and a great deal 
 of anxiety, is bestowed upon what concerns this world. 
 
 Suppose, then, that a Christian, who feels that he is 
 a citizen of heaven and a subject of Christ, and that 
 his life should therefore be a heavenly one and his 
 heart devoted entirely to his Lord and Saviour 
 — suppose that such a person is anxious to know how 
 far it is right or safe for him to engage in worldly 
 pursuits, to look after worldly gains, or to take his 
 part in the amusements and recreations of society, 
 how shall we answer him or give him any guidance ? 
 He may take his lesson from the Gospel of to-day. 
 We read there that the Pharisees and the Herodians 
 asked our Blessed Lord whether it was "lawful to 
 give tribute unto Caesar or not ? " By this question 
 they meant to " entangle Him in His talk ; " and they 
 thought that they had so framed it, that whatever 
 answer He gave they would be able to find matter of 
 accusation against Him. If He said that it was not 
 right to give tribute unto Caesar, then they might 
 accuse Him to the Roman Governor of resisting the 
 authority of Caesar. If He said that it was right to 
 
O UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 3°3 
 
 pay the tribute, this would be the same as saying that 
 the Romans were the proper governors of the Jews, 
 and so our Lord would give up His own claim to be 
 the great King, Saviour, and Deliverer of their nation. 
 Thus they pretended that they were troubled by ; a 
 point of conscience, and wanted to have their doubts 
 relieved. "What are we to do? are we to obey 
 Caesar, or are we to obey God ? " Observe how our 
 Lord answers them. He " perceived their wicked- 
 ness." His eye could read their hearts, and see 
 plainly that this pretended desire to find out what 
 was right was only a deceit. So He said, " Why 
 tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites ? Show Me the tribute 
 money.'' And they brought unto Him a penny. 
 And He saith unto them, " Whose is this image and 
 superscription ? " Whose likeness and name is this 
 which the coin bears upon it? " They say unto Him, 
 4 Caesar's.' " See, then, our Lord means, the very 
 money which you use shows that you acknowledge 
 Caesar to be your prince, and your duty is simple and 
 plain enough. Treat him as your prince, and pay him 
 the taxes which are due to him. " Render, therefore, 
 unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's — and unto 
 God the things that are God's." Your fit and proper 
 duties to your earthly governor need never for a 
 moment interfere with your duties to God. Keep 
 well and plainly before your minds that you owe 
 
304 0 UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 worship, obedience, love, and service to God above 
 and before every one else. Be sure that you do not 
 rob Him of what is due to Him. Never let your 
 obedience to your earthly ruler lead you into a sin 
 against the King of heaven and earth. Make this 
 your fixed and certain rule, and you need not be 
 afraid that you will be doing wrong in showing all 
 proper submission to the governor under whom you 
 are placed by the will of God. 
 
 Now let us apply this same principle to the case of 
 one who wishes to know how far he may give himself 
 up to the occupations and pleasures of the world 
 without being false to God. Let us say to him, 
 " Render " to the world the things that are the world's, 
 " and to God the things that are God's." Many 
 things you owe to the world, to those that live with 
 you and around you, to the fulfilment of your duty 
 in the position which God has given you. Those 
 things you must pay. Attention to your business, 
 care of your household and family, kindness and 
 courtesy to your equals, submission, respect, and 
 cheerful obedience to those set over you, all such ser- 
 vice as may be required of you for the good of your 
 country ; these are debts which you are bound to pay. 
 We may go further, and say that you ought also to 
 encourage all such friendly intercourse with your 
 neighbours, all such meetings for recreation and 
 
0 UR HE A VENL V CITIZENSHIP. 305 
 
 amusement as tend to keep up feelings of kindness 
 and brotherhood between men. Such things are 
 often high duties. No doubt, there are some to whom 
 it may be more soothing to lead a retired life of study 
 or to enjoy the calm quiet of home. In some respects 
 it is certainly more safe to do so, though this kind of 
 retirement has its great and special dangers and 
 temptations. But, be it ever so safe or ever so 
 pleasant, we were not sent into this world to live 
 for ourselves, to do that which seems to be most for 
 our own peace, to consult only for our own salvation. 
 No ; we are to do good to others also. Therefore 
 it is a false, and low, and unworthy following of 
 our Master, who went about doing good (even 
 though it brought suffering, and reproach, and disap- 
 pointment upon Him) to hold aloof from the world 
 and refuse to take our part in that round of offices 
 which God has given us to perform. Render to the 
 world the things that are the world's. You will very 
 likely find some advisers who will tell you to have 
 nothing to do with the amusements and business of the 
 world, to keep aloof from them altogether. And this 
 seems to be the simplest way of escaping the difficulties 
 which beset us in society. It has, moreover, an appear- 
 ance of greater devotion to God, just as the Pharisees 
 seemed to be more zealous for God when they said, 
 " Have nothing to do with Caesar, pay him no tribute. 
 
3 o6 O UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 It is against the honour of God to acknowledge Caesar 
 as our master." But, for all that, it is not right for us 
 to act upon such advice, at any rate, not for the 
 greater part of us, whatever special calls some of us 
 may have. It was the will of our Lord, Whose choice 
 was that of the greatest love and the truest wisdom, 
 not to remove us from those trials and difficulties that 
 surround us. On the very night before His death 
 when He was committing His Church to the Father's 
 care, His prayer for us was : " I pray not that Thou 
 shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou 
 shouldest keep them from the evil." 
 
 These very words, however, you will see, show that 
 there is " evil " in the world, that there is in it much 
 to corrupt, and pervert, and destroy our souls. Un- 
 doubtedly there is. The Bible is full of warnings 
 against it. And, while we are rendering to the world 
 the duties which we owe to it, how are we to know 
 whether it is having a bad effect on us ? Let us take 
 the last part of our Lord's answer to the Pharisees 
 and Herodians, and it will guide us : " Render unto 
 God the things which are God's." If the world leads 
 you to rob God of what belongs to Him, then it is 
 indeed corrupting you, and you must beware of it. 
 Your Heart, for instance, belongs to God. If the 
 world so fills your heart that you care more for pleasure, 
 wealth, comfort, luxury, the praise of men, than you do 
 
O UR HE A VENL V CI TIZENSIIIP. 307 
 
 for serving and obeying God, then you are rendering to 
 the world what belongs to God. Your Time belongs 
 to God. If you allow yourself to be so taken up with 
 business, with family cares, with society, with reading 
 or working, or loitering and idling, that you forget 
 God and the presence of God, and give up or shorten 
 your prayers, and stay away from Church, and neg- 
 lect to read and hear God's word, then you are 
 rendering to the world what belongs to God. Your 
 Money belongs to God. If you toil and strive to 
 grow rich for the sake only of having plenty of money, 
 either to hoard up or to spend upon yourself, instead 
 of using your money to do good to others, and to 
 promote the glory of God, then you are rendering to 
 the world what belongs to God. Your Health and 
 Strength belong to God. If you waste these by late 
 hours, by exciting kinds of dissipation, by excess in 
 eating and drinking, if you do things which lower the 
 tone of your body and mind, making you feverish, 
 nervous, feeble, and unable calmly and quietly to pray, 
 and read, and meditate, and examine yourself, or 
 unprepared to receive the Holy Communion, then, 
 again, you are rendering to the world what belongs to 
 God. Your Learning, your Powers of Conversation, 
 your Accomplishments belong to God. If you make 
 these minister to vanity, if you use them to get 
 praised and thought much of by men, instead of using 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 0 UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 them for the greater happiness of those amongst 
 whom you move, and for the honour of God Who lent 
 you these talents to use in His service, then you are 
 rendering to the world what belongs to God. 
 
 In short, brethren, the lessons we learn to-day are 
 these : to live in this world as those who belong 
 to a higher and more glorious one ; to live on earth 
 as if earth were heaven ; to behave as those who 
 know that, through the Incarnation and atoning 
 Passion of Christ, heaven and earth are one, and that 
 the baptized members of Christ's Church are one 
 great and holy family together with those pure spirits 
 of just men made perfect who have passed to their 
 rest and with the angels ; to speak, and think, and 
 act, as those who know that they are the subjects of 
 the King of Heaven, Whose Eye is ever on them, 
 and Whose work they may be doing every moment. 
 This is to have our conversation in heaven. And, to 
 live this life, we find that we need not do strange or 
 uncommon things ; we need not go out from our 
 brethren, nor separate ourselves from the doings and 
 employments of the world. No ; the secret of a 
 heavenly life on earth is to do the common every-day 
 works of ordinary men, but to do them in an un- 
 common spirit, to do them in a spirit of intense and 
 continual devotion to God ; whether we eat or drink, 
 or whatever we do, to do all to the glory of God. 
 
OUR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 309 
 
 Parents are to teach their children that they may be 
 fitted to do what God shall call them to. Masters 
 are to rule their households as if they were looking 
 after souls put into their charge by God. Servants 
 are to do their work heartily, not with eye service 
 as men pleasers, but as unto the Lord. Men of 
 business, merchants, tradesmen are to set themselves 
 to gather wealth, that they may have more to spend 
 for God. Kings and those in authority are to govern 
 so as to encourage peace, order, and religion. Every 
 power of body or mind, every advantage we possess, 
 our rank and place, our name and station, our in- 
 fluence over others, the charm of winning manners, 
 skill in any art (be it music, or painting, or any 
 other), the gift of noble birth, or situations of author- 
 ity, all these are to be rendered unto God, used 
 earnestly, honestly, sincerely, in making Him more 
 known, loved, and obeyed. 
 
 Is this a pure and holy pattern of life to set before 
 ourselves ? Is it one that will need much striving 
 and watching over ourselves lest we should be 
 corrupted in this world of trial in which our lot is 
 cast? It is indeed. But let us remember that this 
 high and holy life is set before us because our 
 conversation is in heaven. We, on our part, are 
 pledged to be the faithful subjects of the King of 
 Heaven ; but He also, on His part, is pledged to save, 
 
310 OUR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 and defend, and strengthen us. Therefore the collect 
 for the week invites us to flee to Him as our "Refuge 
 and Strength;" our "Refuge" from all dangers and 
 assaults of the world and the Prince of the world ; 
 our " Strength " whereby we may faithfully work for 
 Him. He is the " Author of all godliness ; " and, in a 
 firm trust in His love, we ask Him to " be ready to 
 hear the devout prayers of His Church," and to 
 u grant that those things which we ask faithfully we 
 may obtain effectually." " Those things which we 
 ask faithfully," as the true, loyal, and devoted servants 
 of the King of heaven, who desire to spend and be 
 spent in His service — those things which we ask, in 
 order that God in all may be glorified, we have a 
 firm and lively hope that we shall "obtain effectually, 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord." We know that " He 
 is able to subdue all things unto Himself," "the 
 unruly wills and affections of sinful men," "the cor- 
 ruption that is in the world through lust," the folly 
 and blindness that has led away so many from Him. 
 Therefore, through all the difficulties, and troubles, and 
 temptations which beset us, " we look for the Saviour, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ." We wait for Him as for One 
 " Who shall change our vile body that it may be 
 fashioned like unto His glorious body" — Who shall 
 change our weak souls that they may be for ever 
 strong and steadfast in His love — Who shall change 
 
O UR HE A VENL Y CITIZENSHIP. 3 1 1 
 
 this imperfect world into " a new heaven and a new- 
 earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," casting out 
 from it all that rebels against Him or seduces from 
 His service, and " putting down all rule, and authority, 
 and power," that all things may be subject to the One 
 King of the heavenly Jerusalem. 
 
3U 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 XIX. 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 Preached in the Church of St. Peter, Lavington, on the 
 twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity, 1857. 
 
 St. Matthew ix. 25, 26. 
 
 " But when the people were put forth, He went in, and took 
 her by the hand, and the maid arose. And the fame hereof 
 wtnt abroad into all that land." 
 
 You wish, my brethren, to devote yourselves to God. 
 Touched by His wondrous love to you, you would 
 love Him in turn. As you know that He made you 
 and made every limb and part of your body, made 
 every power and faculty of your soul, so you would 
 rt render to God " all that is His, you would give 
 yourselves up to serve Him to the utmost. As you 
 know that God the Son gave Himself up to die on 
 the Cross in His intense love for you, so you long to 
 live unto Him Who died to save you. He offered up 
 His sacred Body to be tortured and racked in those 
 fearful agonies which He bore when He was nailed 
 
ABSOLUTION. 313 
 
 to the tree of shame ; He offered up His pure and 
 spotless soul to be darkened by those unknown 
 sufferings which were laid on Him in His passion ; and 
 all this to make you His Own, to set you free from 
 guilt, from the power of sin and Satan, to redeem 
 you, body and soul. And you are ready to offer 
 yourselves to work and to suffer for His Name's sake. 
 You feel that you ought to live in this world as those 
 who belong to Him. You have learnt that your 
 conversation is in heaven, that its courts are your 
 proper home, that its blessed and holy inhabitants are 
 your companions, that its laws are the rules of your 
 lives, that its King is your Lord. Henceforth, all you 
 do is to be done for the sake of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. Your time, your strength, your talent, your 
 money, are to be spent in doing Him honour. You 
 are to mix in society that men may learn to love 
 Him, and because He has given you duties to perform 
 there. You are to be diligent in your business or 
 occupation, because He has allotted it to you. What- 
 soever you do in word or deed, you are to do all in 
 the Name of the Lord Jesus. Such was the lesson 
 which the Church brought before you last Sunday, 
 and you wish to act upon it. If you do indeed wish 
 this, then two things will probably — almost certainly 
 — have struck you ; one, how very little your con- 
 versation has been in heaven in time past, how false 
 
314 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 you have often been to your Heavenly King ; the 
 other, how much you are likely to fail in that entire 
 devotion of your hearts and lives to God which you 
 confess to be your duty. For there is no doubt that 
 it is far from easy to give ourselves wholly to God ; 
 to live always as if we felt His Eye upon us, to speak 
 as if His Ear caught all our words, to behave as if He 
 were One in every company in which we move, to 
 remember Him in all hours of light conversation, in 
 times of excitement and honourable rivalry, such as the 
 best men may be exposed to, to feel that He stands 
 over us in the midst of the crowd of pleasure-hunters, 
 that He is a witness of every bargain we make, that 
 He watches every scheme we plan, that He is by our 
 side in the lonely walk, and in the silent chamber ; all 
 this is very hard. And so it is very hard to train 
 ourselves to serve Him with hand and tongue, with 
 head and heart, to do our common business, and join 
 in our common amusements, and yet not only not to 
 forget God, but to strive to please Him. This world 
 is full of snares to draw away our affections from Him. 
 A thousand matters are always ready to take up the 
 place in our souls which He ought to fill. Can we 
 hope to escape all these temptations ? And, if not, 
 what is to become of us ? We shall be lost to God, 
 cut off from Him, and shall die in sin. 
 
 Such are the dangers that are round about us, 
 
ABSOLUTION. 315 
 
 dangers both real and true, such as we shall do well 
 to think of deeply, for they threaten us with everlasting 
 destruction. Some of us perhaps at this very moment 
 are dead to God, dead to all love for Him, and faith in 
 Him, dead to all zeal and activity in His service. Others 
 of us may feel that the bad influences of the world 
 are so stifling and choking the energy of love and 
 faith within them, that they know not how soon the 
 Spirit may be altogether quenched, and God's grace 
 have perished in them. Are there, then, any means 
 for restoring a soul that has been thus almost, or 
 altogether, cut off from God ? There are ; and one 
 of these means of restoration is brought before us in 
 the services of this Sunday, namely, that Absolution 
 and Remission of sins which God has given power 
 and commandment to His ministers to declare and 
 pronounce to such of His people as are penitent. 
 
 Look at the history of the raising of Jairus's 
 daughter. Hers was not the more common case of 
 one who was suffering from sickness. Every sickness, 
 and every disease among the people our Lord had 
 healed. But here was one who might perhaps have 
 been thought to be beyond the reach of His compassion 
 and might, ready as they were for all who called upon 
 Him. Sickness had so far done its work upon her, 
 that she was at the point of death when her father 
 left her, as St. Mark tells us. St. Matthew, describing 
 
316 ABSOLUTION. ' 
 
 rather what the father expected than his actual words, 
 says that she was " even now dead." Yet her father 
 prays for her. When he saw Jesus, "he fell at His 
 feet, and besought Him greatly, saying, ' My little 
 daughter lieth at the point of death ; I pray Thee 
 come and lay Thy Hands on her, that she may be 
 healed ; and she shall live.' " Observe the words, " she 
 lieth at the point of death ; " so near to it, that it is 
 not to be thought that I shall see her again alive, yet 
 even from death itself Thou canst restore her, " I pray 
 Thee come ! " Observe, again, the manner in which 
 Jairus hopes that his child will be restored ; u Lay Thy 
 Hands on her, and she shall live." It was the touch 
 of the Hand of our Blessed Lord which was to work 
 this wonder. 
 
 The prayer of the father was not in vain. " Jesus 
 arose, and followed him." " And when He came into 
 the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels and the 
 people making a noise, He said unto them, 'Give 
 place ; for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.' " 
 There is no need for hopeless and bitter lamentation 
 here ; the child is not utterly perished. " And they 
 laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead." 
 To their eyes, she was indeed lost beyond all remedy. 
 Nothing that man could do would bring life into 
 her. Therefore they mocked at Him Who told 
 them that she was only asleep, as if they did not 
 
ABSOLUTION. 317 
 
 know what death was. But " He put them all out, 
 and went in." 
 
 What a strange and mysterious sight must that 
 have been for the few witnesses whom He had chosen : 
 the father and the mother of the damsel, and the 
 three disciples, St. Peter, St. James, and St. John 
 whom He had thus made partakers with Him in the 
 miracle ! There, in that still, quiet chamber, where 
 all sounds of weeping and lamentation were now 
 hushed, the Lord Jesus stood over the corpse of this 
 young girl. Face to face were met together, life and 
 death, God by whom all things were made, and the 
 works of His hands ruined and defaced. As the eye 
 of the Saviour fell with love and pity on that pale 
 face and stiffened form that lay stretched out before 
 Him, He was gazing on the outward sign of that sad 
 punishment which man had brought upon himself by 
 his disobedience. That dead child was the victim of 
 sin ; and He was the Redeemer Who had come to set 
 the world free from the misery, and decay, and 
 corruption which were the fruits of sin. His Own 
 human nature, joined as it was to the Divine nature, 
 was pure, spotless, and full of virtue. Her nature was 
 struck by that fatal blight with which the fall of man 
 had cursed it. In Him was life, the very fountain- 
 head, and well-spring of life, for He was that " second 
 Adam Who is a quickening Spirit," able to give life 
 
318 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 to " whom He will." And so He stood over that dead 
 child, took her by the hand, and the maid arose. He 
 touched her, and in that touch the power of God and 
 the weakness of mortal nature met together, and the 
 weakness was turned into new-born strength. In that 
 touch, the chains with which guilt had bound her 
 dropped from her, as bands of tow shrivel before a 
 consuming fire. In that touch, life poured into her ; 
 and death, with its corrupting power, was driven 
 forth. 
 
 Now, what does this show us ? That there was no 
 suffering, not even the very worst, from which our 
 Lord had not power to deliver. And further, when 
 we find Him working so many of His miracles in one 
 uniform way, when He touches the blind, and they 
 receive their sight, when He touches the deaf, and 
 their ears are opened, touches the dumb, and the 
 string of his tongue is loosed, touches the leper, and 
 the foulness of his disease is cleansed away, touches 
 the dead, and life comes back, — what would He 
 teach us ? That it is through His Human nature, 
 through that nature which He shares with us, that the 
 Power of His Godhead works to heal and restore. It 
 is through His sacred Body, that the virtue of God 
 manifest in the flesh goes forth to cure those evils 
 which sin has brought upon us. 
 
 But may we go no further ? Surely we may. All 
 
ABSOLUTION. 319 
 
 the great teachers of the Catholic Church have taken 
 the sicknesses of the body to be types of the sick- 
 nesses of the soul, and the death of the body to be a 
 type of the death of the soul ; and in this they have 
 only followed the teaching of Holy Scripture itself. 
 Therefore we gather from this miracle that our Lord 
 can not only "open our eyes to see the wondrous 
 things of His law," "unstop our ears that we may 
 hear the voice of God and follow Him," " make us a 
 clean heart, and renew a right spirit within us," when 
 our " whole head is sick, and our whole heart faint," 
 but that, even when we are " dead in trespasses and 
 sins," He can quicken, or give us new life. Even 
 when we are most lost, there is a means of restoration 
 open to us. Even when death has seized upon our 
 souls, if we can be brought under the shadow of His 
 sacred Hand, we may live again. 
 
 But how can that be ? Our Lord has gone up on 
 high. He has entered into heaven. He is no more 
 to be seen amongst us. True ; but think of those 
 gracious promises which He made to us before He was 
 taken out of our sight. Remember what He said to 
 His Apostles after He was risen from the dead : 
 " Then said Jesus to them, Peace be unto you ; as My 
 Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And 
 when He had said this, He breathed on them, and 
 saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose- 
 
320 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; 
 and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." 
 As the Son of man, the Lord Jesus hath power on 
 earth to forgive sins. While He was on earth He 
 exercised that power in His Own person. Before He 
 ascended into heaven, He appointed the Apostles and 
 all priests of the Church who should come after them 
 to exercise the same power in His Name. Thus we 
 find St. Paul exercising this office of binding men and 
 loosing men from their sins, though he was not one of 
 those twelve Apostles to whom the power was first 
 committed. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians he 
 excommunicates the man who was guilty of incest. 
 In the second Epistle, he absolves him on his repent- 
 ance, and declares that he does this in the Name of 
 our Lord, and as His minister : " If I forgave any- 
 thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I 
 it in the Person of Christ." 
 
 Here, then, is a most blessed means of restoration 
 and life left for those who are dead in sin. The com- 
 fort of Absolution has been specially provided for 
 them by the Saviour. It is thus that the Gospel is an 
 answer to the Collect for this week. In the latter we 
 pray, " O Lord, we beseech Thee, absolve Thy people 
 from their offences ; that, through Thy bountiful 
 goodness, we may all be delivered from the bands of 
 those sins which, by our frailty, we have committed." 
 
ABSOLUTIOX. in 
 
 We know well that, in the midst of this evil and se- 
 ducing world, we have offended Thee again and again. 
 Far from living as if we were devoted to Thy service, 
 through our weakness and folly, we have given our- 
 selves over to the service of sin ; and now it holds us 
 as with the grasp of death. But we beseech Thee, 
 absolve, loose us ! Yes ; the Gospel says : " There is 
 One Who can restore you : go to the ministers of 
 Christ. Go to them and you shall go to Him, for He 
 is with them alway, even to the end of the world : go 
 and confess your sins. Go and mourn over the 
 offences that have separated you from God, and 
 Christ shall lay His Hands upon you, and you shall 
 live. As the voice of the servant looses you and 
 declares that your sins are forgiven, the Master Him- 
 self will loose and forgive you in heaven." 
 
 We will conclude with two points, which I ask you 
 earnestly to consider. First, do you ever confess 
 your sins to a priest, and seek absolution for them ? 
 I put the question thus plainly to you, because it is 
 one which you ought to answer plainly for the good 
 of your own souls. Private confession to a priest is 
 not absolutely necessary for forgiveness. Certainly it 
 is not, but is it necessary, or, to say the least, advis- 
 able for you ? There is no doubt that private con- 
 fession and absolution is an ordinance specially 
 appointed for relieving the conscience that is burdened 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 with the sense of any sin which it cannot otherwise 
 remove. Can you, and ought you, to deprive yourself 
 of it ? You feel and acknowledge that the world has 
 an evil influence over you. You find to your grief 
 that your heart has been much drawn away from God. 
 You know that many sins have entered into your 
 soul to cut it off from God. If you be cut off finally 
 from God, then all hope is gone. You wish to be at 
 peace with Him. Well, open the Gospels, and you 
 find that our Lord has given authority to His ministers 
 to absolve those who are penitent. Open the Prayer- 
 Book, and you find it inviting you to come to some 
 minister of God's Word * and open your grief (tell 
 him, that is to say, what you are distressed to remem- 
 ber that you have done against God), that you may 
 
 * The Church does not bind you to go to any particular 
 minister for confession, not even to the Priest of your parish, 
 but leaves you to choose for yourself such a one as you feel 
 will best be able to minister to your soul. The words of the 
 Priest : in instructing his parishioners how to prepare for the 
 Holy Communion, are these : "And because it is requisite that 
 no man should come to the Holy Communion but with a full 
 trust in God's mercy, and with a quiet conscience ; therefore, 
 if there be any of you who, by this means (self-examination and 
 confession to God alone), cannot quiet his own conscience 
 herein, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come 
 to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God's 
 Word, and open his grief ; that, by the ministry of God's holy 
 word, he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with 
 ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, 
 and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness." 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 receive absolution. Open almost any of the books 
 written on the subject of repentance by the great 
 writers of the English Church, and you find that they 
 speak of Confession and Absolution as a chief means 
 of reconciliation to God. Perhaps you have had 
 friends who have also recommended the practice to 
 you. You have heard it pressed upon you in sermons. 
 You have known those who have manifestly found 
 strength and comfort in this ordinance. With all 
 these voices beckoning you, as it were, to make sure 
 of your repentance and of God's forgiveness, what 
 have you done ? No doubt, if by the means pointed 
 out to you in the Prayer-Book you can quiet your 
 own conscience, there is no sort of reason why you 
 should confess your sins to any human creature ; but 
 the question you must ask yourselves is, Can you ? 
 You must be your own judges in this, but you must 
 judge honestly.* 
 
 * Since the abuse of confession in the Church of Rome has 
 led to the disuse of it in England, it is necessary- that we bear 
 in mind the essential difference in the doctrine of the two 
 Churches respecting this ordinance. In the one case it is a 
 duty to which men are compelled, in the other it is a privilege 
 to which they are invited ; in the one case it is a recapitulation 
 of all remembered sins, in the other a statement of those 
 particular sins from which we cannot otherwise obtain relief ; 
 in the one it is the daily food of the believer, in the other the 
 cordial to be used for the restoring to health of souls diseased 
 with sin. At the same time it must be borne in mind that, 
 since the cessation of public penance and absolution, there is 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 'Perhaps you have never sought for absolution, 
 because you were afraid of the shame of confession, 
 you could not bear the thought of telling out your 
 sins within the hearing of man. But surely it is far 
 better to acknowledge your own sins now with a willing 
 shame and sorrow, and to hear the blessed sentence 
 of God's forgiveness, than to have them made known 
 before men and angels in the last day, and to be put 
 to everlasting shame. Now shame is full of hope and 
 healing for the soul, then it will be hopeless and full 
 of confusion. Remember the woman that was a 
 sinner. She did not care to hide her past shame nor 
 her present misery from the eyes of men. They 
 might mock her, or judge her harshly. That did 
 not keep her back. She came in before them all, 
 and lay down at the Feet of Jesus, and washed them 
 with her tears, till He told her that her sins were 
 forgiven, and bade her go in peace. Be you like her 
 in her humiliation, that you may be like her in 
 
 almost no discipline exercised in the Church (a fact which is 
 acknowledged and deplored in our Commination Service), and 
 therefore there is great danger of our receiving the Body and 
 Blood of Christ into souls that have not been fitly prepared by 
 penitence for that Great Gift. It is for each one of us to 
 consider whether he can take upon himself to say that he does 
 " truly repent of his former sins," or whether it is not safer for 
 him to make use of private confession and absolution, as part 
 of the ministry of reconciliation, in making his peace with God. 
 
ABSOLUTION. 325 
 
 the full and free forgiveness which was granted her. 
 In your confession, keep before you the desire to be 
 at peace with God. Be glad of anything that may 
 help to humble and abase you more entirely, that 
 may make you blush and burn with confusion at what 
 you have done, that may urge you with the greater 
 horror to cast away your sins, that your soul may be 
 free for the grace of pardon to flow in, and give you 
 life again through union with God. None can know, 
 till they have tried it, how a perfect and penitent 
 confession changes the whole state of the soul towards 
 God ; nor what a weight and burden absolution, after 
 such confession, removes ; how strong the faith in the 
 blessed power of the Cross to take away sins 
 becomes ; how the love of God seems to beam upon 
 us, and the clouds that were between us and Him to 
 be drifted away ; how doubt, and fear, and despond- 
 ency are at an end, and we are ready for a calm, and 
 confiding, and loving service of God. The change is 
 no less than if the Lord had laid His Hands upon 
 us and brought us from death to life. 
 
 And this brings me to the second point which 
 should be considered. Absolution is not an end, but 
 a means. We come, burthened with sin, to lay down 
 our burthen at the Saviour's Feet, that we may be 
 set free to run the race that is set before us. We 
 come for peace and forgiveness, that we may be ready 
 
326 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 to do the Work of God.* The Hand of Christ is 
 laid upon our dead soul to give it life, and that life is 
 to be used in serving Him. It is a very common, but 
 a very great and serious mistake, to look upon 
 forgiveness as the completion of our salvation. 
 Forgiveness and reconciliation with God is rather the 
 starting-point of the Christian course, as in the case 
 of that first full and entire remission of our sin in 
 Holy Baptism, or it is the motive for starting with 
 renewed energy, as in the case of Absolution. Having 
 been forgiven, we thrill in our inmost souls with love 
 for God Who has received us into His favour, with 
 love for Christ Who has reconciled us by His precious 
 death to God ; and therefore we long to serve God 
 and rejoice in pleasing Him. We are not to seek for 
 peace with God, merely that we may rest in it as a 
 pleasing and soothing state of mind. We are not to 
 crave for an assurance of God's having pardoned us 
 merely that we may fold our hands, as if, having once 
 received that, we had got all that we wished for, and 
 were very glad to have escaped from all spiritual toil, 
 and strife, and trial. It is a deadly deceit of the Evil 
 One thus to turn one of God's greatest gifts into a 
 
 * This is expressed very exactly in the Collect for the twenty- 
 first Sunday after Trinity : " 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." 
 
ABSOLUTION. 327 
 
 snare by which he draws us away from God's service. 
 Yet this deceit is at the root of many of the false 
 systems of religion, and is the cause of many per- 
 versions from the truth which we see about us. We 
 hear much on all sides of the perfect peace of mind 
 that is to be found in this sect or in that. Enquire a 
 little into the circumstances, and you will discover that 
 the particular sect assures its members of salvation 
 without the continual effort to resist sin, or to choose 
 between right and wrong, between the faith and error, 
 which is indeed a sore trial to us, but is nevertheless 
 the proof of our love to God. There is a kind of 
 hankering desire in men's hearts for ease ; just such a 
 feeling as was once expressed to me in plain and 
 homely words thus : " It would be such a comfort to 
 feel that one had done enough." 
 
 My brethren, that is the last feeling that a Christian 
 man ought to allow to rest in his heart. We never 
 can have done enough for God, enough to show our 
 love for Him Who spared us when we had rebelled 
 against Him, came to seek us when we were lost, died 
 to redeem us, took upon Himself the punishment of 
 our offences, purchased forgiveness for us by shedding 
 His Own Blood. Every day, every moment of our life 
 spent in labouring to do His Will, every power of our 
 soul and body employed in work for Him, would be 
 as nothing to repay Him for His priceless mercies to 
 
328 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 us. The man who has a real and deep sense of God's 
 goodness in pardoning him will say, How can I ever 
 do enough to show my thankfulness to God ? For 
 Christ's sake He has accepted and taken me again 
 into His love and favour, now then let me 'yield' 
 myself 'unto' Him, as one that is 'alive from the 
 dead.' Poor and unworthy as my best efforts to 
 serve Him are, it is a joy and comfort to me to know 
 that He will watch them with favour. I will set 
 myself to make Him all the return in my power for 
 His unspeakable goodness." 
 
 And this is exactly the state of heart and life 
 which St. Paul prays in the Epistle for to-day that 
 God would grant to the Colossian Christians. He 
 reminds them that God "the Father" hath made 
 " them " meet to be partakers of the inheritance of 
 the saints in light. He " hath delivered " " them 
 from the power of darkness, and hath translated them 
 into the Kingdom of His dear Son : in Whom we 
 have redemption through His Blood, even the 
 forgiveness of sins." What then ? Their sins forgiven, 
 themselves admitted into the blessed and holy family 
 of God's saints, the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 open to them — is there nothing more for them to seek 
 and desire ? Far from it : the Apostle prays without 
 ceasing that they may " be filled with the know- 
 ledge of the will of God in all wisdom and 
 
ABSOLUTION. 329 
 
 spiritual understanding ; " that " they may walk 
 worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful 
 in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge 
 of God ; strengthened with all might, according to His 
 glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering, 
 with joyfulness." Can there be any doubt that such 
 ought to be the effect of the pardoning love of God 
 upon ourselves ? Every fresh absolution, being, as it 
 is, a fresh application of that atoning Blood which was 
 poured out so freely for us on the Cross, ought to waken 
 us to greater thankfulness and to warmer love for 
 Him Who suffered for us, and for Him Who gave His 
 only Son to be the propitiation for our sins. To walk 
 " worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing ; " to show by 
 our lives that we never forget the deep and wondrous 
 compassion of our Lord ; to watch for the least thing 
 in which we may give proof of our love, and to please 
 Him, whether by abounding in good works, or by 
 patiently and even joyfully bearing our Cross of 
 trouble and suffering as He once bore His — this 
 should be our aim. As every touch of His absolving 
 Hand pours fresh life into our soul, and drives out the 
 deadliness of sin, we should use the life which He gives 
 in ministering to Him. Thus our resurrection from 
 sin to holiness will be a witness to the world of the 
 Saviour's mercy and power. " The fame thereof will 
 go abroad into all the land," and the unbelieving will 
 be converted unto Him. 
 
330 
 
 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 Preached on the Sunday before Advent, in the Church of St. 
 Peter, Lavington, 1857. 
 
 Jeremiah xxiii. 5, 6. 
 
 " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto 
 David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, 
 and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His 
 days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely ; and 
 this is His Name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD 
 OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." 
 
 Advent is again close at hand. Another year with 
 all its holy seasons has passed over our heads. The 
 last sand in its glass is almost run out. Let us begin 
 this day at once by thinking what use we have made 
 of the time that is now gone from us. Have we 
 drawn nearer to God ? Have we sought His grace, 
 and turned it to good account ? Have we left off 
 old sins, and begun to obey God in a more hearty, 
 loving, steadfast, and unwavering manner? If there 
 is any day in the whole year in which it is right and 
 proper for us to consider what answer we can give to 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 331 
 
 such questions, it is this day. For now we stand, as 
 it were, on the brink of Judgment. The past year, 
 with all its frequent and abundant offers of grace, 
 with all its sacred and solemn lessons, with all its 
 opportunities for serving God, is a kind of picture of 
 our life upon earth. How has God surrounded us 
 with voices of warning ! How has He whispered His 
 encouragements to our inmost souls in the softest 
 tones of mercy ! What proofs of His Love has He 
 given us ! What rich gifts has He held out to us ! 
 What glorious hopes has He spread before us ! At 
 Christmas we learnt the deep love of God the Son, 
 Who was made man for us, and were led to take 
 notice of His bright and spotless innocence. At 
 Circumcision we heard of Him obeying the law for 
 us even in suffering. At Epiphany we watched Him 
 fulfilling every holy duty of life, manifesting forth the 
 Godhead in the perfection of His human nature. We 
 were told that we, too, were " partakers of the Divine 
 nature " through our union with Christ, and that we 
 ought to show forth the indwelling of Christ by the 
 purity of our lives. Then the Church at Septua- 
 gesima broke in upon us with a sudden and startling 
 call, to think whether or not we had fallen from this high 
 state of grace, and, if we had so fallen, to repent. All 
 through Lent she taught us the. duty and the blessed- 
 ness of repentance. At Passion-tide she led us to the 
 
332 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 Foot of the Cross, showed us Jesus Christ our God 
 dying in the flesh to atone for us, bid us reflect on 
 the greatness of our sins which nailed Him there, tried 
 to pierce our hearts with sorrow and with love for 
 Him Who laid down His Life for us, and comforted 
 us by declaring to us the power of that Precious 
 Blood to cleanse us. At Easter-tide she sought to 
 fill us with joy in the triumph of our Lord, Who rose 
 from His grave, conquered death, and sin, and Satan 
 for us, and " brought life and immortality to light." 
 On Ascension Day we saw how our Lord, both God 
 and man, went up into heaven, and passed into the 
 Presence of the Father to plead His Sacrifice there, 
 to pray for us and to open a way for us into that 
 same glory in which He dwells. At Whitsuntide we 
 were still further strengthened by being reminded 
 how the Blessed Comforter, God the Holy Ghost, 
 has come down upon the Church to unite it to Christ, 
 to take of the life that is in our Lord, and give it to 
 the members of His Body. On Trinity Sunday the 
 nature of the Three Divine Persons in One Godhead 
 was revealed to us, as far as our weakness can bear 
 such a revelation, and the very glimpse which we 
 were allowed to catch of the outskirts of that tremen- 
 dous Majesty was a pledge to us of the Will of God 
 to bring us to a clearer knowledge and vision of 
 Himself. 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 333 
 
 Then we were sent forth into the world to bear 
 witness to God. We were to show our sense of His 
 boundless Love and Goodness by behaving lovingly 
 ourselves to those around us, by works of mercy, by 
 fervent acts of adoration. The holiness of our lives 
 was to force men to believe and confess that God is 
 in us of a truth, that nothing but a power above the 
 power of man could so transform the heart as to 
 make it the source of such godliness. Men were to 
 be made to see by our faithfulness in business, by our 
 use of worldly goods, by our gentleness of behaviour, 
 by the purity of our words and acts, that we are ruled 
 by laws far higher than the world can make, that we 
 are seeking a home far purer than this fallen earth, 
 that we are the servants of a King Whose service is 
 Divine. In short, our work in the world was to bring 
 men to taste for themselves of the Love of God In- 
 carnate suffering and atoning for man, subduing and 
 conquering all the evil that afflicts man, of God 
 dwelling in His Church, of God giving the strength 
 and holiness that is in Himself to man, of God recon- 
 ciling man to Himself, and raising him to that perfect 
 happiness which consists in being one with Himself. 
 
 This was our mission, that which God gave us to 
 do for Him. How is it being done ? Is it being 
 done at all ? Has the history of all His acts of love 
 and wonderful blessings been wasted upon us up to 
 
334 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 this hour ? Then at least let us rouse ourselves now. 
 For He Himself is coming to take account with us. 
 What if this were our last hour? What if at this 
 moment we stood before Him ? What if after this 
 year, which is now closing, there were no more years 
 to run ? What if we had now said our last prayer ; 
 if we could never more fall down on our knees and 
 cry, " Forgive us, Lord ! " no, not even once more ; 
 if the opportunity for beginning to serve God better 
 were altogether fled ; if our souls were to be for 
 ever and for ever what we feel them to be now. 
 What if for us there were to be no more teaching, 
 no more calls to repent, no more pleading of God 
 with us, no more drawing near to God, no more 
 cleansing through the Sacrifice of Christ, no more 
 changing and converting of our hearts through His 
 grace. If this were so, how should we meet the Eye 
 of our Judge ? Would it be with hope or trembling ? 
 with humble faith, as in One Who knows our 
 weakness, but knows also our earnest love, or would 
 it be with terrible confusion and shame ? What 
 account have we to render up for the Gospel believed 
 or despised, for sacraments used or abused, for 
 advance in holiness or falling back into sin, for 
 diligence or sloth, for good works done or left 
 undone? Answer these questions to God in your 
 own minds, my brethren, for it will depend very much 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 335 
 
 on the kind of answer which you are able to make 
 whether you are prepared to take your part in the 
 services of this day. 
 
 It is remarkable that the Church's view of the 
 coming of our Blessed Lord is not terrible, but full of 
 comfort. She does not speak to us to-day of the 
 awfulness of Judgment. She scarcely mentions 
 Judgment at all. She rather teaches us to look on to 
 the last day as one that will complete and crown all 
 our blessings. She describes our Lord not so much in 
 the character of the all-searching Judge, as in that of 
 the Redeemer returning and showing Himself to His 
 expectant people to accomplish His work of mercy. 
 The Church treats us, in fact, as her faithful and obed- 
 ient children, who have acted upon her lessons for the 
 past year, who have been true to her Lord, and are, 
 therefore, watchful and longing for the end of all things. 
 
 All the more reason is there that we should try our 
 own hearts well, lest we presume to claim the 
 blessings which are prepared for those that love God, 
 and find ourselves rejected, because He sees that we 
 have neither faith nor love in us. But, if we can 
 answer for the earnestness of our desire to be true to 
 our Lord, then the services of this day are most 
 cheering and full of hope. 
 
 Look at the Epistle : " Behold, the days come, saith 
 the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous 
 
336 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall 
 execute judgment and justice in the earth." Now, 
 what does this mean ? It has two meanings. It 
 refers both to the first and to the second Advent of 
 our Lord. It comforts the Jews by telling them that 
 the time of their sorrows and sufferings in captivity 
 should pass away, and the days should come in which 
 they should once more be safe from their enemies. 
 Out of the royal house of David, now brought so low, 
 so decayed, that it was but as a dry root in the ground, 
 there should spring a fresh Branch, even the Messiah. 
 He should reign over the true Israel, His Church, and 
 should protect, guard, and keep them from harm. 
 He should gather His people together, and unite them 
 once more ; and so glorious and blessed would this 
 deliverance be, that compared with it the coming out 
 of the bondage of Egypt would be as nothing. We 
 know that this prophecy has already had one fulfil- 
 ment, when the Son of God was made man, when He 
 suffered, died, rose, and conquered Satan, led captivity 
 captive, gathered into one the people of God that 
 were scattered abroad, and became the Head of His 
 Church, our Strength and Refuge under all trial, 
 temptation, and danger. But was that its last and 
 complete fulfilment ? Assuredly not. The Israel of 
 God is not yet in perfect safety. Our enemies still 
 surround us. We have still a battle to fight. Our 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 337 
 
 " own land " is not reached yet. " We see not yet all 
 things put under" our Great King and Lord. We 
 are still looking forward to a blessed time of more 
 unbroken peace and rest than this present world has 
 ever seen ; a time which will begin with that second 
 great Advent of our Lord to which the Church now 
 bids us look on. Then, indeed, when Christ returns 
 from heaven, there will be an end of all suffering and 
 sorrow for the redeemed. For them all trial, and 
 temptation, and danger, will be for ever passed away. 
 Then at last the glowing words of prophecy will come 
 true : " Violence shall no more be heard within thy 
 land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders." 
 " It shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord 
 shall set His Hand the second time to recover the 
 remnant of His people, which shall be left." " He 
 shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather 
 together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners 
 of the earth." And, in that home to which He shall 
 bring them, they shall be secure from all harm, for 
 no one "shall hurt nor destroy in all" His "holy 
 mountain." "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
 and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the 
 calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; and 
 a little child shall lead them." " The branch of the 
 terrible ones shall be brought low." "And in this 
 mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all 
 
 z 
 
338 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 people a feast of fat things." " He will swallow up 
 death in victory ; and the Lord God will wipe away 
 tears from off all faces ; and the rebuke of His people 
 shall He take away from off all the earth." "The 
 sun shall no more be" their "light by day; neither 
 for brightness shall the moon give light unto " them : 
 "but the Lord shall be unto" them "an everlasting 
 light, and " their " God " their " glory." " The days 
 of" their " mourning shall be ended." " The people 
 also shall be all righteous : they shall inherit the land 
 for ever, the branch of" the "planting of" the Lord, 
 "the work of" His "Hands, that" He "may be 
 glorified." For He shall " create new heavens and a 
 new earth : and the former shall not be remembered, 
 nor come into mind." "And it shall be said in that 
 day, 1 Lo ! this is our God ; we have waited for Him, 
 and He will save us : this is the Lord ; we have 
 waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His 
 Salvation.' " 
 
 What must that time be which holy souls will 
 welcome with such intense joy ? What but that day 
 on which He shall come openly and visibly Who is 
 even now the stay of our hearts, that day on which 
 our " eyes shall at last see the King in His Beauty." 
 What must that place be in which is such perfect 
 peace, such spotless innocence, such purity, and such 
 universal love ? It can only be that " new heavens 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 339 
 
 and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." For 
 there indeed every bad passion shall be subdued to 
 the Will of God, every weakness shall be removed by 
 the power of His grace. There the soul shall be 
 guarded from every temptation, and shielded from all 
 trouble. There every faculty of our whole being shall 
 be taken up with the service of God, and we ourselves 
 filled with an unfailing strength to do the Will of 
 Him on Whom all our affections shall be immovably 
 fixed. 
 
 It is to this most blessed end of all things that the 
 Church would have us look. All the year long she 
 has taught us of our fall, and of the redemption 
 which Christ has wrought for us. She has told us of 
 the sin that is in us, and of the deep love of Him Who 
 came in the flesh and died to deliver us from that sin. 
 She has set before us, on the one hand, the hard strife 
 we have to keep up against evil, the dangers that are 
 round us, the afflictions that must be borne ; and, on 
 the other, the rich gifts of grace which we have received, 
 and the mighty aid that is ready for us (no less than 
 Christ dwelling in us, feeding us with Himself, and 
 pouring life into us). And now she says, See what is 
 to come after all. " The end of your faith " is, that 
 you may " receive the salvation of your souls." After 
 all griefs and troubles, after all tears of repentance 
 and earnest cries for grace, after struggling and 
 
 z 2 
 
340 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 falling, struggling and rising again, at last the victory 
 and the crown, and the rest, and the glory shall be 
 yours. Through the Blood which Christ shed for you, 
 you shall be cleansed from the sins over which you 
 are now mourning. Through His strength working 
 in you, you shall be set free from all the weakness 
 and imperfection that now cleaves to you. The gates 
 of heaven shall open before you, and you shall enter 
 into an eternity of happiness. " Behold ! the days 
 come," when our Lord and " King shall reign and 
 prosper." His Kingdom shall have come in perfect 
 glory, and there shall no more be anything in us to 
 gainsay or oppose Him. "He shall execute judgment 
 and justice in the earth ; " He shall cast " out of His 
 Kingdom all things that offend, and them which do 
 iniquity." He shall trample under His Feet our great 
 enemy Satan, and rid us of his oppression. " In His 
 days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell 
 safely ; " all His faithful Church shall be secure under 
 His defence from the fear of harm. " And this is His 
 Name whereby He shall be called, The Lord our 
 Righteousness." In the praises that they sing before 
 His Throne, in the secret but intense thankfulness 
 that shall stir their inmost being, all the whole com- 
 pany of the redeemed will rejoice to confess that He, 
 and He only, has made them what they are ; that to 
 Him they owe the pardon of their sins, their new 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 341 
 
 birth, the change by which they passed from strength 
 to strength, until at last they were made pure and fit 
 for the vision of God. " Behold, the days come that 
 they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which 
 brought up the children of Israel out of the land of 
 Egypt ; but the Lord liveth, which brought up, and 
 which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the 
 north country, and from all countries whither I had 
 driven them." The days come when the faithful 
 shall praise God, not so much for those first proofs of 
 His love which He gave in separating them from the 
 evil world (of which Egypt is a type), and delivering 
 them from the bondage of Satan, (of which Pharaoh 
 is a type), but rather for gathering them safely into 
 one common home. " And they shall dwell in their own 
 land ; " they shall no more be passing on as pilgrims 
 through the wilderness of this life, suffering under its 
 hardships, and sometimes half fearing lest they should 
 faint and fail. No ; they shall at last be settled for 
 ever in that glorious City which is " their own," be- 
 cause it was bought for them by the precious Sacrifice 
 of Christ, the "inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, 
 and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for" 
 those " who are kept by the Power of God through 
 faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last 
 time." 
 
 Such is the teaching of the Epistle, and the Gospel 
 
342 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 carries it on. There we have the history of the feed- 
 ing the five thousand. "A great company comes 
 unto n our Lord. They are hungry. He makes them 
 sit down, and feeds them. They are " filled," yet 
 there is still food " over and above," after they " had 
 eaten." " Then those men, when they had seen the 
 miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that 
 Prophet that should come into the world." 
 
 We have here in a parable that last great " eating of 
 bread in the Kingdom of God," the filling of those 
 that hunger and thirst after righteousness, the perfect 
 satisfaction of the soul that feeds for evermore on 
 Christ. The multitude of the saints follows our 
 Blessed Lord through the wilderness of this world. 
 They turn aside for nothing. They will have no food 
 but what He gives them. For that they long and 
 wait. At the last He bids them sit down, for He only 
 can give them rest. He fills them, for He, and He 
 alone, can meet, and answer, and supply every want 
 of man's spirit. " In " His " Presence is the fulness of 
 joy.'' He feeds them, but there is still more food be- 
 fore them ; for the joys that Christ gives never waste. 
 They are ever fresh and ever new. " At " His " Right 
 Hand there are pleasures for evermore." And as 
 they find that He can give them all and more than all 
 they ever longed for, with one voice they magnify His 
 miracles of love and say, " This is of a truth that 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 343 
 
 Prophet that should come into the world." This is 
 that Saviour for whom the whole world has waited 
 and yearned. This is He Who has taken pity on our 
 miseries and lightened them. This is He Who has 
 seen the sorrows and burthens under which we 
 groaned, and has delivered us from them. This is He 
 Who made our hearts, and knows what alone will 
 satisfy them. This is He Who alone can set right the 
 evil, the falseness, the sin that has marred and cor- 
 rupted the earth. We have sought for peace with 
 God ; Christ alone can give it through His great 
 atonement. We have striven to be holy ; Christ 
 alone can make us so by uniting us to Himself. He 
 • is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the 
 world." 
 
 A moment's thought will show you how the teach- 
 ing of this Sunday follows upon that of the previous 
 Sundays. On the twenty-third Sunday we learnt 
 that our conversation is in heaven, that even now on 
 earth we belong to heaven, and are to live as subjects 
 of our heavenly King. To-day we are reminded that 
 at last we shall reach that land which is our true 
 home. 
 
 On the twenty-fourth Sunday we were warned to 
 seek forgiveness of those many sins which threaten 
 to make us unfit for the purity of heaven. To-day 
 we are comforted with a description of the peace 
 
344 
 
 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 of those who shall be forgiven and accepted by God 
 at last, never to fall away again. 
 
 And now, my brethren, see how fit a close is thus 
 furnished us to the services of the year. The Church 
 would say to us: Do not be cast down at present 
 trouble. The days come in which they that mourn shall 
 be comforted. Do not faint and fail at the temptations 
 that try you for the present. Bear up bravely. These 
 temptations will not last long. Cast your eyes onward. 
 The days come when God's people " shall dwell 
 safely." " Look up, and lift up your heads, for your 
 redemption draweth nigh." If " now for a season ye 
 are in heaviness through manifold temptations ; " this 
 is so, " that the trial of your faith," much more 
 precious " than gold that perisheth when tried with 
 fire, might be found unto praise, and honour, and 
 glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ." " Wherefore 
 gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to 
 the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at 
 the revelation of Jesus Christ." Do not let yourselves 
 be drawn away from God by the things of this world. 
 They never can make you really happy. At the most 
 you can enjoy them only for a few short years. A 
 little while, and money, or lands, or houses, or fine 
 clothes, or gay companions, or meat and drink, will be 
 no good to you. You will die, you will be judged. 
 The earth will pass away. In that hour God's love 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 345 
 
 will be the only thing worth having. To love God, to 
 be loved by Him, will fill you with happiness. No- 
 thing else can. Seek this, then, now, and let nothing 
 turn you from it. 
 
 See, again, how the Church begins and ends with 
 Christ. All through her course she has set our Lord 
 before us. He was to be our example : He, our 
 strength. For His sake we were to look for forgive- 
 ness. By Him we were to be kept in this world, 
 through Him prepared for glory. And now to find 
 Him at last is held out to us as our greatest happiness. 
 To dwell where Christ is, to be with Him, safe under 
 His Protection, kept for evermore from all that may 
 hurt us because we are in Him Whom evil cannot 
 approach ; to see Him, to be able to love Him — this 
 we are to long for as the highest of all joys, beyond 
 which there is nothing for us to ask. 
 
 Thus the Church leaves us standing, as it were, on 
 
 o' » 
 
 the brink of eternity. Eternity ! What a word to 
 utter ! How hard to grasp its meaning ! To be 
 always holy, always with God, always happy ; or to 
 be always wicked, always cast out, always miserable 
 and damned — always in heaven, or always in hell — 
 with no change for evermore. This is eternity. 
 Intense and never-ending bliss ; intense and never- 
 ending woe ; one of these will be our lot. Pause and 
 think which will be yours. Call up before your minds 
 
346 
 
 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 the scene of the last coming of our Lord. The sun 
 is darkened. The moon does not give her light. 
 The stars of heaven are shaken. The fearful trumpet 
 sounds, and the voice of the Archangel summons the 
 dead to judgment. The heavens open, and the Cross, 
 the sign of the Son of Man, burns in the skies, the 
 hope of the faithful, but the terror of the wicked who 
 have despised it. There on the throne, with thousands 
 of angels round Him, the Judge is seated. He turns 
 to the wicked on His left Hand, and declares their 
 terrible sentence: "Behold My Side which was 
 pierced for you, My Hands and My Feet which were 
 nailed to the Cross for you ; these bear witness how 
 I longed, in My love, to save you. I called you, but 
 you would not listen. I sought you, but you fled 
 from Me. I offered you a place in My glory, but 
 you despised it. I threatened you with the torments 
 of hell, but you mocked at them. You have turned a 
 deaf ear to My Voice pleading with you. You have 
 quenched My Spirit within you. You have rejected 
 the grace offered you, neglected My holy Sacraments, 
 abused My patience and tender pity. You have 
 chosen Satan for your master, and given your hearts 
 to him. Therefore you must follow him to his punish- 
 ment. ' Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared 
 for the devil and his angels/ " 
 
 He turns to the faithful on His Right Hand, and 
 
THE FULL REWARD. 347 
 
 welcomes them with these words of mercy : " ' Come, 
 ye blessed children of My Father, inherit the Kingdom 
 prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' 
 Come you that have been true and constant in My 
 service, follow Me into My glory and bliss, as you 
 have always followed Me in My humiliation and 
 suffering." 
 
 In that awful moment, which will be our lot ? 
 Shall we be among the blessed or the cursed ? Let 
 us pray heartily to God to " stir up " our " wills," to 
 move and urge our hearts to desire and love His 
 service. Let us beg of Him so to fill us with His 
 grace, that we may " plenteously bring forth the fruit 
 of good works." Then shall we be " plenteously 
 rewarded," not according to our merits, which are far 
 below any reward, but according to the riches of God's 
 mercy, Who is pleased to reward our labours for 
 Christ's sake. Most plenteous indeed is that reward. 
 It is no less than the entire healing of our body and 
 soul, and the gift of every possible happiness that we 
 can imagine or desire. For at the last coming of our 
 Lord the bodies of the faithful will be raised from 
 their graves to be fashioned like unto His glorious 
 Body, to be set free from every weakness and every 
 form of suffering that now afflicts them, to be made 
 deathless, and to be clothed with a Divine strength 
 and eternal beauty. At the same hour the souls of 
 
348 THE FULL REWARD. 
 
 the faithful will be finally purged from all taint of evil 
 and sin, and filled with the most perfect holiness, with 
 an unfailing power of serving, obeying, and delighting 
 in God, without wavering and without distraction. 
 And then this pure and holy family of God shall be 
 gathered together ; those that have been torn asunder 
 by death on earth, meeting again never to be parted 
 any more ; widowed and orphaned hearts finding at 
 last those after whom they have longed in weary 
 seasons of bereavement ; the great fellowship of the 
 saints, from the penitent once so nearly lost and so 
 hardly found, up to Confessors, and Martyrs, and 
 Evangelists, and Apostles, and the Blessed Mother of 
 our Lord, all united visibly, and rejoicing in each 
 other's joy. Most wondrous happiness ! Inexpressi- 
 ble and soothing peace ! 
 
 Yet even this is not the true reward of the soul. 
 God says, " I am thy exceeding great reward." To 
 see God, and to be with Him, to know Him, to love 
 Him, and to be loved by Him for evermore — this is 
 that plenteous and crowning gift of God which shall 
 satisfy the soul. After all the storms and sorrows of 
 life, after all its dangers and temptations, after fears 
 and failings, after earnest seeking and longing for 
 God, after blind wanderings and penitent returns, to 
 be brought home to God, to be in His very Presence, 
 to be sure that He is ours and we are His for ever- 
 
THE FULL REWARD. _ 349 
 
 more — this is the highest bliss we can receive. To 
 behold the Face of Christ in glory, to have found that 
 Lord Who died for us, and Who has loved and shielded 
 and cared for us all our days on earth ; to be in Kim, 
 to be certain that we shall never fall away from Him, 
 but through the power of His continual grace shall 
 serve God perfectly for ever — this is that reward 
 whose plenteousness neither words of man can de- 
 scribe, nor thought of man conceive. This is that 
 reward which the Church in her last solemn prayer 
 bids us seek as the end of our being. For this we 
 were born, for this redeemed. This is the one thin^ 
 for which we should long, pray, strive, labour — to 
 love God, be loved by God, and dwell in God for 
 ever. May He of mercy grant that we lose not this ! 
 
 14 Behold, the days come ! " Yes, He says Him- 
 self, " Behold ! I come quickly ; and My reward is 
 with Me, to give every man according as his work 
 shall be." May we be able to answer, " Even so, 
 come. Lord Jesus ! " 
 
 " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you 
 all ! Amen." 
 
IN THE PRESS. I Vol. Cr. %vo. 
 
 ADDRESSES FOR A RETREAT OF FOUR 
 OR SIX DAYS. 
 
 PART I. UNION WITH GOD. 
 PART II. FROM LIFE TO LIFE. 
 
 By Rev. R. W. RANDALL, 
 Author of " Life in the Catholic Church." 
 
 London : W. H. ALLEN & Co., 13, Waterloo Place. 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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