Shelf.. 
 
 PRINCETON, N, J. 
 
 BV 4501 .W47 1869 
 Westcott, Brooke Foss, 1825 
 
 1901. 
 The Christian life, manifol( 
 
 and^ one 
 
 Number 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, 
 
 MANIFOLD AND ONE. 
 
CTamtntJgc: 
 
 TRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A., 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFK, 
 
 MANIFOLD AND ONE. 
 
 S/X SERMONS PLEACHED /A' PETERBOROUCIf 
 CATHEDRAL, 
 
 BROOKE FOSS %ESTCOTT, B.D. 
 
 CANON, 
 
 Honton anb Cambritjge : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1869. 
 
 \AU Rights rescri'di.] 
 
TO THE 
 VERY REVEREND A. P. SAUNDERS, D.D., 
 
 DEAN, 
 AND TO THE 
 
 VENERABLE ARCHDEACON DAVYS, 
 
 REV. M. ARGLES, 
 
 REV. H. PRATT, 
 
 CANONS OF PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL, 
 
 ARE DEDICATED WITH SINCERE RESPECT AND 
 GRATITUDE. 
 
■L\ 
 
 % 
 
 
 r<> 
 
 '<loc^iC3]Z^^^^^ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 These Sermons, the first-fruits of new work, 
 are printed, partly that I may through them 
 ask for the active sympathy of those among 
 whom I have been called to labour, in the dis- 
 charge of duties which at the present time may, 
 as it seems, be made by God's blessing of pecu- 
 liar benefit to the English Church; and partly 
 that I may be myself reminded hereafter in 
 times of failure and despondency of the thoughts 
 which were ministered to me in the first Ca- 
 thedral services in which I was allowed to take 
 part. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss measures of 
 Cathedral Reform, but I cannot refrain from 
 repeating what underlies all that I have here 
 
vm PREFACE. 
 
 said, that the great want of our Church is re- 
 cognized variety of functions and not uniformity. 
 To parochialize Cathedrals would be to destroy 
 one distinct element in our organization, and 
 to add nothing in its place. What is needed 
 is rather to specialize their office, and to claim 
 for them, in accordance with the statutes of the 
 New Foundation, the prerogative of higher 
 education, that is, theological study in its largest 
 sense and the final professional training of Can- 
 didates for Holy Orders. Our Church, as such, 
 has made no provision elsewhere for the fulfil- 
 ment of these necessary parts of her work. But 
 let it once be recognized that it is the privilege 
 of Cathedral bodies to fulfil them, and our 
 Cathedrals will become, what they ought to 
 be, and may be, the springs of the intellectual 
 religious life of England. ' The which if they 
 ' do,' to quote the preamble of our Statutes, * we 
 ' verily trust that great increase of piety shall 
 ' come to the kingdom, and those who erected 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 ' these churches for the glory of the All-good 
 ' and Almighty God, and the advancement of 
 * the Christian Faith, and furnished the same 
 ' with various orders of Ministers, shall in no 
 ' wise be disappointed of their expectation and 
 'desire.' 
 
 B. F. W. 
 
 Harrow, 
 
 Sept. 15, 1869. 
 
That it may please Thee to illuininaie all Bishops, 
 Priests, and Deacons, with true knowledge and under- 
 standing of Thy Word ; and that both by their preaching 
 and living they may set it forth and shew it accordingly: 
 
 We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord. 
 Epiphany, 1S69. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 LIFE CONSECRATED BV THE ASCENSION. 
 
 PAGE 
 St Luke xxiv. 51.— It came to pass, while he blessed them, 
 
 He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven . . i 
 SERMON II. 
 
 MANY gifts: one SPIRIT. 
 
 1 Cor. XII. 4. — There are diversities of gifts, but the same 
 
 Spirit . . . . . . . . . . .15 
 
 SERMON III. 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 1 Cor. XV. 11. — Whether it were I or they, so we preach, and 
 
 so ye believed . . . . . . . . -27 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 
 
 2 Cor. III. 5. — Our sufficiency is of God 4» 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 St Luke x. 37. — Go, and do thou likewise . . . -51 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 PROGRESS FROM THE CONFESSION OF GOD. 
 
 St Luke xvii. 15. — One of them when he saw that he was healed 
 
 turned back, and with a loud voice glorified GoD . . -63 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 LIFE CONSECRATED BY THE ASCENSION. 
 
 W.S. 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 LIFE CONSECRATED BY THE ASCENSION. 
 
 St Luke xxiv. 51. 
 
 // came to pass, ivJiilc He blessed iheni, He was parted 
 from them, and carried up to heaven. 
 
 Such was the last scene of the earthly presence 
 of the Lord. So it was that Jiaving loved His oivn 
 which were in the world, He loved them unto the 
 end. Not silently and alone as Enoch, who walked 
 with God, and zvas not, for God took him : not with 
 the whirlwind and chariot of fire like Elijah, who 
 was swept away before the eyes of his awestricken 
 follower ; but calmly, naturally, as we must think, 
 with words of assurance and in the act of benediction 
 Christ ascended nnto His Father and our Father. And 
 this revelation of human life linked to heaven by the 
 Saviour's blessing is that on which we necessarily 
 dwell to-day. Christmas, Easter, and Ascension-tide 
 have each their peculiar lesson of joy, and we must 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 LIFE CONSECRATED [Serm. 
 
 distinguish the lessons if we would apprehend their 
 fulness. Christmas is the festival of the family, for 
 then Christ by being born hallowed all the ties of 
 home. Easter is the festival of the Church, for then 
 Christ by the victory over death established a spiri- 
 tual power among men, invincible for ever. Ascen- 
 sion-tide is the festival of the race, for then Christ by 
 raising all that belongs to the perfection of humanity 
 to heaven, gave us a glorious sign of our true destiny 
 as men. 
 
 This being so, two thoughts out of many which 
 offer themselves may be taken for our consideration 
 now. The Ascension teaches us the consecration 
 of all the parts of life ; and it teaches us also the 
 consecration of all the offices of life. Not only is 
 every detail of each individual life impressed with a 
 divine value ; but the differences by which any life as 
 a whole is separated from another belong also to the 
 completeness of the divine order. We may reject the 
 gift of God : we may mar the beauty which He is 
 ready to perfect: we may mistake the purpose which 
 he is ready to accomplish ; but if we look to the 
 Ascension and that last blessing with which Christ's 
 earthly work was consummated, we shall know that 
 all we do and all we are has in possibility, — GOD 
 grant that it may have in deed — a vital relationship 
 with heaven. 
 
 In many respects it is a happy circumstance that 
 Ascension-day comes in the middle of our week. It 
 
I.] BV THE ASCENSION. 5 
 
 may thus indeed be neglected, but when we observe 
 it, we are led at least to ponder on its meaning. Nor 
 can tliat meaning be hidden from us ; for it is ])lainly 
 expressed in the services and in the recreations by 
 which the Festival is marked among us\ Hereto- 
 day the full joy of work and the full joy of devotion, 
 the hearty gladness of seasonable mirth and the so- 
 lemn fellowship of divine Communion, meet together 
 in a true harmony. Earth to-day may be seen by us 
 united with heaven, not as in a dream to the sleeping 
 patriarch, but in the open triumph of a Saviour. 
 To-day to the eye of faith angels once again are 
 shewn ascending and descending in ministry to the 
 sons of men. 
 
 I. In this then lies the first lesson of which I 
 spoke, the religious unity of life. If we enter into the 
 spirit of Ascension-day, we shall be enabled to real- 
 ize practically that Christian life is essentially one. 
 Over all the hands of Christ are raised to bless. In 
 Christ the results of thirty years of silent and obscure 
 labour, no less than of three years of recognized 
 ministry, were transfigured and raised aloft for ever. 
 By that last pledge of love, by that last victory of 
 love, a real unity was restored to human existence. 
 Nothing can be clearer than the significance of the 
 fact, but we still need greatly to be reminded of 
 
 ^ Ascension Day is observed at Peterborough by an annual meeting 
 of the members of the Cathedral body, the Grammar School, and the 
 Training College. 
 
6 LIFE CONSECRATED [Serm. 
 
 the truth thus made known to us. We are always 
 tempted to break up hfe into httle fractions; to sepa- 
 rate routine and effort ; to contrast secular and spiri- 
 tual; to assign this part to the duties of the world 
 and that to the service of GOD. But to-day we may 
 learn that such a division is faithless and vain. As 
 the body is one, so also is the life. Physical health is 
 the harmonious action of every member according to 
 its proper law, and religion is the true health of our 
 whole being. 
 
 Such a view of life as this is undoubtedly solemn, 
 but it is also inexpressibly grand. No one would de- 
 sire deliberately to lower the recognized dignity of 
 action, and we may rejoice when any habitual mode 
 of thought helps us to appreciate it more worthily. 
 Do what we will we know that w^e must be beset by 
 sorrow and suffering and care. We may for a time close 
 our eyes to their presence, but in the end they will 
 make themselves felt with more crushing power. If 
 however we once see that these also belong to the 
 completeness of our discipline ; that through them 
 God makes Himself known ; that by them that per- 
 son is fashioned which, by His grace, shall be lifted 
 to heaven ; — if we once see that it is in the silent, un- 
 numbered, unnoticed trivialities (as they seem) of daily 
 business that character is formed which in due time a 
 crisis will reveal: then already something of a divine 
 harmony is re-established among the elements which 
 sin has disordered. 
 
I.] BY THE ASCENSION. 7 
 
 So it comes to pass that we can by GOD'S blessing 
 draw strength from failure. When we place the seen 
 in its true relation to the unseen, the circumstances 
 of life appear in their true proportion and significance. 
 Whatever is inchoate, imperfect, discordant, becomes 
 a sign of that fuller being into which all our efforts 
 and all our achievements are destined to pass. That 
 only which is wholly of the earth can find its satis- 
 faction on earth; all which belongs essentially to 
 some vaster whole must as yet bear about with it the 
 marks of incompleteness, and to our eyes the appear- 
 ance of failure. The weaknesses, the littlenesses, the 
 incoherences of daily life, so long as they are felt and 
 struggled with, are evidences of a victory yet to come. 
 They bear witness to us that we cannot rest till we 
 rise to the level of Him in whom we live. They never 
 cease to teach us that the end to which we are called 
 is not now nor here. Moved by their importunate 
 promptings, we must confess that it is not enough to die 
 with Christ : that it is not enough to rise with Christ : 
 we must also ascend with Him even now, ' in heart and 
 mind,' — with the power of feeling and Avith the power 
 of thought — to the presence of God, that so at last we 
 may reflect His glory and be transformed into His 
 likeness. 
 
 2. The whole life of a Christian is then, when we 
 view it in the light of Ascension-day, one in its 
 character, in its progress, in its issue. It is also dis- 
 tinct in its function. As the circumstances and facul- 
 
8 LIFE CONSECRATED [Serm. 
 
 ties of men are permanently different, so the religious 
 office of each, which represents the sum of all his 
 endowments consecrated to an eternal destiny, is 
 necessarily different in form. There is one body but 
 it is composed of many members. There is one life but 
 it is expressed in many ways. Certain as this truth is, 
 we are practically in constant danger of forgetting 
 it. The same spirit which leads us to isolate parts of 
 our life as alone religious, leads us also to construct 
 one type of religious work, so that all action which 
 does not fall within this narrow boundary is left out 
 of account. Thus it necessarily follows that our 
 theories prove unreal ; that our conception of religion 
 is impoverished ; that our effective energies are les- 
 sened by lack of sympathy and by secret misgivings. 
 But to-day we are raised to a higher platform. 
 Those to whom Christ gave his last blessing, those 
 whom He sent as the Father sent Him, fulfilled their 
 commission not after one pattern but after many. 
 Even in that first outburst of renovated life each 
 believer worked according to his natural gifts. One 
 ministered, another preached, another wrote: one 
 satisfied an immediate want, another laid up treasures 
 for a later time. Every form of service was hallowed, 
 because all were rendered to GOD. And this is the 
 image of Christian activity which we are at present 
 called to imitate according to the measure of our 
 power. In this way only can we gain a true sense of 
 the worth of the individual life, when it is seen to 
 
I.] BY THE ASCENSION. 
 
 contribute its distinct share to the manifold richness 
 of the total sum. In this way only can we realize in 
 any degree what is that Body of Christ which, while 
 it finds in Him its perfect unity, is extended and sus- 
 tained by that which every part supplies, to complete 
 its beauty or to harmonize its action. If we were all 
 alike in our hiijhest attributes, if religion were in all 
 the same exercise of the same gifts, then the defec- 
 tion of one or another would make little difference 
 to the general result ; but if, as we see it must be, 
 the faithlessness of one subtracts from the whole, 
 that which no other can supply, all is changed; we 
 feel at once the overwhelming majesty of life even in 
 its ultimate details : we feel that we can never be 
 alone and confine to ourselves the issues of our 
 actions : we feel that in us, in each of us and in our 
 common duties, the highest well-being of humanity 
 is imperilled. 
 
 Such thoughts as these, which flow naturally from 
 the celebration of Ascension-day, seem to have a 
 special fitness for ourselves. Elsewhere it might be 
 difficult to enter into the conception of the religious 
 unity of life. Elsewhere it might be difficult to see 
 how different groups in society act and react upon 
 one another and contribute to the fulness of bene- 
 ficent service. But our Cathedral life is so ordered 
 as to bring these ideas practically home to us. Here 
 our daily services so fall into our common work as 
 necessarily to give, so far as they are real, a religious 
 
10 LIFE CONSECRATED [Serm. 
 
 character to all we do. Here our parts in a corpo- 
 rate society are so clearly marked out that we 
 can never forget how much we depend one upon an- 
 other for the adequate fulfilment of the general office 
 with which we are charged. Here are concentrated, 
 as we see to-day, the representative spiritual powers 
 which are organized to meet the wants of every sec- 
 tion of the Church. Here in a word we cannot 
 but recognize that our whole life, if it be true to its 
 idea, must be religious. Here we cannot but recog- 
 nize that each one of us has some task to fulfil 
 which no one else can fulfil, and which is destined in 
 its fulness not for himself but for others. 
 
 If the opportunity be given me I hope to speak 
 hereafter more at length of the ennobling and cheer- 
 ing thoughts which spring from the consideration 
 of the cornplex constitution of our Cathedral body. 
 At present I can barely indicate what seems to be its 
 central conception as brought out by the services of 
 to-day. It is strength in cooperation, strength in the 
 consecration to one end of manifold gifts, strength 
 in religious fellowship. How greatly we need such 
 strength is evident from all around us. No one 
 can have reflected on the position of our national 
 church without feeling that its chief peril lies in the 
 isolation of its constituent parts ; and this defect 
 is the more dangerous because it springs from our 
 national character. Thus we find a tendency to sepa- 
 ration personally, in our religious feelings, and paro- 
 
I.] BY THE ASCENSION. II 
 
 chially, in our religious organization \ There is 
 among us a want of sympathy and a want of combi- 
 nation. We do not trust others with our highest aspi- 
 rations : we do not look to others to carry on and 
 complete what we have begun or partially apprehend- 
 ed. Now it is not too much to say that (as I believe 
 myself most profoundly) a Cathedral like our own 
 furnishes exactly those elements of varied and yet 
 converging energy which may by God's blessing form 
 a spring of harmonious activity throughout the Church; 
 powerful by the influence of a disciplined dependence, 
 elevating by the presence of a divine aim. Our 
 gathering here to-day interprets my words and con-^ 
 firms them. By our school we arc brought into the 
 closest contact with those who will be the head and 
 heart of our city population ; by our College with the 
 great masses which it is the first privilege of the 
 Church to quicken and raise ; by our clergy, with the 
 pioneers of thought and speculation, which it is their 
 office to make tributary to the glory of the Truth. 
 To labour in these manifold functions, to inspire them 
 by the power of sacrifice, to harmonize them by the 
 spirit of a divine life, to strive towards the union of 
 tasks and classes, is the mission to which we are call- 
 ed. The work is for our country and we come to GOD 
 through Christ for strength to fulfil it : the work is 
 
 ^ The relation of the Cathedral body to the Parish is admirably 
 marked out by Mr Beresford Hope in his English Cathedral of the 
 XlXth Century. 
 
13 LIFE CONSECRATED [Serm, 
 
 for our generation, and we bind it to the past by 
 our meeting in this grand temple which is itself the 
 monument of twelve centuries of Christian triumphs. 
 
 Such a view of our common work is, I admit, a 
 lofty one, but it is not chimerical. The stirring times 
 in which we are privileged to live call for heroic 
 efforts, but I know that the efforts will not be un- 
 availing. They call for faith and truth, but it is 
 on these foundations that all great results must rest. 
 They call for unselfish and unreserved co-operation 
 of class with class, and rank with rank, but it is 
 through mutual dependence that our personal powers 
 are most operative. They call for self-denial and disci- 
 pline, but so it is alone that we can learn what is the 
 peace of perfect freedom. They call for trustful love 
 for man, for loving trust in GOD, but it is by love 
 that the heart of man is opened, and by trust that the 
 help of God is won. The very dangers which seem 
 imminent rouse us to a sublimer faith. Human weak- 
 ness is the vantage-ground of divine strength ; and 
 to-day we consecrate our aspirations by looking to 
 the ascending Saviour. 
 
 May God grant that that vision may not soon 
 fade from our sight. May it rather be for us too the 
 pledge of transfigured life. Let us only carry its 
 teaching to our several works ; let us see in it the 
 divine pledge that life in its eternal aspect is one and 
 manifold; and it must be so. If only each scholar 
 will cherish as he learns the thought of his fellowship 
 
I.] BY THE ASCENSION. 13 
 
 with the religious work centred here, and after\vards 
 carry the thought with him through the business of 
 his life : if only each teacher who goes from among 
 us will keep alive in the isolation of his laborious 
 duties the sense of sympathy with those who share 
 his trials and supplement his toils : if only each priest 
 in silent study and public ministration will remember 
 the countless workers whose manifold services it is 
 his high commission to bring to the throne of GOD : 
 if only each one of us will now join in one intense 
 prayer for sympathy and communion ; it will be 
 given us to know as we have never yet known the 
 majesty and power of our life in Christ. Without inc, 
 the Lord has said, yc can do nothing. Through Him, 
 all things are possible to him that bclievctJi. May we 
 all — may I in the prospect of new work — rest in the 
 fulness of that boundless promise. May we all — 
 may I in the fulfilment of new work — find ever, as 
 on this Ascension-day, the Risen Christ to give His 
 blessing. 
 
 Peterborough, 
 
 Ascension-day, 1869. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. 
 
 I Cor. XII. 4. 
 
 TJicrc arc diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 
 
 If we try to picture to ourselves the earliest forms of 
 life we shall see at once that they are distinguished 
 from that with which we are familiar now by a 
 strange simplicity. There is little intercourse be- 
 tween men, and little sympathy. Their wants are 
 few and for the most part such as they can satisfy 
 by their own direct effort. For them the idea of 
 humanity is limited by the extent of their tribe : the 
 idea of the universe by the iron circle of the sky. 
 Step by step fresh mysteries of being, fresh possibili- 
 ties of action, are opened before them. The stranger 
 is no longer synonymous with ' the enemy ' or ' the 
 barbarian.' The margin of the world fades before 
 the inquirer who would reach its boundary. Expe- 
 rience reveals within the heart deep wants Avhich 
 W. S. 2 
 
l8 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. [Serm. 
 
 social trust and social love alone can satisfy. Class 
 is linked to class and race to race by inseparable 
 bonds. The various functions of teaching and 
 production and distribution are almost indefinitely 
 subdivided, A single detail is found to be sufficient 
 for the labour of a life-time. All the offices and 
 duties of men become inextricably complicated, till 
 at length, as the least consideration will shew, in all 
 we do, and in all we enjoy, we depend at present, 
 consciously or unconsciously, on the ministration and 
 sympathy of countless fellow-workers and fellow-feel- 
 ers whom yet we can never know here face to face. 
 There is something very sublime and at the same 
 time very awful in the thought of this marvellous 
 complexity of our modern life, even in its outward 
 aspects ; and if we penetrate below the surface and 
 come to feel that the same law holds in the spiritual 
 as in the material relations of men, we shall readily 
 acknowledge that we are in the presence of a truth 
 which it concerns us most nearly to apprehend as far 
 as we can do so. If religion be the most complete har- 
 mony of life with the seen and the unseen, the modes 
 in which it will be embodied will vary with the vary- 
 ing modes of life. It also will necessarily exhibit, 
 like the visible life of which it is the soul, a develop- 
 ment, a progressive subdivision of parts, a mutual 
 dependence of action, issuing in a mightier and fuller 
 energy. At the same time it will be exposed to the 
 peril of conventionality, to the peril of isolation, to the 
 
II.] MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. 1 9 
 
 peril of indifference. All the causes which tend to 
 stereotype or separate or narrow our lives, tend 
 equally to stereotype and separate and narrow our re- 
 ligion. And, if, on the other hand, we sec that by the 
 counsel of the Divine Love the highest forms of earth- 
 ly good spring from the co-operation of the most 
 diverse elements, so we believe is it also in religion. 
 Here too the distinctness of our special work, how- 
 ever small, is a condition of the perfection of a whole 
 which we cannot yet imagine. Here too the fulfil- 
 ment of our peculiar office is the pledge of the effi- 
 cacy of the divine life of which wc have been made 
 partakers. Here too the full majesty of our redeemed 
 nature is seen in the glory of that august spiritual 
 Body of Christ in which we are all incorporated. 
 
 It is in the light of such reflections as these that 
 we can understand the words of St Paul which we 
 have heard this morning, Thci'e are diversities of 
 gifts, but the same Spirit. There is an essential dif- 
 ference in all lives, and there is in them also, by the 
 gift of God, an essential unity. There is a difference 
 in them because there is a unity; because, that is, 
 they are not bounded by that which falls under our 
 present notice, which is fragmentary, imperfect, half- 
 suppressed, but pass on to the more immediate pre- 
 sence of God, where all that has been blessed by 
 His Spirit coexists in absolute harmony and power. 
 
 These then are the two thoughts which I wish 
 now to commend to you. There are among us diver- 
 
20 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. [Serm, 
 
 sities of gifts ; and these gifts belong to the same 
 Spirit. St Paul is speaking, it is true, of special gifts 
 while he is writing to an exceptional society, but we 
 may rightly generalize his words when we refer them 
 to a Christian state. And thus interpreted they have 
 a direct application to ourselves. 
 
 I. In our ordinary life, as I have already indi- 
 cated, we fully recognize the law of progressive variety. 
 It is indeed forced upon us by all the conditions under 
 which we act and think. It is called into play equally 
 by the natural endowments with which we are born, 
 and by the circumstances under which we use our 
 powers. It is the spring of all that is most impressive 
 in national character : it is the spring of all that is 
 most energetic in personal influence. A great people 
 stamps the history of the world with the impress of 
 its special traits. A great man sways his fellows by 
 the gifts through which he differs from them. There 
 is nothing from which a true patriot would shrink 
 more than from the endeavour to obliterate the marks 
 which represent in his countrymen all the issues of 
 the past. They may be transformed, ennobled, trans- 
 figured, but in them lies the pledge that the nation 
 has still something to do for the race. Remove the 
 difference, slender it may be, by which citizen is dis- 
 tinguished from citizen, and something is lost to the 
 fulness of the body which nothing can replace. Ex- 
 ternal equality is uniform degradation. 
 
 But while this principle is acknowledged unhesi- 
 
II.] MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. 21 
 
 tatingly in social and political life, we do not com- 
 monly apply it to religious life. Religion is regarded 
 as something abstract, uniform, colourless. Here it 
 is supposed that the rich variety of function which 
 marks the development of man finds no place. He is 
 nnclotlicd, to use St Paul's image, and not dotJicd 
 upon, that so he may fulfil his highest work. We sud- 
 denly abandon the law which has guided the magnifi- 
 cent growth of life when it approaches its last fulfil- 
 ment. We trust to no generous spontaneity when we 
 come as sons to our heavenly Father. We painfully 
 mould and repress ourselves after one fashion; and 
 enemies say, not without the semblance of excuse, 
 that our religion looks traditional, formal, dead, power- 
 less to claim all human interests for its domain, all 
 human faculties for its instruments. And still if 
 we reflect that what we are called upon to offer to 
 God is nothing less than ourselves, our souls and 
 bodies, it must at once be seen that in that perfect, 
 holy, livijig sacrifice is included every element of 
 character, of endowment, of circumstance, by which 
 each one of us is made to differ from others. Thus 
 it is that not only as men, or as citizens, or as mem- 
 bers of families, but as believers in Christ, we have 
 severally a definite and personal work to do, for 
 which we have received in our powers and in our posi- 
 tions the requisite equipment. Only let us be faithful 
 to the ministry which we have received, without 
 attempting to estimate its value or measure its 
 
22 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. [Serm. 
 
 efficacy : only let us be sure that religion is the con- 
 secration of our whole nature and not the special 
 attribute of any one part of it : only let us come to 
 God such as we are, bowed down it may be Avith the 
 burden of toil and care, without the opportunity, as it 
 seems, of preparing an offering for His acceptance : 
 and He will welcome and purify and hallow all that 
 we lay before Him. But so far as we fall short of 
 this : so far as we set apart any section of our interests 
 and our energies as foreign to our religion : so far as 
 we aim at satisfying an artificial standard of emotion 
 or belief which answers to nothing within us : so far 
 also we lessen the total sum of Christian powers and 
 impoverish the fulness of that life to which we are 
 called to contribute. Other offices may appear to 
 us to be more fruitful than our own : we may wish 
 for an ampler field on which to shew the devotion 
 which we sincerely feel : our time, we may argue, is 
 so engrossed by necessary routine that all nobler 
 aspirations are dulled. But if followed to their spring 
 such thoughts come simply from faithlessness and 
 impatience. They may rise to tempt us till the sure 
 answer comes that we are in the hands of GOD, 
 who has given us our place. For us it is enough 
 to keep it. We see but a part while He sees all 
 Differences which to our eyes are enormous vanish 
 in His presence. The results of silent service, of 
 complete self-surrender, of patient trust, cannot be 
 measured by our present experience. They survive 
 
11.] Af.lXV GIFTS: O2VE SPIRIT. 23 
 
 US on earth and they follow us before the very throne 
 of heaven. 
 
 We are called then in Christ to bring to GOD our 
 whole selves. This and nothing less than this is our 
 rational service. And if so our religion will be as 
 manifold and as personal as our lives, active now 
 through this gift, now through that, and hallowing with 
 the cross all that is truly human. 
 
 2. But underneath this infinite variety, this intense 
 indi/iduality of religion, so to speak, there lies the 
 one common Spirit which combines all the separate 
 parti into a harmonious whole. We work each in our 
 own vaywith untiring and truthful effort, and because 
 we d) so, and just so far as we do so, a higher unity 
 is posible. There can be no unity in an aggregate of 
 simihr atoms. Thus we are brought to our second 
 point. Our diversity of gifts is reconciled in one 
 suprene destination. 
 
 A.l the images under which the religious life is 
 figured bear witness to this its twofold character. The 
 powei and beauty of the Christian society are always 
 shewr to us in manifold subordination. At one time 
 we an; taught to regard it as a temple reared through 
 long ages, each stone of which fills its special place 
 and ontributes its share to the grace and stability of 
 the fabric. At another time as a vine, where by the 
 compicated and delicate machinery of Providence 
 earth and air and water are fashioned into leaf and 
 flowe- and fruit. At another time as a body, where 
 
24 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. [Serm. 
 
 a royal will directs and disciplines and uses the func- 
 tions of every member. At another time as a vast 
 army, where each soldier trained and strengthened 
 acts no longer for himself, but even to absolute sdf- 
 sacrifice submits to the sovereign control of his leader. 
 It is impossible to mistake the meaning of sach 
 images, which teach us our mutual dependence in 
 every aspect. We are dependent on the past which 
 determines our relative positions. We are dependent 
 on the present which supplies the materials for our 
 action and the law by which we can appropriate and 
 employ them. We are dependent even on the ffiture 
 which may require that we perish, as some forlorn -|iope, 
 to ensure the triumph of those who shall come after 
 us. This, I say, is clear if we practically realizewhat 
 Holy Scripture teaches us ; and not less cleaij is it 
 in Whom mutual dependence is brought to unity. 
 Christ is the Corner Stone on which the whole tjmple 
 rests. Christ is the Root from which the vine iraws 
 its vital energy. Christ is the Head from whidli the 
 body receives its divine impulse. Christ is thei great 
 Captain by whom through toil and suffering and loss 
 the army is led to victory at the last. We are all 
 different and therefore we may be one. We are all 
 united in Christ and therefore, unless we are uijfaith- 
 ful, we must be one. ! 
 
 It would be easy to pursue these reflections into 
 detail, to point out in special cases the variety o| gifts 
 with which GOD has blessed us, to shew how thqy^ are 
 
II.] JILLVV GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. 2$ 
 
 joined tog^ether so as to produce in due course nobler 
 issues otherwise unattainable. But I prefer to leave 
 them in their broad and simple form. Each one can 
 tell for himself what he has and what he is : each 
 one can tell whether he strives to render all to the 
 glory of God. In the meantime enough, I think, has 
 been said if we take the thoughts to our hearts, to 
 guard us against the dangers of unreality, of isolation, 
 of indifference in religion which seem peculiarly urgent 
 now. If it be true, and who can doubt that it is true, 
 that religion is the divine soul of the whole of each 
 separate life ; that something has been given to every 
 man, more or less in human judgment, whereby a 
 special duty is marked out for his fulfilment ; that all 
 we do passes at once out of our reach to influence 
 others for all time ; we shall strive ever more and 
 more earnestly by God's help to realize in some de- 
 gree the ideal which we see before us. While we 
 labour to consecrate our whole life we shall not has- 
 tily adopt any conventional mode of marking our 
 purpose, but wait for the Spirit to embody itself 
 in its true form. While we cultivate to the utmost the 
 special gifts which we have received, we shall not be 
 content till we have referred them to their social end, 
 from which alone they derive their proper dignity. 
 While we refuse to compare office with office, and 
 service with service, knowing how little we see and 
 that little how imperfectly, we shall never forget that 
 it is to Christ each act of the Christian life is ren- 
 
26 MANY GIFTS: ONE SPIRIT. [Serm. II. 
 
 dered, in His sight, by His power, in obedience to His 
 will. Doubtless we shall fall short often and sadly 
 of the standard which we have set up, but our failure 
 will be not without hope. We shall know, know with 
 an ever-increasing assurance, that all life must be 
 eternal and may be divine, and look humbly and 
 trustfully to that Spirit from whom comes our rich 
 diversity of gifts that He may strengthen us to use 
 them rightly to His glory. 
 
 Peterborough, 
 Tenth Sunday after Trinity, 1869. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 I Cor. XV. ii. 
 
 Whether it iverc I or they, so we prcaeJi, and so ye 
 believed. 
 
 Last Sunday I endeavoured to point out some of 
 the broad religious lessons which are forced upon us 
 by the conditions of modern life. I endeavoured to 
 shew that the law of progressive variety which con- 
 fessedly applies to all our material interests, applies 
 also to our spiritual activity: that our religion finds 
 its true expression in the consecration of our special 
 gifts : that there is no human faculty which may not 
 by God's help be made an instrument of divine ser- 
 vice: that there is no one believer in Christ whose 
 ministry will not contribute to the effectual energy of 
 that august body of which we have all been made 
 members. I endeavoured to shew that all our natural 
 endowments, all our personal histories, all our con- 
 
30 THE GOSPEL OF [Serm. 
 
 trasted circumstances are so many opportunities for 
 peculiar work ; and thus to encourage every one to 
 offer to God that which he Jias and is, in the sure 
 trust that every gift and every power will be ennobled 
 in the offering, and made to subserve to the heavenly 
 cause to which our lives are pledged. 
 
 The epistle of to-day, from which my text is 
 taken, sets forth how, being the frail, sinful creatures 
 that we feel ourselves to be, we can yet cherish these 
 glorious aspirations, and rest assured, even in the 
 midst of failure, that they are not vain. In that Gos- 
 pel, as the Apostle calls it, of Christ's Death and 
 Christ's Resurrection we stand ; by that we are saved. 
 It accompanies us from the beginning of our lives to 
 the end. It is the voice which welcomes the un- 
 conscious infant to his Saviour's love : it is the voice 
 which commits the unconscious dead to his Maker's 
 keeping. It is the full satisfaction of one of the deep- 
 est instincts of our nature. As men we must look 
 heavenward ; but as believers in CJirist that died, yea 
 rather that is risen again, even now onr conversation 
 is in Jieaven. 
 
 This then is the thought which I have chosen for 
 our meditation this morning, the belief in Christ's 
 Resurrection as influencing the Christian's life. The 
 subject is at all times a practical one, for if GOD 
 in His great love enables us to realize in any way 
 more personally what is the power of that belief, He 
 will teach us also to convert the fresh knowledge into 
 
III.] THE RESURRECTION. 3 1 
 
 deed; and however rich our experience may be, how- 
 ever near we may liave felt Christ, however tenderly 
 we may have been draw'n to Him, we can never 
 exhaust the fresh spring of that apostohc gospel. It 
 is therefore well, as occasion offers, to go back to the 
 first principles of our faith. The message of the 
 Resurrection which the Apostles were charged to pro- 
 claim has lost none of its significance, but we, I think, 
 perplexed by the necessary growth of later thoughts, 
 are often in danger of missing the grandeur of its 
 simple outline. At least the unnatural barriers of sepa- 
 ration which we all fix in various degrees between 
 parts of our duties and our pleasures: the conven- 
 tional banishment of our highest desires from ordinaiy 
 intercourse: the unreal triviality which first veils and 
 then smothers passionate longings for sympathy : the 
 sense of weakness which drives us in upon ourselves: 
 the sense of weariness which forces us again to frivol- 
 ity ; shew that we have not yet fully learnt the lessons 
 which it can teach, or the strength which it can give ; 
 for the faith in the Resurrection can harmonize life: 
 can inspire life : can transform life, 
 
 I, The faith in the Resurrection of Christ can 
 harmonize life. Whenever we pause to think what 
 our lives are, they must seem for the most part to be 
 a strange patchwork. Very much appears to be done 
 for us, over which we have little or no control: very 
 much is determined by the necessary routine of our 
 daily occupations: very much is fashioned by the 
 
32 THE GOSPEL OF [Serm. 
 
 current opinions of those among whom we are thrown. 
 And these great sections are brought together more 
 or less by aspirations, by resolves, by acts, through 
 which we witness however imperfectly to the stirrings 
 of God's Spirit within us. But if we rest here, we 
 have not known the power of Christ's Resurrection. 
 Though comparatively little may be left to us to 
 determine by our arbitrary choice, — and I think that 
 we do not commonly reflect how little it is: though 
 body and mind, wearied with urgent occupations, fail 
 to fulfil the desires which we sincerely entertain : 
 though we indulge in honest fancies of what we 
 would do if other circumstances were granted us ; still 
 in the light of the Resurrection those very hin- 
 drances, those burdens, those little gifts are seen to 
 fashion and equip the several members of Christ. It 
 is in each case the distinct person who has received 
 that imperious bias from the past, who is hemmed 
 in by those peculiar cares and toils, who is entrusted 
 with that one poor talent, it may be, to save whom 
 Christ died. The whole life is one (we must reiterate 
 the truth) just as the whole man is one. At any 
 moment we represent in ourselves the entire sum of 
 the past which we have gone through — of influences 
 from without, and of impulses from within, of the 
 deeds which we have done and of the thoughts in 
 which we have indulged — and just so far as these 
 admitted at first the presence of Christ, so far also 
 will they be made to bear the image of His glory : 
 
III.] THE RESURRECTIOX. 33 
 
 so far even now do they form parts of a true har- 
 mony. 
 
 If we consider for a few moments in all reverence 
 the earthly life of the Lord we shall perhaps grasp more 
 firmly the idea which I wish to convey. That life, 
 we all know, was absolutely perfect, absolutely har- 
 monious, absolutely one, and still in its outward con- 
 ditions it was not essentially different from our own. 
 Christ was born poor. He was subject to His parents. 
 Step by step He increased in wisdom and stature and 
 in faz'onr zvith God and man. Till the appointed 
 hour came for a brief ministry, He continued for 
 thirty years in silence and labour. His time, like our 
 own was, to outward sight, occupied with routine. He 
 who had come to save the world was known to his 
 neighbours as the carpenter. The record contains a 
 virtue which we cannot misunderstand. Christ lived 
 that humble life to shew us that all life is potentially 
 divine. The various forms of life do not differ in 
 their inherent capacity for spiritual progress, but in 
 the opportunities for its manifestation; and if we look 
 to Christ, He will bring to one the manifold frag- 
 ments out of which our lives are built, even as He 
 bore to heaven after He rose from the dead the fruits 
 of that long time of obscure and common toil, no less 
 than of His active ministry, united in His perfect 
 manhood. 
 
 2. Thus it is that for us faith in the Resurrection 
 of Christ harmonizes life. It can also inspire it. The 
 w. S. 3 
 
34 THE GOSPEL OF [Serm. 
 
 Christian lives, according to the impressive words of 
 Holy Scripture, in Christ. It is from Christ that he 
 draws his energy by vital union : it is as a member of 
 Christ that he fulfils his part in the great economy of 
 the world. By his faith in GOD Incarnate and man 
 ascended he stands forth as a witness of the essential 
 unity of the seen and the unseen, of earth and heaven ; 
 and there never was a time when it was more neces- 
 sary to proclaim this truth than it is now. There 
 is about us on every side, in the midst of much that 
 is simply ostentatious and false and selfish, a restless 
 striving for the truth, a stern impatience of hypocrisy, 
 an eager desire to do something to raise the masses of 
 men to their proper dignity. And in the meantime 
 popular religion seems to stand aside from these great 
 stirrings of national life. Adversaries even venture to 
 urge that Christianity is, at least in certain aspects, 
 hostile to truth, to sincerity, to freedom. The sphere 
 of its action and its hopes is said to be transferred by 
 tacit consent to a remote region, inaccessible even to 
 the imagination. So true it is that at first we neglect 
 our gifts, and then we deny them. 
 
 There is need then that a fresh spirit should be 
 breathed through our common life to shew not only 
 that the whole may be truly divine, but that every 
 part in it contains some spiritual capacity and power. 
 And if we go back to the simplest elements of our 
 faith we shall see at once whence it must come, and 
 what is the fallacy which lies at the root of all reason- 
 
III.] rilR RESURRECTION. 35 
 
 ing which tends to divorce religion from any human 
 interest. Our first prayer teaches us to ask not that 
 we may be transferred into the kingdom of Goi), but 
 that the kingdom of GOD may come among us. And 
 conformably with this the Avhole life of the Christian 
 is rightly spent in the effort to see more of GOD in 
 His Word and in His works, and to make Him seen 
 more clearly by others. We are placed, as it were, 
 in the presence of a veiled glory. The practised eye 
 can habitually pierce beneath the covering, and even 
 we of duller vision come to feel, first perhaps in seasons 
 of darkness, the reality of its effulgence. In a word 
 heaven is not for us so much a 'yonder' towards 
 which we have to move, as a ' here ' which we have to 
 realize. It lies about us, even as we live and move 
 and have onr being in GoD, though often we know it 
 not. While we work and wait and watch, now this 
 bright glimpse now that is given ; and it is due to our 
 own faithlessness if every spot in which we are set 
 does not become to us like the stony desert to the 
 fugitive patriarch, a Beth-el, a very gate of heaven. 
 
 Doubtless it is hard to endure as seeing tJie invisible, 
 but when the spiritual eye grows dim, the thought of 
 Christ risen /// Whom we are, will remove the mists 
 which cloud them. If once we realize what these 
 words 'we are in Christ' mean, we shall know that 
 beneath the surface of life lie depths which we cannot 
 fathom, full alike of mystery and hope. The very 
 fact that Christ lived and lives with the fulness of His 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE GOSPEL OF [Serm. 
 
 perfect manhood is sufficient to enable us to appreci- 
 ate the possibiHties of our being. Everything" that is 
 human catches a brightness from that supreme hght : 
 everything that is transient is found to be charged 
 with an abiding issue by contact with that eternal 
 Truth. 
 
 3. The faith in the Resurrection of Christ can 
 then inspire life. Once again it can transform it. 
 We have seen that our nature, our personality, is a 
 result of complicated forces and yet is indivisible. If 
 we try to form a distinct conception of what we call 
 vaguely our soul, we shall find that we include in the 
 idea all the details of circumstance and action and 
 feeling and thought, which go to make up that which 
 we feel to be ourselves. If we attempt to leave out any 
 part, however small, even in the remote past, the pre- 
 sent result is changed. The acts and the words of our 
 childhood, nay, the acts and the words of our parents, 
 bear ever fresh fruit in us. And as far as we can look 
 forward, wherever we can represent ourselves as living 
 still, under every conceivable change of circumstance 
 and organization and faculty, we are forced to regard 
 this manifold result as still continuing. Where it 
 ceases ive too cease : where it fails ivc too are maimed 
 and imperfect. 
 
 This inevitable conclusion is very solemn. At 
 first sight, and without Christ, it is overwhelming. 
 We know each how, as life goes on, its stream grows 
 stained and turbid. Dark memories from distant years 
 
III.] THE RESVRRFXTIOX. 37 
 
 come unbidden and minijlc with its current. We can- 
 not stay the source once opened. And for the infinite 
 future, is there tlien no release, no restoration, no puri- 
 fying power.-* Must we for ever carry with us not only 
 the impress of the past, but that ever-springing fount 
 of sorrow, if not of sin, Avhich lies in the bitter recol- 
 lection of good neglected or evil done .'' The answer 
 comes to us from the cross and from the sepulchre. 
 Beloved, now arc zvc tJic sons of God, and it doth not 
 yet appear what lue shall be : but ive know that, ivJien 
 He shall appear^ zue shall be like Him ; for ive shall 
 see Him as He is. The open vision of GOD in Christ 
 will then transform us into His image. By that the 
 most amazing miracle of Divine love and Divine power 
 will be consummated, the complete forgiveness of sin 
 crowned by the transfiguration of the sinner ; and in 
 the mean while to look for that, to prepare for that, as 
 far as we may do, to treasure up such glimpses of 
 that ineffable glory as may be shewn to us, to carry 
 with us throughout our whole work the recollection 
 of the Risen Saviour, is the profession to which we 
 are pledged, the mission to which we are called, the 
 strength with which we are clothed. 
 
 To repeat then what has been said, the belief in 
 the Resurrection of Christ harmonizes life, inspires 
 life, transforms life. The words are lofty words, and 
 if for us they are words only they bear with them the 
 sad condemnation of a noble ideal recognized and 
 abandoned. But, my friends, I cannot think that we 
 
38 THE GOSPEL OF [Skr.m. 
 
 shall rest contented with the possibility of such an 
 issue. To make of life one harmonious whole, to 
 realize the invisible, to anticipate the transfiguring 
 majesty of the Divine Presence, is all that is worth 
 living for. What life is, as we sec its outward form 
 in the vain shadow of earth, the lesson of the last two 
 days may teach us. Suddenly, without time for 
 special preparation or parting counsel, one^ of our 
 own body passed almost at once from the fulfil- 
 ment of his daily ministry to helpless unconscious- 
 ness, from unconsciousness to his final rest ; but by a 
 most touching coincidence the last words which he 
 accompanied in this Cathedral' express, as we trust, 
 his last prayer and his last confession, and breathe 
 comfort beyond any words of man: Lo ! this is oitr 
 God, "lVC have waited for Him, and He will save us : 
 this is the Lord, zee have waited for Him, ive zuill be 
 glad and rejoice in His salvation. I cannot, as a 
 stranger, speak with fit judgment of his services, but 
 I know that they were long, that they were faithful, 
 that they were zealous ; and I know that work so 
 done by the grace of GOD, follows him who has been 
 enabled to do it, to bear fruit beyond all that we can 
 imagine, and that the memory of it survives to be a 
 silent power for good among those who shall come after. 
 Death, after earthly duty loyally, humbly, patiently 
 
 ^ Mr John Speedily, organist of Peterborough Cathedral from 1836, 
 died suddenly August 7, 1S69. 
 
 ^ The last words of the anthem at eveninc: service on Ausnist > 
 
III.] THE RESi-RRECTIOy. 39 
 
 fulfilled, is not the end but the beginning of life. 
 That is the Gospel of the Resurrection to which our 
 thoughts have been turned this morning; and may 
 God in His great mercy grant to us all to know, as 
 our hope is our brother knew, not in word but in 
 power, the Gospel which we preach and ye believed, 
 the Gospel of Christ's Passion and Christ's Triumph. 
 
 Peterborough, 
 Eleventh Sund.vy .\fter Trimtv, 1869. 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 SUFFICIEXCV OF GOD. 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 sufficiency of god. 
 
 2 Cor. hi. 5. 
 Our sujficicucy is of God. 
 
 These Avords of St Paul which occur in the Epistle 
 for the day carry forward the thoughts with which we 
 have been occupied in part on the two last Sundays. 
 We have seen the manifoldncss of the materials which 
 are given into the hands of the Christian to use in the 
 service of GOD : we have seen the harmonizing, inspir- 
 ing, transforming power of the Christian faith. But 
 when we fall back from the earnest longing for a con- 
 secrated life to the littlenesses and distractions and 
 failures of each passing day : when we contrast the 
 power of our creed, as an ideal, with the actual effect 
 which it produces upon our habitual manner of acting 
 and judging: — it is impossible that we should not be 
 filled with a profound distrust of ourselves. We are 
 tempted to declare, in the bitterness of disappoint- 
 
44 SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. [Serm. 
 
 ment, that after all the vision of a life moulded into 
 one whole, and animated by one Spirit, was but a 
 dream ; that we cannot realize the Life and Passion 
 and Resurrection of the Lord as certain truths which 
 must colour the whole stream of our existence. And 
 indeed so it must be, so long as we look at ourselves. 
 In that contemplation of self lies weakness without 
 the prospect of support; failure without the promise 
 of redemption. But if it be well that we should learn 
 by sad experience w^hat we cannot do by our own 
 power, still, to rest in this knowledge of despair is to 
 renounce our birthright. Discomfiture and defeat are 
 means by which GOD draws us closer to Himself. 
 Each fresh discovery of our helplessness, if we use the 
 opportunity, reveals to us at the same time a present 
 source of succour. We are alone, as it may seem, 
 or {&\^, or pov/erless, in the midst of the world, which 
 moves on its way with irresistible force : we are beset 
 and baffled by circumstances which lie wholly without 
 our control : we dishonour and discredit by our faint- 
 heartedness the name which it is our privilege to 
 bear ; yet even so, in isolation, in failure, in dejection, 
 only let tlie thought of self perish, and we shall know 
 that we are not desolate : ojir sufficiency is of God. 
 
 St Paul when he used these words originally was 
 .speaking of the ministers of Christ, and it is in this 
 relation that we must first consider them ; but we 
 may also extend their application further to those 
 secondary ministries of life and thought to which 
 
IV.] SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 45 
 
 every believer is devoted. The ordinances of the 
 Christian society, the conduct of the Christian life, 
 the confession of the Christian faith, all alike derive 
 their sufficiency from GOD. Looked at in themselves, 
 they may seem poor and unmeaning and foolish, but 
 when referred to their Divine sprin<^, and thereby 
 seen in their proper majesty, they become a pozvcr of 
 God and a zvisdoni of God. 
 
 I. This is true in the first place of the ordinances 
 of public worship, the institutions of the Christian 
 society. It is perhaps very natural that we should 
 regard these according to the sensible effect which 
 they are calculated to produce upon our feelings, and 
 thus remotely upon our actions. We can see, for ex- 
 ample, that a particular exercise of devotion is likely 
 to move us deeply, and forthwith we set an immode- 
 rate value upon it: another may appear dull and un- 
 interesting, and though it may be providentially com- 
 mended to us, we unreasonably neglect it. Every- 
 one's experience will furnish him w'ith examples of 
 what I describe. We disregard too frequently the 
 public and social aspects of religion. We crave to fol- 
 low out each step in the process by which w^e are in- 
 dividually to be made like to GOD, and judge before- 
 hand the direction in which the steps must be made. 
 Perhaps even we grow restless and dissatisfied, and 
 murnmr that privileges are withheld from us which 
 others enjoy. Doubtless it is by such stirrings as 
 these that provision is made for progress in the 
 
46 SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. [Sf.rm. 
 
 Church, but the part of reformers is reserved for 
 few, and for them it is encompassed with peril. To 
 the mass of us meanwhile it may be a lesson of in- 
 estimable comfort that we are not left to an uncertain 
 caprice in the choice of the means by which we shall 
 publicly approach GOD. Let us then forget ourselves 
 when we meet together, and think of Him only, and 
 He will assuredly make Himself felt. The dullest 
 sermon at least offers a fragment of His word. The 
 loneliest service is at least rendered in His immediate 
 presence. There is a danger, and I should be most 
 unwilling to underrate it, of coming to regard outward 
 acts of worship as inherently meritorious, but there is 
 a danger to which we appear commonly to be more 
 liable, of neglecting to look for any blessing from 
 Divine ordinances apart from the emotion of which 
 we are ourselves conscious. The whole system of 
 public worship is, if I may so speak, sacramental. 
 Not only does it rest on the two Sacraments as its 
 essential basis, but each part is a symbol of a spiritual 
 antitype and fitted to be the channel of a spiritual 
 grace. We meet here not as kinsmen, not as friends, 
 not as outwardly bound together by ties of depend- 
 ence or duty, but simply as members of Christ whom 
 He has called to work in His Body. It is then im- 
 possible not to acknowledge that in this relation we 
 may look for peculiar blessings when once we feel 
 that each service is a function of a spiritual life. If 
 in humble and faithful expectation we lay ourselves 
 
I\'.] SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 47 
 
 open to the Di\ine influence, as \\c do to the air 
 and the sunshine, not attempting to define too curi- 
 ously how it quickens us : if we a\ ho teach sink our- 
 selves utterly in the message with which we are 
 charged and the ministry which we have to fulfil : if 
 you who hear look beyond the voice and the instru- 
 ment to Him whose love is so brought near to you : if 
 all come together in this place prepared to receive and 
 not to create, to offer themselves and to find life and 
 access of life : then we shall understand by fellowship 
 with the Author of all strength what it is to confess 
 and to know that our sufficiency is of Gon. 
 
 2. The ordinances of public worship in this way 
 force us to think on our common spiritual life. Un- 
 less they are regarded in this light they have no dis- 
 tinguishing mark. The special blessings which they 
 bring, as we feel upon the least reflection, come from 
 God and must be sought from God ; and faith is 
 soon content to wait upon His will. But in the activ^e 
 ministry of life it is more difificult to learn the same 
 lesson. Here where we seem to trace the course and 
 the issues of actions more plainly, we are apt to con- 
 tinue more hasty and impatient and discontented. 
 It is very hard to realize the vitality of effort. It is 
 very hard to labour as believing that he who plants 
 can rarely see the rich fruitage of the tree. It is very 
 hard to refrain from measuring ourselves by ourselves 
 and claiming our reward before men. We complain 
 — whose conscience does not accuse him — that we 
 
48 SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. [Serm. 
 
 have toiled in vain. We say bitterly that we may 
 fold our hands and rest, for no deliverance is wrought 
 by us. We forget the harvest reaped from others' 
 labours while we murmur that the seed which we have 
 cast upon the ground remains long hidden. And all 
 this is because we do not firmly grasp the truth that 
 in all we do our sufficiency is of God. What we have 
 is from Him : what we do is for Him. As soon as 
 we really feel this we shall not be strong only, but 
 strong in quietness. We shall be afraid to anticipate 
 the results of devoted service, but rather commit them 
 to His keeping in whose hand are ivc and our works. 
 
 To many the saying zuhatsoevcr is not of faith is 
 sin has seemed exaggerated, the command pray with- 
 ont ceasing impossible ; and yet both, I believe, must 
 be applied literally to life. Every part of life cannot 
 but have a connexion with that unseen world by which 
 we are surrounded. To realize this connexion is 
 faith ; to seek fellowship with its King through Christ 
 is prayer. And just so far as we limit our purposes 
 and desires by the visible and the temporal, we miss 
 our true aim, we sin. Just so far as we claim no 
 heavenly guidance and support, the clearest sight of 
 the beauty of the eternal order is simply a vision of 
 condemnation. And if this be so, or rather since this 
 is so : while that heavenly light can stream over the 
 occupations of our daily business: while that heavenly 
 communion can be made vital by lifting the soul 
 upward in the momentary acknowledgment of God's 
 
I\'.] SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 49 
 
 Presence ; shall we not be satisfied to do calmly and 
 for eternity that which we find prepared for us, know- 
 ing that all so done must work its proper work, un- 
 flattered by success and undisturbed by failure, be- 
 cause our sufficiency is of God ? 
 
 3. Such a view of life, infinitely noble as it is, 
 naturally comes, as we have already seen, from a 
 belief in the first elements of the Christian Creed. 
 But who has not trembled often at the contrast be- 
 tween the words of our profession and the type of 
 life with which we are satisfied ? It seems as if it 
 were impossible to embrace in simple sincerity the 
 true import of the awful facts to which our Christian 
 name bears witness. The more our conceptions of 
 the universe are widened the harder it seems to be to 
 realize that the Maker of all took our nature upon 
 Him and died for us and bore our transfigured nature 
 to heaven. Faith becomes more difficult in propor- 
 tion as our need of it becomes greater. Yet even 
 here the text speaks comfort. It raises us above our- 
 selves : it points to the beginnings of faith in the love 
 of God : it recognizes the cooperation of our will, but 
 traces all our strength to a Divine source. No man, 
 it is written elsewhere, can say that jfcsus is the Lord 
 but by the Holy Ghost. To be ready then to declare 
 that we do believe that Christ died and rose again for 
 us : to welcome the new bond which the gospel esta- 
 blishes among all men : to wait even with dim eye and 
 dull ear for the coming of the kingdom of heaven : 
 W. S. 4 
 
50 SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. [Serm. IV. 
 
 is for us a sign that the Spirit is active within us. 
 We may still feel difficulties which no intellectual 
 effort can wholly remove : we may still find natural 
 impulses urging us to selfish indulgence : we may still 
 be cumbered with much serving when Christ is wait- 
 ing to speak to us ; but it is enough if we have learnt 
 our weakness : it is enough if we can lift the cry which 
 was once powerful against the might of evil : Lord, 
 I believe ; help Thou ^nine tinbelief : it is enough if 
 we look beyond ourselves for the confirmation of our 
 faith, and know that our sufficiency is of God. 
 
 To sum up all then very briefly, the losing of self 
 in the supreme thought of GOD is the secret of our 
 power as Christians. In this spirit it is that we are 
 taught to frequent the services which Christ has 
 ordained, waiting devoutly for the blessing which 
 He is ready to give. 
 
 In this spirit it is that we are taught to offer to 
 Him our lives, in the sure trust that He will con- 
 secrate them to the eventual ministry of His Church. 
 In this spirit it is that we are taught to come 
 before Him with our faltering confession, knowing 
 that in due time He will confirm it by the witness 
 of personal experience. 
 
 So may we be enabled in devotion, in action, in 
 belief, to know ever more certainly that our suffici- 
 ency is of God. 
 
 Peterborough, 
 Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 1869. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. 
 
 4—2 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. 
 
 St Luke x. ^y. 
 Go, and do tJiou likewise. 
 
 There is no one among us who is not familiar with 
 the story of the good Samaritan which we have heard 
 again this morning as the Gospel of the day. There 
 is no one in whose heart its deep lesson of love does 
 not find a clear response. But in this as in all other 
 narratives of Holy Scripture there is a freshness which 
 no acquaintance deadens : a fulness of meaning which 
 no single experience exhausts. As we change our- 
 selves, the details appear in new combinations : as we 
 view them in altered lights, they become radiant with 
 unexpected brightness. 
 
 Thus the circumstances with which the parable is 
 connected by St Luke bring it into a significant rela- 
 tion with the topics which have been presented to 
 us on the last three Sundays. If at that time the 
 
54 ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. [Serm. 
 
 Lord could thank His Father that the mysteries of 
 redemption were revealed to babes, the thanksgiving 
 apphes to us who have learnt that spiritual service 
 lies in the consecration of simplest duties. If at that 
 time He could pronounce His disciples blessed, be- 
 cause their eyes saw and their ears heard what was 
 not made known to prophets and kings, the blessing 
 belongs still more to us for whom each day makes 
 clearer the manifold glories of the Gospel of the 
 Resurrection. If at that time the student of the Law, 
 who had rightly penetrated to its meaning and sought 
 by deeds to inherit life, required to be placed face to 
 face with an ideal This do and than sJialt live, felt 
 to be alike true and unattainable, the lesson is no less 
 for us who hardly learn by disappointment and dis- 
 aster that om- sufficiency is of God. 
 
 Moreover the parable itself has a close application 
 to ourselves. If as yet we have advanced no further 
 we may hope that we have all at least reached the 
 position which the lawyer had gained. Like him 
 we have an adequate theoretic knowledge of the 
 faith in which we have been born. Like him we 
 are, I assume, honestly desirous to turn our theory 
 into practice, even if we are tempted to attach an 
 inordinate value to our works. Like him, I do not 
 doubt, we are often ready to justify ourselves when 
 we are confronted by claims which we are unwill- 
 ing to satisfy. For us then, no less than for him, the 
 story of the Good Samaritan has its peculiar lessons. 
 
V,l ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. 55 
 
 It tells us that wo are to carry our intellectual know- 
 ledge of religion into the actual conduct of life : it 
 tells us that humanity is the only limit which Goi) 
 has placed to the ministries of love : it tells us that 
 opportunity is the test of character : it tells us, not 
 indeed with stern irony to earn life by a perfect obedi- 
 ence, but to manifest the life which Christ has given 
 us in the faithful endeavour to fulfil the noblest in- 
 stincts of our nature. May GOD grant that we may 
 listen to the lessons, and as He gives us strength, obey 
 them. 
 
 !. A pure Creed is indeed an inestimable bless- 
 ing. No greater privilege is given to men than to be 
 able to advance in the knowledge of Divine things, 
 to ler.rn by slow and patient thought how truth is set 
 against truth, and all the various lines of revelation 
 in the words and works of GOD converge to one great 
 unity. He who has carefully reflected on what he 
 professes to believe, and pierced to the spirit of his 
 faith, like the lawyer in the parable, has gained a 
 vantage-ground for action. But knowledge is only a 
 vantage-ground and not a victory. If we neglect to 
 turn to use the superiority which it gives us, our 
 defeat will only be the more disgraceful because we 
 were so richly furnished for the battle. Religious 
 truth cannot be of the intellect only. It must, if it 
 be held vitally, shew itself in life. 
 
 What then is the practical power of our peculiar 
 faith .' How is our conduct direct!}- influenced by 
 
56 ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. [Serm. 
 
 what we hold as Christians, or as members of the 
 Enghsh Church ? How do the special articles of our 
 belief move us to exertion when we are tempted to 
 indolence ? how do they discipline us to self-restraint 
 when we are tempted to pleasure ? how do they 
 ennoble with a Divine dignity the trivial details of 
 our daily business ? how do they gather into one 
 supreme sacrifice the manifold services in which we 
 are engaged ? They can do this, and if they do not 
 according to the measure of our infirmity, I fear that 
 we cannot be said, in any true sense, to believe at all. 
 If we take the simplest examples my meaiiing 
 will be most evident. Can any one, for instance, sin- 
 cerely believe that GOD the Father made the world, 
 and not regard all creation, even in what we call its 
 lowest forms, with a devout reverence ? Here too 
 there are marvels of love and wisdom, partly veiled 
 and partly open, before which we must check all 
 wantonness and wilful caprice. Can any one sincerely 
 believe that GOD the Son redeemed all mankind, 
 and not feel his soul stirred within him towards those 
 who as yet have known no tidings of the Gospel } 
 Here too there are around us in the ignorant and the 
 outcast those for whom Christ died, to whom we are 
 privileged to commend our faith by the tender ofifices 
 of charity. Can any one sincerely believe that GOD 
 the Holy Ghost sanctifieth all the elect people of 
 God, and be content to drag on a life of poor frivolity 
 without claiming for it the glory of transfigurement 1 
 
V.l ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. 57 
 
 Here too there are occasions and faculties and im- 
 pulses which the Spirit is waiting to convert into 
 springs of blessing. 
 
 Such questions, which rise out of the first elements 
 of our Creed, must help us to feel what a gap lies 
 between our confession in words and our confession in 
 acts. And if we pass on to the characteristics of our 
 own branch of the Church, how few among us look 
 upon these as fresh motives, fresh instruments for 
 labour, which are given not to minister to our pride 
 but to fit us for our appointed task ! Yet is it no- 
 thing that a temple like this in which we are gathered 
 reminds us of the splendours of our inheritance.-' Is 
 it nothing that we claim to represent the national 
 Christianity of England by direct succession from the 
 earliest times .'' Is it nothing that our Catholic Church 
 has never been permanently compressed within any 
 partial mould of truth, but has been able at all times 
 to bring fortli from its treasures things nczv and old, 
 to satisfy the wants of all who come to it for support 
 and guidance } Nay rather in all these things there 
 are unexhausted sources of strength. But we, in our 
 faithlessness, divorce theory from life, and forget that 
 each advantage becomes for us a more effective mo- 
 tive for energy, and that the superior purity and 
 completeness of our faith must, if it be real, manifest 
 itself in increased power of action. 
 
 3. At this point, however, I can imagine that we, 
 like the lawyer, may inquire in genuine perplexity. 
 
58 ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. [Serm. 
 
 where we are to find scope for this practical energy 
 of faith. To him the answer was given in an inverted 
 form. He asked who was his neighbour. He was 
 told to consider who acted as a neighbour. And in • 
 this inversion lies a deep truth. It is one of the ne- 
 cessities of our imperfect lives that we fence ourselves 
 round with prejudices and tastes and party sympa- 
 thies. We are unconsciously narrowed in our real 
 apprehension of the fellowship of men. We require 
 to be pointed to deeds of heroism and devotion in 
 those from whom we are most widely separated in 
 order that we may actually feel the bond of the com- 
 mon nature which underlies every difference of class 
 and creed. When we doubt to whom we must shew 
 love in the strength of our Christian faith our eyes 
 are directed, it may be, to one who denies it, who yet 
 by his works shews that he is moved by the love of 
 purity and the love of truth, which zve draw from an 
 unfailing source. 
 
 The thought is one on which it is well to dwell 
 in times like our own, when sharp intellectual differ- 
 ences are found on all sides combined with common 
 zeal for the removal of definite evils. Our faith, let 
 us remember, is not opposed to the truest instincts 
 of humanity, but rather makes their fulfilment possible. 
 If, as I believe, what is called Natural Theology has 
 no substantial basis, man is naturally religious, and 
 the Gospel furnishes him with motives sufficiently 
 powerful to overcome the temptations of selfishness, 
 
v.] ACTIOX THE TEST OF FAITH. 59 
 
 and hopes sufficiently strong to support liini through 
 the long delays which separate the seed-time and the 
 harvest. The Christian differs from the patriot and 
 the philanthropist not so much in the immediate ends 
 which he seeks as in the impulses by which he is 
 moved to seek them. If his aims are always wider 
 and more far-reaching, they are forced upon him 
 by convictions infinitely more persuasive. A spiritual 
 Samaritan, a stranger that is, or even an enemy to 
 our faith, may first open to us our duties, but then 
 we shall confess with shame that we were already 
 })ledged to the fulfilment of those offices of charit}- 
 by the neglect of which we have brought discredit on 
 our name. 
 
 3. And this reflection brings me to the last point 
 in the parable which I wish to notice. No exam- 
 ple can shew more clearly that opportunity is the 
 test of character. We may be sure that countless 
 little acts of cowardice and self-seeking had hardened 
 the priest and the Levite against the final claim made 
 upon their devotion. We may be sure that countless 
 tender services of unquestioning love had prepared the 
 Samaritan to imperil himself in the hope of saving an 
 alien. They had not contemplated desertion so dis- 
 graceful : he had not set before himself devotion so 
 complete. But when the crisis came it revealed the 
 accumulated results of a long, slow growth in selfish- 
 ness and sacrifice : it revealed the intrinsic hollowness 
 of a life hitherto holy in the sight of men : it revealed 
 
6o ACTION THE TEST OF FAITH. [Serm. 
 
 the fatal difference between a true faith dissociated 
 from faithful action, and instinctive piety loyally- 
 obeyed. 
 
 And as it was of old time, so it is now. It must in 
 the end be disastrous to cherish a creed which finds 
 no expression of its characteristics in our lives. The 
 Christian will pause from time to time to satisfy him- 
 self that he does, by God's grace, work in the spirit 
 and by the help of his faith. It is always easy to 
 find excuses for good undone and evil done ; but each 
 excuse accepted removes our faith farther away from 
 the sphere of life and weakens the motives by which 
 it prompts us to action. Those who left the wounded 
 man to perish could doubtless have awakened compas- 
 sion in others by describing the extremity of their 
 own peril. The dying traveller would have become 
 simply an incident in their story. Such a version of 
 the occurrence would, we must confess, have seemed 
 plausible. It is only by the contrast that we feel the 
 baseness with which ministers of GOD betrayed their 
 trust. It is only by the appeal to instinct that we 
 can fitly condemn their degeneracy from their creed. 
 And when we apply the test to ourselves, when we 
 compare what our faith enables us to accomplish and 
 what our humanity claims from us, with what we 
 actually effect, we shall be ready to take the condem- 
 nation to ourselves. Some men who have been and 
 are most active in reforming our criminals, in elevat- 
 ing our poor, in purifying the methods of government. 
 
v.] ACTIO X THE TEST OF FAErH. 6 1 
 
 in ennobling the aims of national policy, arc without 
 the all-constraining belief in the Gospel which we 
 hold. We ought to be stronger and more active than 
 they. If we arc not our Christianity must be passing 
 into a form. Thus we shall find in every record of 
 self-sacrifice an imperious call to us as Christians to 
 test the reality of our belief. In every golden deed 
 by which GoD reveals the possible nobility of man 
 we shall hear His clear command : Go and do thou 
 likrcvisc. Go and do tJiou likewise: faith in Christ fur- 
 nishes thee with a motive of irresistible force : faith 
 in Christ furnishes thee with an instrument of in- 
 exhaustible strength. 
 
 PeterhoroHgk, 
 Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1869. 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 PROGRESS FROM THE CONFESSION OF COD. 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 PROGRESS FROM THE CONFESSION OF GOD. 
 
 St Luke xvii. 15. 
 
 One oj them tvhen he saiv that he was healed ticrncd 
 back, and zvith a lond voice glorified God. 
 
 We were led last Sunday Morning to consider the 
 right interpretation which the heart of man gives to 
 the Divine truth of our common brotherhood ; to 
 see in the action of a Samaritan a luminous commen- 
 tary on the Law of which he was held to be the 
 enemy ; and so to ask ourselves very humbly what 
 practical use we make of the special treasures of 
 faith and discipline which are committed to our 
 keeping, not for theory but for life. In the person of 
 an alien the Lord then set before us the type of our 
 duty to man. To-day he sets before us again in the 
 person of an alien the type of our duty to GOD. The 
 coincidence is not to be overlooked. It is as if He 
 would teach us among other things this great lesson, 
 W. s. 5 
 
66 PROGRESS FROM THE [Serm. 
 
 that instinct ratifies the Gospel, and forces us to re- 
 cognize in the deeds of strangers to our covenant the 
 principles which ought to b£ the necessary spring of 
 all we do or think. It is as if he would teach us that 
 the human soul, when it is true to itself, strives up- 
 wards, and that our Christian faith makes the fulfil- 
 ment of its aspirations not only possible but natural. 
 And though the miracle of the ten lepers is less fami- 
 liar to us and less pathetic than that parable of the 
 Good Samaritan, the details of the history add singu- 
 lar force to its central teaching. 
 
 A common misery, we read, had brought together 
 men who otherwise had no dealings with one another. 
 As lepers the Jew and the Samaritan Avere equal. 
 In distant isolation they confessed their common un- 
 cleanness afar off. They lifted up one voice of 
 prayer. They received one testing command. All 
 alike proved faithful under this trial, and all alike 
 were cleansed. Then appeared the difference which 
 lay deep in their inmost souls, deeper even than the 
 springs of faith. One — one only of the ten — zvJien 
 lie sazu that he zuas Jiealcd turned back, and zvitJi a lond 
 voice glorified God and fell doivn at [Jesus'] feet, 
 giving Him tlianks ; and he was a Samaritan. In 
 that generous devotion, which formalists would call 
 disobedience, we seem to see the spontaneous nobility 
 of his true manhood. He could not fulfil the letter 
 of the injunction which had been imposed upon him 
 till he had satisfied its spirit. He could not claim 
 
VI.] CONFESS/OX Of COD. Cy 
 
 from the priest the witness of purity till he had openly 
 acknowledged the magnitude of the blessing which he 
 had received. He could not make the prescribed 
 offering in the Temple of GoD, till he had rendered 
 grateful worship to Him in whom he had found the 
 Presence of GOD. An imperious voice within him 
 called him to an immediate service. To that all other 
 claims must yield. The delay indeed was but for a 
 moment. From the lips of Christ he heard at once 
 that his heart had interpreted rightly the will of his 
 Saviour ; and then he was charged in new strength to 
 complete the interrupted duty: Arise, go thy zuay: 
 tJiy faith hath saved thcc. 
 
 What then, we may ask, did he gain more than 
 his fellows ? They too were made whole even as he. 
 He too was commanded to leave Christ even as they. 
 The answer is near at hand. They found the bless- 
 ing, but he found the spring of blessing. They ex- 
 perienced the action of life, but he reached to the 
 soul of life. They remained what they were, devout 
 Jews, it may have been ; but he welcomed in his soul 
 the revelation of the power of faith. He had seen 
 God : he had given glory to GOD : he had moved 
 others to look for GOD by the confession of his own 
 experience : for him all things were become nciv. 
 
 And for us, my brethren, the essential circum- 
 stances of the narrative are realized every day. GOD 
 is ever cleansing, strengthening, blessing us through 
 Christ, like those ten lepers. And for our part we 
 
 5—2 
 
6S PROGRESS FROM THE [Serii. 
 
 are not slow to render to Him the prescribed service 
 of decent devotion ; but how few there are among us 
 who pause to recognize His personal love and pre- 
 sence in the act of mercy to themselves : to tell 
 courageouslywhat things He has done for their souls: 
 to stir others by opening the sources of their own joy. 
 And so it is that our Christian life seems to be so 
 poor, so fragmentary, so undiffusive, that many ques- 
 tion whether it has any longer more than a traditional 
 existence, while it is unable to interpret, and combine, 
 and fertilize, the materials of thought and action with 
 which we are called upon to deal. If however we can 
 pierce to the spirit of to-day's Gospel : if we can make 
 our own that which the one Samaritan gained over 
 and above his restoration by his public adoration of 
 the Lord, then I believe that all will be changed. 
 Life will become not a prayer only but a psalm of 
 thanksgiving, uniting at every point the visible and 
 the invisible in hope and in accomplishment. But 
 to this end, like him, we must see GOD : we must 
 give glory to GOD : we must confess GoD openly 
 before men. 
 
 I. We must see GOD. It is true that in GOD we 
 live and move and have our being, and still very 
 commonly we do not see Him. There is a won- 
 derful saying of one of the greatest of the Greek 
 philosophers, which will help to explain my meaning. 
 Strangers had come from a distance to render him 
 their homage and profit by his wisdom. On their 
 
\'i.i coxFESsioy OF con. 69 
 
 arrival they found him engaged in tlie humblest of 
 domestic labours. Ashamed to surprise him in what 
 seemed to them a menial service, unworthy of a great 
 master, they would have withdrawn unnoticed ; but 
 he recalled them by a word which laid open the 
 divine mystery of life. ' Enter,' he said, ' for there 
 ' are gods also here.' Yes, my friends, there are gods 
 also here : that is the thought which explains and 
 ennobles our trials, A little more keenness of sight. 
 a little more quickness of ear, and we might become 
 conscious of the divine powers by which we are en- 
 circled. For us doubtless the point of that sa)'ing of 
 Heraclitus is concentrated in a way which he could 
 not have imagined by the coming of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ; but still even in its old .shape it may be of 
 use to us. It is an incalculable blessing to be abh' 
 to pause at any moment and say ' GOD is also here': 
 it is an incalculable blessing to pause and say it. All 
 our habits of thinking and planning tend to remove 
 the idea of GoD far away from us. We become 
 familiar with so many modes of applying and trans- 
 forming force and life, that we £fre in danger of for- 
 getting that we do not create them. Yet it matters 
 not how many links in the great chain of sequence 
 we may be able to distinguisli and follow: they do 
 not help us to dispense with a beginning. And Faith 
 knows that that beginning is GoD, even our Father. 
 
 The effort thus to see GOD about us is, I say, of 
 the highest practical moment. There is no one here 
 
;o PROGRESS FROM THE [Serm. 
 
 perhaps who has not known the vakie of the thought 
 TJioii God sccst me, but this 'seeing GOD ' of which 
 I speak is something more. TJiat is a safeguard but 
 tJiis is strength : that keeps us from doing but tJiis 
 arms us to do : that suggests the presence of a Judge 
 but tJiis the presence of a Redeemer. And in the 
 common details of life it is this, the conviction of the 
 nearness of GOD to help us, which we want above all 
 things. We pray languidly, expecting little: we take 
 the gifts and the trials which come to us for the most 
 part as a matter of course: we are like 'the nine' 
 who made their petition and received their answer, 
 without actually knowing that the petition was ad- 
 dressed to a present GOD, and that the answer came 
 directly from Him. But when the better way is 
 opened let us boldly enter upon it, and claim, like 
 the Samaritan, to see the personal love of God in the 
 action of His Providence. 
 
 2. If we see GoD we shall then, in the next 
 place, be ready to give Him glory. It does indeed 
 appear to be an amazing thing that man can give 
 glory to God, so that it be acceptable to Him. The 
 fact points to some deep harmony of creation which 
 we are as yet wholly unable to comprehend. Here 
 all human analogies fail us ; and still we know that 
 we can magnify the honour of GOD, not as though 
 He needed anything, but as if He rejoiced in the free 
 devotion of His creatures. For ourselves however we 
 can see more clearly what privileges are included in 
 
VI.] COXFESS/OX OF COD. 
 
 this power of giving glory to GOD. It assures us that 
 we have fellowship with Plim; and that our true work 
 is His. There must be some likeness of nature, or 
 the tribute would be impossible. There must be 
 some community of purpose, or we should not rejoice 
 instinctively in the thought of the Divine omnipo- 
 tence. And as we exercise the powers which enable 
 us thus to realize a Divine conmiunion they become 
 insensibly more pervading and more energetic. Who- 
 ever has cultivated the habit of looking to GOD and 
 praising Him will have found growing up within him- 
 self the vital consciousness of a present Saviour by 
 Whose strength and for Whom he is working. He will 
 have learnt not to be impatient of results, for he knows 
 that we see but little of that which can be seen even 
 on earth, and that the end is not here. He will have 
 ceased to trouble himself as to what GOD gives him 
 to do, for he feels that the work of GOD is one, and 
 that all faithful labour contributes to its fulfilment. 
 He will have rested in the assurance that what he is 
 allowed to do is of moment only as one test of what he 
 is enabled to be, for he sees that the influences of life 
 propagate themselves in countless incalculable ways. 
 He will have penetrated to the secret of unfailing 
 strength ; for in reply to each fresh acknowledgment 
 of Divine mercy he will find borne in upon his soul, 
 as the revelation of the law of life, t//j' faitJi hath 
 saved tJicc. 
 
 ^ In the mean time he will have recoernized 
 
72 PROGRESS FROM THE [Serm. 
 
 also that his sense of God's goodness has imposed 
 upon him duties towards his fellow-men. The Sama- 
 ritan when lie saw that he was hcalei, turned back and 
 with a loud voice glorified God. It was not enough 
 then that his gratitude should be real ; it was to be 
 open too. And this brings us to the last point which 
 I wished to notice. In that open confession which 
 Christ blessed lies a lesson which we need greatly. 
 There is, I think, nothing sadder in the world than 
 the waste of Christian influence. From one cause or 
 another we shrink from the responsibility of avowing 
 our deepest convictions. Partly it is from the fear of 
 ostentation and singularity, partly from self-distrust 
 and sincere humility, partly from more unworthy 
 motives. But from whatever cause it may be, by so 
 doing, we wrong our friends. We leave unspoken the 
 word which might have cheered or guided or turned 
 them. By our coldness we suffer them to remain in 
 doubt whether GOD has visited us. If the heart be 
 full, men argue, its feelings will find utterance. If the 
 Christian creed be accepted as the Truth, it cannot but 
 colour the whole life of the believer. Not to speak then 
 of our highest hopes, not to talk, one with another, 
 of what, as we trust, GOD has done and will do for 
 us, is to cast discredit on our name. When that is at 
 stake we may well forget ourselves. It was strange 
 and presumptuous, no doubt, in the one Samaritan 
 to turn back alone. The ignominy of his descent ex- 
 posed his boldness to yet severer criticism. But none 
 
y\.] CONFESSION OF GOD. 7Z 
 
 the less his boldness was welcomed with a blessing. 
 He was strengthened himself by his confession, and 
 he strengthened others. And so will it be with us. 
 No one, I fancy, has ever ventured to cast aside his 
 religious reserve without meeting with sympathy for 
 which he had not looked, and gaining courage from 
 the sense of spiritual fellowship. How caji it be 
 otherwise .-' It is not of ourselves we speak but 
 of God whom we have seen. It is not our own 
 honour which we look for, but the glory of our 
 Father which is in heaven. It is not of any spe- 
 cial prerogative we make boast, but of a blessing 
 which is offered as the common heritage of men ; 
 for Christ is tJie propitiation for our sins : and not 
 for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. 
 So may we all see Him as our Redeemer and our 
 Strength : so may we give Him glory : so may wc 
 confess Him before men ! 
 
 Peterborough, 
 Fourteenth Sunday akiek TRiNrrv, 1869. 
 
 V.A.\1UKIUGE: i-KlNTI^L) AT ^H& UNIVUKSITY PKEba. 
 
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