OF THL UNIVERSITY or ILLINOIS 252 P972p V2 NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materialsl The Minimum Fee for ' each Lost Book is $50.00. The person charging this material is responsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN L161— O-1096 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. VOL. II. Rev. B. B. PUSEY, D.D. EEGITJS PEOFESSOE OF HEBEEW, AND CANON OF CHEIST CHUECH. " O knit our hearts unto Thee, That we may fear Thy Name/ LONDON: AVALTER SMITH (late MOZLEY), 34, King Street, Covent Garden. 1883 PLYMOUTH : PRINTED AT THE PRINTING PHESS OF THE DEVONPORT SOCIETY. 1883. 1)^1- TO THE EIGHT llEVEREND FATHER m GOD, THOMAS VOWLER, ^ovts Mi^f^a^ of ^. ^^aqpl), THIS VOLUME IS, (with his peemission,) eespectfully insceibed, in grateful acke70wled ghent of benefits received in youth from his earnest practical teaching and religious instruction, of his faithful friendship amidst advancing years, and of his fatherly and episcopal eindness UNTIL now; WITH THE EARNEST PRAYER THAT GOD WILL BLESS HIS PEACE-LOVING SPIRIT AND HIS ZEAL FOR SOULS TO THE HEALING OF OUR WOUNDS AND THE SALVATION OF HIS PEOPLE. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIEST EDITION. The appearance of this Yolume was delayed by the loss of some Sermons, in a desk, taken from the Eeading Station. If the Sermons on the texts Dan. iv. 27 ; and S. James v. 19, 20 ; or S. John XX. 21, beginning Peace is a holy rest," should have fallen into any one's hands, the Author would be thankful to have them restored. CONTENTS. SERMON I. EAITH. Galatians v. 6. In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any- thing, nor uncircicmcision, but faith, which worketh hy love J ^ . SERMON II. HOPE. Psalm xxxi. 16. My hope hath been in Thee, 0 Lord : I have said, Thou art my God,*^ SERMON III. LOVE. 1 Corinthians xiii. 13. And now abideth faith, hope, charity y these three : but the greatest of these is Charity,*' • • . viii CONTENTS. Page SERMON IV. HUMILITY. FEAST OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. St. Luke xxii. 26, 27. ITe that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve, I am among you as he that serveth.'* .... 63 SERMON V. PATIENCE. SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 1 St. Peter ii. 22. *^ Even hereunto ivere ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps'' 80 SERMON VI. SELF-KNOWLEDGE. St. Matthew xx. 22. Jesus answered and said. Ye know not what ye ash. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? They say unto Him, We are able,'' . . 98 SERMON VII. LIFE A WARFARE. i Corinthians ix. 26. / therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." . . . . 113 CONTENTS. ]X rage SERMON VIII. THE BESETTING SIN. HEBREWS xii. 1. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weighty and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race tvhich is set before us . 130 SERMON IX. VICTORY OVER THE BESETTING SIN. St. Luke iv. 1^ 2. And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil." . , 146 SERMON X. PRAYER HEARD THE MORE THROUGH DELAY. SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. St. Matthew xv. 28. Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt'* . . 167 SERMON XI. RE-CREATION OF THE PENITENT. Psalm li. 10. " Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a right spirit within me," 181 X CONTENTS. Page SERMON XII. THE SIN OF JUDAS. PaLM-SUNDAY. St. Matthew xxvii. 3 — 5. Then Judas which had betrayed Him, when he saiv that He was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief Priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, in that I have be- trayed the innocent Blood, And they said. What is that to us ? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself" 197 SERMON XIII. THE ASCENSION OUR GLORY AND JOY. ASCENSION-DAY. St. John xii. 26. " If any man serve Me, let him follow Me : and where I am, there shall also My servant be." . . . 216 SERMON XIV. THE TEACHING OF GOD WITHIN AND WITHOUT. WHIT-SUNDAY. PSALM XXV. 15. " The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will shew them His covenant" . . • ^40 CONTENTS. XI Page SERMON XV. THE REST OF LOVE AND PHAISE, TRINITY SUNDAY, Revelations iv. 8. " They rest not day and night saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Which was, and is, and is to come:' 259 SERMON XVI. FAITH IN OUR LORD, GOD AND MAN. FESTIVAL OF ST. PETER, 1845. St. Matthew xvi. 15 — 17. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? And Simon Peter ansivered, and said. Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus answered and said, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and hlood ■ hath not revealed it unto thee, hut My Father, Which is in HeaverJ' 283 SERMON XVII. GROANS OF UNRENEWED AND RENEWED NATURE. FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Romans viii. 22^ 23. " We knoiD that the whole creation groaneth and travail- eth in pain together until now ; and not only they, hut ourselves also, ivhich have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan ivithin ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our hody" , 304 Xll CONTENTS. Page SERMON XVIII. VICTORY AMID STRIFE. Rom. vii. 22, 23. ^' I delight in the law of God after the inward man ; hut I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind^ 327 SERMOM XIX. VICTORY THROUGH LOVING FAITH. EASTER. 1 St. John v. 3, 4. " This is the love of God, that we keep His command- ments ; and His commandments are not grievous. For tchatsoever is horn of God overcometh the world : and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our SERMON XX. THE POWER AND GREATNESS OF LOVE. FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 1 St. John iv. 7, 8. " Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God, and every one that loveth is horn of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.'' 356 SERMON XXI. OUR BEING IN GOD. Acts xvii. 28. " In Him we live, and move, and have our heing/* . 372 SERMON XXII. THE SACREDNESS OF MARRIAGE. Ephesians v. 33. * " This is a great mystery ; hut I speak concerning Christ and the Church.' ' 387 * SERMON I FAITH. Gal. v. 6. In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing^ nor uncircumcision^ hut faith luhich worketh ly loveP Faith is the foundation of the whole spiritual build- ing, whereby we are built on Christ Jesus. It is the root of the whole spiritual life of grace, the ground whereon the soul rests securely, the beginning of our spiritual existence. Faith goes even before love, in thought, but not in deed. It goes before love, in thought ; for we love, because we believe, not believe, because we love. Faith gives us, in this our state, the knowledge of Him Whom we love^ Faith is instead of eyes. By Faith we see Him Who to our eyes of sense is unseen. We behold both backwards and forwards, and round about us, and every way we behold the love of God. And, behold- ing and knowing His love, we ourselves, through \ Ol. II. B 2 Faith. His gift, love. Backward, we by Faith behold God creating us, and we see our own fall ; we behold His Holiness, and Goodness, and Love, forming ns to loye Him everlastingly ; and when we had fallen, by Faith we behold Him, the Father, for ns willing that God the Son should take our fallen nature, should be born, despised, tortured, crucified, die for us. By Faith we see God the Son willing, for our sakes, to become Man. We see our dear Lord and Ee- deemer on the Cross, as though we were, with St. Mary Magdalene, at its foot. Faith has no past nor to come. It sees past and to come in the light of God, and is sure of them ; yea, surer than of what it sees. More readily could it doubt that itself is, or that the things it sees are real. More readily could it think that all which it sees around is a dream ; all things of nature, which are seen with the eyes of the body, a vain show ; seeming to be, as in a dream, yet not being, than it could doubt that God IS, or IS what HE hath said HE IS. For what we see around us we know to be, by our mere powers of nature. Faith is a Divine power. They are mere bodily powers, these eyes which shall soon decay, which tell us that the things around us are. Faith is the eye of the soul, which God has given us, to behold Himself. If we trust the eye of the body in things of earth, much more must we trust the eye of the soul in the things of God. If that which is high- est in us, our soul, strengthened and enlightened by God, could deceive us, much more these bodily eyes. Had we the choice (which is impossible), yet had we to believe either that this world is a mere show, just as a picture is a mere surface, without any real Faith. 3 substance, or that God IS not, it were far easier to believe that He had set us in the midst of a vast waking dream, than that He was not the Maker of all we see, that He, Whom we love, IS not. To Faith, then, the Crucifixion of our Lord is not (as some have coldly said) a fact which took place 1800 years ago, nor is Heaven a distant object, removed far from us, in space and time, until the end of this weary world. The Death of our Lord is to Faith the Eternal Counsel of the Ever-blessed Trinity, the unceasing Source of all spiritual blessings. Each act of His Sufferings is a part of the determinate Counsel and foreknowledge of God ; each is a mys- tery of Love, whereon the soul shall dwell in love for ever. Faith beholds Him, because it is beheld by Him. It gazes on Him, because He has first caught and fixed its gaze. It sees, because He has given it eyes to see. Yet so it beholds Him, and He is more really present to the eyes of the soul, than all around her. To Faith which loves, things seen fade from sight, things heard fall dull upon the ear ; it will be unmoved by all outward things. For it has an inward sight and an inward hearing, and an inward touch, whereby it beholds Him dying on the Cross for love of us, and hears Him pray for us, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" and it looks on Him "Whom, by our sins, we sin- ners pierced, and catches the look wherewith He looked on Magdalene and the thief, and clasps His Feet, and in the shadow of His Cross feels itself protected and healed. Tea, Faith can enter into that Cleft of the Eock opened for us, whence gushed ^Hhe Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness,'' B 2 4 Faith, and there it finds refuge from accusing thoughts, and the Accuser's malice. The Cross is not far off, not over the seas, in the Holy Land, nor removed by length of time. Faith sees it close at hand, and clasps it and loves it, and is crucified on it with Him, dying to itself with its Lord, nailed to it, motionless to its own desires, dead to the world, and living to Him. ISTor is Heaven far off to Faith. For where its Lord is, there is Heaven. Faith is with Him, present with Him in spirit, though absent in the body ; a penitent amid those who, around the Throne, sing ^'Holy, Holy, Holy." Although as yet unfit to enter there, where nothing defiled can enter, there it lives and loves, in ^^the ^^city of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem," with ^^an innumerable com- pany of Angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus, the Mediator of the new cove- nant." There, with them, it worships Him ; it beholds the glorious scars, radiant with Majesty and Love, which plead our cause with the Father, and it tastes^ and sees that the Lord is good " unto all that seek Him. Faith, in one sense, goes before love, because, un- less we believed, we should have none to love. Faith is Divine knowledge. As in human love we cannot love unless we have seen, heard, or in some way known, so, without Faith, we cannot know aught of God, or know that there is a God "Whom to love. Yet in act, Faith cannot be without love. " ^The^ just,' says Scripture, ' shall live by his faith,' but by a faith Avhich lives. A dead faith cannot give life." « Ilcb. xii. 22, 23. ^ Ps. xxsiv. 8. c S. Ecrn. de offic. Episcop. c. iv. n. 15. Faith, 5 Faith without love is the devils' faith. For they ' ' believe and tremble." They knew Jesus, that ' ' He was the Holy One of God." They knew, and they owned, and they besought their Judge, '^Art Thou come to torment us before the time ? " ''If Thou cast us out, suffer us to enter into the swine." Hearing must come before faith, for faith *^ cometh by hearing." But faith cannot for an instant be separated from love. Who is the Object of Faith ? God the Father, Who created us, and gave His Son to die for us ; God the Son, Who became one of us, and by dying, redeemed us ; God the Holy Ghost, Who sanctifieth us, and "pours forth love," which He is, '' abroad in our hearts." We were as stocks and stones without faith ; but He died, even ''of these stones to raise up children to Abraham." Are we stocks or stones now, that, having faith, we can be- lieve without loving ? Which of His acts of bound- less love should we believe without loving ? Were it not enough to bear us out of ourselves for love, to transport us, to make us give up our lives for love, to carry us away out of ourselves and of all that we are, to think that for us, earth-worms and defiled, Jesus died ? Does not the very name of Jesus make the heart beat, and tremble, and thrill with love ? Could a criminal really believe that he had received a full pardon from his injured King, or that the King's Son had suffered to obtain his pardon, and was come to tell it him and forgive him, and not love? Well might he doubt such love. Eut he could not believe it and not love. Faith and love would enter his soul together. So is it with chil- li Rom. X. 17 6 Faith, dren, who with simple faith believe^ and place no hindrance to belief and love. Tell them of their Good rather in Heaven, and they together believe in and love Him. Tell them of Jesus' love, and they together believe in and love Him. Tell them of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, that He vouchsafes to dwell in them, and they listen with wondering awe and love ; they believe at once and love. Love is in all true faith, as light and warmth are in the ray of the sun. Light and warmth are in the sun's ray, and the sun's ray brings with it light and warmth ; not, light and warmth, the sun's ray : yet, where the sun's ray is, there are light and warmth, nor can that ray be any where without giving light and warmth. Even so, faith it is which brings love, not love, faith ; yet faith cannot come into the heart, without bringing with it the glow of love, yea, and the light wherewith we see things Divine. So soon as faith is kindled in the heart, there is the glow of love ; and both come from the same Sun of Eighteousness, pouring in faith and love together into the heart, and ^Hhere Ms nothing hid from the heat thereof." In winter, fewer rays come upon any spot of this land from the sun ; whence there is then less brightness of light and less glow of heat than in summer ; and so the surface of the earth is chilled ; and though for a time the frost be melted by that fainter sun, this warmth, coming upon it only for a short time, soon passes away. Even so, there are degrees of faith and love. Yet they may be real faith and love, even when the power of both is lessened, in that the soul does not keep itself or ® Ps, xix. 6. Faith. live in the full presence of God. Or, as through a closed window, more light comes than heat, so in some hearts, there may be more of knowledge than of love. And again, as on a cold misty day, when the sun is hidden from our eyes, we are so oppressed by the clamminess of the chill damp upon the surface of our bodies, and by the heavy gloom around, that we scarcely feel the presence of the light and heat ; and yet the light and heat are there, else we should be in utter darkness, and our bodies would die ; even so, many hearts, at many times, when some mist hides from them the Presence of their Lord, feel nothing but their own coldness and numbness, and all seems dark around them, and yet in their very inmost selves they believe and love, else their souls would be dead, and they would be ^'past ^feeling," and they would not pine for more light and love. A dead body is in darkness, and seeth not the light of this world, and has an aweful coldness to the touch ; yet itself feels not its own coldness^ nor knows its own darkness. Even so, the dead soul, being without the life of God, feels not its own death, craves not to love more. Eor He Who is Love hath left it, and it hath no power wherewith to desire to love, unless or until the Yoice of Christ raises it from the dead and awakens it and it hears His Yoice, and lives. Or think on the great instances of faith in Holy Scripture. Think you not that Abraham loved, as well as believed, when God first spake to him, and called him to give up his country, and his kindred, and his father's house, and instead of all, God said, I will bless thee," and he took God for his All, and f Eph. iv. 19. 8 Faith, " went out, not knowing whither he went," save that he was following God ? Or did not Moses love, when, tanght of God, he renounced ^'the wisdom of the Egyptians," and refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt?" Or David, did he not love, when, in zeal for the honour of the Lord of Hosts, he went forth, a stripling, in His Name, to meet the champion of the Philistines ? Or did not love with faith revive, when the royal penitent said, I have sinned against the Lord," and much more, when the Lord had put away his sin, he, all life-long, said, My sin is ever before me ?" Why did he wish to be cleansed with the atoning hyssop, even the humiliation of our Lord in His Passion ? Was it not for love of God? Thou desirest truth in the inward parts." So he longed to be what God would have him. What longed he for, but not to be ^'cast out of God's Holy Presence^," or lose His Holy Spirit, His Presence, from the soul ? Or in St. Peter, when both faith and love had been chilled in the night of the Lord's Passion, did they not revive by that gracious look wherewith He recalled him to Himself, and melted him into tears of penitence and love ? And of that other great penitent, St. Mary Mag- dalene, our Lord bears witness that in her there were together love and faith; and for both together, a loving faith, or a ^' faith working by love," our Lord tells her, '^thy sins are forgiven." Truly, she had great faith, who knew and believed the Physician of her soul. Whom the Pharisee who received Him knew not, who knew that ^^the Son of Man had s Ps. li. 3, 6, 7, 11. Faith, 9 power on earth to forgive sins," and could read lier heart, and know what she was and what she longed to be and what she came for, and would not disdain her and would accept her love, and that she might kiss His Feet, and that, when she washed them with her tears, He would wash away her sins. Truly she had great faith, who died to all that the world thought of her, and, seeing only her Eedeemer, came uncalled, with such holy boldness, to Him Who had come to seek and to save that which was lost, yet had drawn her only with the cords of love, in her inmost heart. But our Lord speaks first of love. Her sins are forgiven her, because she loved much," to shew us, that in all true repentance and faith there must be love ; and then^ having pronounced to her the forgiveness of her sins, to herself He says, ''Thy faith hath saved thee." Faith saved her, because it brought her to Him, the Saviour. Yet had not her faith had love, she had not been forgiven, for He, the Truth, says, "Her sins are forgiven her, heccmse she loved much. And think you not, that she must have loved much, when she poured out her tears with the ointment upon His Sacred Feet ? She knew Him "Whom the self-righteous Pharisee knew not. She knew, far better than he, " vv^ho or Avhat manner of woman" she was who touched Him ; she knew far better the depth of the loathsomeness of her own sin ; for she loathed it in herself. Eut she knew what the Pharisee knew not. Who He was Whom she touched. She knew that Holiness came from His touch to her, and that her touch could not defile Him, Who " was Holy, harmless, separate from sinners." Think ye not that those hot burning tears which dimmed her 10 Faith, eyes, and washed her Saviour's Feet, were tears of burning love ? Could she but love, when she kissed the Feet of God, wearied in seeking her, the lost one, and He despised not her polluted and adulterous lips, but rather ^' virtue went out of Him," to cleanse them ? Or was there not love in the faith of the penitent thief, when he discerned his Saviour by his side, in that marred Form, which '^had no beauty or come- liness," ^'His Yisage was so marred more than any man, and His Form more than the sons of men," and he said, Lord, remember me in Thy Kingdom." There was humility, which owned that it deserved to be forgotten, and wondrous faith which owned in Him, the rejected of men," his Lord and King and God. But there was love too. For love only craves to be remembered. It was the penitent cry of the holy Psalmist; ^'Eemember^ not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Thy Mercy, remember Thou me, for Thy Goodness' sake, 0 Lord." There was mighty love, and hope, and trust, which could so wrap up all its longings in that one word, remember me." ^^Deal with me as Thou wiliest, so Thou remember me." And so that inward desire He answered, To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." What would love have, but to be with Him it loves ? The robber desired, not to be out of the thoughts of His Saviour. J" esus gave him more than he dared ask or think, not at some distant day, when He should come in His Kingdom, but To-day." Jesus would not ^'remember" him only, as afar off. He would that the robber should h Ps. XXV. 7. Faith, 11 be nigli Him. His Mother remained behind in sor- row, the Apostles in perplexity, the whole redeemed world in darkness. But to the robber Jesus saith, thou Shalt be with Me ; " Hhou with ME thou, the blood-stained, with Me Who shed My Elood for love of thee and of the whole world ; thou, now defiled, with Me the All-Holy ; thou, the prey and sport of all evil passions and of devils, with Me Who have bruised Satan ; thou, who hast been like the beasts which perish, with ME the All-wise, All-mighty, All- good God. What a torrent of love does He pour into the penitent's heart. Thou with Me. " Yet the love which He had given him, called for the love which now he gives Him. The cry of humble love Lord, remember me too, all unmeet to be remembered, Lord for Thy love's sake, remember,'' called forth the words of Divine Love, ^'To-day shalt thou be with ME." Or think you not that, when God opened' the heart of Lydia, to attend unto the things spoken by Paul," He poured into her heart which He had opened, love with faith ? Or when Paul said to the affrighted jailor, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house," must not he who just before would have killed himself, have loved Him Who had brought His servant through stripes and sufferings, to teach him, how not he only, bu.t his house might be saved from wrath, and have everlasting joy in God ? Or when, amid the mocking Athenians, Dionysius and Damaris and others clave ^ unto Paul and believed," was there not love with faith? Love is the glue whereby i Acts xvi. 14, 31. k Acts xvii. 30. 12 Faith. hearts cleave unto God, or to His messengers and ministers for His sake "Who sends them. Or when Peter bade those, pricked in the heart, because ^'that same Jesus Whom they had crucified, was both Lord and Christ," '^repent and be baptized eyery one of you in the jSTame of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you and to your children," think ye not that the three thousand, who gladly received the Word," were full of love with faith, and that, believing, they loved ? Eaith which loves not, is not faith ; it is dead. And what is dead, hath ceased to be. The outward form too will soon decay and come to nothing, when life is gone. Where love is not, there is not the Holy Spirit, Who is Love, and Who shed abroad love in our hearts." And without the Holy Spirit there cannot be faith, since faith is the gift of the Spirit. A dead body is a body without a soul ; a dead soul is a soul without God. A dead faith" is a faith without love." A dead body is, for the time, until it wholly decays in outward form, like a living body or a body asleep ; a dead faith has an outward likeness to a living faith. Eut as a dead body has no warmth nor power of motion, nor feel- ing, nor can use any of the powers it once had, nor has them any longer, it can neither taste, nor see, nor hear ; so a dead faith is that which has no love, no power to do good works. It perceives not, hears not, tastes not, feels not, the things of God. Devils believe that God IS ; they know against Whom they have rebelled and do rebel. Whom they hate. Devils Faith, 13 or bad men may "believe God/' that is, believe what God saith. The devil, though of himself he eamiot foreknow it, believes that "he^ hath but a short time," and therefore hath the greater " wrath," and puts forth the more hate. Bad men have believed, "to-morrow we die," and so said, "let us eat and drink," making this their belief the more an occasion of sin. Neither devils nor bad men can " believe in God." For "to believe in God," says a holy man"", "is by believing to love, by believing to go into Him, by believing to cleave unto Him and be incorporated among His Members." Judas believed that our Lord was the Christ, when he betrayed Him. He believed that Jesus was holy, and so repented when he saw Him con- demned. But sin and the love of money had stolen away his love of God, and faith was dead. Pilate believed, so as to fear, and to regard our Lord as one, come from God, and innocent. He feared Csesar more, and could not believe in Jesus. The High- Priests believed that Jesus did many miracles ; they could not believe in Him, because " they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God." Cain believed that God would punish him as He said ; but, being of that wicked one, he had neither re- pentance, nor love, nor faith. Jeroboam and Jehu believed what God told them of themselves, and did His "Word, as far as it was what they wished. Nei- ther J eroboam nor Jehu believed in God ; for J ero- boam was he who caused Israel to sin, and Jehu, while he destroyed Baal out of Israel, departed not 1 Eev. xii. 12. S. Laur. Justinian, dc Fide, c. 3, 14 JPaith, from Jeroboam's sin. For the worship of the calves favoured his worldly policy ; the worshippers of Baal were Ahab's friends, and so were against himself as well as against God. As love is the life of faith, so, with the increase of love, faith increaseth. Even from man towards man, faith and love grow together. The more we love, the more we understand and the more we trust one another. "We trust, because we love, and by loving, know God. "We can only know God, by loving Him. St. Paul says, ^'I know in Whom I have believed." Want of love is the cause of all want of faith. Did we fully love God, who could for a moment doubt of Him ? Who could repine at any loss, or pain, or want, or sickness, or bereavement, if he loved God with his whole soul and heart and strength ? For strong love can have no hard thoughts of God. All mistrust of God implies that He is not All-good or All-wise. But love liveth by good works. Love cannot live torpid. Even in human love, love which never did deeds of love would grow chill and die. We love those most, to whom we do most good. Love is perhaps increased more by doing than by receiving good ; at least, by doing good out of the love of God. Acts of love do not prove only that we have a living faith ; they increase it. Eor to do good is to use the grace of God ; and on the faithful use of grace, more grace is given. Faith worketh" (literally '^nworketh^," the word means, worketh in the very soul itself) ^^by love." But it has been thought, if faith, on which God ^ ivepyovixivrj. Faith. 15 holds US righteous, or justifying faith, have love in it, are we not accounted righteous for something in ourselves ?" We are justified, or accounted righteous before God, neither for faith nor love, but for the Merits of our Lord Jesus Christ Alone. And faith and love alike, although in us, are not of us ; both are alike the gift of God. So St. Paul says, ^^to you it hath been given [given, the word means, by grace °, and as grace] in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake," and again, "By? grace ye are saved, through faith, and that [faith] not of yourselves ; it [faith] is the gift of God even faith whereby we are accounted and made righteous before God, is not our own, lest we should think we had anything of our own; '4t" [faith] also, ^4s the gift of God." But this gift, whether of faith or love, is so given, that it is with us to receive it. We come to God by faith and love. But "no man cometh unto Me" saith our Lord, " except the Father, Which hath sent Me, draw him." But by both he draws us through our will, not drags us without or against it. The pleasures of sense and of the world draw us one way. God the Father and Christ draw us the other. ]N'either, irresistibly. '^If" says a father^, "pleasure draweth, how much more may we say that a man is drawn to Christ, who is delighted by truth, delighted by blessedness, de- lighted by righteousness, delighted by everlasting life, all which Christ is ! " "Believe^, and thou com- est ; love, and thou art drawn. Think not that it is 0 cxapto-^T?. Philip, i. 29. P Eph. ii. 8. q S. Aug. in Evang. Joh. c. 6. Tr. 26. n. 4. ' Id. Serm. acl Pop. Serm. 131. n. 2. see p. 586. Oxf. Tr. 16 Faith. a rough and painful violence ; it is sweet, pleasant ; the very sweetness draws thee." The drawing of grace changes nature, and strengthens nature, re- forms nature, subdues nature, but only if we be willing to be changed, reformed, subdued, strength- ened. We are drawn with the cords of a man, not dragged as brutes. '^The drawing of grace raises upwards towards Heaven the will, inclined towards the flesh ; allures it, when resisting ; strengthens it, when weak ; gladdens it, if saddened ; gives it, when fearful, a good courage towards good. It was man's sin that, when He came unto His own, His own received Him not," but to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His Name." ^'He gave them power," which by nature they had not and could not have ; here is the grace and gift of God ; but,^^ to as many as received Him," here is the will of man, although enabled and receiv- ing power to receive Him, from God. he does not say here, ^^He made them Sons of God," (although when we receive Him, He doth so make us, for none can make us the sons of God save God Himself by the Holy Spirit of adoption) but here He goes further back and says ^' He gave us power." He wishes," says a father at the same time to shew thee that not even grace cometh upon us any how, but on those who wish for it, and take pains about it." He doth not give to us, unwilling or careless, but if we ourselves will it and consent and long for it. How then may we know if we have this faith ? How may it grow and be strengthened in us ? — How s S. Chrys. Horn. x. n. 2. in S. Joh. i. 12. p. 84. Oxf. Tr. Faith, 17 do we know that our bodies live ? As," says a holy man^, we discern the life of this body by its motion, so also the life of faith by good works. The life of the body is the soul, whereby it is moved and feels; the life of faith is love; because by it, it worketh, as thou readest in the Apostle, ^ Faith which worketh by love.' "Whence also when charity waxeth cold, faith dies ; as the body, when the soul departeth. If then thou see a man, earnest in good works, and gladly fervent in conversation, doubt not that faith lives in him. Thou hast undoubted proofs of its life." Wouldest thou again that thy faith should grow and be strengthened in thee ? If thou art not drawn," says a father ^'pray that thou may est be drawn." If thou canst not pray fervently, pray for the spirit of prayer and supplication, and 'Hhe Spirit Himself shall help thine infirmities and make inter- cession for thee, according to the Will of God." Heed not, if thou seem not at first to be heard. Eemember the Syrophenician woman, and take cou- rage. He Who seemed to neglect her, inwardly drew her to persevere, and then crowned her perse- verance by the words of blessing, 0 woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt." Act faithfully, according to thy degree of light and what God giveth thee to see; and thou shalt see more clearly. Hearken to the low whispers of His Voice within thee, and thou shalt hear more distinctly. Above all, do not stifie any motions of conscience ; for this were to deaden faith. * S. Eern. in Temp. Ees. Serm. 2. n. 1. p. 906. « S. Aug. in S. John 1. c. n. 2. Vol. II. c 18 Faith. If thou art in doubt how to act, set the Day of Judgment before thee, and act now as thou wouldest then wish that thou hadst acted. It sorely injures faith, to act, suspecting that thou art acting amiss. For it is the part of Faith, to act without seeing, in all which it dimly hopes to be according to the Will of God. Wean thyself from pleasures of sense, if thou wouldest have strong faith. Moses despised the pleasures of a king's court, and so became ^'a man of God," faithful in all his house," through faith ; the children of Israel lusted after the leeks and onions and flesh-pots of Egypt," rebelled against God and lost the promised land. Be not taken up with an earthly future, if thou wouldest look beyond the veil, and behold Him Who is Invisible." Be not anxious about little things, if thou wouldest learn to trust God with thine all. Act upon faith in little things ; commit thy daily cares and anxieties to Him ; and He will strengthen thy faith for any greater trials. Eather, give thy whole self into God's Hands, and so trust Him to take care of thee in all lesser things, as being His, for His Own Sake, Whose thou art. Meditate daily on the things of Eternity, and, by the grace of God, do something daily, which thou wouldest wish to have done, when that day cometh. Eternity fades quickly from sight, amid the mists and clouds of this world. Heaven is above our heads, yet we see it not with eyes fixed on the earth. Especially, in any temptation of Satan, call quickly to mind Whose thou art, in Whom thou hast be- Faith. 19 lieved. Whom resist," says St. Peter, '^steadfast in the faith." Taking," says St. Paul, the shield of faith, whereby ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the devil." Above all things, in all things, look unto JESUSy the Author and Finisher of thy faith." Do things through His grace, for Him, looking to Him as thy everlasting Great Eeward. Let nothing keep thee back from Him. If thou failest, look to Him to up- hold thee ; if thou stumblest, hold swift His Hand to keep thee ; if thou failest, lie not hopelessly there, but look to Him to raise thee ; if by His grace thou doest well, look to Him in thanksgiving, that He has helped thee, and pray that thou mayest do better. Mourn to Him, for love of Him, that thou ever of- fendedst Him ; mourn to Him all thy offences, one by one, against Him ; but pray Him that for love of Him thou mayest no more offend Him. Do deeds of love for Him, to Him, following His steps. The severing of love," says a holy man^, is the death of faith. Believest thou in Christ? Do the works of Christ, that thy faith may live. Let love give life to thy faith, works prove it. Let not earthly deeds bow down, whom faith of heavenly things raises up. Thou who say est thou abidest in Christ, oughtcst so to walk as He walked. If thou seekest thine own glory, enviest the prosperous, speakest ill of the absent, renderest evil to him who injureth thee, this did not Christ. Thou confessest that thou lovest God, but in deeds thou deniest Him. Thou hast given thy tongue to Christ, thy soul to the devil. Thou canst ^ S. Bern. Serm. 24. in Cant. n. 8. c 2 20 Faith not lift up the head, bowed down by the yoke of the devil. Thou canst not raise thyself, when thine iniquities go over thy head, a heavy burden, too heavy for thee. Even a right faith, if it work not by love, maketh not men upright. Nor can works, although right, make the heart upright, without faith. For ' without faith it is impossible to please God.' "Whoso pleaseth not God, God cannot please him. For whom God pleaseth, he cannot displease God. If then neither faith without works, nor works without faith, suffice to make the heart upright, let us, who believe in Christ, labour to make our ways and^our deeds upright. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God, that we may be formed wholly upright, proving by right deeds the rightness of our faith, loving and loved by the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, God Blessed for evermore. AmeiL" SERMON II HOPE. Psalm xxxi. 16. ^^My hope hath leen in Thee^ 0 Lord: I have said, Thou art my God,^^^ Satai^ ensnares mankind, alike througli false hopes or through hopelessness. He heeds not whereby he ensnares them, so they fall into his hands. He will allure or will affright them ; he shews himself as an angel of light, or in his own hatefulness ; deceives them through shew of virtue, or hardens them, openly to defy God. Very often he first allures themthrough false hopes, and then affrights them by false despair ; blaspheming first God's Holiness and then His Mercy. He leads them to follow him blindfold to the edge of a precipice, as though they could not fall ; and then he persuades them that it is too late, and that they must fall. He persuades them, that they can stop short when they will, and that so they may go 22 nearer and nearer; then lie turns the brain dizzy, and although, by one strong effort, through the yet lingering grace of God, the hapless being might re- coyer and shake him off, he persuades him that he must fall. Up to their fall, Satan lures men by false thoughts and hopes of the mercy of God ; as though God were not so severe and would not so punish this sin ; when fallen, he would keep them by false de- spair, as though there were no hope. Against these wiles of our deadly foe, God gives' us for our shield, the gift and grace of Divine hope. It much behoves us then, to know what true hope is, that we be not lured to our ruin by false hopes, or held back in our Christian course by false hopeless- ness. For what should one say of the seeming hopes of most of mankind ? What would ye say, brethren, of the hopes of the seaman^, whose open boat was tossed in a heavy sea, rolling heavily now this way, now that, at times half filled by the waves breaking over it, and guided by an unsteady hand ? If ye would think his hopes good, then think theirs also good, who take no heed beforehand to the assaults of their besetting sins, give way to their passions, and without looking to the ways whereby they burst upon them, or to the Cross of Christ, are mastered by them. Or what would ye think of him, who without chart or steerage or knowledge of the coast, was floating along in a dangerous sea, amid hidden rocks and whirlpools, going he knew not whither ? Ye would say that if he were saved at last, it must be through some secret mercy of God, not that he himself has any ground of hope. Such are the hopes a Preaclied in Hayling Island. Hope, 23 of those, who go on, day by day, as chance may carry them, without any strong, steadfast, earnest purpose to find out the narrow way, which, amid the thousand ways that lead to death, alone leads to life. Or what would ye say of him, on whose vessel the water was slowly but steadily gaining, and he, at no pains to clear it out, though still far from shore and his home ? What but that, unless aroused to greater watchfulness, he too must founder and perish ? Such are their hopes, who, with unexamined, unsifted con- sciences, let petty sins creep into their lives day by day, are careless about them, because they are little, and empty them not out by daily penitence and daily prayer for forgiveness. Or what of him who, having escaped a dangerous sea, thanks God for his deliver- ance, and then, as if all danger were past, relaxes his watchfulness, and lets himself be, little by little, drifted back again into the same perils from which he hardly escaped ? If this were presumption, what is theirs who, having been roused from their death- sleep by some strong call of Christ, leave off, little by little, what they had found good for their souls, pray less frequently, are less strict with themselves, less heedful of occasions of sin, and thinking that all is well with them, are blindly sure, that all must be well with them to the end ? There are many ways to death ; one only, a nar- row way, to life. There are many false, deceiving, meteor hopes ; one only, sui^e and steadfast ; many, which end on this earth, one only ''which entereth into that within the veil," even the Heaven of hea- vens, binding the soul, amid all the tossings of this troublesome world, to the Throne of God. One only 24 Hope. hope reaches already, yea and places us already there, '^whither the Forerunner is," (not, as it were, for Himself, so Scripture speaks, but) ^'for us, en- tered," that where He is gone, there we might enter in, might tread the way which He has trod before, follow after, where He is the Forerunner and holdeth wide open the Everlasting doors, which lifted up their heads to receive Him, a High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedeck, ever living to inter- cede for us. This Hope is not a Gift only of God to cheer us on. It is also a virtue, one of the chief virtues, whose end is not man, but God Himself. H we be Christians indeed, we not only may, we ought to have this virtue of hope. Our Christian character is wanting without it. It does not merely make the difference of serving God with gladness of heart or with heaviness, as slaves or as sons ; we do not merely, with it, part with a great stay in trouble, a great spur to noble devoted exertion ; we lose a grace, and thereby our other graces and our whole tone of mind are impaired. "What is true hope then ? how can we distinguish it from those false hopes ? and if we seem to have it not, can we attain it for ourselves, and how ? Hope, as a Christian grace, it has been said, is, ascertain expectation of future blessedness, coming from the grace of God, amid well-doing," or a de- sire of heavenly good with a trustfulness of attaining it." Eut hope, as well as its sister graces, faith and charity, with which it is entwined by an indissoluble bond, is capable of increase, degrees; so that the ^ S. Laur. Justinian, de Spe c. i. fin. Hope. 25 first trembling hope of the returning prodigal may be as different from the assured hope of Paul the aged, when he had fought the good fight," had finished his course," and ''the crown of Eighteous- ness, laid up for" him, stood just before him, as may be their mansions in Heaven, or the glory of one star above another. Some hope there must be, as well as love, where there is any faith. "Without love, faith would have nx)thing to dwell upon ; without hope, faith would have no object for us. We might believe that Jesus died for all, and we might be amazed at His Love and Goodness, and the wondrous work of man's re- demption, '' God made man ; " but it has been a very miracle of grace, when love and faith have lived, while hope seemed dead. There have been those who, out of deep love which God gave them, loved Him because they could not but love, though they had but that joy of loving Him here for their re- ward, without hope for the life to come ^ ; but it was one of His most wonderful works of grace, one of the deepest trials of His most faithful ones. But, mostly, hope, faith, and love are born together in the heart, together grow, together are perfected ; together alas ! wane or die. All may be in an infant state ; all, weakly or sickly ; all, strong and glowing. About all, the soul itself may be deceived. There is a faith which is of the head only, and a love which is but of the imagi- nation and excitement, and self- wrought, and there is a hope which is but presumption. It is a separate, yet not uncommon sickness of the soul, that hope is weakly, when yet love is strong ; as in timid, mis- ^ See the Life of Brother Lawrence. Hatchard. 26 Hope. giving, scrupulous consciences, and these are objects of deep and tender sympathy. It is a very anxious sickness, when hope is buoyant, puffed up by vain conceits, without due proportioned strength of faith and love. In a healthy state of the soul, faith, hope, and love will be born, live, grow, thrive together. When the first good tidings of salvation come to one out of Christ, there must be hope for himself that he may so be saved, and love for Him Who died to save him, and faith in Him, that He, as St. Paul says, ^' loved me and gave Himself for me." And so to one, again dead in trespasses and sins, the hope that, on re- pentance, he can be saved, shoots like an electric shock through the benumbed heart, and faith and love revive together, and the dried-up soul gushes forth anew in tears of penitential love, and cries to Jesus, my Eedeemer and my God." Hope, in a manner, goes before full faith, and prepares the way for it. It opens the heart, fixes the thoughts, prepares, the will. In natural things, too, the heart cannot believe, while it hopes not. Jacob's heart was chilled with the hopeless thought of years, that his son was dead ; hope, belief, love, gushed forth together. ^^It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive ; I will go and see him before I die." Ye yourselves have felt, at times, how some ray of hope kindled new faith and love ; or some fervour of prayer, which God gave you, wakened a thrill of stronger hope ; or some deed of self-denying love, wrought through the grace of Christ, warmed the heart to hope that God had not forsaken it. And thus, in their continual flight by which they Hope, 27 bear the soul heavenwards, these three Divine Graces, are seen as it were, at times this one, at times that, before the other ; yet where one advances, the others follow ; for, even if not seen, they hardly can but be together. All have their being from the same source, the love of God towards us ; all are fixed on Him ; all return to Him. They are a threefold way of grasping or apprehending" (as Scripture speaketh) Him by "Whom we have been apprehended; three modes of holding Him "Who is Infinite, of containing Him Who containeth all things. For what is faith, but the very substance of things hoped for," making them present to the soul ? and hope maketh Him in Whom we believe, our own : and love is the very Presence of God Who is Love, in the soul. Faith saith, Christ loved me and gave Himself forme ; " and ^'hope makethnot ashamed," and saith, I know in WTiom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that Hay;" and love saith, We love Him, because He first loved us ;" I am my Be- loved's and my Beloved is mine." Each of these graces will soar higher, as the others rise also. All have their degrees. For after the Apostles had believed in our Lord, it is told us again and again, His disciples believed on Him ; " and just before His Passion they say to Him, ^'^by this we believe that Thou camest forth from God," as though, in each higher stage of belief, it was a new belief, a belief such as they never had before. ' ' Faith is the substance of things hoped for. " Without faith then, things hoped for would have no substance, no 2 Tim. i. 12. « S. Jolm xvi. 30. 28 Hope. reality. We could not hope for what we believe not. And hope, again, is the support of faith and love; as St. Paul again says, having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and your love towards all saints, for the hope's sake which is laid up for you in Heaven." They believed in Christ absent, they shewed love to all who were His, for the hope of His Presence, the hope laid up for them in Heaven, where He is. And St. Paul calls himself ^^an Apostle according to the faith of God's elect." This was the substance of his office ; but its end is, he goes on to say, " in the hope of eternal life." St. Paul saith of faith and love together, '^^your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth ; " and St. J ude prays, ^ Mercy unto you, and peace and love be multiplied ; " and St. Paul, ^^^This I pray, that your love may abound more and more ; " and St. J ohn speaks of love perfected ; " and of hope, St. Paul prayeth^, The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound (overflow^) in hope, by the power of the Holy Ghost." He prays that, in and through their life of faith, the continual energy of believing, God would give them joy and peace ; that joy and peace should enter into their belief, and be blended with it, and be a part of it, so that their belief should be joyous and peaceful ; and not only so, but that God would fill them with it, "the God of hope fill you;" and so, that faith andjoy and peace, with which they were filled, should overflow and over- f Col. i. 4, 5. g 2 Thess. i. 3. h Jiide 2. i Philip, i. 9. ^ Rom. XV. 13. ' Ilcptcro-eveu/. 29 stream the soul, and the soul have enough, and as it were more than enough, so that it cannot contain itself for joy and hope, but its joy and peace and hope should overflow to others also, and this ^Hhrough the power of the Holy Ghost," healing all wounds, strengthening all weakness, kindling all chilliness, bedewing all dryness, until all which should hinder hope should cease, and hope be lifted above itself, through the power of the Holy Ghost.'' And again St. Paul speaks of all these three graces as living together, and putting forth their life, each according to its own proper fruit. Eemembering""," he says, ^^your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ faith working by love, and love not inactive, but toiling in deeds of love ; and hope enduring all troubles and all things contrary ; and all these, ^' of the Lord Jesus Christ," by His Merits purchased, by His Spirit given, to Himself returning. So then faith, given by Him, worketh in us towards Him ; and love, shed abroad in the heart by Him, toileth for Him and for His members ; and hope abideth all things, resting in Him Who is the Eock, unshaken like Himself in Whom it is. For hope, as well as every other grace, is the Gift of God the Holy Ghost ; and so again it too groweth with the increased indwelling of the Comforter. It is a fruit of the new birth, given us by the Holy Ghost, in which we are born by Him, of Him. Blessed," saith St. Peter, ^'be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again," given us a ^ 1 Thess. i. 3. 30 new, immortal birth and life, unto a living hope through the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ ; " as though this ^4iving hope" were a very object of our new birth through the Eesurrection of Christ. And St. Paul, ]N"ow'' our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, Which hath given us ever- lasting consolation and good hope through grace P The comforts which God giveth are not like this world's comforts, fleeting, but for ever. His hopes are not, like this world's, evil and decaying, but " good," and they are through His Grace, Which is given us by the Holy Spirit. And, as a grace of God, hope grows through every other grace. Each grace of God, well used, draws down fresh grace from Him Who hath said, To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundantly." Hope, again, grows through deeds of love, done through the grace of Christ. '•^ God°," St. Paul saith, '4s not unrighteous, that He should forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed for His Name's sake, who have ministered to the saints, and yet do minister. And we desire that every one of you should shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end." Hope they already had. But ''the full assurance of hope" as yet lay beyond them. S. Paul had hopes for them; "we are persuaded," he says, "better things of you;" they had hopes for themselves; but "the fulness of hope " as yet they had not. This was an end which they were to reach unto, "to the full assurance of hope ; " and to this, he says, they would attain by persevering diligence in what they had begun, self- » 2 Thess. ii. 16. ^ o Heb. vi. 10, 11. Hope, 31 denying deeds and labour of love. So should hope become fuller and fuller, as the measure of their love increased, until they should reach to its very ful- ness ; and as they shewed forth the same diligence, so their hope also should in its fulness abide ^'unto the end.'' Again, like every other Christian grace, hope is ripened through trials and afflictions. Having been justified by faith," St. Paul says, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Such, St. Paul tells us, are the fruits of faith ; a state of grace, steadfastness in it, wherein we stand ; ") peace with God, wherein we fear no wrath nor condemnation, but with free, calm, joyous heart and soul, as His children, rejoice in hope of the glory of God ; " that is, that He will give us of that glory which He imparteth to all to whom He im- parteth Himself, His own Glory, the Glory which shone forth in the Only-Begotten Son, to Whose Glory we shall be likened. And, rejoicing or glory- ing p in this hope of the glory of God, we rejoice (however painful they may in themselves be) in all things which lead thereto. And not only so, but we glory or rejoice^ (it is the same word as before) in tribulations also; ^'knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope;" that is, troubles and trials of all sorts, but especially those borne for the sake and cause of Christ, in the Hand and through the Grace of God, work that endurance which, without P Kav^w/xc^a. Eom. V. 2. <1 Kavxw/xe^a. Yer. 3. 32 Hope, that Grace, they would shatter ^ The hammer of afflictions but knits closer together what it does not break. For, by endurance, men become more ac- ceptable to God through Christ, and are tried ; and, through trial, hope is stronger. Eor if we hope more of anything which has gone through any trial, (even in things made, we trust most in those which have been proved,) how much more, when the trust is not in man, nor in any natural power, but in God, that He "Whose love has carried His own through any trial, will the more love and carry them to the end. And so St. Paul sums up, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost "Which is given to us." Human hopes, and all hope in man out of God, do " make ashamed for they must fail us ; but hope which is of God faileth not ; for it is the fruit of love ; and love is poured out, he says, into the Chris- tian's soul ^'by the Holy Ghost which is given us." Shall hope then fail ? But love, by which it cometh, is poured out in the Christian's heart, a full stream from the Fountain of love ? Shall love then dry up? But it is ^'poured out" by God the Holy Ghost. "Will then the Holy Ghost leave us ? But He ^^is given unto us," and will not then part with us, unless we (God forbid ! ) part with Him. Our question, brethren, is already answered; how may we distinguish true hope from false? True hope is the gift of God, blended with faith and love, r "Woe to the adversities of tlie world, once and again and the third time, from the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is a hard thing, and lest it shatter endurance." S. Aug. Conf. B. X. p. 204. Oxf. Tr. Hope, 33 strengthened by deeds wrought in Christ, by acts of love, and by patience in trouble. They are not true, but deadly hopes, accursed of God", when men, pleading the mercy of God, continue in carelessness and sin, or delay repentance, as though man might offend God, because He is long-suffering. Of such. Scripture saith, ^'I^ot knowing that the goodness of God calleth thee to repentance, dost thou treasure up to thyself wrath against the Day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God It is to profane the very attribute wherein our hope is, to make the mercy of God the occasion of sin. They are not true, but deceitful hopes, whereby men trust that without effort, because they are as other men are, without any real or deep repentance, they shall be saved. For our Judge salth, ^'Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." They are not true but presumptuous hopes, whereby a man thinks he may be saved, although he avoid not diligently all which are occasions of sin to him, or because he, without real repentance, has only left off any sin because it has rather left off him. They are baseless hopes, which a man hath, who has not sifted his own conscience before God, nor hath, reviewing his whole life, repented him of the evil. They are blind hopes, if a man hope to be saved, and yet will not bear the pain of looking into his ^ It is an infidel confidence, capable only of a curse, when we sin in hope. Although that is not even to be called confidence, but rather an insensibility and pernicious despondency." S. Eern. in Annunc. Serm. 3. p. 986. Vol. II. D 34 Hope. own heart, and ^'hateth the light, and cometh not unto the light," suspecting that his deeds are evil." They are vain hopes, when ^^a man putteth his trust in himself" and his own strength, and passeth through trials without calling upon God. It is a perilous and ruinous hope when a man trusteth in his own merits*. They are broken, failing hopes, which will pierce a man, as they break under him, if '^he trusteth in man, and taketh man for his defence, and in his heart departeth from the Lord." They are false, sickening, miserable hopes, when man seeks for any happiness out of God, or, with a heart divided between God and the world, hopeth to have the world for his portion in this life, and God for his Portion in the next. Where, then, is true hope ? Let us ask the Psalm- ist, when, beholding the end of all things, he saith of all earthly things, ^'Man walketh in a vain show." " And now. Lord, what is my hope ? Truly my hope is even in Thee." His are true hopes, who, amid whatever infirmity, yet knows that he has forsaken sin, and would sooner than the whole world that he had never done it, that he would not, for the whole world, again do it, because it offended God. His are true hopes, who, amid whatever failure, has set his heart steadfastly to conquer any besetting sin by the Grace of God, and is watchful and prays for grace to do it. His are true hopes, who, as our Article says, feels in himself the workings of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and drawing up his mind to high and heavenly things." His are true hopes, who, knowing his o^vn frailty, t S. Bern. Serm. 1. in Ps. qui habitat. " Art. 17. Hope. 35 mindful of his own weakness, wholly mistrusting liimself, wholly trusting God, useth diligently grace given, he ^^keepeth himself" that 'Hhe wicked one touch him not;" ^'having the hope that he shall see God, he purifieth himself as He is pure ; " he is zealous to maintain good works," yet trusteth not in his works, but in Him Who ^'forgiveth all our sin, and crowneth" in us, not for our own merits, but in mercy and loving-kindness," the works which His grace has given. Thou, Lord, art my hope." ^'Whatever," says a holy man,"" is to be done, whatever avoided, what- ever to be borne, whatever to be -wished for, ^ Thou, Lord, art my hope.' This is to me the cause of all the promises, this the whole ground of all I look for. Let another put forward his merit, boast that he ' bears the burden and heat of the day,' say that he 'fasts twice in the week,' or, lastly, boast that he is 'not as other men are,' but for me, ' it is good to hold fast to God,' to place my hope in God. Let others hope in what they will ; one, in learning ; another, in cleverness of this world; another, in noble birth ; another, in dignity ; another, in any vanity he wills ; all these ' I have counted as loss and dung ' for Thy sake ; for ' Thou, Lord, art my hope.' Hope who will, in uncertain riches ; I will not hope for the necessaries of life save from Thee, trusting in Thy word, at which I have cast away all ; ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Eighte- ousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' For ' the poor committeth himself unto Thee, for Thou art the help of the friendless.' If rewards ^ Id. lb. Serm. 9. n. 5. 6. D 2 36 Hope, are promised me, through Thee will I hope to obtain them; ^if wars arise against me,' if the world slay- eth, if the evil one stormeth, if the very ^ flesh lustetli against the spirit,' ' in Thee will I hope.'" Brethren, to be thus minded is to live by faith. Nor can any other truly say, ^ Thou, Lord, art my hope,' unless he be inwardly persuaded by the Spirit to cast all his cares on the Lord, knowing that ' He careth for us.' Why, if we be thus minded, why delay we wholly to cast aside miserable, vain, use- less, seducing hopes, and with the whole devotion of our mind, with the whole fervour of our spirit, to cleave to this one so solid, so perfect, so blessed hope ? If anything is impossible, if anything is difiicult to Grod, seek something else in which to hope. But with a word He can do all things. If He have de- creed to save us, we shall be delivered : if He be pleased to give us life, life is in His Will ; if to give us everlasting rewards. He can do what He Avilletli. Or doubtest thou not that He can, but hast misgiv- ings of His Will ? ' Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Or how should that Majesty fail him who hopeth in Him, Who so earnestly biddeth that we hope in Him ? Truly, He doth not leave those that hope in Him. ' He shall deliver them from the ungodly and shall save them.' On what ground ? ' Because they have put their trust in Him.' Oh sweet, but effectual, unanswerable grouud ! This is, ' Righteousness ; yet not of the law, but of faith.' " Would you then grow in hope ? First cast out all vain hopes ; hope for nothing, hope in nothing out of God. 37 Then, hope is on high within the vail, where Christ sitteth on the Eight Hand of God." Grovel not in things below, among earthly cares, pleasures, anxieties, toils, if thou wouldest have a good strong hope on high. Thou canst not soar to Heaven and stoop to earth. Lift up thy cares with thy heart to God, if thou wouldest hope in Him. Then see what in thee is most displeasing to God. This it is which holdeth thy hope down. Strike firmly, repeatedly, in the might of God, until it give way. Thy hope will soar at once with thy thanks to God Who deliver eth thee. And then cast all thy care on God. See that all thy cares be such as thou canst cast on God, and then hold none back. Never brood over thyself ; never stop short in thyself ; but cast thy whole self, even this very care which distresseth thee, upon God. He hath said, ^'Cast all thy care." He has excepted none ; neither do thou. Hope is a grace and gift of God. Try not to make it for thyself, nor look in thyself for grounds of hope ; but pray God to pour it with faith and love into thy soul. Our hopes are where our hearts are. Meditate often then on the love of God, the Passion of thy Lord, the Price He paid for thee. His Intercession for thee. His Providence over thee. His Gifts ever renewed to thee. His Word pledged unto thee, and plead to the Father, that He ^'despise not the work of His own Hands, destroy not His own Image though branded by sin;" to the Son, that He ''despise not the price of His own Blood, named after His own Name, " to whom He giveth His Body and Blood ) to 38 Hope, the Holy Ghost, that He despise not us into whom He breathed life, whom He has hallowed ^ ; and He, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, in Whom alone is thy hope, will have pity upon thee, and give thee strong, sure, sustaining, well-grourded hope in Him, grounded on Him Whose "mercies" alone are "sure." "My hope hath been in Thee, 0 Lord; I have said. Thou art my God." "My hope is in Thee." Sweet is it that our hope should rest in Him Who is never shaken ; that it should abide in Him Who never changeth ; that it should bind us to Him Who can hold us fast to Himself, Who Alone is the full contentment of the soul ; that it should, as it were, enter into Him ; since "mHim is our being," Who is Love. Sweeter yet is it, that this our hope is no fruit of our own thought. We do not come at it by our understand- ings ; we do not gather it for ourselves even from His word alone. It is, with Faith and Love, His Gift, poured out within us, drawing us upward to Himself. Yet Holy Scripture has yet one sweeter word still. I^ot only is our hope in Him, but He Himself is our Hope^ " Thou art my Hope," saith y Bishop Andre wes. 2 What has been said, brethren, might seem to suffice for the explanation of this Psalm, if the Prophet had said (as it is in some other Psalms) ' in Thee have I hoped.' Eut what he saith, ' Thou Lord, art my hope,' meaneth perhaps something fuller and sublimer, that my Hope is not only in Him, but Himself. Por more properly is that called our hope, which we hope for, than that wherein we hope. There are indeed perchance some, who desire to obtain from the Lord certain things temporal or spiritual. Eut perfect love thirsteth only for the Highest, crying aloud with the whole vehemence of its longing, 'Whom have I in Heaven, Hope, 39 the Psalmist. ^^God our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ/^ saith St. Paul% our Hope." Yea, there is a deeper, nearer depth. ^^The Glory of the Mystery of the Gospel," says St. Paul, ^4s Christ in you, the Hope of glory." Christ Himself is our Hope, as the only Author of it ; Christ is our Hope, as the End >of it ; and Christ, "Who is the Beginning and the ^]nd, is our hope also by the way; for he saith, Christ^ in you, the Hope of Glory." Each yearn- ing of our hearts, each ray of hope which gleams .upon us, each touch which thrills through us, each Toice which whispers in our inmost hearts of the good things laid up in store for us, if we will love God, are the Light of Christ enlightening us, the Touch of Christ raising us to new life, the Yoice of Christ, Whoso cometh to Me, I will in no wise oast out." It is ''Christ in us, the Hope of Glory," drawing us up by His Spirit Who dwelleth in us, imto Himself, our Hope. Eor our Hope is not the ;glory of Heaven, not joy, not peace, not rest from labour, not fulness of our wishes, nor sweet content- ment of the whole soul, not understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge, not only a torrent of delight; it is ''Christ our God," "the Hope of Glory." IN'othing which God could create is what we hope for ; nothing which God could give us out of Himself, no created glory, or bliss, or beauty, or majesty, or riches. What we hope for is our Ee- but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I would desire in •comparison of Thee. My flesh and my heart fainteth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.'" S. Bern, lb. n. 8. * 1 Tim. i. 1. b Col. i. 27. 40 deeming God Himself, His Love, His Bliss, tlie Joy of our own Lord, Himself Who hath so loved us, to be our Joy and our Portion for ever. Oh will ye not then say with me, brethren, once for all, Farewell all vain hopes and desires out of God;" ^'Wliom have I in Heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee?'' ^'Thou Thyself art my Hope and my Portion in the land of the living. " In Thee I shall not be disappointed of my Hope." SERMON III. LOYE. 1 Cor. xiii. 13. And now ahideth faith^ Jiope^ charity^ these three; hilt the greatest of these is Charity J^^ ^'Chaeity^," as Holy Scripture speaks of it, '4s the love of God for Himself above all things, and of man for God and in God." It shows itself in outward acts of love to man, or, where it may be, in labour for God. But these are only outward forms, wherein the inward life puts itself forth. These shall cease in the world to come, (for where there is no misery, there is no room for works of mercy, nor for labour, where all is everlasting rest,) but Charity never faileth." It is itself deep within, in the heart, ever there, even when not called to act, like hot glowing coals, which dart forth in a quick consuming flame, * S. Laur. Justin, de cliaritate c. 1. He adds, *'0r Love is life Tiniting the beloved with the Beloved ;" also, *'Love is a virtue whereby we long to see and enjoy God." 42 Love, when fuel is laid upon tliem, but their deep, pure, wliite heat is within. Acts of love strengthen the inward fire of love ; and love, which puts itself not forth in deeds of love, would go out, as fire without fuel; but they do not first light it. Love is the ^^fire,'' which our Blessed Lord came to send upon the earth, and would that it should be kindled." He kindled it by His Own Death and Passion, heaping coals of fire upon our heads," to melt us into love. He kindled it, by sending His Spirit into our hearts, ^'a Spirit of burning" to burn out what was defiled, enlighten what was dark, make what was €old to glow, melt what was stone, purging away our dross and changing the dull ore into the fine gold. Love is of God," and " God is Love." In God, Love is Himself, His Yery Substance, the very bond of unity of the Co-equal Trinity^. For God is Love." In Angels and man. Love is the gift of God, given to man by Him Who is the Gift of God, ^'shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who is b ''For what, in that Supreme and Blessed Trinity, maintaineth that supreme and ineffable unity, hut love ? Love then is a law, a law of the soul, which in a manner holdeth the Trinity in Unity and hindeth It together in the Bond of peace. But let no one think that I here speak of love as a quality or accident. Else (God forbid) I should say that there is in God something which is not God. But I speak of that Divine Substance. And this is nothing new or unwonted, since John saith, ' God is Love.' Eightly, then, is Love called both God and tha Gift of God. So then Love giveth love ; Substantial, the accidental. "When Love means the Giver, it is the Name of Substance ; when the gift, of a quality." S. Bern. Ep. xi. n. 4. See also S. Aug. Hom. 39. in S. Joann. n. 5. p. 537. Oxf. Tr. Hom. 14. n. 9. p. 224. Hom. 18. n. 4. p. 277. " How much more must the Father, Who is God, sand the Son Who is God, be, in the Fountain of Love, One God." Love. 43 given to us." ^^Love giveth love." God "Who is Love, giveth His Spirit Who is Love, to pour abroad love into our hearts. Love then is the source and end of all good. " It alone," says a father distinguishes the children of God from the children of the devil." Without it, nothing avails ; with it, thou hast all things. If it were possible that, without it, thou couldest ^^have all faith, so as to move mountains," the Apostle says, thou wert nothing." Judas cast out devils, we must suppose ; but he was himself a devil. He was nothing, for he had not the life of God ; he was but a blot in God's Creation. Without love, all know- ledge of Divine things is ignorance ; all eloquence, though it were the speech of Angels, ^^a tinkling cymbal," hollow and empty, for it is not filled by God. Without love, all gifts of a whole substance to the poor, all zeal for the honour of God, yea, to suffer death, if it were possible, for the Name of Jesus, would profit nothing. With love, the cup of <)old water, given for J esus' sake, or the two mites, are rich acceptable gifts, and the mute longing of the soul pleads eloquently for the conversion of sin- ners ; and unlearned and ignorant men speak with the Spirit of Christ; and the weak things of the world overcome the mighty, and children trample on Satan, the prince of this world; and "things which are not, bring to nought things which are," since they are filled and strengthened and ensouled and empowered by Him Who Alone IS and 1.3 Love. " Love," says a holy man "is the beginning of all good, because it is from God, and moves to Him. c S. Aug. ^ S. Laur. Just. 1. c. c. 2. 44 Love, For love worketh great things, where it is ; but if it worketh not, it is not love. Love is the means of all good, for it is according to God, and fashioneth our deeds aright. For it hath ever the eyes towards God. It is the glue of souls, the union of faithful souls ; it is not cold through sloth, nor feigned in action, not fleeting, not rash, not headlong. Love is also the end of all goods ; for it is for the sake of God, and directeth our works, and bringeth them to the right end. It is the end of sins, because it de- stroyeth them ; the end of the commandments, be- cause it perfecteth them; it is the end of all our toils, the end of all ends to us, for our rest is in life everlasting, but God is the End in Whom we rest," and God is Love." Whence hath love its birth ? In the Infinite Love of God, in the Essence of God. Faith and Hope are towards God. They are graces put into the soul by God, whereby the soul should cling to Him, hold fast to Him, long for Him. But Faith and Hope can have no likeness in God. They are virtues of the soul towards God, bringing it near to Him, sup- porting it in cleaving to Him, opening it for His Love. They are the virtues of the creature, when absent from its Creator, companions of its pilgrim state. In Heaven, neither Angels, nor Saints, hope or believe, but see and know and feel and love. Faith and Hope are great graces ; but they, as well as works of love, will, in Eternity, cease to be. They are a ladder to reach to Heaven. When Heaven is reached, there is no more place for them. In Heaven they cannot be. Faith cannot be, where there is sight ; nor Hope, when He for Whom Ave hope, has Love. 45 fully given Himself to us ; and we have Him, the End of our faith, and are immersed in the Ocean of J oy in Him we hope for ; and knowledge, such as we have here, vanisheth away, and there will come in its stead another kind of knowledge, a knowledge not coming to us in words, nor formed by our thoughts, nor reflected to us, as through a glass darkly, not faint images of things Divine, but the Beatific Yision itself, the Very Essence of God. In God, we shall (if we attain) see God ; in God, we shall know God. J^ot only through the Manhood of Christ Jesus our Lord, although inseparably united with His Godhead and in God; not through any thing created, even His Adorable Manhood, shall we know and see God. God Himself shall the eyes of the soul behold, unveiled in His Glory and Majesty and Beauty, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as HE IS. But then, when the highest speech of God here, even prophecies, words spoken of God, through God putting them into the mind, shall cease, and instead thereof shall be the new song;" then, when, for this dim knowledge of God, through our imperfect thoughts and words, spoken after the manner of men, we shall ''know as we are knoAvn," when we shall know the Very Self, the Essence of God, even as He knows our inmost selves ; yea, then when His Divine i^ature, as HE IS, shall be open to our gaze, and Himself, with all the treasures of His Wisdom and Goodness and Love, shall be ours to behold ; and when the bright torch of Faith, which guides us in this our darkness, shall be lost in the Ineffable Brightness of the Sight of God, and Hope shall be swallowed up in the un- ceasing, assured, satisfying J oy of Him we hope for, 46 Love, beyond Whom, out of Whom, there is nothing to hope for, but a certain knowledge that our joy shall be as unchangeable as His Bliss, which shall be our joy ; then, even then, Charity never faileth." For Charity is the love wherewith, throughout Eternity, the blessed shall love God, and each other in God. On this ground, then, is Charity greater than Faith and Hope and any other grace, because it has its source in that which God IS. Charity is created love, coming forth from the Uncreated, shed abroad in our hearts" by Him Who is Uncreated Love,*Hhe Spirit Who is given us." Love is that which is most akin to that which God is. Love unites man to God. Love lifts men to Heaven, because it is of God, as it bowed God down to earth, to have pity on our miseries and sins. Love is the return and flowing back of the love of God. We love Him because He first loved us." He loved us with an infinite love. He would have us return a whole undivided love, all for All ; the whole love of man for the whole Infinite love of God. It reaches as far as the love of God. Pru- dence and wisdom are likenesses of the Eternal Pro- vidence ; but they reach, when furthest^ a very little way. Love, when well-ordered, loves, in its measure, all which God Himself loves. It loves, in its height, God Himself, for Himself, because He IS What He IS, even as (if we may reverently say it) God Al- mighty loves Himself, because He is Himself, Father^ Son, and Holy Ghost, the One Object of All-Perfect love. It loves His Holy creatures. Angels and Arch- angels, because they love Him, and His Love rests upon them. It loves the Church, because it is His Body, the multitude of His redeemed, whom He Love. 4T purchased with His own Blood." It loves those who love Christ, because Christ loveth them ; it love& those who love Him not, because He willeth them to be saved. It loves the weak tenderly, as Christ also compassionates them. It joys in penitents, as He saith ^^Eejoice with Me, for I have found the sheep which I had lost." It exults in the triumphs of martyrs, in the love of devoted souls, in the fervour of the zealous, in the purity of innocence, in whom Christ seeth of the travail of His soul and is satis- fied." It weeps with those who weep," as Christ wept at Lazarus' grave. It was in St. Paul, "weak with the weak," as Christ took the weakness and in- firmity of our flesh. It feels the goods and ills of others as its own, as Christ hungers in the hungry^ is "thirsty" and "naked," "sick and in prison," in His members. Who is there whom God loveth, whom they who love by His love, love not ? They love all whom God loveth, because God loves them, and they love Him in them, and them in the degree in which He is in them. Hence then it is love which gives the value to all deeds of faith, or devotion, or toil, or love, or mar- tyrdom; because love is of God, and refers all to God. IS'oble self-denying deeds may be for man's praise or in self-complacency ; chastity may be proud; alms-giving, vain-glorious. Active service may be its own reward; death itself may be undergone amid obstinacy. Love hath no end but God, seeketh nothing but Himself for Himself, "seeketh not her own ; " for in God she hath all things and overflow- eth; she hath, only to overflow to others; she receives, only to diffuse and to give back. All virtues are but 48 Love. forms of love, for she is the soul of all. Temper- ance, " says a father^, is love, keeping itself pure and undefiled for God. Fortitude is love, readily- enduring all things for the sake of God. Justice is love which serveth God alone, and so, hath command over all things subject to man. Prudence is love, distinguishing what helpeth it towards God, from what hindereth it;" or, '^Love^, kindled with entire holiness towards God, when it coveteth nothing out of God, is called temperance ; when it willingly parteth with all, is called fortitude. " Love contains all vir- tues ; it animates all ; but itself is beyond all. For theij are concerned with human things and human duties, with the soul itself, or its fellow men, with deeds* which shall cease when our earthly needs and trials and infirmities shall cease ; love bears them all up to God, looks out of all to Him, does all to Him, and in all she sees Him, soars above all, and rests not until she finds her rest in the All-loving Bosom of God. But since the love of God is so great, so blessed, so necessary a gift, how may we know that we have it, how grow in it ? Blessed be God, there are many degrees of it, else most might well fear that they had not any of it. Yet this may be said at once. If thou art pained that thou hast not more love for God, and desirest to love, thou hast love. Love only craves more love. Love only so contemplates the Object of love, as to feel that all its love is too little for His Adorable Love. Love only feels the absence, or seeming absence of Him it loves. Love only knows that God is above all things to be loved* « S. Aug. de Mor. Eccl. c. 15. f lb. c. 22. Love, 49 The worldly, careless, covetous, hard-hearted, the lovers of pleasure, cannot love God, but neither do they desire to love Him. They love their own god, the god whom they have set up in their hearts to love, serve, worship, — their pleasure, honour, gain, indulgence of the body, lust, praise of man. If thou knowest that God is to be loved above all things, if thou wouldest, sooner than the whole world, have one pure drop of the love of God, if, in order to have the love of God, thou wouldest part with anything which thou knewest to keep thee back from His love, thou lovest God. Holy men have distinguished four stages of love. IN'ot that all these stages are so distinct that, as when one crosses from one field to another, so soon as one is in this, one is not in that. These several kinds of love are often found mingled together ; and one may have glimpses and flashes of a higher love of God, even while, for the most part, one has but the lower love of Him. The first state of fallen man is, alas ! to *4ove^ himself for himself. Tor he is flesh, and can taste only the things of flesh." In this state, he rather fears God than loves Him. Yet man needs God. He cannot suffice for himself," cannot uphold him- self, " and so he begins by faith to seek after and lovo God, because he needs Him. And so he is brought to a second stage of love, to love God for man's own sake." Such is the love of most who love God at all. It is indeed a strange unworthiness that He, the Good of all goods, the Centre of all being, of Whom and by Whom and to Whom are all things," g S. Bern. Ep. xi. n. 8. Vol. 11. E 50 Love, should be loved only for His creatures' sake ; tliat man, this earth-worm, should love God, only because God is needful to him. Much as a man might value the sun, because it warms him and ripens his corn, so man, at first, makes himself his centre, and loves God because he needs Him. Yet God so condescend- eth to man's wretchedness. He so humbleth Himself, that He willeth even thus to be loved. Kay, He has therefore surrounded us with the blessings of nature, that all things around us may teach us to love God, because He made them '^very good." And how great then must be His Goodness Who made them good, and His Beauty Who made them beautiful, and His Mercy Who in mercy made them all, and made all to serve man ! Yet in some such way, might a heathen love. God left not Himself without wit- ness," saith the Apostle, in that He gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." It is a Christian form of this love of God for man's own sake, if a man loves Him, because He has re- deemed him, because, without Him, he cannot be saved, and he hopes to be saved by Him. Such is the love of those who are taken up with the thoughts and cares of this world, with earthly hopes, an earthly future, and do not much rise out of them to the thought of God, or pray much for His love, or dwell upon His Goodness, or on the boundless love of J esus, in His Suffering for us and His Long-suffering with us. The greater the Love of God, for which we love Him, the more unworthy is it to love Him only for ourselves. Strange is it for a Christian to love God, only as One Whom he has need of, when he Love, 51 believes the Love of Christ which passeth heyond all knowledge, that love whereby He took our misery that He might give us of His own Joy in the Co- Equal Father and Holy Spirit. Yet it is something, if, even for His gifts of nature, any learn to love God. Nor can ye, by any act of your own will, love God in any other way than ye now do. Men may work upon their own minds, they may excite their feelings ; but this is only self-deceit. As a man is, such is his love ; and as his love is, such is he. But by no act of his mind, by no contem- plation of God, can he make his love, any more than himself, other than it is. As long as ye make your- selves your end, so long, if ye love God at all, ye must love God for yourselves. Ye must give your whole selves to God, or ye must think on God, as He is to you. God alone can lead men out of this state ; and this He does, as they unlearn self, and, "because they need Him, worship Him, and are much with Him, thinking of Him, reading of Him, obeying Him." " So," says a holy man^, "by some sort of familiar intercourse, docs God, slowly and by degrees, become known to the soul, and consequently sweet to it; and so, having Hasted that the Lord is good,' he passes to the third degree, and loves God for His OAvn sake, not any longer for man's own." Yet even in beginning to love God for His own sake, there is a snare, lest men should love God for sensible sweetnesses and the consolations which, when He sees good, He gives in prayer or the Holy Sacrament ; and so He often withdraws these com- forts, and leaves the soul in darkness, after shew- 1' S. Bern. Ep. xi.. n. 8. , ; j e2 52 Love. ing her His light, and in dryness, after having bathed her in His sweetness, that He may prove the soul that she follows Him, not for the loaves and fishes, because she did eat and was filled, but for love of Himself alone. This is a pure chaste love, which loves God not for any gifts of His, not even for everlasting bliss as His gift. Pure love would not be contented with all the glories and brightness and beauty of Heaven itself : it stops short of nothing, it could be satis- fied with nothing, but the Love of God Himself. For pure love is that which loveth whom it loveth, for his own sake. Pure wedded or childish love is that which loves, not for the sake of anything which husband or parent bestows, but for himself. As thou wouldest be loved, so must thou love God. This love fulfils the commandment, because' as Christ sought us, not for Himself nor for anything in us, but for ourselves, so it " seeks " not '-^ its own," but " the things which are Jesus Christ's." It loves God, ^'because He is good;" and so it loves the Will of God, and the Ways of God, and the Mind of God, and becomes conformed to the Will of God, and wills, or wills not, not for its own pleasure, but for the Will of God. And so the soul is formed towards that last stage of love, of which, blessed are they who have for a moment some faint glimpse in this life, but which is life eternal, that man should love himself only for » Who so loveth, loveth no otherwise than he is loved : him- self also, in return, seeking not his own things, but the things of Jesus Christ, as He sought ours, or rather us, not aught of His own.'* S. Bern, de dilig. Deo. c. 9. Love. 53 the sake of God. In this, as holy men have spoken^, the soul, borne out of itself with Divine love, "for- getting itself,'* losing itself in a manner, as though it were not, not feeling itself, and emptied of itself, "goeth forth wholly into God, and cleaving to God, becometh one spirit with Him, so that it may say, ^my flesh and my heart faileth, but Thou art the God of my heart and God my Portion for ever.'" For since God is the Centre of all things, so the soul, when perfected, must will to be nothing but what God wills ; to be, only that His will may be fulfilled in it ; to be, only that He may live in it ; to be dis- solved, as it were, and wholly transfused into the will of God. This is life eternal, that God should be All in all, that the creature should be nothing of itself, except the vessel of the life and love of God. Of these stages of love, the love of God only for one's own sake, is plainly unsafe. Blessed is it, if any love God even thus, as a step towards that which is better. Blessed is any spark of the love of God ! For it is life ; and faint as it may be, it may be fanned and strengthened into a glowing flame, which shall burn out all that is earthly, and burn on to everlasting life. Yet so long as man loves God, only for man's own sake, there is much danger lest, if God gives him not what he wills, or gives him what he wills not, he should lose what love he seemed to have. Thus, frightful as it is, people have become embittered or impatient through misfortunes, or sick- nesess, or bereavements, as though God had dealt hardly with them, and have thrown off the love of God. So the Jews, who seemed to love our Lord k S. Bern, de dilig. Deo. c. 10. 54 wlien they followed Him and cried Hosanna, hoping that He would deliver them from the Eomans, so soon as they found that His Kingdom was not of this world," crucified Him. Sorrow and disappoint- ment harden or soften, as man loves God for man's own sake, or for God's. How then are we to know whether we have love ; how gain it? The tests whereby we may know whether we have this love of God for Himself, are also the means of gaining it, or of increasing it, if, through them, He has given it. How is it with those^ whom you dearly love on earth ? Be this the proof of your love of God. You gladly think of them, when absent. You joy, in their presence, even though they be silent to you. Love makes them seem to be present with you, even when in body they are absent. You are- glad to turn from converse with others, to speak withi them. One word or look of theirs is sweeter than all which is not they. The soul which loves God for its own sake, thinks only of God when it needs Him. When things go- smoothly, such a soul forgets Him ; she is taken up- by her own pleasure, and scarcely or coldly thanks Him ; in trouble she recollects herself, and flies ta Him. The soul which loves God for His own sake, gladly escapes from the business of the world to think of Him ; she recollects Him in little chinks and intervals of time, in which she is not occupied ; she takes occasion of all things to think of Him ; is glad of hours of prayer that she may be with Him ; is glad to be alone with Him ; glad to come to Him here in this holy house or in His Sacraments ; to dwell with. Love, 55 Him and that He may dwell in her. She prays Him, Abide with me, Lord hushes herself that she may hear His Yoice, gathers herself together, lest, in the distractions of things of self, she should lose Him. She attends to the lowest whispers of His Voice, lest she lose any, which should show her His mind and will for her. Again, you are glad to hear of those you love ; you are glad when others speak good of them, even if you dare not speak yourself : you heed not who it is that speaketh of them, so that he tells you of their goodness ; you would take pains to understand any word of theirs which he told you. He who is of God," our Lord saith, ^^heareth the words of God." Mary, who loved much," "sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His Words." It is in reading the Words of Jesus, that the heart burns within us; it is in "musing" within us over the Word of God, that " the fire kindles." Love loveth to hear the humblest speak of Jesus' love^, to learn of any one how to love Jesus more. Love knoweth that it knows all too little of that " love " of Jesus "which passeth knowledge," and searches His Words, and longs to know their meaning more, and learns in all the ways it can, if so be it may learn more of Jesus and His Love. Again, deep human love loves anything which belongs to what it loves. Love will love a piece of dress, a plant, dumb animals, simply because they 1 S. Laur. Justin, de caritate, c. ii. ''He who truly loveth God, gladly hears His Words. He seeks from all indifferently what he sees to he lacking to himself ; considers not how much he knows, hut of how much he is ignorant." 56 Love. belong to the object of its love. How much more, if we love Jesus, must we love all for whom Jesus died ! If we love God, must we not love man who was made in the Image of God, redeemed by His Blood, sanctified by His Spirit, made by His Own Hands, re-made by Him., and, though weak and wayward and rebellious against Himself, still the ob- ject of His Love ? How much more, when He Whom we would love, gave them to us in charge ! ^^A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." He who loveth another for the sake of God, what loveth he in him but God ? Yea, love to God must overflow in love to man. If we love God more than ourselves, we must deny self for love of our fellow-men whom He loves. Had not Apostles so loved God, we had been heathen still. This has been the love which has converted nations, spread the knowledge of God. • This still seeks out sinners for repentance, teaches the ignorant, is patient with the wayward, bears with the contradictory, tends the young, recalls the wandering, has fellow feeling with the worst of sin- ners, thinks nothing hopeless which Christ doth not cut down, is unconquered by weariness, unbroken by disappointment, unmoved by ingratitude ; for truly all this were we, when Christ, in. long-sufi'ering, sought and found us. And hath He not Himself said: ^'Shouldest thou not have had compassion upon thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee?'' But love for God cares also for the bodily wants Love, 57 of those whom, with it, God has loved. This is the very test which the Apostle of love, the beloved disciple, gives us, whether our love be love of the lips or of the heart, in word and tongue, or in deed and truth. Whoso hath this world's good and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ? " Love gladly suffereth for one whom it loveth. It joys to suffer, in proof of its love. Toil ceaseth to be toil ; it is joy, when it is to shew its love. Love sweetens all bitter things, softens all hard words, smooths all which is toilsome, makes fasting a feast ; self-denial for Christ's poor, a joy ; labour, rest ; and rest out of God, weariness ; waking early with Christ, refreshment. Bodily pain is hallowed to it by His Cross, and it receives each throb or pang from its loving Father's Hand, as distilling like the dew upon it from that precious Cup, which He for our sakes gave to His Well Beloved Son. Love hath no other will than that of what it loves. The very heathen said that, Friendship is to will and not to will the same things." How much more, when the Will of God is nothing out of Himself ! The Will of God is not, as man's will may be, ac- cording to his own private wishes, or tastes. The Will of God is the Eternal Wisdom of God, ordering what will bring about the ends of His All-perfect Love. ^^If ye love Me," saith our Blessed Lord, ^^keep My Commandments." Through love we have grace to keep His Commandments ; and through keeping His Commandments, He giveth increase of grace and love. For He giveth a fuller 68 Love, measure of His Presence. ^^^He that hath My Commandments, and keepeth them,' hath," saith a father '4n memory, and keepeth in life ; hath in words, and keepeth in works ; hath by hearing, and keepeth by doing ; hath by doing, and keepeth by persevering ; ^ he it is who loveth ME, and he who loveth ME shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him.' " He Who giveth ns the love to obey Him, doth on our free obedience give us yet more love. He loveth us, so as to give us greater gifts of grace, yea, so as to give us that greater gift of love ; and in love He will discover Himself to the soul, in a way which words cannot utter, but which the soul tastes, and which gives it a knowledge of Himself which passeth knowledge, and lights up the soul with an unearthly brightness, and it knows that it loves, and loving, knows that it is beloved ; (for we love God because He first loved us,") and grows in care and zeal and watchful diligence to please God Who loves it. Love is jealous for the honour of one it loves ; it will not bear a slight ; it is eager to set those right who speak amiss. Zeal for the honour of God, which longs that none should dishonour Him, none blaspheme His ISTame, which feels tenderly any irreverence or slight to Him, is a good sign of love ; if we are but first zealous with ourselves, that we ourselves do, or occasion Him no dishonour. Love which is deeply fixed on one object, valueth not, for love of what it loves, any outward things which others prize. ^NTay, it loves more deeply, in poverty of all things than in abundance, in dis- ^ S. Aug. Horn, on S. John 75. n. 5. p. 807. Oxf. Tr. Love, honour than in praise, because then it is the more assured, that it loves for the sake of the object of its loye alone. He who loveth God for Himself, loveth Him the more, as he is bared of all, and nothing is left him but his God. He feareth to keep things- about him, which may take off his thoughts from God ; he sits loose to the things of the world, or uses them only that, through the Mammon of unrighte- ousness given to His poor, he may the more gain the love of God ; he feareth nothing but what may lessen the love of God, he desireth nothing but what may gain him more love ; he valueth no praise of man, unless it cometh from the love of God, or issueth to His Glory. It counteth all things loss, so that it may win Christ. To mention but one more token of love. Love does all things for his sake whom it loves ; it counts nothing too little, nothing too great to do for love. ^Nothing so purifies the thoughts, heightens the acts, shuts out self, admits God, as, in all things, little or great, to look to JESUS. Look to Him, when ye can, as ye begin to act, or converse, or labour ; and then desire to speak or to be silent, as He would have you ; to say this word, or leave that unsaid ; to do this, or leave that undone ; to shape your words, as if He were present ; and He will be present, not in Body, but in Spirit, not by your side, but in your soul, so that of you too, in your measure, it may be said : ^^It is not ye who speak, but the Spirit of your Father Which dwelleth in you," ^^He hath wrought all our works in us." Faint not, any who would love Jesus, if ye find yourselves yet far short of what He Himself Who is 60 Love, Love saith of the love of Him. Perfect love is Heaven. When ye are perfected in love, your work on earth is done. There is no short road to Heaven or to love. Do what in thee lies by the grace of God, and He will lead thee from strength to strength, and grace to grace, and love to love. Be diligent by His Grace to do no wilful sin ; for sin, wilfully done, kills the soul, and casts out of it the love of God. Seek to love nothing out of God. God re-makes a broken heart and fills it with love. He cannot fill a divided heart. Think often, as thou canst, of God. For how canst thou know or love God, if thou fillest thy mind with thoughts of all things under the sun, and thy thoughts wander to the ends of the earth, and thou gatherest them not unto God? Nothing, (except wilful sin,) so keepeth men torpid and lukewarm and holdeth them back from any higher fervour of love, as the being scattered among things of sense, and being taken up with them away from God. Bring all things, as thou mayest, nigh to God; let not them hurry thee away from Him. Be not held back by any thought of unworthiness or by failures, from the child-like love of God. When we were dead in trespasses and sins, Christ died for us ; when we were afar off, Christ recalled us; when lost, Christ sought us; much more may we reverently love Him, and hope that we are loved by Him, when He has found us, and we, amid whatever frailties, would love Him by Whom we have been loved ! Be diligent, after thy power, to do deeds of love. Love, 61 Think nothing too little, nothing too low, to do lov- ingly for the sake of God. Bear with infirmities, ungentle tempers, contradictions ; visit, if thou may- est, the sick; relieve the poor; forego thyself and thine own ways for love ; and He "Whom in them thou lovest, to "Whom in them thou ministerest, will own thy love, and will pour His own love into thee. ^^The love of God," says a holy man", ^^produceth the love of our neighbour and kindle th it ; " the love of our neighbour winneth the love of God. Where, above all, shouldest thou seek for His love, but in the Eeast of His Love ? Without It, ye can- not have any true love. In It, JESUS willeth to come to thee, to dwell in thee, to abide in thee. Canst thou be warm, if thou keep away from the sun or the fire ? Canst thou have any fire of love, if thou keep away from JESUS? or canst thou think to find Him, if thou seek Him not where He is to be found ? He has said : Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you." How should ye have life, if ye have not Him Who is Life ? How should ye have Him, if ye refuse to come to Him ? Come to Him, longing for His Love ; come to Him that He may come to you ; pray Him to enter into your soul and pour His Love into you, and He will come, and, if you forsake Him not, will dwell in you everlastingly. Charity never faileth." How then is all lost, which tendeth not to love ! 0 abyss of love, torrent of pleasure, life of them that believe, paradise of de- lights, comfort of our pilgrimage, reward of the blessed, root of all good, strength in all strife, rest in ^ S. Laur. Justin. 1. c. c. 14. 62 Love. all weariness ! Why will ye labour for tliat whlcli is not bread," and toil for that which satisfieth not ? why seek for pleasures which perish in the grasp, and when tasted, become bitterness ? why heap up things ye must part with, or why love vanities, when ye have before you love which cannot weary, cannot sate, cannot change, cannot fail; for Love is the Essence, theEliss, the Being, the Glory of God; and this may be yours for evermore. God, in Whom are all things. Who is All-Goodness, willeth that ye love Him eternally, and be eternally filled with His Love, and enter into His Joy, the J" oy of the Everlasting Father in His Co-Equal Son through the Spirit, of Both Proceeding, the Bond of Both, and that ye should rest in the Bosom of His Love, and His Love rest upon you and fill you for ever. Will ye not then cast out now, for these few years, what hinders in you the Love of God, that ye may have for ever His Love which passeth all understanding, and be one with God, being filled with the Love of God Who is Love ? SERMON IV HUMILITY. FEAST OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. St. Luke xxii. 26, 27. "jffj? that is greatest among you^ let him he as the younger^ and he that is chief as he that doth serve, I am among you as he that servethP Hidden indeed are the saints of God. After the pattern of our Blessed Lord Himself, God willed that little should be known of those who are nearest to Him. Of our Lord Himself, St. John says that ^'if the many things which He did should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written." Wherein, in part, he spoke after the manner of men, to express by strong words the number of our Lord's acts of mercy and greatness and love. But if we think of His Divine mercy and greatness and love itself, the words are far too poor. For to speak of 64 Humility, His Divine goodness and love surpasses not only all the tongues of men in all ages, but of all the orders of Angels. It will fill not the world only, but Eter- nity. Then will the Angels know fully what now ^^they desire to look into." Then will each of the redeemed know the mystery of the Eedemption, and the exceeding love of ^^God manifest in the Mesh," which passeth knowledge." Then from all, men and Angels and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, will the praise of our Eedeeming Lord, the King of Glory, echo on through all created space. It will fill all ; but it will not reach His Fullness. For His Love and Wisdom are infinite as Himself. And yet of His works and words of love, while yet in the Flesh, how few have been related. How do we wish to know something of His sacred Child- hood ! How, of the thirty years, of which we know only that He taught the Doctors in the Temple, and was subject to His parents, and was a Carpenter ! How should we long to know the gracious words which proceeded out of His Mouth" at Nazareth, or those which Mary, who sate at His Feet, heard ; or of those forty days when, after His Eesurrection, He spoke of ^ the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." We turn, again and again, with kindling love, to those deep words and long discourses of love which St. John records just before His Passion. How often have we mourned, that they were so soon ended ! And since such was one discourse, which occupies not one short hour, what must all those many, many words have been, which for the three years and a a Actsi. 3. Humility. 65 half of His Ministry, He spake ! How would we reverently approach, if we might, those Divine thoughts of love, when He wept near the grave of Lazarus, or when He was moved with compassion on the multitudes because they fainted and were scat- tered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd What His thoughts were, in His Mysterious Agony and at His Crucifixion, when in His outstretched Arms He embraced the whole world in His love, and knew how the price of His Blood would be wasted in many who were called by His ISTame, and through what perils of death He would lead many Avhom He yet should save, none but Himself could tell. They embraced the whole time and eternity of the whole human race. The seven words which He did utter on the Cross have been the food of devout minds, ever since He spake them. And yet how little do we know of the full meaning of what He did say ; how little do we know of what He said at all ! How often is all which is said of them but faint guesses at the full meaning of His Words, each explaining but a little, or only one side or aspect of what He said ! And how have the Evangelists been guided to record oftentimes the same words and deeds only, sonie- times teaching us by the very way in which each re- lates them, yet seeming to tell us the less of Him, because they tell us the same things ! So did He in His Glory complete the humility of His lowliness. He offered Himself to reproaches ; He forbade His good deeds from being known. He hid Himself from being made a King ; He went forth to them to be crucified. And now, few of His deeds or words are told ; and of His inward thoughts scarce anything Vol. n. F 66 Humility. by Himself, save that for us He tells ns, ^^My meat is to do the Will of Him that sent Me," and that slight glimpse into His sufferings, ^^My soul is ex- ceeding sorrowful even unto death." A\Tiat is told too, is told in such simple form. Like Himself, it wins those who have hearts to receive it, and draws and binds and glues them to Him, that they cleave for ever to Him ; but to the wise in their own con- ceits, it is still a stone of stumbling and rock of offence. As with the Master, so, in their degree, is it with the disciples. Of most, we know almost nothing. The few of whom we hear something, mostly come out before us for a little while, and then vanish out of our sight. St. John, the beloved disciple, tells u& that his Master loved him. But after the Ascension of our Lord, we hear only that he had part in one miracle wrought, but not what part he had ; that the High priest marvelled at his and Peter's boldness, but we are not told one word which he spake ; only, that he was an unlearned and ignorant man ; and then he is hidden from our eyes, until, after sixty years, we find him in the Isle of Patmos exhorting^ the Churches which he had founded, and beholding the visions of God. And then, (strange close of an Apostle's life !) we hear that he was reserved for ex- treme weakness, so that he could only say, little children, love one another," and his own flock were wearied by the sameness of his teaching, who had seen the heavens opened, and our Lord in glory, and had gazed, above Cherubim and Seraphim, to the throne of God, and thence told us, ''In the begin- ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 67 and the Word was God." And then when they ^ told him their weariness, he humbly told them that, perfect love is the whole of man." We hear of the wisdom and spirit with which St. Stephen spake, but none of his words, save those which brought on his death. St. Peter appears at the beginning of the Acts, St. Paul at their close. For twenty-two years, the sacred history tells us of no act of St. Peter. We hear of him at last, declaring at the Council, how God made choice of him, that the Gentiles should hear, by his mouth, the word of the Gospel and believe. He tells how he believes, not that the Gentiles only should be saved, but that ^ through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ive shall be saved even as they,'' giving the first place to those whom God had converted through him. And then he gives place to the Apostle, who was Bishop at Jerusalem. St. Paul's history is closed with the ac- count how ill the Jews received him, and the brief words, ^^he dwelt two years in his own hired house and received all that came in unto him." He had sped like lightning through all lands, preaching^ working miracles, disputing with the wise of this w^orld ; he was looked upon as a God for his eloquence in Asia and for his miracle at Malta ; and Holy Scrip- ture closes this account, not with his martyrdom, or his hearing before the Emperor of the world, but in his hired lodgings, speaking of Jesus to those who came to ask him. How should we long to hear him, as he stood alone before the Emperor IS'ero ! All forsook him, as our Lord was forsaken by His dis- ciples. "No man," he says^, '^stood with me." ^ See S. Jerome in Gal. iii. 10. p. 529. Yall. ^ 2 Tim. iv. 16, 17. f2 68 Humility, *^But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully known and all the Gentiles might hear." This hour he had looked on to ; this had been foretold him, Thou must bear witness of Me at Eome then, probably, he converted even those of the very household of the Emperor ; this was the end of years of prison and of suffering ; and all which God bids him tell us of it is, The Lord stood with me and strengthened me." Take again the Apostle of this day Of others we hear little ; of him we do not know who he is. He seems to be the same as Nathanael to whom our Lord gave that great praise, ^' Behold an Israelite indeed," one worthy of the name of the people of God, one who was ''a prince with God," "in whom is no guile." Yet we do not know with authority ^Yh.eih.B^: he whom Jesus so praised was admitted to be one of His Apostles ; and so, we know not certainly, whe- ther St. Bartholomew, though one of the twelve, was so honoured by his Lord. Our Lord promised to St. Philip and ]^athanael, "Hereafter ye shall see Heaven open, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." Yet when they saw this, we are not told ; whence some have thought that our Lord meant only that they should spiritually see, that He was the Son of God, Whom Angels served. And so, as to his close. It is certain that he preached the Gospel in India. It is said that he preached in Lycaonia, and suffered martyrdom in Armenia, countries as far apart as the whole of oui- Europe. We know that he was one of " the noble army of martyrs ; " but by what death he glorified Preached on the Feast of S. Bartholomevf . Humility, 69 God, whether flayed alive, or crucified, or both, what torments he endured for and with Christ, that he might be glorified with Him, we know not. My brethren, it may well shame ns, to turn from the thought of Him, who left ns ^^an example that we should follow His steps," and from those who did so follow them, to onr petty trials in this day. We might almost be ashamed to have to learn humility from such examples as these. Yet there is but one path to Heaven ; one way, but with difi'erent tracks ; one ascent, though with difi'erent heights ; one fight with our fallen nature, and one victory through our One Lord Who instrengtheneth" us, though the amount of victory is manifold; one glory of the grace of God, although in Eternity ''star" shall '' difi'er from star in glory." And the first step on this road is humility. Our Lord first descended, then ascended. First He came down and took our nature ; then He descended lower to the shame of the Cross, and so He placed our nature at the Eight Hand of God. We fell through pride, lifting up ourselves to '' be as God ; " we must rise by humility, lowering ourselves that God may raise us up. One law there is. Wouldest thou become great in God's Eyes, be little in thine own. Wouldest thou enter the kingdom of Heaven, '' thou must be converted," our Lord says, ''and become a little child." Wouldest thou be exalted there, and have there more of the sight of God, and the love of God, and the fullness of God, "take the lowest place " here. But "how is it possible," one may say, "how can it be true ? God has kept me from great sins ; He e Gen. iii. 5. 70 Humility. has fenced me from great temptations. 'Ey the grace of God I am what I am.' But would it be thankful to the grace of God, would it be honest, would it be real, to own myself less than those who have openly fallen from God's grace ? " My brethren, well is it, if any man from the heart says, By the grace of God, I am what I am." Well is it, if any, by the grace of God, have been kept from great sins, not of the body only, but of the soul also. For the sin of the fallen Angels was a spiritual sin only. Through spiritual sins, envy and pride, the Pharisees delivered our Lord to be put to death. Through anger and unbelief. His own citizens would have cast Him headlong." Through ^4ove "of^'man's praise " or vanity, the Chief Priests and Scribes could not believe in Him." Spiritual sin alone is enough to destroy the soul, although in fact, since God resisteth the proud," the proud mostly fall even into disgraceful sins. God even lets them so fall, that their eyes may be opened to see their own misery, which before were closed up with pride. Yet it must be true, that ''he that is greatest, must be as the least;" for our Lord, the Truth, has said it. And this not in outward act only. Outward acts of humility help much to make us humble. Yet the outward acts alone would be the body without the soul, a slavish service, or hypocrisy. It must be true that we are in lowliness to ''esteem others better than ourselves," since God the Holy Ghost has so taught us. For most of us, such as we are, this might be easy enough. It might seem no great thing to own our- Humility, 71 selves miserable sinners," wlien we know that we are sucli, or to think that others are not so great sinners as we. But so, I believe, it is with those who have great graces of God. To prefer others, is not with them matter of understanding, but of grace. Such know the greatness of the grace of God towards them; they know His Gifts and their own sins, negligences, short-comings, failure to that grace. What good there is in themselves, they know to be God's work. In themselves they see God's good and their own evil. In others they close their eyes to evil which it is not a duty to see, and see only whatever grace there is. And so the grace of God becomes a sort of nature to them. They know that any good they have, although in them, is the gift and grace of God. But the evil which re- mains is too truly their own. We know not, either in evil or in good, what we are in this life. ^'That Day shall declare it, which shall try every man's work, of what sort it is." And so, by a blessed blind- ness, while they forget their own good and see the grace of God in others, they readily believe that any one, (not openly God's enemy) is better than them- selves, and that even those, now God's enemies, may, through His converting grace and intenser love, become more His friends than they. There is so much of good, so much which is touch- ing and lovely, in those who are most outcast from the world, so much which, by the grace of God, may yet shine in them with His lustre for ever, that it seems to be no hard thing for those who have much of His grace, to think that, as to these poor outcasts too, the last may be first, the first last." Thus a 72 Humility. holy and humble man said, If ^ Christ had loaded any wicked man whatever with the same mercy which He has shewn to me, I suppose that he would have been much more grateful than I." And, Every man is what he is in the sight of God. [N'ot from the opinion of men who are often deceived, but from the judgment of God, is the state of each to be ac- counted. But who knows what is his own, what another's state before God ? Who knows how God looks on him and on another? Who knows that another is fallen, himself upright, when in a moment their state might be changed, and he who stood might fall, and he who was fallen might rise again to great grace ? If we know not these things, on which man's greatness depends, well may we account ourselves least of all, and set ourselves in the lowest place." And for us, my brethren, humility is the beginning of all solid good and of every grace. It opens the heart for them, and guards them, where God has given them. Humility scoops away the barren sand of our self-conceit, that so our foundation may rest solidly upon the Eock which is Christ. Then may the building which we raise, reach to Heaven by love ; for it cannot fall, being founded on the Eock. Of humility there are many steps. Lay the first solidly, and God will lead thee onward. The first is to know seriously, truly, sincerely, thine own nothing- ness. Many will confess, in words, that they are nothing; but they neither believe themselves, nor wish to be believed of others. They say that they are miserable sinners. It is true and right. We all are. ^ S. Prancis of Assis. in Bonav. Yit. cj. c. 6. Humility. 73 We confess it daily ; and we must not confess mere words, nor lie to God. But it is one thing to own that we are all by nature sinners, that we have come short of the glory of God, that we and our neigh- bours cannot stand in God's sight. Yery different is it, to be ready to own and that others should be- lieve, that thou thyself art a sinner. If men really believed this of themselves, would they be so vexed that others saw some fault in them? would they even be so vexed themselves at their own failures ? If we felt ourselves really helpless, should we be so surprised and annoyed that we stumbled ? I mean not in the greater sins. Those who are in the grace of God may be kept from these. But were it not for pride, we should grieve for, not be annoyed by, our own failures or infirmities, from which man, in this imperfect state, can scarcely be free. Still less would people try to hide such faults from others, or excuse themselves so eagerly ! And yet is it not an every day thing to hide a negligence or carelessness by a lie ? If a person has done a vain thing and is charged with it, will he not lie to excuse it ? Lovely indeed must humility be, since they who have it not, are so ashamed of not being humble, that they will sin to hide it. Still stranger is the perverseness that people will accuse themselves, in order that they may not be believed. They will call themselves sinners, generally, or they will own lighter sins in themselves, as that they are quick-tempered, or hasty, but they will be angry if they are taken at their word. They accuse themselves, in order that others may excuse them. They own the truth of themselves, that others may disown it to them, and cast dust in their eyes. 74 Humility, How does it startle them, if their own words be echoed to them, as seriously true! ^^0 ye sons of men, how long will ye love vanity and seek after leasing ? " What nothings will men own of them- selves ! They will own that they are liable to be overtaken by faults which, in man's sight, have some- thing noble mixed in them, or clever, or at least is not despised. But to own that they are, in any measure, what man despises, or that God hates what they are, how will they shrink from it ! How com- mon is it, (ye know yourselves) to give soft names (misfortune or the like) to open deadly sin ! And yet those really in the grace of God, have seen that they had in themselves the germs of all the deadly sins. They have felt in themselves, that, were the grace of God withdrawn, they might fall into any sin. ^' Thou knowest. Lord," says one ^, that there is no sin which man ever did, which another man might not do, if his Creator, by "Whom man was made, were wanting to him." Well might men shrink from the truth, if it thereby ceased to be truth. But the truth is as surely truth, as God is God. To what end to draw a vail over your eyes, since the Day of Judgment is near at hand, when every secret thing shall be revealed? ^'Own^ and remember thy evil now, and God will forget it ; forget thy good, and God will remember it." This, then, let us learn, first to know, that we are by nature nothing, that through our own fault (not of our nature, for God's grace would have been suf- ficient for us) we became worse than nothing. It is to rob God, to take anything to ourselves, any power s Solil. i. 14. ap. S.Aug. ^ S. Chrys. on S. Matt. Pt. 1. Humility, 75 of nature, any strength, understanding, memory, quickness, knowledge, taste, art, any gifts of body, or mind, or estate. What is thy body? ''Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.'' How then should '' earth and ashes" be ''proud?" What thy mind? The gift of God, of which He can deprive thee at once, destroy thy memory, darken thy understanding, take from thee clearness of mind, or words to utter it. What thy soul? Precious indeed above all price, infinite in value, since it is the price of the Blood of Christ ! If it is in grace, beautiful is it above all created beauty, since it partakes of the Brightness and Glory and Image of God ! But what of this is thine own ? Thy sins, by which, in whatever degree, thou hast marred the work of God in thee, or by which the Brightness of God's grace is darkened, or hidden, or dulled in thee ! All else is the work of God. ISTow, think in thyself, how often thou hast, at least, in thy younger years, neglected the Voice of God, done what thou ought est not, not done what thou oughtest. Nay, if thou thinkest now^ that thou fully obeyest the Voice of God, and doest all which His Grace would enable thee to do, it shows this only, that thou knowest not, how powerful, gentle, tender, swift, mysterious, is the Grace of God. It comes, it speaks ; if thou have not hearkened, it is gone. If thou listen to thine own will, thine own pleasure, thine own pride or vanity, it is, for the time, drowned. What wouldest thou think of thyself, if this world's glories and greatness had been offered thee for some short toil, some self-denial, abstaining fi'om some 76 Humility, pleasure, rising early, and seeking the Love of Him Who could give it thee ? Or what if thou mightest have had strong powers of mind, gifts of speech, skill, invention, memory, the wisdom of Solomon, if thou wouldest have been at pains with thyself? What wouldest thou think, if thou hadst put these things aside, not as our Lord did the riches of the world and the glories of them, not because thou mightest be more easily saved in a lowly place, but through thine own fault ? What, again, if thou hadst treated with shameful thanklessness, forgotten, insulted Him Who, in love for thee, offered thee these things. Surely thou wouldest despise thyself, wouldest be indignant with thyself, thou wouldest not boast thyself of any of the poor things thou hast ; the thought of thy loss would come before thee, and thou wouldest be dumb with shame ! And what if others praised thee for what thou hast, wouldest thou have pleasure in it, or be proud of it, or wouldest thou not think with grief and shame of what thou hadst wasted ? But what were all the riches and glories of the world to the least possession of the grace of God ? What to be the very first in this world, to being the very last of those who for ever see God, know God, love God, are beloved by God ? What any of us have wasted by our pride, our negligences, our sins, has been, if, by God's mercy, we are saved at last, or unless, by His grace and greater diligence, we yet recover it, that degree of the power of loving God and being beloved by God. We have wasted His goodness. His grace. His love towards us, the price of the Blood of Christ, our Humility, 77 Lord and God. And wliat knowest thou whether any other in the whole world have wasted more ? It may be that what others think well of thee for, are rather God's natural gifts, than graces won by the grace of God. It is no great thing to be easy tem- pered, if God made us so. It is a great thing, by the grace of God, to subdue a quick, angry temper, if it be the trial which God appointed us. And what knowest thou of the hidden graces of others ? or with what toil, by God's grace, they gained what to thee seems so imperfect ? There is so much imperfection in the good, so much good in all who have not wholly shut out the grace of God, that it seems no hard thing to suppose that any may be better than we ; no hard thing, if we but know ourselves, our own unfaithfulness to the grace of our God, our abuse of His grace. But this we know that if we have all gifts, without love, it profits us nothing ; if we could have all without humility, it would be worse to us than if we had them not. For if we abuse the gifts of God to pride, or vanity, or to exalt ourselves, bet- ter for us that we had them not ! The building not founded through humility on the Eock, the higher it is, the more heavily it will fall. The Publican went down to his house more in God's favour than the Pharisee. What our Lord came, above all things, to teach us, what He taught us, what He teaches us now, by His very Being as Man, what He preached in act from His Birth in the manger to His Death, bared of all and in shame, upon the Cross, what He made the first step to His Apostles who were filled with the Holy Ghost, to ^'become as little children," must 78 Humility, be needful for us. Such rules as these may be use- ful. They have been tried. Know thyself. Pray God to show thee thyself. Bear in God's light to see thyself, bared of all out- ward advantages, what thou thyself hast made thy- self, what thou hast been, what thou art. By God's grace, the sight will never again let thee be proud. Keep ever present with thee the knowledge of thine own infirmity. Kever seek praise, nor speak of any good in thee, except for some good end, nor say, what may draw out praise. Yea, rather if it be useful to speak of thine own experience, it is best mostly to hide, in some true way, that it is thine own. Do not even blame thyself, if it makes others think thee humble. Mistrust thyself in everything, and in the very least things, seek, whenever thou canst remember it, the help of God. Be afraid of the praise of others. If there be good in thee, own it, at least in thy heart, to be God's, and think of thy evil and thy sins. Take patiently any humiliation from others. It is a precious gift of God. '^Humiliation is the way to humility, as patience to peace, reading to know- ledge." If thou endurest not to be humbled, thou canst not be humble. In all things, humble thyself under the Hand of God. Take all things, through whomsoever they come, from Him. Do not excuse thyself, if blamed, unless respect or love, or the cause of truth and of God, require it. It is of more value to thee to detect one grain of Humility, 79 fault in thyself, than to shew to another that thou deservest not, as it were, a hundred weight of blame. Be not careful to conceal any ignorance or fault in thee, unless it would hurt another to know that thou hast it. Do willingly humble offices, humbly. Give way to all, in all things in which thou mayest. It is but for a short time, at the longest. Seek here to be humble with the humble JESUS, and He will exalt thee. As thou becomest, by His grace, lowly here, thou shalt be exalted there. There^ is greatness, which none envies ; treasures, of which thou wilt deprive none ; joys, in which all will joy with thee. There, not thine own lips or thine own thoughts, but thy Saviour will praise thee. Seek humility, and thou wilt find it ; and when thou hast found it, thou wilt love it, and by God's grace, wilt not part with it : with it, thou canst not perish. Yea, thou wilt reign for ever with JESUS, Who was humbled for thee, and with the choirs in the heavenly dwellings. For there too, thou wilt be humble, not, as now, in the need of all things, but in the posses- sion of all things, in glory, and honour, and power, and beauty, and knowledge, and wisdom, of which we have but the faintest shadow here ; ard all from God and in God. Eor there, if thou attain, thou shalt cast thy crown before the throne, saying, ^'Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; and giving back all to God, thou shalt receive all from God, in bliss everlasting, through His Merits, Who humbled Himself to thee, that thou, being humbled with Him here, shouldest enter into His Glory and His J oy. SERMON V, PATIENCE. SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER. 1 St. Peter ii. 22. '^Even Jiereunio ivcre ye called: because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example ^ that ye should follow His steps. ''^ Patience is the endurance of any evil, out of the love of God, as the will of God. There is nothing too little, in which to approve ourselves to God; nothing too little, in which, without God, we should not fail ; nothing too great, which, with the help of God, we may not endure. The offices of patience are as varied as the ills of this life. "We have need of it with ourselves and with others; with those below and those above us, and with our own equals ; with those who love us and those who love us not ; for the greatest things and for the least; against sudden inroads of trouble, and under our daily bur- Patience, 81 dens; disappointments as to tlie weather or the "breaking of the heart ; in the weariness of the body, or the wearing of the soul; in our own failure of duty, or others' failure towards us ; in every day wants, or in the aching of sickness or the decay of age; in disappointment, bereavement, losses, in- juries, reproaches ; in heaviness of the heart or its sickness amid delayed hopes, or the weight of this body of death, from which we would be free, that we might have no more struggle with sin within, or temptation without, but attain to our blessed and everlasting peace in our rest in God. In all these things, from childhood's little troubles to the mar- tyr's sufferings, patience is the grace of God, whereby we endure evil for the love of God, and keep ourselves still and motionless, that we offend not God. All other virtues and graces have need of patience to perfect or to secure them. Patience interposes herself and receives and stops every dart which the evil one aims at them. Patience ^ is the root and guardian of all virtue ; " impatience is the enemy of all. Impatience disquiets the soul, makes her weary of conflict, ready to lay aside her armour and to leave difficult duty. Impatience, by troubling the smooth mirror of the soul, hinders her from reflect- ing the Pace of God ; by its din, it hinders her from hearing the voice of God. It makes the soul outrun, or fall short of, the will of God. Impatience listens to nothing, heeds nothing, fears nothing, hopes no- thing, judges aright of nothing, perseveres in nothing except in restlessness. Impatience is a burden to ® S. Greg. Horn. 35. in Evang. Vol. II. a 82 Patience, itself, distrusts man, rebels against God. It shakes every virtue, and enters into almost every sin. It casts aside every remedy for itself or for any other fault. Impatience made Cain a murderer, and Ab- salom a parricide^, and Judas a Deicide. Impatience, not waiting for God, turns even goods into evils. Jeroboam waited not for the goods which God had promised him ; he forfeited them, destroyed his own house which he wished to raise, and left of his am- bition no memorial save that it was he " who*^ did sin and who made Israel to sin." The sins of the Jews in the wilderness, (our en- samples,) whence sprang they, but from impatience of hunger and thirst, or of the sameness of the food God gave them, or of Moses delaying in the Mount, when they ^'made gods to go before them into Egypt," whence God had redeemed them ? It might seem a natural thing, that impatience should be the ground- work of anger ; but strange it is, that even deadly indulgence in miserable pleasure should be the fruit of impatience. How does it shake faith to be impatient of evils, either in the world, or in the Church, or those which befall a person's own self ! How does impatience with others' defects chill love, or impatience with even our own failings and short- comings extiaguish hope ! To be impatient at blame is a blight to humility; at contradiction, destroys meekness; at injuries, quenches long-suffering ; at sharp words, mars gentleness ; at having one's own will crossed, obedience. Impatience at doing the same things again and again, hinders perseverance ; impatience 2 Sam. xvii. 1 — 4. c i Kings xiv. 16. Patience, 83 of bodily wants surprises people into intemperance, or leads them to deceive, lie, steal. " In patience," our Blessed Lord tells us, possess ye your souls." By patience, we have the keeping of our own souls ; we command ourselves, and our passions are subdued to us; and commanding ourselves, we begin to possess that which we are." What is to possess a thing, but to have entire com- mand over it, that we may do with it what we will ? What, then, is it to possess the soul," but to be lord over all its. powers, motions, emotions, and, by the grace of Grod, to control and direct them, according to the will of God ? Whence even the world calls a man self-possessed," who cannot be thrown off his guard, but, gathered up within himself and immov- able, has a clear, steady command of all the powers of his mind. He is spiritually ^^self-possessed," who, by the grace of God, so keeps himself, that ^^no ^ve- hemence of delight masters him, no tribulation wears him out, no sudden temptation carries him away, no unworthy affection draws him down from God." Patience, then, is the guardian of faith, the fence of love, the strength of hope, the parent of peace. Patience protects humility, keeps meekness, is the soul of long-suffering, guides gentleness, strengthens perseverance. Patience bridleth ^the tongue, re- strainetli the hand, ruleth the flesh, preserveth the spirit, tramples on temptations, drives away offences ; breaks the force of passion, calms the violence of pride, quenches the fire of variance," bids, in its ^ S. Greg. 1. c. « Paradise of the Christian Soul, P. iv. p. 61. f See Tert. on Patience, c. xv. p. 346. Oxf. Tr. S. Cyprian on Patience, § 14. p. 262. Oxf. Tr. ' g2 84 Patience, Lord's I^ame, wind and storm ^^be still; and there is a great calm." Patience makes the soul to be of one mind with God, and sweetens all the ills of life. It casts the light of Heaven upon them, and transforms them into goods. It makes the bitter waters sweet ; the barren and dry land fruitful. Desolation it makes a loneliness with God ; the parching of sickness to be the fire of His love ; weakness to be His strength ; wounds to be health ; emptiness of all things, to have all things from Him ; poverty to be true riches ; His deserved punishments to be His rainbow of mercy ; death to be His Life. Great must be the blessing of evil, since it is so widely spread in the works of a good God. Deep must the blessing of evil be, since God vouchsafed it so largely to those whom He made most like to His own Son in the flesh. Yery necessary must evil be to us, since none, fence themselves as they may from it, can escape it. None do^ in any great measure, escape it, save those who, resisting God, are at length abandoned by God, and, forsaking Him and forsaken by Him, are left unvisited by Him in His Mercy, until they have treasured up His wrath to the utter- most. So strongly is this stamped upon our fallen nature, that even the heathen ^ felt that unmingled s " I wish both for myself and for those for whom I care, that sometimes we may succeed, sometimes fail, and so pass through life, rather than succeed in all things. For never did I hear of any one, who succeeded in all things, and did not at last end ill, utterly perishing." Amasis to Polycrates in Herod, iii. 40. See iii. 41 — 43. 125. and of Croesus i. 34. M. Purius Camillus is said to have prayed, that if his own fortune and that of the Eoman Patience, 85 prosperity was the herald of woe to come. Absence of chastisement or trial, the fulness of the world's prosperity, are the worst outward tokens of man's salvation. Elow upon blow, and wound upon wound, are signs of Hio Mercy. Blessed are ye then, my poorer brethren, if ye know your own blessedness, that God has allotted to you a larger portion of the hardships of this life. Far easier and safer and humbler is your lot, to en- dure the daily trials of this life, than for us to find out self-denial for ourselves. In this too, blessed are" ye ^'poor, for yours is the kingdom of Heaven." A ready road and straight path have ye to Heaven, if, for the love of God, ye endure patiently the ills which God appoints you, if ye bless Him in them and for them, and let not yourselves be turned to the right hand or to the left, nor seek to remove them by doing what will displease God. Blessed indeed must patient suffering be, since it was the portion of the Son of God. Even here- unto," to suffer patiently, ^^were ye called," because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps." How must not that be the way of salvation, which He, the Saviour, trod and endured for us ? how not hallowing to us, which He has hallowed for us, by undergoing it ? how should it not be the path to Heaven, which He people seemed to any of the gods or men too great, he might abate this displeasure by his own private trouble rather than by the least public evil of the Roman people." Liv. v. 21. " Q. Pabius Max. said that he feared fortune itself, lest it should seem to any of the gods, to have been too great towards him, and more constant than was consistent with the things of man." lb. x. 23. See further Yalck. ad Herod, iii. 40. 86 Patience, has tracked for us with His own Blood ? Glqrious is it for the soldier, to bear the ensigns of the Captain of his salvation. Glorious for the Christian to bear the marks of his Lord. What more blessed for tho bride, than to be likened to the Bridegroom ? what for the members than to be likened to the Thorn-crowned Head ? His Sufferings have even now passed anew before our eyes. All the Sufferings of His Life were- gathered before us in His Death. What of bodily suffering was missing, when every spot in His holy- tender frame was rent with scourges, when limb wa» disjointed from limb^, every sense racked with agony,, when from the thorn-encompassed Head, in unrest upon the hard Cross, to the pierced Feet, all was wounds and bruises and putrifying sores ?" What suffering was spared, when the ears were sated with blasphemies, the heart betrayed, denied, forsaken;, the Soul seemed to be forsaken of the Father ; and the consolations of the Divine Nature, wherewith It was united, were denied to It ? What when man dis~ owned his Eedeemer, and accused the Holy One as- blaspheming Him Whose Will He came to do ; and the Father, for the time, owned Him not ? And now how is it? The scars of His nailed Hands and wounded Feet, and pierced Side remain, but in what glory ! He rose again, a spiritual Body, yet with the tokens of His Passion. Then He showed Him- self to His Disciples, to be seen, touched, felt. With that same Body, He ascended into Heaven. In that same Body, He there ^4iveth to make intercession for us." These glorious Wounds, received for us, plead for us with the Father night and day, to turn ^ Ps. xxii. 14. Patience. 87 away His wrath from us. And how ? The beloved Disciple saw Him as man could see Him, all-radiant with glory, and ^'fell^ at His Feet, as dead." There in the brightness of the Godhead, streaming with the unspeakable glory of the Godhead, transparent, ra- diant, brilliant, beaming above the piercing dazzling rays of the sun, are those Ever-blessed Wounds, the memorials of His Passion, the ensigns of His Yictory. Brighter are they than all created brightness; for their brightness is the glory of the love of God. Such is the reward of Suffering ; such the pattern which ye, in your measure, are to follow ; such is the image to which we are to be conformed, of patient suffering here, and everlasting reward; for '4f we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified together.'^ Eut how, ye will say, can we be made like unto JESUS ? how can our poor irksome sufferings, of cold or hunger, or poor fare, or aching of limbs, or stiffness of our joints, or sleeplessness, or weariness, how can they be hallowed to us, how can they be borne, so as to make us like our Lord ? Eirst, many of these sufferings our good Lord took, in order to hallow them for us, to give them a worth and a joy, painful as they are, because they were His. Was He not weary by the well, and a hungred after His temptation, and were not His Knees stiffened on the Cross, and His limbs out of joint ? Was He not chilled with the dew of Heaven, as He passed whole nights on the mountain or in the garden in prayer for us? and was not HE, Who feeds all creation, fed by the barley-loaves, the gift of His creatures to His poverty? i Eev. i. 17. 88 Patience, But then, how did He hallow them ? By enduring them as the will of God. ''My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me." He ''became obedient unto death, and that the death of the Cross.'' And so for us. It is matter of faith, that every- thing, what seems to us the greatest and the least, is ordained or overruled by God. What is good He gives ; what is evil He overrules to the good of His own. To God, nothing can be great ; as to us, nothing is little, which in any way affects our souls. To God, the fall of empires, the crash of the world, the dissolving of the whole universe, were as nothing. By His Word were they created ; at His breath they would pass away. More precious to Him than the iv^hole world is the value of one single soul. For the w^orld shall perish, the soul endureth. The world ;and all its wondrous beauty is but the work of His Hands ; the soul, made and remade in the Image of God, was redeemed by the Blood of Christ. It were more reasonable to think that God had not made man at all, than to think that He had set him in the midst of this His creation, and left him the mere ^sport of chance, or of rude unbending laws, and did not order every, the least, thing concerning him for the well-being of his soul. We often think of God as too like ourselves. To us, it is a trouble and weariness, to look into little things, to attend parti- cularly to this or that. And so men picture to them- selves Almighty God, as having made certain great laws of our world ; but they cannot bring home to themselves, that every, the very least, accident of every day is known, willed, overruled, by Almighty God. If they ventured to put their thoughts into Patience, 89 words, they would think it a trouble to Almighty God to attend to all the little details of our daily life. As though God were like ourselves, beholding with effort things one by one, giving His Mind (so to say) now to one thing, now to another, or, as though, having set this world in motion like a great machine. He put it in His own stead, to govern it- self, and did not weary Himself about it ! Eather, Almighty God, not being divided and not having parts and a bounded mind, as we, sees all at once, past, present, and to come ; all things which to us have been, or are, or shall be, or all things which could be ; all things which He has made, or all which, if He willed. He could make ; all which He shall make, and the whole history of every creature of His, spread out before Him, as in the mirror of His Infinite Mind, present there. Unchanging, He changeth all things ; in perfect rest. He ordereth all things. By His will He made them ; by His will He upholds all which is upheld, and leaves to decay whatever decays. Every- thing, at every moment of time, is seen in the perfect stillness of His Infinite Mind, and is ruled and over- ruled by His Infinite Will. He so " upholdeth all things by the Word of His Power," that our Lord saith, ^'Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without My Father ; " " The hairs of your head are all num- bered." Our Lord teaches us as to those very little things, in order that we may know and feel, that nothing is too little to be ordered by our Father, nothing too little in which to see His Hand, nothing, which touches our souls, too little to accejDt from Him, nothing too little i;o bo done to Him. Since the 90 Patience. hairs of our head are all numbered, so is every throb or shoot of pain, every beating or aching of the heart. Every tear which starts Is seen, and, if wept to Him, is gathered up by Him. Every secret sigh He hears at once from every bosom in His whole creation. Every secret wish or prayer He hears, while yet un- uttered or performed. He "Who is in the highest Heaven, and filleth all things, but is contained by none ; He is present to each single heart, and hears ; and, if the heart form its wish to Him, He hearkens. This then is the first great ground of patience, that God is our Father, All-wise, All-loving, All- good ; that He ^ knows and wills and can what is best for our souls," while we, poor beings, neither know, nor can, nor, as we ought, will it." He knows not only every illness which in His Good Providence He sends, but every ache or pain of it. He knows our every want in every day, and whether we shall look to Him in it, or no. He knows every cross which befalls us ; how piercing every wind is ; how it threatens your future harvests Every blade of your corn which it nips is as clearly before His eyes, as if in the whole universe there were nothing besides. He "Who " breaks the ships of Tarshish with the east wind," and sendeth rain upon the earth or witlihold- eth it, causeth"" it to rain," He saith Himself, on one field, and not on another," giveth it in one year or month, and withholdeth it in another ; and that, to correct us, humble us, teach us our depend- ence upon Him. ^ Eishop Andre wes. 1 Preached in a village, in a parching spring. ^ Amos iv. 7. Patience, 91 This , is a faith, such as the heathen might have had, and, in some measure, had. God""," St. Paul says, ^^had not left Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and glad- ness." The heathen, in a way, prayed or looked to God for rain and for their needs ; and He, the Father of all, gave it to them. But further ; not only His gifts in nature, but the hearts of men ; not only the ills in nature, but the evil wills of man, are in His Hands. ^Wind and storm fulfil His Word," even when they lay waste the face of His own world. Mankind and each several human being, with all their sins, wayward- nesses, negligences, ignorances, work out, through their own ungoverned wills, exactly that measure of trial which Almighty God, in His Infinite "Wisdom, knew to be best, for the perfecting of those who love Him, or for the chastening of those who may be turned to love Him. God wills not the wickedness of the wicked. But, while they, by their sinfulness, bring on themselves destruction, their very sins are to the good the occasion of good. God, being good, makes men's evil, against their will, work to the good of His Own. God willed not the hatred of Cain, nor the grudge of Esau, nor the oppression of Pha- raoh, nor Saul's blood-thirsty following of David, nor the curses of Shimei. Yet they, through what was against God's will, were to Abel and to Jacob, to all Israel and to David the instruments of the holy will of God. The Chaldeans who fell on Job's flocks and herds, thought only of their own booty. " Acts xiv. 17. ♦ 92 Patience. In God's Hands their evil will proved and made glorious the patience of J ob, as much as the wind of the desert, which smote the corners of the house where his sons were. The Assyrian thought only of his own might and greatness ; the Prophet tells us that he was ^^the rod of God's anger.'' The envy of the Chief Priests, the treachery of Judas, the fickleness of the poorer Jews, and their fear of the Eomans, the cowardice of Pilate out of an evil conscience, accomplished only that, which God's counsel had determined before to be done." Judas' accursed kiss was the fruit of his disappointed covet- ousness and hypocrisy ; the very money which he received, and his own base act fulfilled prophecy and wrought out the will of God. Evil men are not the less evil, they are the more evil, because God is good ; but God is so good that they can do no real evil ; their evil but works to good to those who love God. St. Paul, when he persecuted the name of Christ and took part in the death of St. Stephen, against God's will, fulfilled His will ; when converted, he ful- filled more blessedly the will of God by doing it. The whole noble army of martyrs have been enrolled, one by one, through the cruelty of men who hated God and slew them. And so now too. God willeth not the wickedness or death of the sinners ; but no sinners can harm the good. Nothing can harm us, while, by the grace of God, our own will stands firm to serve God. God willeth not that man should be angry, revengeful, slanderous; but He wills, (if so be,) that our tem- pers should be proved by angry words, our patience by the slanderous tongue. Patience. 93 TMs then is of faith, that everything, the very least, or what seems to us great, every change of the seasons, everything which touches us in mind, body, or estate, whether brought about through this outward sense- less nature, or by the will of man, good or bad, is overruled to each of us by the All-holy and All-lov- ing will of God. This is the first lesson of patience, that whatever befalls us, however it befalls us, we must receive, as the will of God. If it befalls us through man's negligence or ill-will, or anger, still it is, in every the least circumstance, to us the will of God. For if the least thing could happen to us without God's permission, it would be something out of God's control. God's Providence or His Love would not be what they are. Almighty God Him- self would not be the same God ; not the God Whom we believe, adore, and love. Eut since whatsoever befalls us of suffering or ill is, however it comes, the will of God to us, what then should we do when it comes ? Surely forget, as far as we may, all besides, and go up in thought to the Eternal Throne, and behold in mind the Heaven opened, and JESUS standing at the Eight Hand of God, thence looking down upon us, allotting to us our trials, even through the wrong tempers of men ; thence pouring down His strength to us, if we will, to bear them ; thence looking to us graciously, if we bear them, through His grace, aright ; thence preparing us for the place in Heaven which He as- cended on high to prepare for us. 0 how do all the ills of life fade into nothing ; how glad may any trial be, though painful to flesh and blood; how should we greet as goods the evils of life ; how would its 94 Patience, sadness become gladness, its thorns a crown, if we but see in them the Eternal Hand of God, moulding us by them for everlasting glory ; refining away, through outward ills, our own inward evils ; chasten- ing us, that we might not perish ; checking us, that we might not go astray ; recalling us, when astray ; alluring us by His Goodness ; and then again, wean- ing us from this world by its very unrest and sufier- ing, that in Him we might find everlasting rest and peace. A firm faith knows that whatever befalls it from without, will, if by God's grace it perseveres, turn to its everlasting good. ^' There should be no greater comfort to Christian persons," our Church teaches when we are sick, than to be made like unto Christ, by sufi'ering patiently adversities, troubles and sick- nesses. For He Himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain ; He entered not into His Glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to sufi'er here with Christ ; and our door to enter into eternal life is gladly to die with Christ, that we may rise again from death, and dwell with Him in everlasting life." To this faith, the stepping-stone is humility. Faith tells us that all which befalls us, is the will of God. A humble faith knows, that if it is good, it is of God's goodness, not of our desert ; if evil, it is less than we deserve. There was no evil in Paradise. Death, sickness, pain of body and soul, came to us by sin. We are sinners, sick in soul, more or less, whether we know our sickness or no. They know their sickness best, who are least sick. It is the worst sickness, not to know that we are sick. St. John, Patience, 95 whom Jesus loved, says, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." Life is one long sickness, in which those of us who are using God's grace, are regaining our health, until the time come, when He Who forgiveth all our sin," shall ^'heal all our in- firmities, and crown us with mercy and loving-kind- ness." Meanwhile, every evil is, in God's purpose, a medicine to our soul, bitter, painful, but full of ever- lasting health. If we have a mortal disease of the body, we bear, if we are wise, the knife which severs a limb, that the whole body may live ; we take rea- dily what is nauseous, endure what is hard, abstain from our food, if we indeed believe that it is for the life of this body. Even so, if we are wise, we should receive every ill of life, not as God's will only, but as the wise and loving will of God, the tender Phy- sician of our souls. Who gives us no one pain which is not, in His Hands, a means to everlasting joy. No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous." Every, the least, trial has its own weight. It is our wisdom and humility to own this. Were it not so, people would not bear petty trials so ill. It is not lack of patience to feel an ill, nor to be oppressed by it, nor to be heavy and exceed- ing sorrowful under it." Our loving Lord sanctified such human feelings by the heaviness which, in the garden. He allowed to come over His Soul. Impa- tience is not, to feel the weight of suffering, but to attempt to throw it off; not, to be bowed down, but to rebel; not, to be cut to the heart with anguish, nor to writhe in agony, but not out of the deep, to call upon God." Impatience is not, mutely to shrink 96 Patience. from suffering, but to toss feverishly, forgetting God. The heart may, and must, rise and sink ; we can, by God's grace, control it, hold it down, keep it out- wardly still, hinder it from having any wrong vent ; we cannot hush its beatings. Hard words will vex ; unkindness will pierce ; neglect will wound ; threat- ened evils will make the soul quiver ; sharp pain or weariness will rack the body, or make it restless ; cold will fret the frame ; hunger tvill gnaw it. Eut what says the Psalmist ? ^ ^ "When my heart is vexed, I will complain." To whom ? ITot of God, but to God. As thou leamest this lesson, to carry all thy sor- rows to God, and lie at thy Saviour's Feet, and spread thy grief before Him, thou wilt find a calm come over thee, thou knowest not whence; thou wilt see, through the clouds, a bright opening, small perhaps and quickly closed, but telling of eternal rest, and everlasting day, and of the depth of the Love of God ; thou wilt forget the darkness of the cloud, in the rich beauty of His all-encompassing Bow, the witness of His enduring love and of His unwillingness to punish, which, without the cloud, thou couldest not see. Thy heart will still rise and sink ; but it will rise and sink, not restlessly nor way wardly, not in violent gusts of passion ; but, whe- ther rising or sinking, amid all outward heavings of this world's waves, resting in stillness on the bosom of the ocean of the Love of God. Then wilt thou know for thyself, that God is nothing but good "to thee; that chastisements are but an austere form of His Love. Thou wilt find for thyself, that tribulation, by the grace of God, opens Patience, 97 thine eyes to thine own defects, and to the love of God ; softens thine heart ; cleanses thy soul ; guards thee from resting in the things of this life, and taking up with thy portion here ; rouses thee from careless- ness ; keeps thee humble, even when thou succeedest well with thyself; teaches thee to mistrust thyself, and trust wholly in God, thy everlasting strength. Then shalt thou learn, not to endure only patiently whatever shall befal thee against thy will, but hum- bly and quickly to see and to love therein the loving Will of God. Thy faith and thy love and thy hope will grow, the more thou seest the work of God with thee ; thou wilt joy in thy sorrow, and thy sorrow will be turned into joy. It will be a joy to thee, to be likened in suffering to thy Lord, even though it be like the dying robber at His Side. ^^Thou," says a holy man°, ^'0 Lord Jesu, art both to me, the Mirror of suffering, and the Eeward of the sufferer. Each strongly urges me on, and mightily kindles me. Thou teachest my hands to fight, by the example of Thy virtue ; Thou, after victory, crownest my head with the Presence of Thy Majesty. Whether I look on Thee fighting, or look for Thee, not crowning only but the Crown, both ways Thou allurest me wondrously. Both ways art Thou a most mighty cord to draw me. Draw me after Thee ; gladly do I follow Thee ; more gladly to enjoy Thee. If thou art so good to those who follow Thee, what to those who attain Thee ! " o S. Bern, in Cant. Serm. 47. § 6. Vol. IL H SERMON VI. SELF-KNOWLEDGE. St. Matthew xx. 22. Jesus answered and said^ Ye know not tvhat ye asJc. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and to he haptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? They say unto Him^ We are ableP With glowing, burning fire of love did the two blessed Apostles say, ''We are able." With their whole heart and with the lightning swiftness of their affections, did they say it; yet ignorantly. They loved their Master. They had shared all with Him till now ; His poverty, His temptations. His loneli- ness, the contempt and npbraidings and strivings of the world. They thought that they could share all besides which was His, His Cup ; because it was His. To love, nothing seems too hard, if shared with him whom it loves. They thought, perhaps, of toil and labour and weariness and other sufferings to which they were accustomed ; but with the sustain- Self-knowledge. 99 ing Presence of their Lord. They thought not of their Master being taken from them, of the seeming failure of their hopes, the delay of reward and glory to a distant day, and now, to see His Suffering. Often as He had warned them, they had not been able to think of Him, as really giving Himself up into the hands of wicked men ; His Power not put forth ; His Glory turned into shame ; Himself, the willing prisoner of a mad multitude, and themselves, powerless and forbidden to aid. Ignorantly they said it ; for when He did drink of His Cup in the , garden, they could not watch with Him one hour," but were asleep for sorrow." When He'gave Him- self up to His enemies, they too forsook Him, and the Apostle of this day ^, who, first of the glorious company of the Apostles, was to shed his blood for His ITame, stood not by the Cross. Yet they said it with truth of heart; and our Lord promised them the truth of deed also, and His strength whereby to do it. Now they were unable ; but Christ promises; and what He promises. He performs, that what they long to do, they shall here- after have power to do. ^' Ye shall indeed drink of My Cup." Eut He tells them, that the future re- wards shall not be given by any favour even of His Own, to those whom He had called My Friends." It is not Mine to give," in any way of choice or favour ; but it shall be given to those for whom it is prepared of the Father." The blessed, glorious seats of Heaven shall be given according to the measure of faith and love which each, receiving first from the grace of God, a Preached on the Festival of S. James. H 2 100 Self-knowledge. shall, by his freed will, cherish. The measure of the bliss of His redeemed shall be according to their diligence in using His Grace, and the degree of at- tainment in all things pleasing to God, which by His Grace they shall reach. Your eternal rewards and everlasting lot in Heaven, if ye attain, will be given, not for mere asking, not to ambition or lofty desires, not for merely longing, but according to eternal laws of right and truth and holiness, whereby ^' God will reward every man according to his works." God gives each of you the grace and power, if ye too will, to do His Will. He gives to all freely. But • ^' God is no accepter of persons." Whoever is holy, good, pleasing to Him, becomes so by using the grace of God which God gives him, having first given him the heart to use it. Eut although any good in us is God's gift in us, which we have received. He will give to all whom He receives into Heaven, just that place, for which through their faithful use of His free grace, they are fitted. Oui' Lord does not say to these two Apostles, that they shall sit near Him, as they longed ; nor does He say to them, that they shall not so sit. But He tells them, that then was not the time for giving it ; then both for the Master and the servant was the time for drinking the Cup of suffering. It behoved Christ to suffer, and after that, to enter into His Glory." For the servant there is no other way than for the Master. The servant must suffer in subdu- ing sin in himself, as his Master suffered in redeem- ing him from it, and paying the ransom of his soul. ^' ItsA^Z/begiven," then, when in the eternal bright- ness of the truth of God, ^Hhe secrets of all hearts Self-knowledge, 101 shall be open,'' and in the light of His Holiness no one shall envy another, no one shall grudge to ano- ther his greater nearness to the Throne of God, or his fuller knowledge of God, or deeper joy ; no one shall long for a seat above that, which, in the Eternal Counsels of God, shall be allotted to his measure of faithfulness to the grace of God. Even these great Apostles then, whom, from the ardent glow of their impetuous love, our Lord calls sons of thunder," were, before the descent of the Holy Ghost, deceived in two ways. 1. They thought that our Lord would bestow by favour the glories of His Kingdom and nearness to Himself. 2. They were mistaken as to themselves, and their own power to endure that hardness, through which they were to enter into eternal Bliss. In a word, they knew fully neither their Master nor themselves. This will always be. We judge of God by our- selves. No man who knows not himself, can know God. Man shuts his eyes to that, whatever it be, in God, which being unlike himself, he does not wish to see. These very judgments of the Apostles are repeated every day. Men think that they shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, because they say, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which He says." They think that because they bear the name of Christ's disciples and are called Christians, He will own them as Christians in the Great Day. They think that they can drink of their Master's Cup, be- cause they know not themselves, nor Him. Strange it is, my brethren, but if ye have been turned away from God, and now are turned to God, ye know that the last thing in Heaven or earth, 102 Self-knowledge. about wMcli man, by nature, desires to know, is that which most concerns himself ; himself his very self. Man will interest himself about all things around him. He will be curious to know the news of the day, what is passing in other countries, or perhaps the works of God, the courses of the stars or of the winds, the history of past ages, the structure of the world, or even of the human mind, or the evil of his neighbour. One thing, unless touched by the grace of God, he will not wish to know, nay, he will strive to forget, to bury it amid the knowledge of the things which he knows, the state of his own soul. He will seek to knoAV all things, for this very end, to forget himself. Men wish to know about what they have, the goods which perish ; they wish to forget what they are. They wish to know of the health of their bodies which must die; they strive, not to know the health of their souls which must live, in weal or woe. And why this ? Eirst, it is a trouble to people to look really into themselves. Then, in order to avoid the pain of looking into themselves, they persuade themselves, that they know enough of themselves. Then, they half suspect that if they did look, they would find what they do not wish to see, and would have to give up ways which they wish to keep, to leave undone what they do, and do what they leave undone. And so if they look at all, they look at what is good in themselves, or at defects in their neighbours. They look in others at faults which they think they themselves have not, as a sort of balance for faults which they suspect they really have, but will not see in themselves. They think like the Pharisee, ^' I Self-knowledge. 103 should not have done what this man did ; I should not have fallen like that ; I should not lie, nor steal, nor be intemperate, as this, or that, or the other." As though almost any one man had upon him the whole body of human sins, or as though it were to love God with the whole heart and mind and strength, not to break all His Commandments ! Yet thus do men hide from themselves their own faults, and their neighbours' good; they behold their neighbours' evil and their own good ; in order doubly to deceive themselves, both as to their .own good and their own evil. But to what end not to know now, what thou must know hereafter ? Of what avail not to know on earth, when thou mayest amend it, what thou must know in the Day of Judgment, when thou canst not amend it ? If Apostles, so fervent in love as St. John and St. James, before the day of Pente- cost, did not wholly know themselves, how surely must thou not know thyself, unless, by the light of Ood's grace, thou look well into thyself ! The very heathen knew that to ^'know thyself" was the sum of true wisdom. They knew too, that, without pains we cannot know ourselves. They bade us thrice^, before we sleep, review ourselves, what we had, in the past day, been and done. If we know not ourselves, we cannot know God, nor love God, nor become less unlike God, nor be- come like Him. We cannot know God. ^'If we love not our brother whom we have seen, how can we love God Whom we have not seen." So too, if we know not what is so nigh to us, as our own souls, ^ Pythagoras. 104 Self'Jcnowledge. made in His image, how can we know Him Who made them, "Who made and Who fills Heaven and earth ? If we understand not the least, how can we understand the Infinite ? We cannot know God, also, even because we can- not love Him unless we know ourselves. All things which God hath done and doeth, hath made and up- holdeth and ordereth, are "very good." But they seem so to those only of humbled and cleansed hearts. " God," says the Psalmist, when sore tried by the evils of the wicked, " God is nothing but ^good, unto Israel" — but he adds, to the true Israel, '^the pure of heart." To those who know themselves, all things work together for good, and all things seem to be, as they are to them, good. The goods which God gives, seem " very good," and God Himself in them, because they know that they deserve them not. The evils which God allows and overrules, seem also "very good," because they see in them His loving Hand, put forth to heal them of what shuts out God from the soul. They love God intensely, in that He is so good to them in each, and every, the least good, because it is more than they deserve ; how much more in the greatest ! They love God for every and each, the very greatest, of what seem evils, know- ing them to be, from His Love, real goods. For He, by Whom " all the hairs of our head are numbered," and Who "knoweth whereof we are made," directs everything which befalls us in life, in perfect wisdom and love, to the well-being of our souls. He fits every trial to the strength or sickness of that in us, which is to be tried or purified. Now, if ye know ^ aiD riK! Ps. Ixxiii. 1. Self'Jcnowledge, 105 yourselves, ye sec quickly, at once, wliy just this trial was sent, and ye would bow before the justice of God, and adore Him for His Love. "What is all the complaining in the world, but that either men forget God, and believe not that all things are from Him, or they forget themselves, and so know not the wisdom of His dealings with them ? What we shall see hereafter, he who knows himself sees now — how perfectly God's ways are fitted for our souls. Those who know God's works in nature see the end of every part of every herb and flower; they see how every part of our human body or of all the varied living creatures, each after its kind," which God has made, exactly answers the end for which it was made, supplies its wants, upholds it in being. And can you think, that God Who hath so clothed the grass of the field," Who hath so pro- vided for the beasts which perish or for our own perishable bodies, hath provided less for the soul, which He made in His own Image and Likeness, which He gave His Son to save, which He would adorn with grace, beautify with virtues, draw by His love, make a dwelling-place for Himself here, in order to fit it to behold the Infinite Beauty and Majesty of His own Being and prepare it to enter into His own joy everlastingly ? There, if we attain, we shall see in the Brightness of His Presence, how, from our birth in the flesh to that last most blessed and eternal birth, everything was, on God's part, ordered, at each moment and turn of our being, in the fullest wisdom and love for us. Then we shall find that, on God's part, every single thing was bestowed or withheld, delayed or taken away, as should most 106 Self-knowledge, tend to our salvation. Not so surely does the door turn upon its hinges, each part being fitted to the other, so that it should open and shut at our will, as our salvation turns on the events which God in His Infinite Wisdom has fitted for us and in His Love appoints for us. It remains for us only, by His Grace, to fit ourselves to them. Our whole lot is by God's love ordered for us, as is best for each one of us ; every the least event in our lives and the whole course of them are such as is wisest for us. All, our fulness or our needs, our joy or our sorrow, our disap- pointments or the gaining of our joys, things against our minds and our wills and our hopes, nay against our very desire (as we hope) to serve God, or God's granting our heart's desire, is fitted by the finest and most delicate "Wisdom of God to something in our souls. He wounds them that they may be healed ; He prunes them that they may bring forth more fruit; He takes away our earthly stay, that we may lean on Him. But then, in whatever degree we know our souls, we shall know and love God's will in each single token of His good-pleasure. A child who has loving and tender parents knows this. It Imows, as far as it knows itself, that its parents give, delay, withhold the things it wishes for, whether for the health of body or soul, wisely and lovingly. Much more must the Eternal Father of spirits. Who formed us for Himself, and things around us for us. Who, before man's fall, made all things ^^very good," and now that man, believing the evil one, has drawn on him- self the knowledge of good and evil, makes both good and evil work to his salvation, if he will, — - much more must the Eternal Father, in Whose Self-knowledge. 107 Hands are all things, man's heart and the things which touch and affect his heart, know how each the very least thing will, by His Grace, correct and amend that heart, and fit it, cleansed and purified, for His everlasting love. All the complaining in the world is in truth, to deny that God knows what is hest for each of us, and knowing, sends it. God knows us through and through. ISTot the most secret thought, which we most hide from ourselves, is hidden from Him. As then we come to know ourselves through and through, we come to see ourselves more as God sees us, and then we catch some little glimpse of His designs with us, how each ordering of His Providence, each check to our desires, each failure of our hopes is just fitted for us and for something in our own spiritual state, which others know not of, and which, till then, we knew not. Until we come to this knowledge, we must take all in faith, believing, though we know not, the goodness of God towards us. As we know ourselves, we, thus far, know God. This, then, is one great blessing of knowing our- selves, that we hereby come to know and love the doings of God towards us. Then is the ground of all rebellion against God's Will cut off, because we see, that even, in seeming evil. He knows and wills and works our good. Then is all rebellion turned into love, because, knowing our sins and the punish- ment which sins deserve, we know and feel the love of God which we do not deserve. Without knowledge of ourselves, I said, we can- not become less unlike God. For the first step to become less like Him, is to see that we are unlike 108 Self-knowledge, Him, and to grieve, for love of Him, that we have injured His likeness in our souls. But none knows this truly, save the humble of heart, he who has often sifted himself in the sight of God, so that the light of God fell upon him and revealed him to himself. A man, except so far as he is in the grace of God, will own in himself just so much as he cannot help. No one would own quietly to himself, " I am avari- cious, or grasping, or niggardly, or vain, or worldly, or sensual, or ill-tempered, or conceited." We see and know of many, that they have these or other faults ; hut they themselves, if they know anything of them, call them by light names, and soften them, or forget them. But meanwhile, what thousand, thousand sins, which are not a man's chief est outstanding sins, pass by unheeded ! He lessens in his own sight what he cannot but see, and sees nothing which he can help. He blinds himself when he can. If he cannot shut out the light wholly, he shuts, or half shuts his eyes, that it may not disclose to him what he wishes not to see, himself. But thus, day by day, he adds to a load of unrepented, deepening, sin. Sin itself, if it lasts, blinds the eyes to itself. Conscience is a very tender thing. If we listen to it, to know ourselves or what we are doing, it speaks to us more plainly. If we hush it, attend not to it, stifle it, we deaden it until it awake to condemn us. Men think that they know themselves, because they are themselves. And yet of others we are all ready to think that they do not know themselves. You yourselves think that you know well that your neighbour has this or that fault. At least, people Self-knowledge. 109 speak of their neighbour's faults undoubtingly, and condemn them, as though they well knew that, what they condemned in them, was quite true. Think you that in most cases, they know their own faults as much and as clearly as you think you know them ; that they see them, as you see them ? Surely, if many so saw their own faults, as others see them, they would be at more pains, by God's grace, to subdue them. Since then, as thou thinkest, people around thee, those in whom thou seest ill, whom in thy mind, at least^ thou condemnest, deceive themselves, how knowest thou, that thou art not deceived thyself? The very heathen knew this self-deceit. ' 'Change but the name," they said'^, ^'the tale is told of thee." "We know in what aweful sins David was sunk. His conscience murmured doubtless, and shook his soul at times, during that long year of impenitence. But it needed a Prophet's voice to tell him, Thou art the man." Thou seest that others are ignorant of themselves. How knowest thou, that thou knowest thyself? One only way there is, as God bids you, ^'examine yourselves." ^'Examine your own consciences," our Church repeats, and that not lightly and after the manner of dissemblers with God ; " examine your lives and conversation by the rule of God's com- mandments." If thou hast not yet thoroughly ex- amined thyself, be sure that thou dost not yet know thyself. Thou must examine thyself, that thou may- est know thyself. Thou must examine thyself, that thou mayest keep the knowledge of thyself, and not ^ Hor. Sat. i. 69. 110 Self 'knowledge. forget thyself. Thou must examine thyself again and again, as thou wouldest glean after harvest, that nothing be lost. Thou must examine thyself, not by the examples of those around thee, nor by the maxims of the world, nor heeding the praise (if so be) which men give thee, but by the light of God's commandments. Above all, thou must pray to thy Father Who seeth in secret, that He would shed His light into thy soul, to teach thee, of what to repent^ what to amend ; to turn thee inside out to thy-self ; that thou mayest know all, sorrow for all, leave all, be forgiven all, which is against the will and good- ness of the All-Good God. As that is true which the Truth spake, ^^"What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" so then is that also true, It profits thee nothing, if thou know about the whole world, and know not about thine own soul." Though thou couldest know, not the things of the whole world only, but the things beyond the world, all mysteries and all knowledge, except the loving knowledge of God and the knowledge of thyself, it would profit thee nothing. Yea, it would be worse than nothing. Knowledge of all things out of thyself is but a base- less fabric, which shall vanish into nothing ; like the airy buildings in the clouds, but no real, solid, sub- stance. Such ^'knowledge" puffeth^ up, empty and vain, like a bladder (so the word is) distended with wind ; but charity," or the love of God or man, edifieth," or buildeth up on the solid foundation, which is Christ. My brethren, ye cannot, many of you, have much ^ 4>V<7tOl. Self-knowledge. Ill human knowledge, but ye can have Divine. Ye cannot know much now about earth or the things of earth; but ye may know of the heavens and the heaven of heavens, and Him Who dwelleth in the highest heavens and in the lowly heart. Ye cannot know very much of things which concern you not ; but ye can know all which concerns you. Ye can know "the love of God which passeth knowledge,'^ and "the peace of God, which passeth all understand- ing ; and ye can know the way to eternal life, even Him Who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life,'^ "Whom truly to know is eternal life," and "then ye shall know, even as ye are known." "Many," says a holy man^, " seek knowledge ; few, self-know- ledge. But if with the same zeal and care, where- with worldly and vain knowledge is sought, self- knowledge were sought, it would be found more readily, and kept more usefully." " Where ^ shall wisdom be found," asks Job, "and where is the place of understanding ? The depth saith, it is not in me ; and the sea saith, it is not in me. God under- standeth the way thereof and He knoweth the place thereof; and unto man He said. Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is understanding." But " thou must know thy- self," says a holy man^, " that thou may est fear God ; thou must know Him that thou mayest love Him. In the one, thou hast the beginning of wisdom, in * Tract, de Interiori Domo. c. 10. inc. auct. int. opp. S. Eer- nardi. torn. ii. p. 354, ed. Een. Al. de Conscientia, c. 2. Ed. 1586, torn. i. p. 1430. g Job xxviii. 12, 14, 23, 28. ^ S. Bern, in Cant. Serm. 37. § 1. 112 Self -knowledge. the other thou art perfected. For ^ the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ; ' and ' the fulfilling of the law is charity.' " But above all seeking of thine own, and in all seeking to know thyself, pray God to enlighten thee. He will pour His grace into thy soul, and will shew thee thy own deformity and His restoring Hand ; thy readiness to sin, the frequency of thy falls, and their occasions. He will teach thee to know thy weakness, and by His grace, to shrink from what, in thine ignorance, thou knewest not. And so, as thou knowest thyself and condemnest thyself, He will pardon thee ; as thou seest thyself to be blind, He will enlighten thee ; as thou know- est thyself to be weak, He will strengthen thee ; as thou feelest thyself ready for all evil. He will lead thee to all good. For He will teach thee to seek Him, ask of Him, cleave to Him ; and sooner shall Heaven and earth pass away, than that one who truly sought Him, shall not find Him. ^'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away." But His Word is, ^'Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you," even the everlasting gates, where whoso entereth shall never more go out, but shall dwell before the Face of the Lord, in the joy of the Lord, for ever. SERMON VII LIFE A WAEFAEE. 1 Corinthians ix. 26. " / therefore so run, not as mcertainh/ ; so fight J, not as one that heateth the air,"^^ We all own that life is a warfare. Holy Scripture is full of it. It tells us of foes, fighting, armour, rewards, life, death. It tells us of war within us and without us. Within us, are " the ^ lusts which war in our members," ^'war^ against the soul," the° law in our members, warring against the law of our mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin, which is in our members." Without us, are foes, deadly, implacable, unsleeping, unceasing, ex- perienced in near six thousand years of human weak- ness, and passions, and unsteadfastness, and sin. We*^ wrestle not," says St. Paul, ^'against flesh, and blood, but against principalities, against powers, a S. James iv. 1. ''IS. Peter ii. 11. ^ Rom. vii. 23. ^ Eph. yi. 12. Vol II. I 114 Life a Warfare, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." There seem to be ranks and powers of the evil angels, as of good. One of these our Lord singles out, as our chief enemy, who has an access to our souls ; " takes ^ the word out of men's hearts;" the father of lies, and of those who ^ will not obey God ; who entered into Judas, and put it into his heart to betray our Lord ; and who desired to have Peter, to sift him through and through, if so be he might fall. As a pattern to us, our Elessed Lord, although without inward motion towards sin, allowed His rebel creature to tempt Him with those three temp- tations under which men fall. Our Lord withstood them in our nature, that He might withstand him and overthrow him in us. He gave power to His own to ^'treads on all the power of the enemy." He promises to bruise Satan under our feet also. He sets before us, at once, the greatness of our war- fare and of our defence. He arms us from head to foot, that we may be able to stand in the evil day." He gives us ^^the shield of faith, the helmet of sal- vation," and the rest of that Divine armoury. Yet He shews us thereby, how whole and entire our armour must be, if we would not be wounded. He exhorts, by St. Paul, ^^to fight the good fight," and to lay," grasp, ^'hold of eternal life," as being one and the same thing. I have fought the good fight," says St. Paul, when about to suffer death for our Lord. Our Lord speaking to the whole Church of all times, in His words to the seven Churches of Asia, closes alike rebuke or encouragement with the e S. Mark iv. 15. ^ S. John viii, 24. % S. Luke x. 19. Life a Warfare. 115 promise ^^to him that overcometh." Whether they had to repent of leaving their first love ; to hold fast what they had, and ^'to keep His works unto the end ; " to strengthen what remains ; or to cast off lukewarmness, and ^'be zealous and repent;" the promise to all alike ^ is, ^^to him that overcometh." Our Lord sums up, in the last, His sevenfold promise, to him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me on My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father on His throne." *'He^ that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be My Son," are almost His closing words. To be saved ^ from the hands of our enemies," ^'delivered from the hands of our ene- mies, that we might serve God in holiness and right- eousness before Him all the days of our life," is the sum of the promise ^'by the mouth of all His holy prophets, which have been since the world began." We have a warfare then to wage, a warfare within ourselves, against ourselves, and against those, more powerful, subtle, skilful than we ; enemies, who know many of you, your weak points, better than you know yourselves. We have ^^a strong man" with whom to fight ; a stronger through Whom to over- come. Against us, is the craft of Satan to over- throw us. The strength, the wisdom, the love of Christ our God, may be ours, through which to overcome. And about what is the strife ? The soul, its life or death. And what the loss? To be shut out from the love of God, and be the companion of t Rev. ii. 7, 17, 26 ; iii. 5, 12, 21. i lb. xxi. 7. k S. Luke i. 71, 74, 75. I 2 116 Life a Warfare, devils, hating and hated. What the reward ? God Himself. He Himself says, "I am your exceeding great Eeward." And what are ye doing then ? Fighting, surely, with your whole might, with the whole grace of God, straining every nerve, watching at every moment, guarding against every peril ! This is, surely, your first thought in the morning, ^^What may I do this day to make this great prize my own, to escape that unbearable woe?" This is your last thought at night, ^'Wherein have I failed this day ? what can I amend on the morrow?" "Whatever else ye do, this cannot but be your first thought. This must be the aim of all your aims. All things must be precious, or cheap unto you, as they further this or no. For if ye win this, all loss here is endless, boundless gain. If ye lose this, all gain will but mock you, and add intensity to that unendurable loss. This ye would do, as wise men in this world, were the struggle for some good of this world. For what bauble of this world will not men rise early, and late take rest, or toil, it may be, their whole lives, to gain, at the end, what they must part with as soon as gained? If ye are not doing this for the life to come, what are ye doing ? Ye believe, ye cannot but believe, that God has promised to those who are faithful and overcome, those rewards ; Himself and the unspeakable joys, the overflowing torrent of pleasure, in His Wisdom, Power, Glory, Beauty, Love. Ye believe, ye cannot but believe, that to those who are overcome, and obey Him not, but obey Satan and their own pas- sions, He has threatened that unutterable endless Life a Warfare. 117 woe. Ye believe, ye cannot but believe, (for our Lord, the Truth, hath said it,) that ye must over- come," in order to enter into His Joy. And to " overcome," there must be conflict, as God warns us. God the Son took our nature, not only to re- deem us, but to endure and overcome in it. God has assigned one way to Heaven, a way of struggle, effort, striving for the mastery over ourselves. How is it, that men can believe, that God has appointed to man this warfare against Satan and man's own corrupt nature, has given him His Holy Spirit to ensure him the victory, if he wills ; and yet be so much at ease about themselves, although not engaged in that warfare ; as much at ease, as if they were already safe in Heaven ? How is it, that so many can be content, though not struggling at all ? So many, though continually defeated? So many, though making no progress ? Men can hardly imagine that they are doing what God has appointed for their salvation, and yet are as unconcerned and secure, as if they were saved already, and could not miss it. They are walking blindfold, yet have no fear of missing their way. The truth is, men blind themselves, and our very proverbs tell us, that no blindness is so entire I They know not themselves, and so do not know how deeply they are slaves of their special sin. They know that they have not all sin, and so, although they cannot think themselves to be struggling, they can think that they are not in all points defeated. How does this self-deceit come ? To Imow how it comes, may save some of us, my brethren, by ^ ''None are so blind as those who won't see." 118 Life a Warfare. God's grace, from falling into it, or by His mercy may open our eyes, that by His grace we may be freed from it. Most commonly, alas ! the self-deceit comes tbrough. sin itself. It is bard to do sin, and to own that it is sin. God's image, although defaced, is still stamped upon the soul. God's law is, in a mea- sure, written in the heart. God's Holy Spirit, unless finally driven away, lives within the soul. Our moral nature, the Word of God, the Yoice of God's Holy Spirit, teaching, pleading, checking, warning, up- braiding, will not be silenced, so long as the soul itself lives. Most, who have fallen into grievous sin, can recollect that the first act of sin was violence to them-^ selves. Sin, to which any one is not tempted, seems- to him, what it is, not an ofi'ence against God only,, but shocking and revolting. There is scarcely a sin, however shocking or revolting, at which the soul shrank back once, to which it cannot be accustonled, so as to forget that it is sin. Custom," you are wont to say, '4s a second nature." For good or evil, it changes nature. It changes nature, not only by commanding it, as a master, and demanding what it is wont to, but by destroying the very feelings which once resisted it. The change is the less felt,, because it is slow. The poison of sin creeps slowly through the soul. It ends in death ; yet no one can say, which drop will destroy life. The thought of sin flashes through the soul, and is abhorred. It comes again, and is thought impossible. ''Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ?" Per- haps the soul admits it the more in thought, because it thinks it can never do it. It will have the pleasure Life a Warfare, 119 of acting it in thought, because it thinks itself safe from doing it. It would have the pleasure of ima- gining, without the guilt of doing. How often have persons allowed themselves thoughts of revenge, anger, contempt, rivalry, display, covetousness, be- cause they never meant to act them ! Satan is on the watch ; they are unguarded ; and before they know it, the act is done. Then comes self-reproach, and either quick repentance, or the stifling of self- reproach. Sin which seemed unendurable, little by little, looks less grievous; then it looks light; then it is thought necessary ; then it is not felt ; then the soul is dead. Acts become more frequent ; frequent acts become custom; custom, unbroken, becomes necessity; necessity, unless God's chastening arm awaken the sinner, is death. But in every stage of this deadening of the soul, the soul can retain the knowledge of what sin is, only so far as it is not inured to it. We can only fully understand what grace or virtue is, by ourselves acting it. For God gives us light, while by His grace we do it. "We can only understand the hide- ousness of sin, by not doing it. For those who do it, blind their own eyes to it. One who is perfectly true, or has been trained to think it disgraceful to tell a lie, can hardly imagine himself saying what is not true. His whole nature revolts at it. One, in- ured to lies, can scarcely imagine them to be wrong. Those who steal make pleas to themselves, that this or that is not stealing; those who backbite their neighbours, say that one cannot be so rigid about speaking ; those who jest profanely, think that it is innocent mirth, and that others who are shocked at 120 Life a Warfare, it, are over-nice ; the angry man pleads that he can- not help anger or impatience. Avarice becomes prudence; dissipation, largeness of heart; to cast away God's truth, liberality. Even in sins which desolate families, and mar innocence and purity, the fault is cast upon God, Who made us as we are. Man makes his sin into a necessity to him; and what is necessary, he holds to be God's doing, not his own. One, inured to sin, either thinks that all are secretly like himself, or that those who are not, have chosen amiss, in not choosing his enjoyments. Man must have peace. And so, if he will not choose to be of the same mind with God, he must make to himself a god of the same mind with him- self. Perfect love casteth out fear, and so does perfect sin." He who walketh in light, fears not evil ; for he sees it, to avoid it. He who blinds him- self, fears not evil ; for he sees it not, till he falls into it. There are two ends in which men struggle not ; when they are wholly free, and when they are ivhoUy bound. This then is one vast wilderness of self-deceit, in which men lose themselves. Every act by which a man gives way to sin, blinds him to that sin, and, in a measure, to all other sin. For it blunts the fine- ness of his feeling of good and evil ; it dulls his sight to the beauty of good, and the deformity of evil : it makes his ear heavy, that he hears no longer the gentle whispers of the voice of God. Everything, good or evil, in. the soul, reveals or hides God's light to it. And yet, until a man is wholly enslaved by his sin, he is, of necessity, at times freed from it. Some- S. Born, de grad. hum. c. 21 Life a Warfare. 121 times he is not tempted to it ; perhaps, if tempted, he half escapes it. He deceives perhaps, but does not directly lie ; he indulges overmuch, but does not lose his reason ; he is vain, but does no great open act of vanity ; he takes unfair advantage, but does not nakedly defraud or steal. And then whatever the sin is, he quickly forgets what he has done. He drowns, or distracts his thoughts; the world and Satan help him, and God, after a time, leaves him. He thinks that he is not sin's slave, because he is not always sinning in this particular way. A man will count himself generous or kind, if from time to time he does kind or generous acts. He will not think that he is given up to sin, although he commits it whenever a strong temptation comes. And so he abuses even God's mercy. Who by His Providence shields him from temptation, and thinks that he does not much offend God, because God keeps from him the temptations to offend Him. Again; our trial, by God's appointment and mercy, lies mostly in some few things. We bring trials upon ourselves, which God did not intend for us. We increase manifoldly our o^vn trials by every consent to sin. Eut by nature no one, scarcely, has the whole mass of human sin and temptation to strive with, although men have ended with staining themselves with well-nigh all. Most are born with some one leading fault, in which their own chief trial lies. But few are born with very many faults ; most have some natural graces. If angry, they soon forgive; if wanton, they do some kind acts; if covetous, they are careful for their own families ; if they destroy their own souls, they are, it is said, 122 Life a Warfare, " no one's enemy, but their own." And so whereas, if we were wise, we should forget any good thing in us, owning that, whatever it is, it is God's gift in us, and should think only of our remaining evil, people blind themselves to their own evil by thinking of the evil of others and of their own good. Such was the Pharisee, whom our Lord condemns. Doubt- less, he was ^^not an extortioner, unjust, adulterer," or, in many ways, " even as that Publican ;" he used some bodily denial, and gave alms. These things, he dwelt upon. And so he contrived to hide from himself his own besetting sins, pride and contempt. "We ought to compare ourselves with no one, except to abase ourselves ; and men do compare them- selves with others, only to exalt themselves. We may see in well-nigh every one some grace better than our own, from which we may learn ; and men look to see in every one some evil which is not in themselves, to comfort themselves that they are not worse than others. To see graces in others, is often a natural pain, because it is a reproach to them- selves ; to see defects in the good, is a comfort to them, because they themselves look less evil. Still sadder is it, when men use truths of God, to comfort themselves in listlessness and want of faith- ful service to God. True it is, ^Hhat in us, that is,, in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing;" that we have a law in our members warring against the law of our mind;" that *^what we would do, that we can- not;" that ^4n many things we all offend," or stumble. But did God tell us this, to make us slothful, or to rouse us ? If we are told of a disease, do we what in us lies to check it, or do we give it Life a Warfare, 123 full play ? Patriarchs, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, had the same sinful nature cleaving to them, as we. St. James and St. John sought high places ; St. Paul was a persecutor; St. John was fiery; St. Mark shrank from peril; St. Peter was rash and denied our Lord; all forsook Him in the time of peril. But what became they ? How was Saul the perse- cutor transformed by the grace of God into the like- ness of his Master, and his soul conformed to Him, and his spirit obeyed every motion of His Holy Spirit, until he could say ^^not I, but Christ liveth in me." And yet these blessed Apostles, whose names were written in Heaven, and whose names, on the true Foundation, were laid in the foundations of the holy city " ; they who, themselves subdued to God, subdued the world unto the Crucified ; these chosen vessels of the Most High, to bear His Name before kings and princes," who made an unjust judge tremble before his prisoner, and a king almost " to exchange his crown for their bonds ; these, to whom "to live was Christ," who "bore about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," to whom our Lord bequeathed "the fellowship of His sufi'erings," to " fill up " what He willed to " remain ovei; of suffer- ing for His Church," these men were born with the same passions as we, with the same law in their members as we ; they had the same struggle which every child of Adam has had to endure, whether conquering or conquered. "By the grace of God" they "were what they were." Wherein we have fallen short, not God's grace has been wanting to us, but we, to the grace of God. Eev. xxi. 14. 124 Life a Warfare, There is yet one more way of fighting uncertainly, which besets even many who are conscious of their own besetting sin, and are, in some measure, earnest against it. I do not now mean open sins, deliberate breaches of God's commandments, such as plain lying, or stealing, or being drunk, or swearing, or breaches of the seventh commandment, from which a man, if he would be a Christian at all, must, by God's grace, keep himself wholly, or, if. he have fallen into any, must repent and break off altogether. Yet nothing is more common (and some of you must have felt it, my brethren) than for persons to know more or less, what are their most besetting faults, to pray more or less against them, to be grieved and downcast about them, and yet to see in themselves little or no progress towards subduing them. It may indeed sometimes be, that they are really m^aking progress, though perhaps slow, even though they see it not. For faults which a person falls into through infirmity (as of temper), may be less frequent than before, or in themselves less grave. Although sometimes defeated, you may gain the victory more often than before ; and, when defeated or overtaken, you may not fall so badly. For, step by step, people wade into the mire of evil habits, and step by step must they mostly wade out of them ; and, though still soiled, and drenched, they may be in less deep water and nearer to the shore of their deliverance. Still, there is a good deal of uncertain fighting, and Christians waste their strength and lose grace and peace; still, from the same want, "they know not themselves." They struggle, but they know not against what ; they know not on which Life a Warfare, 125 side to expect their foes ; before they are aware, they are overtaken and overthrown. Our first step is to gain a knowledge of our own selves, as a whole ; what our faults are. Then, what our chief fault is, (whatever it be,) that, from which the rest spring, whether it be pride, anger, animal pleasure, or the like. It is something to know thus much. For thus we know what to pray against, what grace to pray for. But we must have a nearer, more determined, conflict still, if we would not waste our strength, and fight in the air. And the same rule will be of use in many of those temptations to more grievous sin. Observe carefully, day by day, the occasion of thy fall ; what happens just before, which leads thee to it. Thus, whether the fault be anger or pride, (to take these,) people generally know thus much, that they are liable to be put out, or to be proud ; and perhaps they could tell, if they thought, that this or that calls up their anger or their pride. But their temptations come, now this, now that, in the different accidents of life. They know that they do feel angry or proud, and they wish they did not. But they do not think distinctly, what are the things which lead to their anger and pride. And so they fight at random and uncertainly. Now here, too, the trials of each of you are fewer, than most of you think. Here, too, we are spared many trials which we might have had. If we be tempted to pride, or anger, or gluttony, yet all things which tempt others do not tempt us. And mostly, you will find that the things which tempt you to your besetting sin, are much fewer than you think at first. You are con- 126 Life a Warfare. fused about them, because you do not know tbem ; and, not Imowing tbem, you think that they are many more than they are. For, until you know them dis- tinctly, you do not know that it is one and the same trial, which comes again and again. Persons who have observed narrowly, what are the outward temp- tations to their sin, have often found that even to some very besetting sin, as anger, there have been, at most, some seven or eight occasions. To know this, and to know the occasions themselves, is, with God's help, a great gain. We say commonly, forewarned, forearmed." The very temptation to sin becomes, when you know it well, the sentinel to warn you against it. Does this seem to you a long, toilsome process? It looks toilsome only, till you begin in earnest. Persevere but a little, and it will grow easy to you. Custom, which binds some miserably to sin, will, by God's grace, be a help to you to do easily what you do for Him. But does the whole strife seem to you long and weary ? Look to eternity. It is nothing to look on to endless time. Time is no measure for eternity. Por, when eternity comes, time will no longer be. Yet even thus, look on to eternity. Look on to it, if but as countless, endless time, no nearer to any end, when thousands of thousands of years such as we now count them, yea if each of these thousands of thousands of years were told over as often as there are grains of the dust of the earth, or sand on the sea shore, shall have rolled by ; still thou must begin again, and again, and again, and when time and thought have failed thee, thou art still no nearer. Life a Warfare, 127 And then say, what is the longest life on earth? Shrivelled into nothing. In the presence of eternity, or of that countless time, not thy life only, but the whole being of this world is as nothing. But look on again in that eternity. I ask not, where God hath said thou shalt be, but, what shalt thou be ? Un- changeable as the unchangeableness of God, what thou hast become in this world, good or bad. And where then is this weary strife which now seems to thee so long, so hard, so unendurable ? Shrivelled up into nothing, past and gone. And what is there besides ? One unchanging, unchangeable state. In all eternity, thou wilt be one and the same, even as God Himself is One and the Same. Here we may ever hope for change. We hope ever to be other, better, than we are. But change, growth, amend- ment, enlargement of the heart, is here alone. There our state is fixed. It is an aweful thing in itself to think of our state being fixed ; of all power of amend- ing it, by God's grace, being gone. Who of us could endure the thought of being in all eternity what they are now, of having no more power to love than they have now ? But think for one moment, what that unchangeable eternity would be in woe, an eternity in the fire which never shall be quenched, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched !" And what will it be to you, my brethren, if ye, by the grace of God, hold on for this little while ? What is Eternity ? Eternity, to the blessed, is God's un- changeable love, shedding upon the countless hosts of Heaven, Angels and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, Martyrs, Prophets, Patriarchs and the whole glorious company of the redeemed, and, if 128 Life a Warfare, thou wiliest, by His Grace, on thee^ the fulness of His infinite love, opening to them the treasures of His Infinite "Wisdom, encompassing them round and round with His Infinite Bliss, satisfying their souls with His Infinite Beauty, and awakening in them a continual longing, which shall ever be filled, never be cloyed. He saith to thee, ^^All which I have is thine," thine, according to thy power to contain it. I^"ow He bids thee, with one eajrnest strife, cast out of thyself what chokes thy heart, so that thou canst not contain everlastingly His Love. He bids thee, by His grace, enlarge thy heart, that He may fill thee more largely. All of this world will soon have passed away. But God will remain, and thou, what- ever thou hast become, good or bad. Thy deeds now are the seed-corn of Eternity. Each single act, in each several day, good or bad, is a portion of that seed. Each day adds some line, making thee more or less like Him, more or less capable of His Love, fitter for greater or less glory, to be nearer to Him, or to be less near, or to be away from Hijn for ever. Is the strife long and hard? Long and hard it would be, to be ever defeated. But Christ shall lighten it for thee. He will bear it in thee ; He will bear thee over it^ as He will bear thee over the molten surges of this burning world. Christ will go before thee. He saith unto thee, Follow Me, and where I am, there shall thou be with Me." Follow thou Me." ^'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." ''If Christ be for us, who shall be against us?" Safely may est thou fight, who art secure of victory. And thou art safe, if thou fight for Lifo a Warfare, 129 Christ, and with Christ. Only give not way. If defeated, be the humbler, and rise again; begin again, and pray to persevere. If thou succeed, give "thanks to Him Who giveth its the victory through J esus Christ our Lord." And He will, by His Blood, intercede for thee ; He will, by His grace, fight in thee ; He will keep thee unto the end, Who Himself crowneth, and is crowned, in all who are faithful to His Grace. Vol. II. s SERMON VIII THE BESETTING SIN. Hebrews xii. 1. Wherefore^ seeing we also are compassed alout with so great a cloud of witnesses^ let us lay aside every weighty and the sin which doth so easily heset us, and let us run with patience the race which is set he/ore usP Thus does St. Paul close that glowing account of the deeds of faith under the Old Testament. He had first taught what faith was. Eaith is the sub- stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith makes the things of the life to come, our life with God, our eternal rest in His love, and our glory amid that rest, as present to the soul, as if we saw them. They are or subsist in them- selves eternally. They are as present in the mind of God, now, as they shall be to . us, when we shall be amid them. Eaith makes them to subsist in us. Eaith is a divine knowledge, given by God, whereby The Besetting Sin. 131 we know tlie things which shall be after death, as certainly, though not as fully, as though we saw them. Faith makes them to exist in the soul. The being which they have, it makes to be in us. We see by faith, what by our bodily eyes we see not; but we behold it as certainly, as if it were before our eyes. Blessed, if we lose not sight of it ! Then, St. Paul sets before us, one by one, some of the noble band of the faithful under the Old Tes- tament, and shews us the sort of faith of Abel, and !N"oah, and Abraham ; how they acted on their belief, shewed their faith by their faithfulness, fore- went things present for the sake of things unseen, and obtained the praise of God, and the earnest of things to come. Then, from single heroes of a mighty faith, the captains of God's army, the leaders of the people, he goes on to the whole army of Mar- tyrs and Confessors, who had suffered for God, before Christ came ; who were stoned, sawn asunder, slain with the sword," every word speaking of some noble deed of faith, crowning a life of faith. And so he turns to the Hebrew converts. They too might then be martyrs. The flame of persecution was lighted, and was around them. But what does he teach them ? " Having " he says so great a cloud of wit- nesses," these witnesses to the might of God, and the power of faith, and the reality of things unseen, which yet in their souls they saw; ''having these witnesses," encircling us as a cloud, uplifted above the earth, flashing forth with the light of God, the lustre of their mighty deeds, and the refreshing streams of their heavenly teaching, ''let us" — do what? follow their example? do and suffer what k2 132 The Besetting Sin. they did and suffered ? St. Paul, as a wise teacher, begins with the beginning, not with the end. He says; lay aside what hinders you from being like them, that so in the end, ye may be like them, with their Saviour and yours. Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us." This is the first step. Cease to do evil," and so learn to do well." He speaks of us as in a race, a race for life eternal, of which our Lord and God, Who gives us strength to run, the Author of our faith, will be Himself the Finisher, will complete it in time, and reward it in eternity. Now, two sorts of things hinder men in a race, a weight to carry, or what ever and anon entangles their feet. What is the weight in our way to Heaven ? Is it not the mass of worldly thoughts, cares, longings, the confused heap of sins, which bow us down, of which we confess, ^'the bur- den of them is intolerable ?" And what then, is the one sin which doth so easily beset us ? It is that we are mostly born with one special temptation; we have not, all, the same trials ; but we have, each, one special weakness or passion or evil inclination, which besets us again and again, is ever twining itself around us, and from which until we disentangle ourselves, we make but little progress. It is the oc- casion of our stumbling, our falling, our slowness in heavenly things. It comes upon us, sometimes in the very same shape, sometimes in another. It takes us sometimes by surprise, sometimes by storm; some- times in acts so slight that we heed them not, some- times, in temptations so vehement, that they carry us off our feet. It comes to us, as I said before ^, mostly ^ Sermon vi. The Besetting Sin, 133 in a few ways, but these so in and out, as it were, sometimes in the one, sometimes in the other, that till men examine it slowly, and take it away piece by piece, it seems much stronger and more manifold than it is. So you have felt when briars have en- tangled you and hindered your walking. The more you stumbled on impatiently, the more hold they seemed to have of you. If you took them off quietly, you were surprised sometimes, how slight a thing it was, which was hindering you. St. Paul's words, then, suggest to us two sorts of work before us to be done by the grace of God : 1. We have to strive against the whole body of sin, everything which is against the holy will of God, every ^ evil inclination, all iniquity and profaneness, neglect and haughtiness,-, strife and wrath, passion and corruption, indolence and fraud, every evil motion, every impure thought, every base desire, every unseemly thought." 2. We have all, probably, some one besetting fault, which is our own special hindrance. Both of these we must learn by looking into ourselves. They vary in all. I^o two persons have exactly the same temptations, as no two minds are exactly alike. And so we ought not to judge of others, nor can we judge of ourselves by them. We must look into ourselves. And this is the examina- tion of ourselves, which St. Paul bids us use ; of which the Church reminds us ; which the heathen Imew to be good, though they knew so little of its use, without the grace of God ; and which all who have grown in the grace of God, have known to be necessary for the soul ; and those most, who have been most holy. ^ Bishop Andrewes. 134 The Besetting Sin, We have then, these two searches into ourselves to make ; one into every part of ourselves ; the other into that part of ourselves, which is the weakest, and through which we most often fall. Of these, holy men recommend that we should begin with our be- setting fault. For this, there are many reasons. It lies, most likely, at the root of many other faults. It burrows under ground, as it were, and comes up at a distance, where we look not for it. It branches out into other faults ; it twines round and kills some grace ; it hides itself behind other faults or virtues ; it puts itself forth in the midst of them. It colours every other fault ; it interferes with, or overshadows or overlays every grace. But the more this one fault spreads, the more, if you uproot it, you will clear of the field of your conscience; the more will your heart become the good ground, which, freed from thorns, shall bear fruit, thirty, sixty, an hundred- fold, to life everlasting. When, in clearing your field or your garden, you pluck up thoroughly some one weed, whose roots lie deep and spread widely, you have often seen, how much more and far more widely you have uprooted, than you thought before- hand to be possible. You have loosened, too, the whole ground, or other lesser weeds are, without your knowledge, pulled up with it, and lie down and die. In like way, when you set yourself in earnest against your besetting sin, you uproot from your soul much more varied evil, than you knew or thought of. We have a picture of this in Holy Scripture. The Philistines were the enemies of Israel, and blas- phemed God. When Goliath their champion stood, they stood and defied the armies of God ; when he The Besetting Sin, 135 fell, they fled. Your besetting sin is your Goliath. Set yourself earnestly, by the grace of God, to subdue ^V, and the rest, Avill, by that same grace, give way. Then, too, your besetting sin is that, by which you most frequently offend God, and offend Him most. They who would keep a fortified place against an enemy, would defend most carefully its weakest points. It is there, that he would most assail them. So Satan most assails thee, wherever thou art weak- est. But, wherever he has power over thee, he gains power over thy whole self If thou sinnest, it is thy whole self which sinneth. It needs not, to make thee a sinner, that thou shouldest have the whole weight of all sin upon thee. If Satan holds thee by any one sin, he holds thee effectually back from God. It is by thy besetting sin, that he makes thee most often displease God. Ey thy besetting sin, he keeps thee down to earth, afraid of God, a stranger to God, empty of God, because thou art filled with things which displease God. For thy besetting sin lies most deeply in thy whole nature. It springs from the most corrupt part of thyself. It hurts thee most, because it is the sin thou hast most love for. Other faults lie on the surface; this goes to the very depth of thy soul. Other faults are not so done with thy whole heart. Thou art in most peril as to thy besetting sin, that it take up thy whole heart, master thy aftections, occupy thy imagination, fill thy thoughts, engross thy time, enslave thyself. Thou hast then great reason to be most watchful to uproot thy besetting sin, because 1, It is the root of other sins, gives occasion to them, makes them as 136 The Besetting Sin, bad as they are, makes acts which would have no sin, to be sinful, because they have this sin in them. And so, while thy besetting sin reigns in thy soul, it is the parent of many other sins; when it is de- throned and destroyed, many others die with it. 2. It is the sin which has most hold of thy mind, and so it is the cause why thou most often offendest God. It comes to thee oftenest, tempts thee most strongly, and where thou art the weakest, and yieldest the most readily. This is another separate evil. People are wont to think of sin as a weakness, whereby they do what is wrong. They own to themselves, that it is their weak point. They do not think to themselves until God has touched their consciences, that every single act is an offence against Almighty God, contrary to His Holy "Will and to His Love. But this besetting sin so multiplies sin. It is called the besetting sin, because it continually besets thee ; that is, it is always about thee, always on the watch for thee. It entangles thee at every step. More of a man's sins are done through his besetting sin, than through all besides. It becomes his companion. He becomes so inured to it, that he does not think of it as sin, or justifies it, or, at least, pleads to himself that his nature is weak and that he cannot help it. !N"ature is weak; but grace is strong, yea. Almighty. But so he sins more ha- bitually. He multiplies sins, whenever the occasion or temptation comes. And so there results, at last, a fearful heap of sin against Almighty God. God says that He 'Svill bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil.'' God takes account of single acts. Every single sin The Besetting Sin, 137 is treason against Almighty God. It is to choose what He forbids and what Satan tempts to. God says, He ^^will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing." Sin then has two aspects. It is a condition, a way of being, a whole, offensive to Almighty God. And every separate sin is a separate defiance, or neglect, or, any how, disobedience to Him. Dead leaves fall, one by one, light almost as the air through which they fall. What a heavy, putrid mass they become, when they are thickened together, full of all uncleanness ! In like way a man commits sin, and thinks so lightly of it, that he will not be able to tell, after a time, how many very deadly sins he has committed. But, when he sees all, festering in their own corruption and foulness, within and around him, what a loathsome sickening sight they — yea he himself is to himself. A man may have committed the same grievous sin every day, or three times in two days. In two years he will have committed a thousand deadly sins against Almighty God. It has been the ground-work of solid conversion to God, to see, in a review of life, how many thousand sins a person has thus, through this one sin, committed against Him. But even short of anything so frightful, the be- setting sin grows, day by day, sometimes in darker forms, sometimes in lighter, but still continually. It is the cause of most of those acts for which thou wilt be judged; for which, but for God's mercy, thou wouldest be condemned. 3. Then too, it is the occasion of a man's worst sins, because a man yields his mind most to it, goes 138 The Besetting Sin. along with it, does it with pleasure. All sin is, to choose something else rather than God. But to choose a thing eagerly, with zest, taking delight in it, against the wise love of God, this is the deadliest form of sin. 4. Then it will most likely be that, when not tempted in act, a man will be tempted to the thought of his besetting sin, both before and after. And so he acts his sin over again in thought, when he can- not in deed. Thus he may multiply his sin, beyond all power of thought. For thought is so quick; each minute may have many thoughts crowded into it. And minutes pass quickly by, when engaged in thoughts upon which a person likes to dwell. And so the sin is thought of beforehand, again and again, before it is done ; and this is deliberate sin, and con- tinual sin of full choice against the will of God. The sin is thought of afterward with pleasure ; and this is confirmed rebellion against the will of God, even when the temptation to the actual sin is not present. No man, unless he has well sifted himself, can ima- gine how manifold these thoughts will be. The mind sinks naturally into the thoughts, which it likes to dwell upon, as a stone rolls downwards. It rests there, Avhen not moved elsewhere. They are its home, its resting-place. Yet in this way, not only are sins multiplied exceedingly, but the very mind and will are corrupted. Everything around us sug- gests something connected with what is nearest to the heart. To those who love God, all God's works speak of God ; to those who deeply grieve, all sights or sounds furnish some fresh memorial of their grief ; to those who love sin, all things suggest thoughts of sin. The Besetting Sin. 139 Such then are grounds from the nature of the besetting sin itself, why thou shouldest earnestly and specially strive against it. It is thy deadliest enemy; that which most keeps thee from God, if unhappily thou art separated from Him ; if not, still it is that which most offends Him, which hinders His love from flowing to thee and filling thee, which hin- ders thee from loving Him with thy whole heart. It is the cloud which chiefly comes between thee and the Face of God ; the chain which binds thee down to earth ; the snare which entangles thy feet, that thou ^'runnest not the way of God's commandments," fol- lowest not the steps of Jesus, Who died for thee, that, serving Him, thou mayest be with Him for ever. It closes thy heart to the full Presence of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, Who wills that, partaking of His holiness, thou mayest have the fulness of His joy. But then for thyself, too, it is thus that thou wilt have most courage to fight. It has been, no doubt, discouraging at some time to most of us, that we could not become good, all at once. We wished to please God ; to be what God loves ; not to do what He forbids ; to do what He commands ; but we knew not wherewith to begin. Our garden, which we were to make clean, seemed full of weeds. They seemed to spring up fresh every day ; how could we clean it? And so the weeds of our sins grew, as they would, left to themselves, with more luxuriant, foul, rankness. It is said that one who thought thus, dreamed that He Who had given him his garden to cleanse, came to him and asked him what he was doing. He said, ^' I lost all hope of cleaning my garden, so I laid down to sleep." His Good Father 140 The Besetting Sin, said to him, Clean every day as much as thou coverest, where thou art lying, and all will be, in time, cleaned." So God speaks to us. Set about some one thing for Me; set thyself to get rid of some one sin for love of Me, to become in one thing more pleasing to Me, and I will be with thee ; I will give thee victory in this ; I will lead thee on from victory to victory, from strength to strength ; thou shalt ' run, and not be weary ; thou shalt walk, and not be faint.' " By the same strength, by which thou prevailest over thy first enemy, thou shalt prevail over the rest. In human warfare, those who fight are tired even by their victory ; in Divine warfare, they are strengthened. For they fight not in hu- man weakness, but in Divine strength; and ''My strength," He says, '' is made perfect in weakness." In victory over sin, God will give, if it be good for thee, sweetness of consolation, and the comfort of His Love, and good hope of His continued favour, ''Who has begun a good work in thee." In any case, thou will find, that, in using the strength of God to sub- due one sin, thou hast, in a way unknown to thyself, weakened the hold of many upon thee. So banded are sins and graces together, that he who makes pro- gress in subduing one sin, has done much to subdue all ; he Avho has made room in himself for the fulness of one grace of God, has prepared the house of his soul to receive all, has nerved his soul to strive and strain for all, through His grace. Who giveth all. This is another good in fighting against thy beset- ting sin. Thou art gathered upon one point. Thou art striving with thy whole heart to please God in that point ; thou wilt be asking for and using God's The Besetting Sin, 141 grace for this. But therewith, secretly, thou wilt be transformed thyself. In learning to subdue one sin, thou wilt have been learning how, in time, to subdue all. Thou wilt have learnt the wiles of the enemy, the weakness of thy own heart, the force of out- ward temptations, the need to avoid, if thou canst, the outward occasion, but, in any case, the necessity of resisting in the first moment of assault. Thou wilt know, for thyself, the might which God gives thee when thou so resistest, the power of instant prayer. Thou wilt have felt the peril of tampering with sin, the value of watchfulness, the danger of security after thou hast conquered ; how the tempter withdraws in order to assail thee more vehemently ; the peril of very little acts or thoughts, at all con- nected with the sin thou wouldest conquer. Thou wilt have tasted the blessedness of gathering up thy whole mind to serve God, and giving thyself to Him, morning b}^ morning, to please Him in this, and not to displease Him. Thou wilt have known, in thine own soul, the value of obeying, at once, any suggestions, which, by His Holy Spirit or in thy conscience. He giveth thee to avoid this or do that. These and other things thou wilt learn in thy first resolute, continued, endeavour to uproot, by God's grace, thy besetting sin. But, therewith, thou wilt have learned to become a good soldier of J esus Christ ; thou wilt have learned the way of the heavenly war- fare, and the temper of its armoury ; thou wilt have proved its weapons, and gained skill to use them. By one sin our first parent broke God's command- ment, and brought sin into the world. He had for- feited the obedience of his innocence; he became 142 The Besetting Sin, disobedient. He sacrificed his obedience to his self- will, and became a rebel to his God; and all other rebellion flowed from this one. Sacrifice thou one darling passion to God, and thou wilt be, by His grace, on the way to recover full obedience to Him. It is true that God could, if He would, transform thee at once, as He did Mary Magdalene, or the robber on the cross, or as He made St. Paul a lamb for a wolf, an Apostle for a blasphemer, full of love instead of full of fury. He might, in one moment, open thine heart as Lydia's, or the jailor's. He does, when He sees good, work wonders now in turning souls, in one moment, to Him. So, in the course of nature. He sometimes heals suddenly without human means. But it is to presume upon His mercy and to tempt it, to wait for this. God has not promised it, nor is it the common way, which His Wisdom has chosen. In grace, as in nature. He wills, that we should learn with pains, with industry, with watch- fulness, with perseverance, with humility, with de- pendence upon Him. He would not drive out the Canaanites before Israel, at once; but He drove them out by little and little, lest the beasts of the field should increase upon them." Amid too easy victory, we might neither know the deadliness of sin, nor its hatefulness to God, nor its power over the soul, nor the mercy of our Eedeemer, nor the depth of the riches of the love of God. We might just miss that very lesson which, for all eternity, God is teaching us, by placing us amid the perils and temptations of this mortal life, in which, through His Grace, we have to work out our salvation amid toil, and hardship, and the deceitfulness of our own The Besetting Sin, 143 hearts, and the world's seducing, but deadly sweet- ness. And now, before I go further, will ye, my brethren, in such leisure as ye shall have, think, during this week, each of you, within your own hearts, what 7/our besetting sin is ? It is as manifold, as human minds are. " In many things we all olfend," the Apostle says. But besides those manifold infirmities, negli- gences, omissions, most have, as I said, some one leading fault ; the captain of all his faults ; that which most enters into all. The most widely de- structive are some appetites of the body. Other sins slay their thousands ; sins of the flesh, their ten thou- sands. Eut as to spiritual sins also, in some, it is pride ; in others, vain-glory, or love of praise, or vanity about their poor bodies or their minds ; in others, envy or jealousy ; in others, unforgivingness or bitterness ; in others, discontent or restlessness ; in others, selfishness ; in others, hard-heartedness, or want of sympathy or of tenderness ; in others^ sloth ; in others, self-will ; in others, anger ; in others, ambition ; in others, covetousness ; in others, self-complacency ; in others, perverseness or obsti- nacy. Alas, my brethren, how many enemies there are, who would dispute with us the love of God, and our salvation ! But mightier is He that is in you, than he that is in the world. Many though your enemies are, when their champion is dead, the victory is, in earnest, won. Ask God then in earnest prayer to shew you, each of you, wherein his chief fault lies. Think, when death, and the Day of Judgment comes before you, what sin most frightens you ; or by what you fall most often ; 144 The Besetting Sin, or for what your conscience most reproaches you ; or against what you have made most good resolutions, and have broken them ; or what fault it would seem hardest to you to give up ; or what makes you most unhappy, or weighs most upon you when alone ; or what seems most to keep you back from God, or afraid to think of Him ; or what seems to stand most in your way, when you would wish to serve God ; or about what your conscience oftenest smites you in hearing God's Word, or reading some good book ; or in what you would least like others to know you just as you are; or what you feel most guilty about, when it is blamed in others ; or what frightens you from coming to Holy Communion, or when you come to It ; or what sin you are most tempted to turn away from, and hide your own eyes from, that you may not see it ; or again, on the contrary, what subject your thoughts, when you have nothing else to do, most dwell upon ; or what thoughts flash across you, amidst other occupations, and come often- est to you, and you entertain them or take pleasure in them ; or for what others have most often blamed you ; or what you recollect, when you were little, was your chief fault, of which your parents oftenest told you. In some or other of these ways, God will shew you wherein your chief fault lies ; or those who know you well and love you, could help you ; or perhaps God may, all at once, if you are in earnest, bring it before you. You will, I hope, by God's blessing, have been encouraged to-day to fight the good fight of faith. God willeth that you should prevail. He will help you, Who wills to crown you. Only purpose to The Besetting Sin, 145 fight, as St. Paul bids you, ^ booking unto JESUS, the Author and Finisher of your faith." In the Name of JESUS, is untold strength. Without Him, ye can do nothing ; with Him, ye can do all things. Eor He will do all for you. Only He will do it, with you, in you, through you, not without you. He has overcome sin once for you, and slain it by His own Death. ISTow, if ye will, He Avill overcome it in you. When your hearts fail. He will comfort you ; when ye are weak. He will strengthen you ; if ye stumble. He will uphold you ; if, amid real strife, ye fall. He will lift you up ; if ye be bruised, He will bind you ; if ye be wounded. He will heal you ; if ye be faint and weary. He will refresh you. Only look to Him, pray Him ; and He will be in life your strength ; in death, your stay ; in eternity, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, "your exceeding great Eeward.*' Yol. II. L SERMON IX. VICTOEY OVEE THE BESETTING SIN. St. Luke iv. 1, 2. And Jesus J being full of the Holy Ghost^ returned from Jordan^ and was led hy tine Spirit into the wilderness J heing forty days tempted hy the deviV Our Blessed Lord endured temptation, as well as whatever besides He did and suffered, for us. It must have been one of His most grievous Sufferings. Whence in our Litany we beseech Him, ^'by Thy Fasting and Temptation, Have mercy upon us." "Within Him, there was nothing to yield to tempta- tion. He was All-Holy, being the Son of God. There was nothing in Him which could rebel, could balance between good and evil, could be drawn to- wards evil. In our temptations, there are four stages. First, the thought is suggested ; then comes an in- ward pleasure in the thought; then follows the struggle ; and men consent or do not consent ; they yield in act, or conquer. Our nature, being corrupt, Victory over the Besetting Sin, 147 has a feeling of inward pleasure in what it likes, even though God forbids it. If through the Grace of God the feeling is put down at once by our will, it belongs to the sinfulness of our nature, not to our own. By putting it down, we gain the victory over our own sinfulness. To yield even in thought, by an act of our own, is sin. Our Blessed Holy Lord ever be- held sin, as God, with the same eyes as God the Pather. His Human "Will was ever perfectly one with His Divine. In Him there was neither sinful- ness, nor sin, nor capacity for sin. He ever hated sin, which He came to destroy, with a perfect hatred, while He loved us sinners. To Him, temptation was simply suffering. To restore our nature wholly. He willed to endure in our nature the presence of temptation. Loathsome to Him above all thought of ours, must have been the presence of that rebel being and his accursed touch. Intensely hateful to His All-Holy soul must have been Satan's smooth words, his hypocritical suggestions of evil under the guise of good, his al- leging the words of God in defence of rebellion against God, and the thought put before Him out- wardly, that He too should rebel against His Father. This, too. He endured for love of us, to conquer Satan in this way also in our nature, and to teach us how to conquer him. Satan tried against our Holy Lord the threefold temptation, by which he conquered the first Adam. First, the desire of the flesh, that is, of what, in us, the flesh thinks necessary for it, what we think it must have, and are tempted to give to it against the will of God. This was when he said, If Thou be the Son l2 148 Victory over the Besetting Sin, of God, command that these stones be made bread.'' Then Satan tried ''the desire of the eyes," or what in US is covetousness, when, ''in a moment of time, he shewed our Lord all the kingdoms of the world." Then he hoped to find what, in us, is "pride of life," or vain glory, when he said, " If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence, for it is written, He shall give His Angels charge concerning Thee." Adam gave way to the desire of the flesh, when he ate the forbidden fruit ; to pride, when he listened to Satan's, " ye shall be as God ; " to the desire of the eyes, or covetousness, when he hearkened to his, " knowing good and evil." Our Lord, in our Nature, not only defeated Satan in these same things, but taught us how to overcome them. First, by answer- ing Satan at once. To hesitate, to parley with Satan, is the first step (as you will unhappily have felt) towards defeat. We are in our own power, at the very first moment of temptation, in a way, in which we are not afterwards. Our mind is free, unclouded ; our will, firm. We can then, by God's help, gather OTirselves up in one, and cast the evil one from us like a serpent. It has become a proverb from sad miserable experience, "Who hesitates, is lost." Secondly, in answering Satan, our Blessed Lord does not vouchsafe to enter into his subtleties. Satan twice says, " If Thou be the Son of God." It may be, he wished to know whether He were the Son of God, " the Seed of the woman," Who, he knew, was to crush his head, and destroy his kingdom. To this our Lord answers nothing. He does not enter into questions, whether to do this were, or were not, be- fitting the Son of God. He simply puts down Satan Victory over the Besetting Sin. 149 with words of Holy Scripture, teaching us in our fight with Satan to set before us God's plain words, to take some one plain command of God, and say to him and to ourselves, ^^It is written." Temptations are sometimes very subtle. Eut the conscience, en- lightened by God's Holy Spirit, will readily see in them some one thing, which is plainly against God's voice within it and His Word. Hold fast to this, and it will lead thee. Thus Satan often suggests to people, This or that is not to break the seventh commandment." Call to thyself the text, ^'Thou, God, seest me," or, God shall bring every secret thing into judgment." Think whether you would do this or that, if Jesus were by, or your parents, or one you loved and respected, and then think, " Can I dare do this, since God is by, in this very room?" And so, as to any grudge to one another, Satan tells you, You cannot help feeling so and so towards such an one. You would not do him any injury. You would not wish him evil." To wish or to do evil would be greater evil. But call to thyself quickly, '^A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." Did our Lord love us, when we were good or when we were evil ? And so on, in other temptations. Thirdly, our Lord teaches us, that there is an order in Satan's temptations; not the same order in all, as perhaps He meant to teach us, when He appointed that His temptations should be related in a different order, by St. Matthew and St. Luke. In both, the first temptation is that of the flesh, perhaps, because this is the first and widest and most deadly 150 Victory over the Besetting Sin. temptation of men. Then, in St. Matthew, follows that to vain-glory, perhaps because we are tempted to vain-glory, through our very victories ; and then perhaps the order was varied in St. Luke, because covetousness may lead to vain-glory, or vain-glory to covetousness. Eut on the subject of which I was speaking to you last Sunday, our besetting sin, our Lord has been thought, by successively subduing Satan in each of our three chief temptations, to teach us to gather ourselves upon our temptations, one by one, and so when we have, by His grace, thoroughly uprooted one, to go on to uproot another. But now, before going further, I must again say,, that, in speaking of each one's chief fault, I do not mean certain open deadly acts of sin, which a person cannot do, and at the same time be a Christian at all. There are some things which ought either never to have been at all, or if, unhappily, they ever have- been, ought never to be again. You would, of your- selves, understand this, if I w^ere to speak of murder.. You could not picture to yourselves a man commit- ting murder again and again, and repenting, and resolving not to do it, and breaking his resolve, and again murdering another. Even this, no doubt, has been done in lands, where people have been more- tempted to deeds of violence, than men in this land now are. In this self-deceit we should see, how far the human heart, and so, our own, can deceive- itself. ^^The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and " of itself incurable^." But what says " Jer. xvii. 9, c'^j;. is so translated, Job xxxiv. 6, Jer. xv. 18, Micahi. 9, of a wound ; " Jcr. xxx. 15, of ''sorrow." In Isaiah) Victor?/ over the Besetting Sin, 151 God's word ? Be not deceived. Neither fornica- tors, nor adulterers, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inhe- rit the kingdom of God.'' Plainly, God is not here speaking of even these sins, if repented of. God for- gives all, for which He gives the heart to repent. And further, when He ranks the covetous " or revilers" with those extremest sins. He means the extreme form of these sins. St. Paul is speaking of sins, which kill the soul at one stroke. God may bring the soul to life. But the sin itself is death. Do not deceive yourselves, my brethren ; but judge of those sins, to which ye are tempted, by those to which ye are not tempted. In sins to which ye are tempted, the temptation bribes you. When ye are not tempted, ye can judge, as God bids you. As then ye would not think of a person's committing murder again and again, and repenting again and again, and yet being a Christian, so neither must any of you, married or unmarried, do those things which God forbids, and think that you are Christians, because, when the sin is done and the temptation over, ye wish that ye had not done it. It is true, that even such deadly sins are to be conquered in the same way as others. It is true, that no one must despair, into whatever sins he falls. But when Holy Scripture speaks of our Christian warfare, it means a warfare, whereby we should be wholly conquerors over such sins, as drunkenness or the deadly sins of the flesh, since the Apostle would xvii. 11, it is rendered " desperate ; " and so our translators pro- bably mean, in this place, that the heart is ''desperately" sick, that isj difficult to he cured, or, by human help, incurable. 152 Victory over the Besetting Sin. have those who so sin, separated from the common intercourse of Christians, that they may be ashamed. But although those sins kill at one stroke, other sins steal away the heart from God, and banish God from the heart. A vessel will sink, whether filled with heavy stones or with sand. Fine grains of sand will bury travellers in the desert. Fine flakes of snow, so light that they seem to hang in the air, and scarce to fall, will, if they gather over the sleepy wayfarer, extinguish life ; if they drift, they will bury whole houses and their dwellers. Fine, delicate sins, as people think them, will chill the soul and take away its life. In speaking, then, of the battle which ye have to fight with sin, I do mean a battle for your life, for your undying souls, a battle, in which your prize is to win God ; your loss, to be shut out from God, and to be with devils. But I do not m?ean, chiefly, strife T>ith such sins, as, if ye guard yourselves diligently, ye need never have to fight with. No one is plunged into all sin at once. ]S"o man would be tempted to commit mur- der, who had not often given way to strong passion. IS'o one would be tempted to be drunk, who had not often indidged himself more than he knew to be right. No one would be tempted to great dishonesty, who had not allowed himself in petty acts, of which he thought lightly, but which he would be ashamed to have know. And so, no one would be tempted to grievous sins against the seventh Commandment, who had not first tampered with less. I must say this, my brethren, lest any of you should think that I set before you, as your Christian warfare. Victory over the Besetting Sin, 153 a figlit, wherein the question would be, whether ye should be Christians at all. If any, unhappily, have this fight, let them not think themselves shut out. They must use the same means ; yea, they must use them the more earnestly, because they are tempting the long-suffering of God, and stifling His grace, and provoking God to withdraw it, and deadening their own hearts, and searing their consciences with a hot iron ; and what is so seared and deadened may be left by God, and so, may never again live. Surely our conflict is, to uproot everything which inter- feres with the love of God, and the thought of God, and the likeness of God in our souls. Surely our warfare is, to subdue our whole souls, every thought and wish and motion of our hearts, to the will of God ; so that we should will, love, choose, avoid whatso- ever God wills and loves, and willeth us to choose or avoid. What saith Scripture? He that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as He is pure." Be ye perfect, as your Father, which is in Heaven, is perfect." As He is, so are we in this world." I gave you some hints last Sunday, how you might each (if you knew it not already) discover your be- setting sin, hoping that some thoughts would help one of you, some, another. For not only has God made us difl'erently one from another, but we our- selves increase in ourselves, each our own fault. We, most of us, come into this world with some leading good disposition Avhich God gave us ; and we bring with us, mostly, some leading wrong temper, through the corruption of human nature, from our earthly birth. That one fault is oui* besetting sin. But even that one fault would not have so much hold 154 Victory over the Besetting Sin, upon us, had we used the grace which God, through Baptism, entrusted to us, and which He has ever since been renewing to each of us, if we would have it. This besetting sin it is, I said, in which our con- flict for life eternal chiefly lies. This if we subdue, we shall most grow in the grace and the love of God. Tor this sin most closes our hearts to His grace and love. But if any of you have not been able to discover your besetting sin, or should not be certain about it, do not therefore give up having some special battle with your sins, some one strife in which, by God's grace, you shall endeavour to have complete mastery over some one sin. Pursue, strike it down, whenever it appears. One blow will not do to death a besetting sin. It would not be well for us to have the victory so easily. We might be puffed up with our success, and think success an easy matter, in our own hands. We might think it our own work, not God's, and so cast out one devil by another, pride, and in the end, be the slave of both. It is this mistake, as though sin were an easy thing to conquer, which makes peo- ple linger so securely in their sins. They do not like to part with them now, and think that they shall be able to part with them when they please. They hope to have their pleasure in them now, and yet be free from them, as soon as they wish. J^Tone can know how hard it is, to get rid of any, even deadly sin, until they in earnest strive. And yet they half suspect that it is very hard ; but they do not like to own it to themselves, lest they should be constrained to strive in earnest. And yet, on this very ground, thou must not be Victory over the Besetting Sin. 155 discouraged by any defeats. We should be humbled for them, always ask God pardon very humbly for each of them, for Jesus' sake, but never despond about them. "Whatever a man's besetting sin is, he has, through careless childhood, or self-willed, self- pleasing youth, strengthened its hold upon him. Thin, fine, invisible, as a gossamer's thread, when the light from God shines not upon them, seem the single threads of our sins. The enchantress^ sin smiles sweetly on you, that you may conceive no ill, until she has wound them slowly round you. When she has wound them, she will clap her hands and say, Thou art mine." Slowly they intertwine, line with line, fibre with fibre, sin with sin ; once inter- twined, no human strength can burst the tightened cord. Stronger than thou, is he who, whilst thou wert asleep and listless, wound them round thee; but stronger than the strong- man is He Who will unloose thee. Yet, one by one, didst thou let these cords pass over thee ; by little and little didst thou give thyself to be bound ; little by little will God unbind thee ; that thou mayest know into how evil and sore a bondage thou hast sold thyself, how help- less and powerless thou art to free thyself. If thou canst not find out thy chief fault, apply thyself to any bad one. It is better to gather thy- self to an earnest conflict with almost any one, than to lose thy time in debating which to grapple with. ^ The language and image are taken from Southey's Thalaba. viii. 21 — 28. All deep moral poetry has a sacred meaning beyond its words. A Hebrew proverb says, ''Evil desire in the begin- ning is like a spider's web ; afterwards it is like a cart-rope." Tract Succah. 156 Victory over the Besetting Sin. "Whilst thou art engaged in earnest about one, God will disclose to thee others. Persons are often mis- taken as to their chief fault. They think it to be one, while it is another, because they do not know themselves. And so they hew at the branches, not at the trunk. Still, hew on, and God will guide thy strokes. One, practised in the knowledge of others' souls and of his own, could often help thee. In any case, God will not be lacking to thee, if thou art in earnest, and not lacking to Him. In this warfare there are some rules, alike for all sins, some, special to each ; some, which relate to self-knowledge ; some, how to be on our guard ; some, to help our repentance ; some, whereby we may gain strength to fight. It is of the very greatest moment, to know the occasions of our sin, and the way in which it shews itself. To know the occasions, puts us on our guard ; to know how our sin shews itself, gives us the means of stopping it. Thus, as to these occasions ; one is made angry, if he is found fault with roughly, or even at all, or slighted, or spoken slightly of, or laughed at, or kept waiting, or treated rudely, or hurt even unintentionally, or if his will is crossed, or he is contradicted, or interrupted, or not attended to, or another be preferred to him, or if he cannot succeed in what he has to do. These sound little things, my brethren, when we speak of them in this house, in the Presence of God, and in the sight of Eternity. But these and such like little things make up our daily trials, our habits of mind, our life ; our likeness or unlikeness to God, "Who made us in His own Image ; our eternity. Victory over the Besetting Sin. 157 Our first step is to know these things ; our next, not to despise them. For such as our acts in them are, such do we become ourselves, and as we become now, so we shall be everlastingly. In these little things, then, you must know yourselves, and thank God that, by taking heed to such little things, you may please Him. As you learn to know yourself, you will come to be upon your guard : and morning by morning, you should tell Almighty God in simple words what are the temptations to this sin, which, by His grace, you would subdue, and ask Him for grace. Tell Him also, the wrong ways into which it betrays you, one by one, and pray Him, to give you strength to keep from the least shadow of them. Even in graver sins, it is very needful to observe, whether the temptation begins from within or from without. Thus, of two men who are greedy, to the one, the greediness will begin with the thought ; to the other, suddenly, in the act itself of taking food. Thou must guard specially against that which is to thee, commonly, the first beginning of the sin. This will be the case even as to much graver sin. To dwell with pleasure on praise, to be fond of dress, of being admired, or loved, to go over in the mind soft words, have most often been the beginning of deadly sin, where there was no other temptation to it. But in all cases, you must set yourself diligently to ob- serve where the temptation begins. For this is the entrance of death, which you must the more carefully close up. The remedy in one case might be to check vanity ; in another, it would be to abstain, at least from the fulness of food, or from strong drink. 158 Victory over the Besetting Sin, Again, if our temptation were anger, we might per- haps be quiet when no one provoked us, and yet suddenly surprised by any slight rudeness of another, and resent it ; or, if we were of a quieter sort, we might not be tempted to resent it at all, but brood over it in our souls, and cherish unlove within us. Then, it is useful to have special rules, with regard to the special sin. Let them not be too hard, nor for too long a time. It is easier to set before one a rule for a short time. If we find it good for us, we shall gladly renew it. Thus, if we wished to gain contentment, we might try such rules as these. I. Allow thyself to com- plain of nothing (not even of the weather), knowing that everything is ordained or overruled by God. 2. IS'ever picture thyself to thyself under any cir- cumstances in which thou art not. 3. !N'ever com- pare thine own lot with that of another. 4. Never allow thyself to dwell on the wish, that this or that had been or were otherwise than it was or is. Al- mighty God loves thee better and more wisely than thou dost thyself. 5. Never dwell on the morrow. Eemember that it is God's, not thine. The heaviest part of sorrow often is to look forward to it. The Lord will provide." Some few simple rules of this sort will be of use against any other ruling passion. They brace the soul ; they give it a definite steadfast aim ; they teach it to fight, not as uncertainly ; they set acts before it, whereby it may please God. They give it tests to it- self, whether it is exerting itself to please God or no. Then do not try only, to abstain from sin, but strive, by God's grace, to gain the opposite grace. Victory over the Besetting Sin, 159 If thou wonldest save thyself from falling backward, thou wouldest throw thyself forward. If thou wouldest not slip back into sin, thou must stretch forward to Christ and His holiness. It is a dull, heavy, dreary, miserable, toilsome way, just to avoid sin. It is to give up the miserable pleasure of sin, without receiving in return the heavenly pleasure of delight in God. It has nothing generous, nothing noble, nothing ennobling, nothing worthy of the price paid for us, nothing befitting what we have been made, the sons of God. Thou wouldest not simply not be impatient; thou wouldest long to be like thy Lord, Who was meek and lowly of heart. Thou wouldest not only not openly murmur ; thou wouldest surely long, like the beloved Apostle, to rest on Jesus' breast, and will what He wills. Thou wouldest not, only not be a defiled and loathsome thing ! Thou wouldest have thy soul a fit dwelling for God the Holy Ghost ; thou wouldest have thy body fit to be transfigured after death into the hea- venly glory of thy Lord, and radiant with His purity. Thou wouldest not have one thought unmeet for the heavenly Inhabitant ; thou wouldest have thy thoughts free to soar aloft to thy future dwelling- place, and be, not with the beasts which perish, but with the holy Angels, with them beholding, adoring, loving, their and your Lord. Thou wouldest not only escape hell, thou wouldest long to have thy capacity enlarged to contain the Infinite love of God. And now to review the method of this warfare This is a practice by which others have in a few months gained more than in years before. First go into thyself ; ask of God light to see thy- 160 Victory over the Besetting Sin, self ; bear to know thyself, and to know well what thy sins are ; and resolve firmly, by thy Saviour's help, to part with them, rather than with Him. Then observe, which of these is thy besetting sin. If thou canst not find this for thyself, another, as I said, perhaps may tell thee. Any how, take steadily some one sin, which seems to stand out before thee, to root it out, by God's grace, and every fibre of it. Purpose strongly, by the grace and strength of God, wholly to sacrifice this sin or sinful inclination to the love of God, to spare it not, until thou leave of it none remaining, neither root nor branch. Then, as to this very sin, look carefully, day by day, what gives rise to it. Observe, with especial care, whether the temptation comes to thee from within or from without. But observe also all the ways in which this sin overtakes, surprises, masters thee ; that thou mayest be on thy guard against the assault and against thyself. Observe too, as well as thou canst, the very ways in which thou yieldest to the sin, thine anger, im- patience, or whatever else it be. Observe the very acts or words thou most often usest, in giving vent to it. Thou wilt find, very likely, that it is some one, or some few ways of acting or speaking, into which thou fallest again and again. If thou art on thy guard, thou wilt often be able to stop the usual vent of thy sin ; if thou stop this, thou wilt have gained time, by God's grace to stop the sin too. As you observe these, fix them in your memory in the best way you can. If you can write, write down something which may recall them. If you cannot, God, if you are in earnest, will help you to remember them. Victory over the Besetting Sin, 161 Fix, by God's help, not only to root out this sin, but to set thyself to gain, by that same help, the op- posite grace. If thou art tempted to be angry, try hard, by God's grace, to be very meek; if to be proud, seek to be very humble. In this way, God, seeing thy earnest wish to please Him, will help thee more ; and thou wilt be further from the borders of sin, and so in less peril. Then frame to thyself, or ask some one to help thee to form for thee, some simple rules, which may help to guard thee, or check thee from giving way to thy sin, or which may aid thee in gaining the grace thou desirest. These things thou mightest do, once for all, or for a long time, while thou art engaged in battling with and destroying this sin. It will not hinder thy work, to think how thou mayest please God ; or thou mayest on Sunday, think with thyself, or ask one who will help thee. Thus far is like making the in- struments of thy daily work. When thou once hast them, they may require sharpening from time to time ; but thy daily work is to use them. Thy daily exercise may be very short. God looks not at the length of words, but at the earnestness of thy heart. If thou hast longer time, God will look graciously upon thee, the more of thy time and thought thou givest to Him. In this too God saith to each of you; ^'If thou hast much, give plente- ously ; if thou have little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little : for so gatherest thou to thyself a good reward in the day of necessity." If thou hast but little, a few minutes will suffice. When you wake, or as soon as you are dresssd, Yol. II. M 162 Victory over the Besetting Sin, offer up your whole self to God, soul and body, thoughts and purposes and desires, to be for that day what He wills. Think of the occasions of the sin likely to befall thee, and go, as a child, to your Father Which is in Heaven ; go to Him Who died to redeem you, and tell Him in child-like, simple words your trials. Be not ashamed of using simple words, or of telling Him your trifling troubles, or trials you are ashamed of. We listen gladly to our children, as they tell us their little troubles. To God, all of ours is, in itself, alike little. But all which concerns our soul is not little to Him Who sent His Son into the world to redeem us ; it is not little to Him Who became Man and died for us. The measure of the soul's value is His Love Who is Infinite. You can tell Him, then, your trials, and ask for grace, in some such simple words as these ; 0 Good JESU, my Saviour, and my God ; Thou Who didst make me, knowest how weak I am. Thou knowest. Good Lord, that I am tempted to — [then name the temptations to it^ and the ways in which you sin, as well as you knoio them.~\ But, Good Lord, for love of Thee, I would this day keep wholly from all [naming the sin\ and be very [naming the opposite grace?^ I will not, by Thy Grace, do one [N] act, or speak one \^~\ word, or give one [N] look, or harbour one [N] thought in my soul. If Thou allow any of these temptations to come upon me this day, I desire to think, speak, and do, only what Thou wiliest. Lord, without Thee I can do nothing ; with Thee I can do all. Accept, Good Lord, this my desire ; help me by Thy Grace that I fall not, or if J fall^ bring me back quickly to Thee, and Victory over the Besetting Sin, 163 grant me to love Thee better, for Thy tender mercy's sake. It will help thee much in thy warfare, if thou first set before thy soul thy Lord, as He showed forth that grace which thou wouldest copy. If the grace be humility, think of Him washing the disciples' feet ; if meekness, think of His receiving the traitor's kiss, and how thou hast betrayed Him by thy sins ; if it be patience under injuries, behold Him standing meekly, while they buffeted, reviled, mocked, spat on Him ; if it be love of thy brother who offends thee, think of Him stretching out His Hands upon the Cross, and embracing the whole world, and thee too with thy brother, in His love. There is no thought which has such power over the soul and over sin, as the thought of JESUS. Behold Him in thy soul, as thou hast seen Him herCj pictured before thee ^ Gaze on His meek Countenance, His Eye full of love resting on thee, the suffering of His Brow pierced for thee, and so ask Him for His love's sake, that thou mayest love Him, and be less unlike Him. And then be very watchful ; watch with thy Lord, for a short time ; summon thy whole strength to keep thyself wholly from every form of this one sin. But you cannot know whether you fail or no, imless you examine yourself ; and you will find that it costs you less time, less weariness, less ii'ksome- ness, and is more hopeful, to examine yourself twice or thrice, than once only at the end of the day. Thy meal times will give thee a break. There is some leisure before thy meal; to look back a few c A representation of the Crucifixion in tlie east window of the village Chnrch of Puscy. M 2 164 Victory over the Besetting Sin. hours, two or three minutes will suffice. At the end of the day, the whole day becomes one confused, colourless distance. Thou canst distinguish no ob- jects in it. It is like looking back on a day's journey. If thou look back from time to time from some height, thou canst see spread out before thee what thou hast passed through. If thou wait to the end of the day, by no effort of thy mind canst thou bring back more than some two or three points which ar- rested thee. Thinkest thou this a hard thing ? Even a heathen advised to examine every morning on rising from bed, what thou wert about to do, of how much moment it is, not to give way to thy failings, and to renew this oftener than morning and evening. Listen not to Satan, telling thee it is hard. It is hard, when thou beginnest. It is hard to resist sin ; it is hard not to follow thine own will ; it is hard to save thy soul ; but it is harder far and unendurable to lose it and the sight of God. Thine own easy ways will become hard to thee : God will make hard ways easy. Listen not again if Satan tells thee, when the hour comes : ''It is good, only not now; now I am tired, weary ; I can remember nothing, think of no- thing. How can I think of what I have said, thought, or done, through these hours ? " Pray God to shew thee. Thou wilt most likely see but little at first. All things are done ill at first. Only pray God to forgive what thou seest. It will be a great gain, if thou hast truly seen and repented of, but one thing. To have learned, in one day, with sorrow of heart ^ Galen de cognosc. curandisque animi morbis c. 5. 6. See further note A, at the end. Victory over the Besetting Sin. 165 for love of Jesus, to look into thyself arid bewail, not thy sinfulness only, but the sins of that day to Him, is the first and hardest step to eternal life. Pray to persevere, and all the rest will be easier. Thinkest thou that it will be toilsome to thee, so, day by day, to remove every speck of sin ? What is it, then, which it is so wearisome to cleanse ? A house which will again be defiled ? a mirror which will again be clouded ? a dress which shall again be soiled ? or this poor outward form, which is one day to decay ? These things thou thinkest it no hard thing to cleanse, day by day, or week by week. What is it then which it is so wearisome to look to, to cleanse ? Is it something which concerns thee not, something for a time only, something for another ? Truly it is for Another too. For it is for the All Holy Trinity. It is that thine own soul, thine own self, thy very inmost self, whom thou shouldest love, may be enlarged to contain God and the love of God ; it is that the eyes of thy soul may be enlightened that they may see Him as He is, and more fully in whatever de- gree thou hast cleansed them here ; it is that thy soul may be brightened to shine with the Brightness of God ; that thy senses may desire nothing but what they have in that blessed-making Sight of God, and have what overwhelms all their desire, to be blessed in His Bliss, wise in His Wisdom, good in His Good- ness, joyous in His Joy, full of God, yet stretching forth to God ; all thine which is God's, save His In- finity, and that will be for thee too, for thou canst never reach the bounds of His Perfections and His Goodness. And shall this too be for a time, my brethren ? 'No ! for ye shall be, if ye attain, eternal 166 Victory over the Besetting Sin, in His Eternity. Ye will not think it a hard thing again, my brethren, to prepare yourselves for such fulness of bliss. God grant that ye may, in some way, begin to-day. To-day " is ever the Day of salvation." SERMON X PEAYEE HEAED THE MOEE, THEOUGH DELAY. second sunday in lent. St. Matthew xv. 28. ^^Jesiis answered and said unto her^ 0 woman, great is thy faith^ he it unto thee even as thou wilt^ Lent is especially a season of prayer ; and these are in many ways Lenten days'", days of sorrow and angnish of heart, days of penitence, days of humili- ation, days, in which, by our cries, to awaken our Lord, "Arise and help us, and deliver us for Thy mercies' sake." And so our Lord, through the Church, sets before us this great example of humble, peni- tent, persevering prayer, to shame us Christians by the lowly fervor of a Heathen woman. Our Lord had withdrawn Himself for a time, from ^ Preached at S. Saviour's, Leeds, Lent, 1851. What was tem- porary and local is omitted. 168 Prayer heard the more^ through delay, the thanklessness of the Jews, and had come to the border-country of Tyre and Sidon. He would not be known, that is, He willed to do those things ^ whereby He should be hidden. But He willed too to Ije a blessing to the Canaanitish woman, to help her, and to teach us by the way in which He helped her. He had come into those coasts. He could not be hid because His Divine love would not. He willed to be hid to those who sought Him not earnestly. This poor outcast He drew by His secret grace, and willed to be found by her. And so He brought her out of her heathen country, its igno- rance and its sins. He was sent first to the Jewish people, and He had said to His disciples, ^' go not into the way of the Gentiles," and so He held Himself in the border- country. But He received her when she came unto Him. Us too He draws inwardly ; yet He wills that we should, of ourselves, be at pains to find Him. So when the prodigal son was among the swine-husks, He put it into his heart to say, I will arise and go to my Father." He gave him strength to arise and go ; He ran to meet him, while yet a great way off, and fell on his neck. Still He willed that he should himself arise and go. So this poor woman had ^' to go forth out of these coasts." She, a Gentile woman in her heathenish sins, was a picture of as many of us, as have at any time, in our sins, forgotten our Lord. The sinful soul, if it would by true repent- ance return to God, must not only turn away from sin, but must leave the whole coast of sin. If thou wouldest repent, thou must not venture on the bor- ders of sin, thou must not do lesser acts which lead Prayer heard the more^ through delay, 169 to sin. Else most surely thou wilt fall back and not find Jesus, nor be healed. So she went forth out of those coasts." In thy soul, thou must avoid all thoughts, which border upon the things thou re- pentest of, or which have led to them. In thy body, thou must keep clear of all houses or streets, or acts, or circumstances, or amusements or society, which are the certain or frequent occasions of deadly sin to thee^. She cried out." It is a great word, which God uses of this poor sinner. It is a loud cry. He uses the same word ^ of the loud cry by which our Lord called Lazarus out of the grave, and of the strong cry whereby the Son, when in the flesh, offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared." This is the second condition of being heard; earnest prayer. The first was, to forsake sin, and to seek Jesus. The second, when she saw Him, though afar off, to cry aloud to Him, and that ear- nestly. ^^The Lord," says the Psalmisf^, "hath not des- pised nor abhorred the low estate of the poor, — but when he called unto Him, He heard him." ''He ^ To make this clearer by instances. It would be sin for one to hunt who found that hunting always caused him to swear ; or for one to frequent a tavern or society, in which he di'ank too much ; or for one to play, who is continually tempted to dishonest play. The cases in which the necessity is most stringent, arc those which fall under the seventh commandment. ^ ^'E,KpavyaG€ Matt. xv. 22, John xi. 43 ; jaera Kpavyr]