38 MURDER, ANCIENT & MODERN. [SERM. III.

away the checks which civilization supplies-the fear of the law's strong arm and regard for the world's opinion-and it has nothing left by which to inspire the love of righteousness. If we are trusting to it to drill men's souls into honour and benevolence, we are trusting to a machinery to act where there is no motive force.

Times have changed, but the same God whom David learned to love among the sheep pastures of Bethlehem, who was always calling him to be righteous, and whose voice he sometimes obeyed and sometimes resisted, is the moving power of our lives yet. He is speaking to us all, summoning us to throw off the allurements of self and to claim our birthright. "It is dangerous to show men how nearly they are allied to God without also showing them how near akin they are to the beast. It is equally dangerous to show them their baseness without also keeping before them their greatness.' it is the function of the teacher to keep both truths before men, and to point them to the only true means-the contemplation and adoration of God-as the deliverance from self, and the attainment of perfection.

+

But

SERMON IV.

REST IN CHRIST THE TRUE COMMUNION
OF SAINTS.

(ALL SAINTS' DAY, 1868.)

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."-MATT. xi. 28.

THOSE persons who are fond of comparing the rules of conduct prescribed by Christian morality with those which were urged by the wisest and purest of heathen moralists are accustomed to say that the difference lies mainly in this, that while Christian morality is purer than any other, it appeals at the same time to higher motives. But putting aside for the moment the miraculous part of Christianity-the birth, life, character, acts, and death of its Founder-there remains something else which makes the radical difference between the Christian message to men, and any other ever delivered by schools of philosophers or moralists. It is not merely that the morality is higher, and the motives to it

more spiritual. It is a difference in the estimate of the creature for whom the message is intended. If the precepts of Seneca or Marcus Aurelius are for a moral agent, the precepts of Christianity are for immortal beings. To the instinct of immortality in men do the lessons of Christ appeal; and this is the primary fact, I believe, which makes the great thoughts of the Gospel so different from the greatest thoughts that ever were conceived by teachers before.

There are throughout the Gospel of Christ statements as to the nature of man, and to his requirements, so great, so deep, so farreaching, that in themselves they constitute for Christianity a place of its own in the history of the world. And as evidences for the truth of that faith, though they may find no place in stock collections, they seem to me among the greatest that can be adduced. Take such sayings as these: "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." "The things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal." "When I am weak, then I am strong." Sayings like these are not different in degree from the spirituality of other systems of ethics; but altogether in kind. They touch not merely

the heart and conscience, but the soul. They find us, as no other appeals ever could. They find us, because we are immortal, and they appeal to us as being so.

Moreover, my brethren, they are living truths, and they have in them the principle and power of growth. They meet us at the outset of our religious life. They have a meaning for us even then; and as we learn more and more by the only path of knowledge, experience of our faith, they grow with us, teaching us more and more -revealing new depths as we think we have fathomed and exhausted them. Our Lord Himself declared that it should be so. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." Dwell upon those few sentences that I repeated to illustrate my meaning. “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.". The disciples, to whom this was said, heard it, and understood it as applying to the sufferings, and perhaps martyrdom by death, which they might be called upon to endure, in living out and preaching their Master's Gospel. It came to them at first, perhaps, as meaning only this: "Suffer here, and you shall find your reward hereafter." A truth, no doubt, and one they needed to support them and to teach them.

But as they lived and learned more, this truth, we may be certain, grew and expanded to them, till they saw in it a far deeper and larger meaning. It applied not merely to persecution and the life after death; but to all denial of self, and the life of the soul, which is our highest and real life here below. True life is in forgetfulness of life, and in union with God: and he who will put out of sight the temptations to self-seeking, shall find his true self "hidden with Christ in God." Nor has this truth, contained in those simple words of Christ, become obsolete yet. We have not yet fathomed its great deeps. It widens and deepens as we rise heavenwards. We hear at times strange parodies of the truth, which show us how much there is yet to be learned from it. We still hear the "rewards and punishments" theory preached boldly in our midst. We are still addressed with appeals to our lower nature, and not to our higher. And till we accept in its simplicity, and yet in its infinite significance, this saying, we are still far from the kingdom of heaven.

Again, take the truth (of which we were speaking a few Sundays ago), "that the things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal." Men began by accepting