ordinary life; and we seem to be a long way from those thoughts among which we were moving just now, about the nature of evil, and the mystery of its existence, and the tragic prominence of its place in human history, and God's reasons for permitting, and methods of dealing with it. But, in truth, the same subject is before us, only in its concrete and everyday form. It is in the light of these great considerations that we perceive how little the humblest Christian lives differ from those which we deem the highest. Each has proceeded from the same Creative Hand; each is washed in the same Cleansing Blood; each is sanctified by the same Eternal Spirit; each is offered the same Heavenly Food; each has before it Death, Judgment, and Eternity. And, meanwhile, each is the scene of that mighty contest between good and evil; between the absolute Self-existent Good, and the evil which was begotten of the perverted freedom of created wills; the evil which existed when Eden as yet was not, but when already there was "war in heaven, and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon." a That great struggle still lasts on; the air resounds with its battle-cries; the soil is strewn with its slain; and if we would witness the shock of battle, we have but to observe what passes within our own souls and consciences. "I delight in the Law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind." Compared with this spiritual combat, the outward circumstances and decorations of life are surely trivialities; since the issues of the inward struggle will have a permanent and awful meaning, when all that meets the eye of sense shall have passed away. May our Lord teach us each and all the reality and seriousness of this conflict, and the secret of victory! May He raise

b

a Rev. xii. 7.

b Rom. vii. 22, 23.

а

our eyes above the narrow horizons which too often bound our waking thoughts; and bid them rest on those eternal hills from whence cometh our help; and whisper to us the grandeur as well as the peril of our destiny; and convince us by a practical experience that, weak as we are, we can be more than conquerors through Him That loved. us; conquerors of each aggressive form of evil by its antagonist form of good!

b

SERMON XXV.

ST. PAUL'S AND LONDON.a

(FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY.)

ST. MATT. V. 14.

A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

HEN, by pronouncing the eight Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord has described the character of the citizens of that Kingdom of Heaven which He was setting up upon the earth, He goes on to define their relation to the external world, or, as we should say, the nature of their influence. He does this by terming them first of all, the "salt of the earth," and next, the "light of the world." Of these figures, the first in the order of our Lord's discourse is last in the order of historical fact: Christians must be, at least, to a certain extent, the light of the world before they can be its salt; they must illuminate it before they can save it from its corruptions. It is upon the second of the two comparisons that our Lord dwells more at length. A startling assertion it must have seemed when addressed to a company of Galilæan peasants-"Ye are the light of the world." But from such a greeting the duty naturally follows: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your

a When originally published, this sermon was dedicated to Sir Thomas Dakin, Bart., Lord Mayor of London in 1871.

good works, and glorify your Father Which is in Heaven." Our Lord connects this duty with the metaphor which it expands, by insisting on the nature of the case, and by an appeal to our common sense. In the proverb, “A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid," He implies that whether His disciples will it or not, they cannot, in their corporate capacity as His Church, avoid living much before the eyes of men. In the homely argument that "men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick," He does not merely remind His followers of that which they owe to His gift of light; He vindicates and explains His own Providence. If it was well for Him to found a Temple of the Truth on earth at all, it was surely well that this Temple should be raised on high, and that all eyes should see it.

I.

By this double image of a "city set on an hill" Jesus Christ connects His work as Founder of the Church with some of the grandest anticipations of ancient Prophecy. The coming dispensation, in which Israel would have a glorious part, yet which would be much too vast to be compressed within the territorial frontiers of Palestine, is described sometimes as a city, sometimes as a mountain. Each image was undoubtedly suggested by the actual site and structure of ancient Jerusalem. "The hill of Sion," cries a Psalmist in a transport of enthusiasm, “is a fair place and the joy of the whole earth: upon the north side lieth the city of the Great King: God is well known in her palaces as a sure Refuge." " Isaiah, in vision, sees the Church of Christendom under either image: "It shall come to pass in the last days, that the Mountain of

a

a Ps. xlviii. 2.

the Lord's House shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord, to the House of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem."a Again, "In this Mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And He will destroy in this Mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." Again, "In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong City; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation that keepeth the truth may enter in." So the Psalmist, as already referred to, shadows out the future and the spiritual under the actual and material Jerusalem: "Great is the Lord and highly to be praised in the city of our God, even upon His Holy Hill. . . . Walk about Sion, and go round about her, and tell the towers thereof." " d And the same sense is discoverable in the deeper meaning of such prayers as that of an exile, "O send out Thy light and Thy truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to Thy Holy Hill, and to Thy Dwelling." Accordingly, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the two images are blended in the reality: "Ye are come," cries the Apostle, "unto Mount Sion, and unto the City of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem." i

a Isa. ii. 2, 3; cf. Mic. iv. 1, 2. b Isa. xxv. 6-8. e Ps. xliii. 3.

d Ps. xlviii. 1, 12.

c Ib. xxvi. I, 2.

f Heb. xii, 22.