What they need is a vivid and habitual perception of the Divine Presence and of the mysteries of faith. For this end, it is good for them to meditate daily on the love of God, on the gift of His Son and of His Spirit; on the Passion of our blessed Lord, on the pledges of His miraculous pity, and of His yearning desire of our salvation. And such meditations ought not to pass away in mere processes of thought, in transient workings of the intellect; but must spread through the whole spiritual nature, and issue in acts of faith, hope, and love. When I say acts, I do not mean a mere recital of the objects and grounds of faith, hope, and love; but such an exercise of the heart and will as may awaken a consciousness of personal faith, hope, and love. For these are spiritual habits, needing to be trained and disciplined, as much as meekness, patience, humility. Nay, far more, inasmuch as they are the active powers, the moving energies of the whole spiritual life. It is by them God quickens us. They are the threefold working of His Spirit in us, uniting us to the Person of His Son, and through Him to the kingdom of the Resurrection, and to the Source of everlasting life.

SERMON VIII.

SELF-ACCUSATION.

ST. LUKE vii. 47.

Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much."

HIS passage of our Lord's life, when He sat

THI

at meat in the Pharisee's house, and the words He spake to Simon and to this penitent sinner, are too familiar to need recital. We may therefore turn at once to some of the instructions conveyed by this event.

We see in it a type of His whole kingdom upon earth, of His ministry of forgiveness, and of the various spiritual states to be found among His servants.

His words to Simon, though full of tenderness, had a tone of divine upbraiding. The Pharisee was no doubt a righteous man; but he had no loving and lowly affections. He called Jesus

Master," but he honoured Him with a cold, distant propriety. He gave his Master no kiss;

he had neither ointment for His head, nor water for His feet; and yet the name of Simon was not known in the city as a sinner.

But this poor sullied soul, a by-word among men, had no cold reserve, no false shame hiding her true shame; in the sight of all men she broke through to the presence of her Master. He had roused her to know her misery; He had brought her to repentance and to herself. Her whole heart was love, sorrow, and self-accusation. Therefore she received the divine words of absolution: "Thy sins be forgiven thee."

The point to which we may specially direct our attention is this self-accusing spirit: its necessity and its blessedness.

1. For, first of all, it may be said, that the kingdom of Christ is founded upon those who accuse themselves of their sins. It has both an exterior and an interior foundation; an outer and an inner court. On His part it is a perpetual ministry of absolution; on our part, a perpetual confession.

He died that He might absolve all sinners. To dispense the absolution purchased in His own blood is His own sovereign prerogative. When on earth, He exercised it in person. His words gave perfect pardon both in earth and heaven. He said to the penitent, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," and

all was blotted out. This was the application of His own redemption to individual souls: the in-gathering of the fruit of His own cross and passion. And this ministry of forgiveness is of perpetual necessity.

His absolution from sin is as necessary to all penitent and self-accusing sinners now as it was then, and ever will be to the end of the world. And He has not ceased to dispense it. His love and pity were not dried up when He ascended into heaven. Therefore He left still on earth the same power, against which Pharisees and unbelievers cavilled, bequeathing their very words to the inheritors of their unbelief: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" He said to His Apostles, "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you - that is, with the same mission of forgiveness: "All My communicable authority is in your trust for the life of the elect."" And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them: and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." He thereby entrusted to them the prolonged exercise of this His own prerogative. The very same full and divine power of absolving all who accuse themselves is in His Church now, and shall be

1 St. John xx. 21-23.

till He comes again. This is the great commission which includes all besides. He gave to His Apostles the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and with them all power to open and shut, to bind and loose. Baptism is an exercise of that sovereign power. The remission of original sin is a full and plenary application of the heavenly keys. Children born into this world of sin are thereby admitted into the kingdom of God. So also is the special absolution, which, like baptism, is given to individual souls, one by one, on distinct and penitent confession: and so too the remission which is given in the holy Eucharist, and in other acts of the Church, by which lesser sins of incursion and infirmity are forgiven: all these are exercises of the one great absolving power which springs from the person and the passion of our Lord, and is continued by His presence through the hands of His pastors, in every age, until this day. The ministry of reconciliation is always at work; the blood of the Good Shepherd is ever being applied to the souls for whom He died.

But this continual absolution on His part demands a continual self-accusation on ours; the one is as necessary as the other. And therefore it may be truly said, that His kingdom is founded on those who accuse themselves. They are its true and enduring foundations. When all empty and false