156 SUFFERING FOR CHRIST. even so I send you. He that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God." This is the root out of which all consolation comes. We do not suffer alone; we have a fellow-sufferer. Whenever you are laughed at because of your Christianity, if it be real, simple, true, noble, honest, and healthy, the laugh is at the cross. Whenever you suffer, which few men now do, for your faith's sake, it is not you that suffer the Son of God is crucified afresh and put to an open shame. Let us take care lest we mistake this matter of suffering in Christ's stead. Sometimes we suffer for our errors and not for our truth, for our impertinence and not for our fidelity, for our selfishness and not for the divine breadth of our characterbuilding. If, therefore, we suffer on our own account, I wonder not that the pain should be sharp and intolerable; but in so far as our character and spirit and action are right, and we suffer, it is not we that suffer only; it is the Son of God whose face is smitten and whose heart is bruised. It is God Jesus Christ goes even further than this, for he connects the whole mission of the Church expressly with the Father. himself that suffers, and it is God that identifies himself with the whole purpose and issue of the Christian economy. When the disciples were speaking in their own defence, Jesus Christ told them, "It is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." "A sparrow," said Christ, "cannot fall to the ground without your Father." So the universe is one : no man can touch the truth without touching the whole kingdom of heaven; no man can injure a single truth without injuring the whole quantity called truth, for the truth is not a question of single filaments and threads, particles and details: the truth is one, indissoluble, and to touch it to the injury of any part of it is to touch it to the pain of its very heart. The universe is one : some of us worship in one place and some in another; but to God there is no space that can be mapped out in separate localities. He filleth all in all. If you are not against him you are on his side. Therein have I sometimes endeavoured to teach men that though they be not nominally in Christ they may be under the inspiration of his Spirit. Men know not what they do even when they put the Son of God to shame. There is a forgiveness that may follow their blasphemy; there is in heaven a consideration for human ignorance, though that ignorance culmi nate in the tragedy of Gethsemane and Golgotha. Truth, let me say again and again, is one as the universe is one. There is nothing despicable or contemptible; the fall of the sparrow is watched, and the very hairs of your head are all numbered. God putteth our tears in his bottle, and he writes our names in his book of life. Sacred universe, sensitive universe; if I lift a hand I send a shudder to the stars. So my whole thought and wish and purpose and prayer-what are these but so many vibrations that tell upon lines that do not come within my purview, and that stir influences which I can neither understand nor control? So Jesus Christ identifies himself with his disciples, and identifies himself and his disciples with the Father that is in heaven. It is one Church, one life, one temple, and to touch it at any point is to cause an influence to be felt throughout the whole living faculty. These are not tiny solaces, these are not little plasters for little wounds: these great solaces are redemptions; they enter the very secret place of the life; they do not evaporate in the sun-they feed the very soul. Another consolation you find in the words, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved." There is where so many of us may fail: we endure a little while; the seed springs up speedily, and because there is no deepness of earth soon withers away. This is not a question of enduring for a little time; it is a question of enduring to the end. The end-who can tell when that shall come? Life is full of endings-life is full of beginnings. Knowing how distressed we are by monotony God has taken care in the economy of the universe that there shall be little or none of it. So he has broken up our life into day and night, the beginning of the week and the end of the same, the day of birth, the day of marriage, the day of peculiar joy-so many beginnings are there to tempt us into new views and lure us into deeper resolutions and give us fresh chances in life, and yet all these beginnings and endings culminate in one supreme finality-no man can tell when it may be my end may be this day. It is well we do not know when the final point comes into the literature of life. He said, "I "He that endureth to the end." Paul did. have fought a good fight, I have finished my course." Weary not in well doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not. Jesus Christ himself said, "I have finished the work which thou 158 FINALLY SAVED. gavest me to do." And again he said, "It is finished." Take care lest you come almost to land, take care lest you be almost saved. The old Puritan divine, the Shakespeare of the pulpit of his day, wound up one of his grandest appeals to his people by saying, "To be almost saved is to be altogether damned.”’ Take care lest you be almost in possession, and yet fail of clasping within your glad hand that after which you have been aspiring. Let us endeavour to the last hour. To fail within sight of the prize, to perish within sight of land, to be able to hear the welcomes that ring from the shore, and yet not to land there—Oh, that is painful beyond realisation. I shall never forget how, recently, we approached the city of our desire. The day before the rain had been continuous, and the mists afterwards very thick, and there was a sudden fear in the minds of men. Then came out the evening sun, and touched up all the sullen clouds into a very apocalypse of glory and beauty. I never saw such a sign in all the heavens, that are full of pictures to the eye that searches for them. We moved on through the water, and the day of landing came, and when persons saw their friends in the near distance, there was much signal giving and signal exchanging. One young boy came to me with his eyes alight and, to explain his joy, he said, "I see my father. heard a lady say, "I see my brown-eyes." I heard another say, "I see my sister." Was it possible to fail just then-to fail within a few minutes of the landing-place-to be lost before hands were grasped in the reunion of grateful affection? I Take care we are going towards the end, but we may not accomplish it; God give us strength to fulfil every mile of the road, and to fight the last battle, and to pluck the sting from the last enemy. It is the end that determines everything. The goodliest ship may go down in sight of port. Oh, may we-many of whose ships are not good, much tried, storm-beaten, creaking because of weakness-may we all be brought in, and so at last"O'er life's rough ocean driven, May we rejoice, no wanderer lost, Whole families in heaven!" Ye did run well; who did hinder you? Are you going to give up now? Say, "By the grace of God we will continue in patient well-doing till we have accomplished our days upon the earth." XLV. PRAYER. ALMIGHTY GOD, do thou now come to us, and, according to the necessity of our heart, grant thy blessing unto us-every one. We are often weary and often are we disquieted by reason of the length and hardness of the road of life; but thou hast provided for us all that we need as we pass from mile to mile of the dreary sand. We look up unto thee with a look that is meant to be a cry, a prayer, an expectation, and we wait upon thee with a patience that is as sacred and dear as a precious hope. Thou dost not disappoint the eyes that look towards the hills whence all true help cometh. Thou dost surprise those who wait upon thee, but never with the littleness of thy replies, always with the depth and breadth and graciousness of thine infinite answers. Thou dost ask us to open our mouths wide and thou wilt fill them thou dost evermore encourage us to bring large petitions to thee, for they who cry unto the Omnipotent for help cannot ask too much from the arm that is almighty. Thy grace is very sweet-sweet as honey: yea, sweeter than the honeycomb; and the more the bitterness of our life, the sweeter the solaces of thy love. Enable us to receive thy promises in all the fulness of their meaning, in all their ineffable graciousness, and may no spirit of hesitation or scepticism interpose to hinder our enjoyment of the infinite inheritance of grace which thou hast provided for thy children. We own that we often live in a cloud; many a time we are uncertain of our standing, our senses mislead the soul; we mistake things near for things great, and things in the hand we mistake as precious. Give us the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the true spirit of discernment, that we may look upon things not seen and eternal, and that by the power of an endless life we may triumph in conquest over all the temptations and besetments of time. Every heart brings its own song, every life is as a censer swung around thine altar to-day, filled with the incense of a pure offering. The Lord hear every tribute of praise, the Lord himself receive our sacrifice as one that is well pleasing, and return upon us from his broad heavens all the light and grace we need. If we speak of our sin our tongue shall cleave unto the roof of our mouth, and there shall be no more strength in our joints; we shall tremble and stagger and die before thee. Our sin is blacker than night, our iniquities are more in number than the sands upon the sea-shore, but we now listen to thy gospel, and it is adapted to all our iniquity. Thine is the gospel to the lost; thine is a cry to those who have gone astray; thy cross, O 160 A MISSIONARY CAMPAIGN. Man of Sorrows, the wounded of Gethsemane and the dying Man of Golgotha, is lifted up, not for error and infirmity and weakness but for the sin of the world. We are sinners; we say so with bowed heads; we mix no words of defence with our confession; we mourn and lament our iniquities; nor do we seek to mitigate in thy sight the aggravation of our offences. The blood of Jesus Christ thy Son cleanseth from all sin: this is our eternal hope, this is our perpetual joy. We desire to be led into all truth; dispossess us of every evil spirit, slay utterly with thy sword of light every prejudice and everything in our nature that would hide from us the true shining of thy sun. Help us to love one another, to pity one another's weaknesses, and to magnify one another's virtues. Where it is possible to clasp hands in the union of intelligent and sincere fellowship may every man eagerly embrace the opportunity of attesting the common brotherhood. Help us in all the difficulties of life; we will not ourselves meddle with them; we wait the inspiring spirit; we abide the all-illuminating light; we will quiet ourselves in the peace of God. Visit our sick-chambers to-day, see the father or the mother languishing and dying, the little child bidding a premature farewell to the earth of which it knows nothing. Look upon the families in whose households there is a great shadow, a ghastly spectre, a noise without words to express its awful meaning. The Lord save every man who is trying to be better and to do better ; the Lord send sweet gospels like singing angels into his heart, to cheer him and inspire him with immortal hope. Lord help us every one; our days are a handful, and they are counted for us by men who reckon numbers; may we remember how small is the span of our life, how little and frail our tenure upon our present earthly existence; and, remembering all these things, and remembering too our all but infinite capacity for doing wrong, may we hasten to the cross, may we all be found at the cross, may our home be at the cross, may the centre of our life be the cross, and God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ. Amen. A REVIEW OF THE WHOLE CHARGE. GREAT missionary campaign was proposed: Jesus Christ himself proposed it. Now what was his idea of such a novel campaign? This is the largest thing he has yet attempted, we may therefore naturally expect to gather from it some hint of his intellectual quality. How does he address himself to great undertakings? What was his intellectual energy, what his moral tone, what his propagandist audacity? How will he grip a great occa |