undreamt-of glories to the Church. But these are solemn truths in themselves, and surely they furnish a most instructive commentary on the words of our Lord in the passage of which we are speaking. They may help us to see that the living and allpervading charity which is the fruit of true unity, is no ornament or accident of the Church and of the Kingdom of our Lord, but its very essence and life-blood. They make us intensely grateful for the gift of this true charity and unity which we have in the Church, and they prompt us to pray ever more earnestly for the increase of this precious gift, in the sense in which it admits of increase and further perfection, in the sense in which the Church speaks when she puts daily into the mouths of her priests at the Holy Sacrifice the prayer, that according to His will God will vouchsafe to "pacificate and unite His Church "-eamque secundum voluntatem tuam pacificare et coadunare digneris. They let us see not only the hatefulness, but also the mischievousness, of the great sin, which inflicted so deadly a wound on the Kingdom of our Lord in the sixteenth century, the sin of schism-malignant enough in its outrage on our Lord's Heart, not less malignant in the desolation it brings on His Kingdom.

These truths suggest also an answer to the question that is in our minds all along with regard to the days in which we live. They are days of cultivation, and refinement, and of a kind of benevolence and softness, days in which men extend their tenderness to animals, invent a thousand

remedies or preventives for bodily pain, and turn away with the tenderness of girls from the sight of blood. But for the Divine charity, the work of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of the faithful, the charity of the Beloved Disciple, who speaks so strongly of the enormity of the sin of division, for this the days in which we live have no name but that of bigotry and intolerance. As far as the eye of man can see, schism has set up its throne all over the Christian world, and it is no longer even thought of as the throne of a usurper. To thousands of Christians the Unity of the Church of God remains in the Creed, but it remains nowhere else, and they deny it in their lives while they profess it with their lips. The last days may not be yet. But if the decay of charity is their mark and their characteristic, the last days can hardly surpass, in this detestable note, the days in which we live.

SERMON VI.

THE NATIONAL SPIRIT.

Consurget enim gens in gentem, et regnum in regnum.

Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. (Words taken from the 7th verse of the 24th chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel.)

I.

THESE Words of our Lord may have sounded more strange and alarming in the ears of those who first heard them, than in our own. We are already accustomed to this feature of the latter days which our Lord here speaks of, but it was not so with the men of the generation in which He came on earth. It has always been considered as a special action of Providence in those days, that the whole world was at peace. For a short time the old prophecy had come true which the Psalmist had spoken, that God had "done wonders upon earth, making wars to cease even to the end of the earth." The temple of Janus, as men said, was closed. But not only was the temple closed, signifying thereby that the great Roman Empire was not at that time disturbed by any external foe. The mere existence of that great Empire was a security for the peace of all 1 Psalm xlv. 9, 10.

the various nations and tribes of which it was composcd. It was in the midst of the great Pax Romana, as it was called, that the Church of Jesus Christ was first set up to lead the nations, and to weld them together by a more secure, a more abiding, a more happy tie. God made use of the peace of the Empire to facilitate the progress and advance the establishment of the Church. Peace not only enabled the Apostles to pass without hindrance from one part of the Empire to another, it not only secured them all the individual liberty and protection which belonged, as of right, to the subjects of that Empire as long as they obeyed its laws. It did far more, because it enabled them to address themselves to populations far better prepared to listen to them than if they had been full of the excitements and passions of political conflicts, or of the jealousies, hatreds, and furies of national strife, and suffering under the dangers and desolations of war. Peace has always been more or less necessary for the advance of the Church, for the spread of her system of charity from land to land, as well as for the active life of that system in the government of her hierarchy, the legislation of her councils, the exercise over all the world of the authority of her central throne.

It is most remarkable, dear brethren, that the Church of God was first founded in the midst of a people of the most intense nationality—and, as if in this also there had been a design of Providence to remove a great possible impediment to her progress, the nation which had given birth to the

Church, drove her from its doors, and forced her, or would have forced her, if that had not been her wish, to repudiate and go counter to the nationality of her first teachers and founders. Thus the peace of the nations under the sway of. Rome was the rule of the world when our Lord spoke these words. And it was so, in consequence of a distinct Divine provision for facilitating the work of His Church. It was a hard stern yoke to the rebellious, a gentle. yoke to the submissive, and no one without the gift of prophetic vision could have foretold this change which was to come, a change so momentous and so fraught with danger and alarm that it was worth. the while of our Blessed Lord to point it out as one of the features of the dreadful days which were at hand. "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." That is, to use the language of our own day, there shall then be a great development of national life, national unity, national vigour-and not only this, but this development shall unlock, not merely the patriotic instincts of nations, but their combative instincts also. It is not only that nations shall be great, but that they shall be continually at issue with one another, there shall be wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against and assailing nation, one kingdom making war on another, and this is to be as much a sign of terror as the pestilences and famines and earthquakes which are to accompany it.

Now I say, my brethren, that it is surely remarkable that we should find among the features of the last time as revealed to us beforehand by our Lord,