"Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the ful- ness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be Written for Easter Day 1886, but not preached on account of illness. "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at "In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our 14. THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. "And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but 18. SERVANTS OF GOD "Paul, a servant of God."--TITUS i. I. Preached in St. Mary's, Oxford, 15th October 1882. 19. THE IMPERFECTIONS OF RELIGIOUS MEN "Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, where- 20. HUMAN LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh Preached in Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, 5th October PAGE 256 274 294 I THE SERIOUSNESS OF LIFE "To stand before the Son of Man."-ST. LUKE xxi. 36. THE season which begins to-day turns our thoughts to the finishing and winding up of all that we are concerned with in our passage here. It turns our thoughts to the question, what will become of it all,all that we see, all that we do, all that we are? For ourselves, at least, we know that a great break-up is not very far off. We, at least, each in his own way, more. -we, either abruptly, or by gradual but hardly slow decay, shall pass from the scene and appear here no But the interest of life, and of this present state, does not stop at this interruption. That there is something beyond it, that what is and has been here, runs on by connections, certain however unknown, into what shall be there, that what has been lost and forgotten here, will assuredly revive and be found in that unknown future, that the judgments and doings of time have yet to pass under a more searching and complete light than any given us now, -this, which is the unconquerable instinct of conscience, is the assurance which comes to us from the other world. If goodness and right are more than words, if we are not deceived in acknowledging them as standards of our conduct and masters of our life, there is something to come, not only after, but out of and from what we are all of us doing here. And the word which we believe to be of God tells us, with unswerving earnestness and clearness, what that is. It is to be the completion of that law of righteousness, truth, and mercy, which here is both acknowledged and disobeyed. All things, all characters, all deeds, are to pass under the final review of that law. All that will then happen to any of us will be in subordination to the fulfilment of that perfect justice. So The Old In that world to come a judgment waits for all things in this world; and what is at last to happen to them, and to us all, depends on that judgment. much was clear in the Old Testament. Testament is chary of speaking of the way in which all this should come to pass. It speaks indeed, but it speaks in mystery, in suggestion, in parable. It speaks so that when our Lord came, the Jews, both the mass of them and the more thoughtful, had learned to believe in a resurrection and a judgment. Yet it speaks so that they who chose to doubt or to deny, could say that it had not forced them to believe; that its hints were not explicit enough for them. But that in some way or another, God, who made the world, should be its Judge, the Old Testament declared beyond mistake. It is the cry from end to |