ready to help you, nay that He is ever striving with you to lead you in the way of God, and that you can be guided by Him if you will.

If, then, you believe that you have life by the Spirit of Christ, be careful to abide in the Church, which is the Body of Christ, and to abound in the fruits of the Spirit, that is, to be fruitful in good works, such as God has prepared for you to walk in. Thus by His grace you shall sowd to the Spirit, and in the end reap the fruit of eternal life.

с

c Eph. ii. 10.

d Gal. vi. 8.

SERMON XVI.

PREACHED IN CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL ON

SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY.

MATT. XX. 6, 7.

And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.

THE history of our Lord's ministry in the Gospel according to St. Matthew contains first His general invitation to all men to prepare by repentance for the coming of the kingdom of Heaven, and the calling of some of His first disciples. Then His proclamation of the general laws of that kingdom in His Sermon on the Mount. Then His labours to bring men into it both by His own preaching and miracles and by those of the Apostles whom He sent out with authority. Then the way in which different persons received both Him and them, and the

parables in which He foretold what would be the end of their different courses.

Afterwards the course of the narrative requires that controversy with the unbelieving Jews should be mixed with instructions to the now separate body of His own disciples, and these instructions are more exact than what had been given before both with respect to the Church on earth, its discipline and its privileges, and with respect to the final state of men, whether in glory or in punishment.

But we must observe that, at least till after our Lord's resurrection, the minds of His disciples were by no means clearly enlightened with respect to the nature of the kingdom He was about to establish. Their questions were like that of the Sadducees, Whose wife shall she be of the seven, such as could not be answered except by first shewing that they were grounded upon error. such very likely may some of the questions be, which are raised even now about the world to come.

And

Still it is good for us to exercise our minds upon those parts of the Holy Scriptures which relate to the world to come, as well as upon those which relate to the king

a Matt. xxii. 28.

dom of God upon earth. And indeed we do but very imperfectly understand these last. For the kingdom of Heaven, as our Lord said, is within us. It has indeed its outward signs, and organs, and acts, and means, and influences, but even in these the real power is in the unseen working of the Holy Spirit. And though the kingdom of Christ has visibly subdued empires, kingdoms, and commonwealths, and has received the homage of the greatest, the most powerful, and the wisest of mankind; yet its outward glory seems but as silver in the realm of Solomone, it is nothing counted of by those whose household vessels are of gold. The man whose mind is stayed on God, who believes that he truly has access to Him through His Blessed Son, and that his prayers and thanksgivings are truly heard and accepted by his Heavenly Father, and who truly purposes to surrender himself wholly to Him, to do His will, and to suffer it, and to be His for ever, finds that in surrendering himself he has gained all things, and that it were but loss to have all the world can offer to himself, since it would distract his mind from the enjoyment of far better things. And so he is content that

b Luke xvii. 24.

M

c 2 Chron. xix. 28.

the Church should have but such a share of visible glory in this world as may suffice for a witness to mankind; seeing that in each of her members, and in the one Spirit that animates the whole body, she has the inward glory of holiness. But this is a glory which we can only see in proportion as we partake of it, and though we may see enough to know that no earthly glory can be compared to it, yet we do not know but that men, who live nearer to God, and renounce themselves more than we do, may see incomparably greater things than are visible to us. We must not be surprised then if we find Holy Scripture representing the state of Christians on earth as something more than we have been used to consider it, and calling it by high and wonderful names, such as the kingdom of God. We may even be in doubt sometimes about the meaning of our Lord's parables, whether they refer to the admission of Jews and Gentiles into the Church, or to the reception of the faithful, after their trial

is over, into Heaven. And this parable

itself seems to admit of such a doubt. For St. Chrysostom, who expounds it of persons brought into the vineyard of the Christian Church at different times of life, and their final reward, notes several points in which