as any savages."

That is what was said less than 150 years ago. It is not true now. The day has dawned, though the full light does not yet shine. And how has the progress been brought about? By a process as silent as the dawning of day. The light brightens in a few breaks in the clouds; it brightens and spreads; and the cloud itself is less dark, and behold the day is approaching, stealing insensibly over the whole sky. These great men, these saints of old, or saints of yesterday, whom we commemorate on our pillars, are but representatives of their age; they imply thousands below who were moved by the same spirit, and were doing the same work. The pinnacle is only lofty because it is borne on a solid and lofty tower. The crest of the wave catches the eye only because it is upheaved by the mass below. How has the progress been brought about? It is the work of the Holy Spirit of God in hearts such as ours which meet here to-night. is not the work of a few distinguished and gifted men; it is the work of the good and the obscure. God sees not as man sees; and the praise of God is quite other than the praise of man. We know that many that are last shall be first, and the first last at that tremendous final verdict when many a human judgment shall be reversed, and then the righteous shall shine out as the stars in the firmament. Who are the righteous? They are those who strive to love God and love their neighbours, who strive to leave this world a little better than they found it; a little better for their having lived. This is something that we can all do in our different ways. knows, my friends, that you have harder work than I; yea, and God alone can reward, not with noisy.

It

God

praise of men, but with His own silent praise, the faithful work that is being done in this parish by men and women among yourselves for the common good. He can and He does bless you with happiness even now, and with eternal life. I am preaching now to you; but some of you preach a better sermon to me in your lives and work. Thus, and thus only, by silent individual work, is the blessed progress towards the kingdom of God brought about. Thus we are bidden to "Go forward."

And if there is any city in England in which we can trace the work of God through the years past, it is Bristol. Wesley thanks God in his journal that "God had given him such success among these gentle Bristolians"; that "God had given them such artless and teachable hearts." And many a minister and worker since Wesley's days has said the same. No city, moreover, has been blessed with so many and such devoted servants of God as this Metropolis of the West, this city of churches. I do not of course speak of our own Church only. I speak of the great Nonconformists also, from Robert Hall to Miss Carpenter, not to speak of living workers in Church and Nonconformity.

But I must be brief. I have spoken of the past and the present, rather than of the future, even though my text is "Go forward"; and I have done so for this reason. I know not the future any more than you do. But this I know, that the spirit in which to go forward is that of cheerful confidence and hope founded on the knowledge of God's mercy in the past and in the present. "He is at our right hand, and we shall not be moved." It is in this reasonable confidence that we must go forward.

And this church, and the work that will for all years to come centre round it, will help you to go forward. First, it will help you to deepen and strengthen your own personal holiness and love to God. Here you will come, I trust, in large numbers, and with ever-increasing regularity, to join in worship, and to get instruction, and to partake of the Holy Communion, that witness to Christian brotherhood and to the spiritual presence of Christ among us, and to go out comforted, more at peace with God and man, more bent on doing and saying the right thing, on honesty, industry, forbearance, kindness, temperance, thrift, and all family duties, and everyday virtues.

All the seats in the church are free for ever. It

is your church. The church is, moreover, open all day and every day for you to come in for quiet, for meditation, for prayer.

It will help you to grow in goodness year by year. And this is the root of the matter. It is what you are that slowly affects the world; not what you say, or what you wish to be thought. This church will help you to be good, to realise God in your lives; and it is thus, and thus only, that the world is reformed.

Next, it will bring you into more sympathy with others, and open out to you some fresh lines on which you can work. Every member of a congregation should join it with the resolve to do something for others. We, being the parish church, are responparish. The parish church is not these

sible for the
walls; it is you who meet in
temple of God." It is in you,

it. "Ye are the

not in these walls,

that the Holy Spirit dwells. Round the church

cluster already numerous activities; and yet there is room for more workers. There is room for more of that quiet lay mission work, of which you are the ministers, among the poorest streets. Some of this work is, I know, going on already, and nothing that I have heard of in this parish has given me more pleasure. There is room for more work among boys and girls, and that of many sorts, in Sunday School and on week-day evenings; room for more temperance workers; for help in good recreation; for all sorts of refining and softening and educating influences on some of the wilder elements of our population. There is the work to do. There is our Red Sea to cross. It is hard; it may seem impossible, as did the crossing of the Red Sea seem to the Israelites of old; but I am sure it shall one day be done.

And now, my friends, I commend you to God, and to His Holy Spirit; praying that He may bless you who worship in this place now and in all the years to come; that He will bless those who work among you, men and women, clerical and lay, in their various labours of love; and especially I pray, and I ask your continued prayers, for him whom God has called to this parish to teach and preach the Word, and to guide and help in all that makes for morality and goodness. May this church and all that comes from it bring light and peace and joy to thousands now, and in the coming years and centuries, till the Kingdom of God shall itself come on earth.

ΧΙ

THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL1

"First that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual.”I COR. xv. 46.

1

I WAS asked not long ago by one who was contemplating taking holy orders, whether I found it possible, without putting, by an effort of will, my critical and scientific faculties into abeyance, to retain a firm grasp of belief in the resurrection of Christ, and in our ever-continued personality after death, and whether I did not fear the uprising of these faculties and the extinction of my faith in these fundamental points of Christian doctrine. It was the difficulty he felt in clearing up his convictions on these points, and the fear of some subsequent reversal that alone prevented him from taking orders to which his whole nature and soul gravitated.

I am sure you will feel that these were straightforward questions; and that whether thus formulated or not, they have been in the minds of many of yourselves; and I am sure too that it is the duty of us older men to offer you such help and guidance as we can in thinking on these most important questions.

1 Preached at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge, on Sunday, 30th May