"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."-MATT. vii. 21.

PERHAPS the time has now come when these words of Christ can be understood. Some of His sayings, we read, were hid from His hearers, some have been hidden till now; some perhaps will be hidden for many an age to come. But perhaps the verse I have taken for my text can now be understood.

The progress of thought on religious subjects is very strange, it is not quite unlike the progress of thought on science. You know Agassiz's saying about the reception of a scientific truth. It passes through three stages, he tells us. First, it is said, it is not true; second, it is contrary to religion; third, everybody knew it before. It is almost exactly the case with the reception in their plain broad meaning of some of the most characteristic teachings of Christ.

Do I mean that some of Christ's teaching is said to be not true, or that it is said to be contrary to religion? Yes, that is what I mean. Religion, as

1 Preached in the Chapel of St. John's College, Cambridge, 28th October 1883.

we are brought up in it, is such a strange medley of human traditions and opinions superposed on Christ's teaching and selected from it, that there are parts of Christ's teaching which are absolutely in contrast and contradiction to it. And when these are brought forward some people are always ready to say, this is not true, this is not what Christ meant, this is contrary to our religion; by which they mean the little scheme of texts and traditions they have selected for themselves.

But meantime in a thousand ways the soil of the human mind is being prepared for the seed, and some day people turn round and say, Everybody knew this before; of course this is religion, of course this is Christ's teaching.

Now what has Christ said? "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." And not in this text only, but in many another. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous," nor by His words only, but by the spirit of His whole teaching, and the example of His whole life. Rightly read, the spirit of our Lord's life is a protest against any other idea of religion. He came to reveal fresh light and truth, to throw light on the great problem of life; but so far as the externals of religion were concerned, He taught that not worship, not belief, but duty was the form, the expression which religion ought to assume. And His followers truly caught the spirit of His life and of His words. The astonished Jews of Jerusalem heard from St. Peter that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him; the no less astonished Greeks heard the same

truths from St. Paul; and St. James has expressed the same truth still more pointedly to the Jews of the dispersion in saying that the pure Opηokeía, or expression of religion, is charity and purity, and that alone. Christ dared to say a truth which the religious world of His day-the Scribes and Pharisees—were totally unprepared to receive, a truth which men still shrink from saying or accepting; the truth that morality is religion. This He repeated in clear and uncompromising language. He that doeth righteousness is righteous. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord; not those that are fervent in devotion, firm in conviction, not the passionate adherents of either the cultus or the dogma of our religion, but those who in every nation do the will of God. They enter the kingdom. This is Christ's answer to the question we constantly ask, What is religion? Religion is to care much and care always for doing your duty.

I am not saying that Christ taught us nothing else. I am not saying that morality is revelation. He came as the great Revealer of God. He came to throw light on our present and our future, to give men guidance and hope; He came as a Saviour and Redeemer, and as the Light of the World and Revealer of the Father. But I am saying that the sum and substance of His teaching as regards the expression of our feeling towards God whom He revealed, was that this expression, this pηokeía, this religion, consisted in a keen sensibility and loyal obedience to God's will. Or, to express this in the plainest way, it is to care much and to care always for doing our duty. Now, simple though this is, we often fail to grasp

it.

Young men especially are often occupied with

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the accessories of religion, and lose sight of the central truth; or, on the other hand, having lost sight of the central truth, and being so dissatisfied with the accessories, they avert their eyes and minds. from the whole subject. It has become unreal and distasteful. Let me try to put the subject into right perspective once more. Perhaps, as I said at first, the time has come when these words of Christ can be understood.

"I

Religion is to care much and care always for doing your duty; and all other matters of religion are accessory to this. Can it be so? you ask. thought religion meant a life of devotion and prayer; that it meant believing and knowing about a number of doctrines and articles and creeds; that it meant caring much about forms of worship." Did you think so? If you did, it was because things have. been put before you wrongly, or because you have misunderstood what you have been taught. If I venture to express the thoughts of some of you, they are perhaps somewhat as follows: "Religion seems to me to have no beginning and no ending; a great deal of it is merely form and talk. I find that I cannot take much interest in prayer; I seldom read the Bible, and when I do I get no good from it. I don't see that those who profess to be religious are much better than I am. I am obliged to conclude. that I am not religious by nature, that I must content myself with leading as good a life as I can, and doing my plain duty, and let others find what pleasure they may in religion." I believe that this is what many young men think. Now I beg you to examine the thought in the light of Christ's teaching, and you will find that in the midst of much confusion

of ideas you are nearer the truth than you expected. He that doeth the will of My Father that is in heaven -he that doeth righteousness-is righteous. By their fruits ye shall know them. In modern phraseology, not the conventional or Scriptural language, the religious man is one who cares much and cares always for doing his duty. Let us not be afraid to say so as plainly and as uncompromisingly as Christ himself, even though Scribes and Pharisees still misunderstand us, and say that we blaspheme.

But if this is so, you say, what is all the rest that we associate with religion?

I reply that nothing that is called Christianity or religion is of value except in so far as it helps us to do our duty. All else that we count religion was, or is, to others, if not to ourselves, a help to doing our duty. Let us look at some of these things.

We will take these chapel services. Now I cannot doubt that the service, the prayers, the psalms, the lessons, the sermon, seem, and actually are to some of you, almost, or let me say quite, unprofitable. But they are in their origin the method which men have devised to express and strengthen that mutual sympathy and that trust in God which helps them to do their duty. The psalms are the comfort and support of one generation after another. The prayers express the deepest longings of the saintliest of men for spiritual blessings. The hymns contain the joy, the aspirations, the emotions of the finest souls that have lived, sung to music that has stirred the souls of myriads of congregations. And so the service is to very many a real substantial help to doing duty. You come to service in this chapel certainly not because your involuntary presence is an