FRQM THE LIBR&RX OF
COLLEGE
CONTENTS. Vll
PAGE
SERMON VI.
S E R M O
1. PORTIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE;
2. THE HOLY NAME ;
3. THE LAST CHAPTER OF PROVERBS,
PREACHED IN
THE ORATORY OF S. MARGARET'S, EAST GRINSTED,
BY THE
REV. JOHN MASON NEALE, D.D.
LONDON :
J. T. HAYES, LYALL PLACE, EATON SQUARE ; AND 4 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
5-133
TO
ELIZABETH PHELPS, THEIR OWN AND THEIR FATHER'S FRIEND.
THE SISTERS OF S. MARGARET'S AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBE THIS BOOK.
East Grinsted, S. Margaret's Day, 1871.
138950 AU6 1 7 1992
CONTENTS. Vll
PAGE
SERMON VI.
167
CONTENTS.
THE APOCALYPSE.
SERMON I. PAGE
I HAVE THIS AGAINST THEE .......................... I
SERMON II. HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND ........................ 6
SERMON III. THE WHITE STONE ................................ 18
SERMON IV. SEVEN .......................................... z8
SERMON V.
LlSTLESSNESS ...................................... 38
SERMON VI. A LITTLE STRENGTH .............................. 46
SERMON VII. THE OPEN DOOR .................................. £
SERMON VIII. FAINT, YET PURSUING .............................. 6z
VI CONTENTS.
PAG|
SERMON IX. THE GLORY THAT SHALL BEjUveJCLEoT. 71
SERMON X. THE HEAVENLY JOY OF HEAVENLY SERVICE 79
SERMON XI. ALPHA AND OMEGA 92
SERMON XII. DEUS MEUS ET OMNIA . 101
THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS.
SERMON I. THE NAME OF STRENGTH 115 4
SERMON II. THE NAME OF BLESSING 127
SERMON III. THE NAME OF HEALING 136
SERMON IV. THE NAME OF GLORY 147
SERMON V. THE NAME or TRUST 157
CONTENTS. Vll
PAGE
SERMON VI. THE NAME OF LOVE 167
SERMON VII. THE NAME OF HELP 176
LITANY OF THE HOLY NAME 184
THE LAST CHAPTER OF PROVERBS.
SERMON I. THE EXCELLENT WOMAN 191
SERMON II. REAL SERVICE 20 1
SERMON III. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST AND OF His SAINTS .... 211
SERMON IV. THE FOOD FROM A FAR COUNTRY 220
SERMON V. THE BETTER PORTION 228
SERMON VI. THE PURCHASED FIELD 237
SERMON VII. STRENGTH 145
Vlll CONTENTS.
PAGE
SERMON VIII. THE SEED OF THE CHURCH 25 2
SERMON IX. NIGHT WORK 258
SERMON X. THE CROSS 267
SERMON XI. THE POOR AND NEEDY 275
SERMON XII. WHY ARE YE FEARFUL ? 281
SERMON XIII. TRANSFIGURATION 287
SERMON XIV. IN THE GATE 294
SERMON XV. THE GIORIOUS TRAFFIC 303
SERMON XVI. STRENGTH AND HONOUR 309
SERMON XVII. WISDOM AND KINDNESS 317
SERMON XVIII. THE FOUR PATTERNS 324
PREFACE.
FEW words of preface are needed for this volume. It contains, as its title states, groups, not per fect sets, of Sermons on three subjects. Those on the Apocalypse and the Virtuous Woman were partly preached in regular course : those on the Holy Name, at many different times. The latter have been gathered together here, because the subject has a peculiar interest for all persons connected with this Sisterhood ; and the Litany, daily used by all its members, and frequently alluded to in these Sermons, is ap pended to them.
The principle which actuates the Sisters of S. Margaret's in editing their Founder's works, was sufficiently set forth in the Preface to " Ser mons on the Psalms ;" and, while they regret
b
X PREFACE.
the almost necessary imperfection of posthumous publications, they trust that this little book may not prove useless or uninteresting to those for whose use it is offered.
SERMONS
ON
THE APOCALYPSE.
SERMON V
1 HAVE THIS AGAINST THEE.
44 1 know thy works* and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil : and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars : and hast borne, and hast patience, and for My name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love." — REV. ii. », 4.
FIRST of all, let me show you how one little word will alter the force of a whole sentence. This verse, so infinitely precious as a warning, has been, by the insertion of that one word, turned almost into a palliation of deep, deep sin. Those who read the English Bible alone, without commentators, and without help, can hardly understand the text otherwise than thus : First, the glorious catalogue of graces ; then : — still, it is not quite perfect : there is a defect, a little defect, — a somewhat: "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast
* Fragment of a Sermon preached on the Festival of the Holy Name, 1863, at the reception of a novice.
2 I HAVE THIS AGAINST THEE. [SER.
left thy first love." And thence men have gone on still further: that, if this Church, this glorious Church of Ephesus, lost its first love, all followers of the LORD also must do so.
But now see. That word somewhat is in italics. My Sisters, the first opportunity you have, cross it out of your Bibles. A most un happy, a most dreadful filling up. This is the true sense. All the dear graces are first reckoned up to the honour of the Church of Ephesus : endurance, and patience, and for His Name's sake (the Name of this day) labouring, and not fainting. " Nevertheless," our dear LORD goes on, " I have THIS against thee, because thou hast left thy first love."
And now first see how much we learn by comparing Ephesus with Thyatira.
Ephesus clung to the faith ; hating apostates and heretics ; the LORD says, " How thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars." But then, this great, this overpowering accusation, " Thou hast left thy first love."
Thyatira had the opposite sin. She suffered that woman Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess ; but she loved, and she showed her love by her works : and the last, He, that knoweth all things, knew to be more than the
L] I HAVE THIS AGAINST THEE. 3
first. On the one side, faith, with decreasing love ; on the other, increasing love, with more cowardly faith.
My Sisters, you see why I have taken this text. I had to say something of the Name above every name. I had also to say some thing of the love of a new Sister. " For My Name's sake thou hast laboured, and hast not fainted." And then, and yet : " because thou hast left thy first love."
Believe me, my Sisters, in what I am about to say to you now, I merely am putting into English words, and realizing in our own great need, what those Saints, whom GOD gave in such love to the world, have taught me.
Now, what is the loss of first love ?
There is the very frequent mistake. The love, the true, deep, quiet love, beginning indeed at the beginning, but to remain for ever, is confused with excitement. See. When a deep, deep sinner turns again to GOD, when the poor sheep tries to come back to the sheep-fold, and the LORD of the faltering and fallen takes pity on him : that is, (to use in its true sense the term which has been so perverted that it has been hated,) when a man is converted : then, there is a certain glow and excitement of feeling, almost necessary, certainly happy, which can-
B 2
4 I HAVE THIS AGAINST THEE. [Sin.
not last. So again : (and, my Sisters, this may contain something of importance as regards you,) you, one by one, have been received, as our dear future Sister hopes to be received to morrow. What you felt, in the way of excite ment, when you took those vows, cannot last. THAT is not first love. No ; but this I do hope, this I do believe : that for your LORD'S sake you really, if the point came to the point, would do more for Him now than then, though you might, in one sense, have felt more then than now.
Oh, my Sisters ! see what follows. " Re member therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works."
Now; do you think I speak to you, as if you were in the position of Ephesus ? This I know : that we, Priest and Sisters, must every moment be on our guard lest it should be so. There is a terrible lesson in that Book of Re velation, taken in connection with the Epistles, which shows what the Priest has to do with the question.
Listen, my Sisters, to a warning to me first. The history is very remarkable.
There were two cities near to each other in Asia Minor: Colosse and Laodicea. When S. Paul was in those parts, he founded, his
I.] I HAVE THIS AGAINST THEE. 5
Master helping him, a Church in each. In Colosse, there was a leading. Christian, by name Philemon, who had a runaway slave, called Onesimus. S. Paul interceded, oh how lovingly ! " If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account ; I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it : albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides." In writing to this Philemon, we find S. Paul's love sent to Archippus, one of his family. Then, when the same Apostle writes to the Colossians, there is a reproof, so it would seem, to this Archippus. And say to Archippus, "Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the LORD, that thou fulfil it." And then, lastly, that Laodicea, with its idle Bishop: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot." *****
\The MS. breaks off ; but the idea carried out was that of Archippus, the beloved of Paul, gradually falling from grace, till, as Bishop of Laodicea, our LORD'S most awful words were spoken of him.]
SERMON II*
HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND.
" I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even (where Satan's seat is .- and thou boldest fast My Name, and hast not denied My faith, even tn those days wherein Antipas was My faithful martyr, (who (was slain among you, (where Satan dwelleth.^ — REV. ii. 13.
THAT first clause, — " I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is," — would it lead us to think that there was the loving message for this poor afflicted Church of Pergamos (or, as it should rather be, Per- gamum), which we really know is to follow? One thing I should take for certain. The works, known to GOD, done by one who dwelt where Satan's seat is, must be either illustri ously good, — the bright candle in the night, — or deeply wicked, — the outer, double darkness. Well ; — and these works are indeed worthy of everlasting remembrance ; and see how that which enhanced them is mentioned twice
* Preached on Septuagesima Sunday, 1862.
HAVING DONE ALL, TO JTAND. 7
aver; "where Satan's seat is,'* — " where Satan dwelleth."
But now, why could it be said that Satan dwelt in Pergamum more than in any other of the seven cities to whom S. John wrote ? why that his seat was there ? or rather his throne for it is the same word with our English ; and as, when applied to the Throne of GOD'S glory, BO it ought to be used of the hellish caricature of that Kingdom ? It is absolutely unknown. And I think I can see the reason why it should be so. If we knew the peculiar temptation this Church had to conquer, we should perhaps sympathise less with the teaching for ourselves. Some great manifestation of Satan's power was exercised against Pergamum ; some bitter temptation he either has bent, or does, or will direct against us. Pergamum conquered; and we shall see how ; and by the same means, my Sisters, must we conquer.
Ah ! and first we get the old story : the high road of suffering ! Antipas was " My faithful martyr." Now, is it not most remarkable that this glorious title, My martyr, My faithful martyr, given to no other Saint, should not for ever have kept alive the memory of Antipas, what he did, how he suffered ? And yet ab solutely nothing is known of him. In the later
8 HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. [SEE.
martyrologies, indeed, we have a long history of his passion ; but clearly only as a legend, written by one who knew no more of the facts than ourselves. Now, if you like to take this as a proof that GOD'S greatest Saints are often those of whom the world knows least, — so it undoubtedly is, and this may be another proof of it. But I am inclined to think that this is not the true explanation. I do not believe that Antipas was the name of any individual martyr. The word Tra? in Greek means every one. As Antichrist, being interpreted, is He that resists CHRIST, so Antipas means He that resists every one ; that is, who, simply, by him self, stands up against a world of evil-doers. Like those glorious verses about Abdiel, in the revolt of the Fallen Angels, which always stir my heart like a trumpet :
" So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found Among the faithless, faithful only he : Among innumerable false, unmoved, Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, His loyalty he kept, his faith, his zeal."
Antipas, then, in this sense, every martyr of every age has been and must be ; and singularly enough, one such Martyr of Pergamum history tells us of. You have some of you read, and I hope all of you have heard of, the letter
IL HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. 9
written by the Church of Lyons in France to the Churches in Asia, seventy years later than the Epistle of S. John, concerning the glorious martyrs there in a local persecution ; when the slave S. Blandina, being bound in a chain ot red-hot iron, thence encouraged her fellow- sufferers to hold out; when the aged Bishop, S. Pothinus, died under the buffeting of the mob, — then one of the foremost soldiers in this brave fight, then one of the first athletes in this brave race, was Attalus, a Pergamene. I have seen the very dungeon in which they were confined ; a dungeon to which you can only obtain access by crawling in like a worm.
Now then : how did this Church of Pergamum stand firm where Satan dwelt ? Look at those two clauses ; " And thou boldest fast My Name, and hast not denied My faith." That is one of the texts that at first sight seem so disap pointing in their conclusion. I have spoken to you before now of that in the Epistle to the Ephesians : "Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of GOD, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day ; and having done all," — well, what ? To win a complete victory ? to crush down Satan utterly ? Nothing less. Having done all, to stand. To hold your own,
IO HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. [Sun.
and that all: the whole result, simply not to yield. And take another example. " Therefore seeing we have received this ministry," — this ministry of binding and loosing, — this ministry according to the voice of which the Incarnate Word is given to us under the similitude of Bread and Wine, — this ministry of which He Himself is the Great High Priest, — seeing we have received this ministry, — and further, as we have obtained mercy, — now surely, it must be, we shall carry the whole world before us ! And alas ! it is only, we faint not ! Not to faint, the highest results of the greatest gifts that GOD can bestow on man ! And so here. " And thou boldest fast My Name, and hast not denied My faith." Think first of that Name, — the only Name given under Heaven whereby one can be saved, the Name which has healed the sick, cast out devils, raised the dead, yes, and greater miracle still, turned stony hearts into hearts of flesh, warmed icy coldness into a fervour of love ; that Name, like ointment poured forth ; that Name, so sweet, so mighty, so exalted above every name ; think first of that ; and then of holding it fast ; and what ought to be the strength of one who clings tight to the Tower of all strength. And then what a dis-
IT.] HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. II
^
appointing conclusion, " And hast not denied My faith."
My Sisters, when I look at you, I can a little understand what this means. You go out, we will say, and do and suffer what you could not do nor suffer except by the power of that Name, which not only in your Litanies and your pro- . fessions, but in your very hearts, you hold fast. You come home : and, by and by, some little temptation, — some word spoken unkindly in the common room, some piece of obedience taken amiss, some misunderstanding of some Sister, — and would you not be most joyful if you could always say that you had resisted a thing in itself so little ? Would you not in your next self-examination feel as thankful, or more thankful, for victory over this very miserable little fox, as over the lion that roared against you before ?
Yes ; this I take to be the meaning of such apparently disappointing clauses. For the great work you put out all your energies, you employ all your watchfulness, you call into action all your prayers ; and down go the walls of your spiritual Jericho. But then comes a poor little Ai ; and the first thing is, " Make not all the people to labour thither, for they are but few ;" and the next thing will be, " O LORD,
12 HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. [Ssa.
what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies?" No one, my Sisters, has greater need of this warning than (not you especially, but) all who have embraced the Religious Life ; because the very height of its aim and enterprises seems to make little worldly, casual temptations small and con temptible ; and the moment you think a temp tation contemptible, Satan's victory is half won.
I was speaking to you the other day* of the promise made to this same Church, — of the white stone and the hidden manna. But it is worth while to notice, how the promise of the reward is peculiarly adapted to the self-denial by which the reward is won. It goes on to specify among the temptations of Pergamum, " Thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, to eat things sacrificed unto idols." That, then, is Satan's line : and our dear LORD'S reward is the hidden manna : is Himself, sacra- mentally eaten in this world by His faithful ; but there, the even yet more precious, more glorious, more delicious manna of the Beatific Vision.
And then, to look back to the beginning of the text, what more solemn words can there
* See following Sermon.
II.] HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. 13
be for you, than those four first ? We know what has been said of your works in the assem bly of the Church. But what, when the Head of the Church takes them into His own knowledge ? " I know," not your works only, but " thy works :" each one : those secret, hidden things, all those tides and counter-tides of temptation and impulse, which she hardly knows herself, which she has not the power of expressing to an earthly Priest, no, not even if he were endowed to the very full with the power of laying open the soul that GOD gave to S. Francis de Sales, or to S. Vincent de Paul ! I know; and not now only, not now first. Long ago,— so He might say to each of you, — I, on the watchtower of My Cross, knew them ; knew them, when I was winning the power for thee to gain thy virtues, when I was suffering additionally for each of thy sins. I knew them ; and I knew thee ; knew with what strength or infirmity, with what faith or un belief, with what courage or listlessness, thou wouldst cleave to My Name, thou wouldst keep My faith." And oh, my Sisters, think of that knowledge first; and then what becomes of every other opinion, of all other praise or blame !
" I know thy works, and where thou dwellest."
14 HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. [Sin.
Ah ! and what when the accomplished works are known, and known happily ? " And where thou dwellest." Not now constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have an habitation among the tents of Kedar, but in one of the many man sions of our FATHER'S Hftuse, whither our dear LORD hath gone before to prepare a place for us. " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna." And, thus called to look on the everlasting Alleluia of Heaven, we are reminded of the temporary Alleluia of earth, from which we are now, for a season, called to part. Some of you may hardly realize the intense, and, so to speak, personal feeling of affection with which the Saints of the middle ages regarded this dear word : how they bade it farewell as to a most beloved friend ; how they counted the days of its absence, in yearn ing desire for its return. I will read you the old Spanish service : The Dismissal of the Alleluia. I can imagine some men calling it childish ; but if so, it is glorious in its very childishness. And thus it runs. It was said at the First Vespers of the First Sunday in Lent. The Chapter was this :
Alleluia in Heaven and in earth ; in Heaven it is perpetuated, on earth it is broken. There
II.1 HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. 15
in constancy ; here in faith. There beatifically ; here sorrowfully. There without vocal pronun ciation here with terrestrial music. There by Angels ; here by sinners. Grant, O LORD, that those whose ministry we endeavour ourselves to imitate, may be our happy companions in the eternal Alleluia.
f Thou shalt go, O Alleluia. Thou shalt have a prosperous journey, O Alleluia.
I^r And again with joy shalt thou return to us, O Alleluia.
7 For in their hands they shall bear thee up, that thou dash not thy foot against a stone, O Alleluia.
ty And again, &e.
•f I will direct thy ways, O Alleluia.
ty Thou shalt go out with joy, and be led forth with peace, O Alleluia.
y The mountains and the hills shall break forth before thee into singing, 0 Alleluia.
fy And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands, O Alleluia.
7 There shall no evil happen unto thee, O Alleluia.
IV Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, O Alleluia.
So they sang their farewell. But whether our
l6 HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. [SsR.
Alleluia does return to us in safety, whether our Angels will bear it up in their hands, that it dash not its foot against a stone, that must depend on our real penitence in Lent. If no true Kyrie Eleison, then certainly no true Alleluia Perenne at last. My Sisters, as each Lent comes round, I am anxious more than I can tell you, — it may be, nervously anxious, — that no miserable deceit or effort of Satan may prevent you, each of you, entering on it as you ought. He has so many, many ways to hinder a good beginning. As in the case of Job, ill ness ; some perplexity among one's friends ; some difficulty in one's own confession ; some unkindness among yourselves ; some mistake made by your poor Priest. But let us all try to remember this : that how we enter that Porch of Easter is all in all to us : every commence ment of Lent is the time when we ought to make up our minds to do better than ever before; arid when you, dear Sisters, should now ask yourselves — and, depend upon it, I shall ask you — how far you think you have given reasonable (ah me ! or even unreasonable) cause of offence to others.
Why ? That our Alleluia may come back to us unharmed, brighter, dearer, happier, now. Why ? That we may one day, in that eternal
n.] HAVING DONE ALL, TO STAND. IJ
Easter, in that perpetual spring, merit to attain that, of which the highest strains of the Church Militant are but the poorest, meanest shadows, the everlasting Alleluia of Paradise ! And now, &c.
II.
SERMON III.*
THE WHITE STONE
" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches ; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name 'written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it" — REV. ii. 17.
IT is almost strange that I should not have spoken to you oftener about these Seven Epistles of our dear LORD Himself: answering, as they do, to the Seven Petitions of His Prayer, and the Seven Beatitudes of His Sermon. To the two Churches of whom nothing but praise is said : Smyrna and Philadelphia ; the two who meet with nothing but blame : Sardis and Laodicea ; and the three in whom praise and blame are nearly equally mixed : Thyatira, Ephesus, Per- gamus.
I suppose it is hardly possible to find too
* Written for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, i86z ; the Priest unable to be present.
THE WHITE STONE. ig
deep a mystery, not only in the number, seven, but in the order in which they are arranged, and in the different promises made to each, as connected with the varying trials of each.
See, for example, how to the first Church, Ephesus, the promise is : " The Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of GOD." There we are carried back to the happy begin ning of the world, and the Garden of Eden. To the second Church, Thyatira, the promise is : " Not to be hurt of the Second Death." And there we are carried back to the Fall, when the sentence of that Second Death was due to the sin of Adam. In the third Church, we read of certain that hold the doctrine of Balaam : and there we are taken to the children of Israel in the wilderness ; also we read of the manna, — the hidden manna : hidden, namely, as that was which was laid up in the ark ; still referring to the same time. In the fourth Church, Thyatira, we read of the prophetess Jezebel : and so we have the children of Israel in the land of Canaan. What follows, leaves oft" speaking of the Church on earth, and has to do only and wholly with that Jerusalem which is free, in Heaven. Is it not marvellous to see how the order of the history in the Old Testa-
C 2
2O THE WHITE STONE. [Sun.
ment forms also the order of the promises and threatenings in these Epistles ?
Now something else. I have often enough spoken to you, my Sisters, of the trials and temptations you all must have ; as things not to be frightened about, not to murmur at, not to think any proof that we are losing ground ; but, whether we can realize them so or not, as blessings.
In these Seven Churches, there are two who have no exhortation to fight valiantly, and to suffer bravely. Are these the two that we should wish to be like ? They are the two fallen ones : Sardis and Laodicea. To the one it is said : " Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead ;" to the other: " I will spue thee out of My Mouth." This is what comes, my Sisters, of having no trials : of settling, as the Prophet says, on our lees. Whereas those glorious Churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia, how are they spoken of? " Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried ; and ye shall have tribulation ten days : be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." And again : " Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour
UT.] THE WHITE STONE. 21
of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth."
But now to come to the text : and a very difficult one it is to understand. First : let us read once more the clause I am about to speak of: "And will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he. that receiveth it."
The first thing to be remarked in that clause, is : " Which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Receiveth it : that is, the stone ; not the Name. It is not that he that has over come has here the promise of himself receiv ing a new name on his white stone ; but, as we shall see presently, a far higher Name than that of any Saint.
Now, many mediaeval writers have said, that the white stone refers to the Greek custom of marking happy days by throwing a white stone into a box : unhappy days by throwing in a black stone ; and according as, at the end of the year, the black or the white were most nume rous, so was the year considered happy or un happy. So, they say, a white stone means the one long, endless glad day of eternity. But there is this fatal objection. S. John nowhere in the whole of his writings draws a metaphor from heathen games or customs. It was not
22 THE WHITE STONE. [Sun.
so with S. Paul ; he, as you all know, is con stantly alluding to them. " If a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully." "Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?" "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." But S. John, brought up in Judaea, where such games were never exhibited, never refers to them or to their prizes. I know you will say im mediately : He does once at least, in that vision of the " great multitude which no man could number, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands :" and the palm was the Greek symbol of victory. Ah ! but those happy palmers do not hold the palm in that they have conquered, but in that they rest : in that they are now keeping the true and everlasting Feast of Tabernacles : as it is written : " The Taber nacle of GOD is with men, and He will dwell with them." They rest from their labours : therefore the palms ; they rest, when the true jubilee, the year of perfect remission is ful filled ; just as it was fifty days after the passage of the Red Sea that the Church of Israel pitched before Mount Sinai.
Well then : what other meaning for this white
in.] THE WHITE STONE. 23
stone? Now I showed you that all the pro mises to the Seven Churches, have reference to some special period of the history of the Church of Israel. This then has, too ; and as we read in the same verse about the hidden manna, so it must have something to do with the time when they were in the wilderness.
Next, the word here translated stone may just as well mean gem; and white is more than merely white ; it is glistering or sparkling : but a white glistering gem is surely a diamond.
Now, for a moment, think of the Taber nacle service, and of the High Priest's vest ments. The most famous of these, you know, was the breastplate. Attend now ; for the whole point lies in what follows. The breastplate was a piece of linen, exactly twice as long as it was broad. Folded in the middle, then, it became square ; the sides were sewn together ; and it became a square bag. Now the Jews are agreed that, in this bag, the Urim and Thummim was kept. Was kept ; for they were one and the same thing ; and hence some times called Urim only. The two words by interpretation mean Light and Illumination. Whatever it was, it was something at which the High Priest, and he only, looked when consulting the oracle. And what was it?
24 THE WHITE STONE.
There is a very old tradition that it was a stone on which the incommunicable Name of GOD — JEHOVAH— was engraved. But what kind of stone ?
On the outside of the breastplate were fastened twelve precious stones, the names of which you may read in Exodus. It is to be supposed that whatever was kept in the purse was more valuable than anything that formed the outside of the purse. Now, — most remark ably, — among the twelve stones, the diamond is not mentioned : although the Jews were very well acquainted with it. Urim and Thummim, then, was probably a peerless diamond, en graved with JEHOVAH'S Name.;
And now, my Sisters, do you see how beauti fully the two work in together ? It is the great promise to him that overcometh, that he shall be made, in the highest and most glorious sense, a Priest in that Heavenly Temple where is the Beatific Vision. If any, under the old law, should be privileged to eat of the hidden manna, the manna laid up in the golden pot within the ark, who but the High Priest, that alone knew where it was concealed ? If any should be able to read what was written on the Urim, who but the same High Priest, that alone knew what it was, and by his very office was bound to consult it ?
III.] THE WHITE STONE. 25
And thus, my Sisters, we unravel the mystery, and find how dear a promise for all of you ! Only, whose name will now be written on that diamond of eternal blessedness, the reward of every conqueror, the special reward of those that have come out of harder fights? Our LORD tells you Himself in another place : " I will write upon him My New Name." See : where the Cross hangs on your breast now, the diamond will hang then. The Name written on the Cross is JESUS of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. But what will be written on the Diamond for Him that is King of kings, and LORD of lords ? Earthly knowledge can not reach so high : " No man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it." Whenever you are, as S. Paul says, wearied and faint in your minds, whatever be the cause, — in yourselves, or from others, temptation, or mere sorrow, matters little or great, — remember those two Churches which alone were without the struggle, and to whom those lips that spake so lovingly to the rest, spoke so fearfully here. Remember also ; that all the other Churches had heresy fighting against them in some form or other : Ephesus, the Nicolaitanes ; Smyrna, the Jews ; Per- gamos, Balaamites and Nicolaitanes ; Thyatira, "that woman Jezebel ;" Philadelphia, the Jews
26 THE WHITE STONE.
again. But the two fallen Churches had no such enemy. Satan left them to themselves ; why should he thus vex and annoy those who were falling into the sleep of death ? Why should he tempt any one of you, my Sisters, unless he feared you ?
Yes : I know not where you could, any of you, look for greater comfort (and greater warn ing, too,) than in those Seven Letters. I often think how each of their Angels must have trembled when he opened the epistle that con tained his own and his people's character in the eyes of GOD, — a sentence which could not be mistaken ; a judgment from which there could be no appeal, — the award of Him Who is the Faithful and True Witness. I often think also, how we should feel, if, as miraculously, such an epistle were now to reach each English Sister hood. Think of the fear and trembling with which we should open that missive ; with which we should know how the Bridegroom of the Virgins at this moment regards us. Would it be : " I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, AND ART DEAD?" Would it be: " I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it, for thou hast a little strength ? " Would it be : "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot : I would thou wert cold or
III.] THE WHITE STONE. 27
hot?" Or would it be: "I know thy faith, and patience, and works, and the last to be more than the first ?" Who can tell us ? And how little our own judgment can decide ! But of one thing I am certain ; let the message begin as lovingly and tenderly as it might, before the close there would certainly be, " not withstanding I have somewhat against thee." What those somewhats are, my Sisters, may that dear LORD give us grace to see day by day more clearly in each of ourselves, and in all of us together ! There they are among us now, — many things of which we know, many things probably that we know not, — there they are, set by Satan there to take away our Crown ; permitted by GOD there, as the remnant of the Canaanites among the children of Israel, to prove us. To prove us here ; and that here after we may inherit the sevenfold glorious promises : the Tree of Life, the Crown of Life, the White Stone, the Morning Star, to be clothed in glistering raiment, to be made a pillar in the Temple of GOD, and to sit down with the LORD in His Throne, the sevenfold glorious promises to " him that overcometh." And now, &c.
SERMON IV.
SEVEN.
" And unto the angel of the Church in Sardis write : These things saith He that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars ; I know thy works-, that thou hast a name, that thou li<vest, and art dead" — REV. iii. i.
I THINK of all fearful passages in Holy Scrip ture, the epistles to the Churches of Sardis and Laodicea are the most fearful. And that, more especially if taken in connection with a Religious House. And of the two, notwithstanding the few names in Sardis which had not defiled their garments, it seems to me that that Epistle is the more dreadful. For of Laodicea, though we know how wretchedly she deceived her self, thinking herself rich when she was most poor, having need of nothing when she was most miserable, yet we have no reason to believe that she deceived other Churches. Sardis did, it is plain, from this very verse ;
SEVEN. 29
she was looked on as a model Church ; no doubt prided herself, and was envied by others, for her spiritual endowments, gift of tongues, and the like. Imagine, then, how like a thunder bolt it must have fallen upon them, when they came together on the Sunday that followed the receipt of this epi-stle, and the Bishop read the words of Him that cannot be deceived and cannot err, for liis own most terrible condemna tion and theirs : " Thou hast a name that Thou livest, and art dead."
But, before I go on to speak of that : first, of the LORD'S title. You must all have noticed how the number seven recurs and recurs in the Apocalypse. The seven candlesticks, the seven lamps of fire, the seven seals ; seven horns and eyes of the Lamb; seven angels and seven trumpets ; seven seals ; seven thunders ; seven heads of the dragon : seven crowns on those heads ; seven heads of the Wild Beast ; seven mountains ; seven kings ; sevenfold ascription of praise : seven invitations to Come ; and the division of the whole book into seven visions.
Now, then, what is the reason of the especial holiness of the number seven ? And if it takes me longer to speak about than I at first in tended, that cannot be a matter of small import-
30 SEVEN. [SsB.
ance to us which runs, like a golden thread, through the whole texture of Scripture.
What especially does seven mean ? It means, and it is, the sign of GOD'S covenant relation to man, and especially to His Church, Jewish or Gentile.
From the beginning it was so. The seventh day hallowed ; circumcision, its initiating sacrament ; after seven days, the dove let loose. Seven is the number of sacrifice ; that of the offering, in consequence of the covenant ; Hezekiah, in reconciling the temple, brings seven bullocks, seven rams, seven lambs, seven he-goats ; Job's friends are commanded to offer seven bullocks and seven rams ; Balaam bids Balak build seven altars, and offer on each a bullock and a ram. It is the number of purifi cation and consecration : in the sin-offering for ignorance, the Priest is to sprinkle the blood of the bullock seven times before the rail ; in the consecration of Aaron the altar was sprinkled seven times with oil ; the cleansed leper was sprinkled seven times with blood and water, and on the seventh day thereafter shaved his head and was clean ; on the great day of atonement, the mercy-seat was sprinkled seven times. It is the number of forgiveness ; " I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until
rv.] SEVEN. 31
seventy times seven : If he trespass against thee seven times ia a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." Seven is the number of every grace and blessing flowing to Israel out of the covenant ; and by this very number, therefore, shown to be in consequence of it. The Priests compass Jericho seven days, and on the seventh day seven times : " The LORD shall cause thine enemies to be smitten : They shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways :" " So that the barren hath borne seven :" " A just man falleth seven times a day, and riseth again." So it is the number of punishment to those that rebel against the covenant. " If ye walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins :" " Shall seven years of famine come into thy land ? " It is the number of punishment of such as injure the people in it. " Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold :" " If Cain be avenged sevenfold, truely^ Lamech seventy and sevenfold." " For the blasphemy wherewith our neighbours have blasphemed Thee, reward Thou them, O LORD, sevenfold into their bosom." " Seven days were fulfilled, after that the LORD had smitten the river." And
32 SEVEN* . [SEE.
again, it is the number of punishment taken as a salutary discipline, and so re-adjusting, so to speak, the covenant between GOD and the sinner. " If the thief be found, he shall restore sevenfold." So the wise man says : " My son, sow not upon the furrows of unrighteousness, and thou shalt not reap them sevenfold. " And so again : " Such things (that is, earthly suffer ing,) happen unto all flesh, and that is sevenfold more upon sinners." All festivals, again the signs of the covenant between GOD and man, are ordered by seven ; or else by seven multi plied by seven. So, not to mention the Sab bath again, so it is with the Queen of Jewish Feasts, the Passover, — the Feast of Weeks, of Tabernacles, — the Sabbatical Year, and the Jubilee.
Now further: when GOD is at work among the Gentiles outside the covenant : while yel it is clearly to appear that it is for the sake oi Israel that He does so work, then comes in the number seven again. Thus it is the number oi the years of plenty and famine : in sign that these were sent not so much for Egypt's sake as for Israel's. Naaman is to wash in Jordan seven times, that he may confess that there is no GOD in all the earth, but in Israel. Seven times pass over Nebuchadnezzar, that he may
rv.] . SEVEN. 33
learn how the GOD of the Jewish captives is King over all the earth. And I might go on almost endlessly. Who would venture to call it, as men speak, chance, that there are seven Beatitudes^ seven clauses in the LORD'S Prayer, seven parables concerning the Church, that the LORD spake seven words from the Cross : that He addressed the woman of Samaria seven several times : and when, in the seventh, He first proclaimed Himself the Messiah, He did it in seven words in Greek as well as in English. " I that speak unto thee am He ?" And mark the analogy: the Priests went round Jericho on seven separate days : on the seventh day seven times : the great High Priest spoke seven sentences, and in the seventh uttered seven words : and lo, with His proclamation of Himself as the Messiah, the walls of the spiritual Jericho fall down flat : and, no longer, Rahab, but the woman, that, like Rahab, had been a sinner, was joined to the true Israel. And S. Matthew seems to ascribe such mystical virtue to this number, that he actually employs a certain violence to distribute the LORD'S genealogy into three double sevens.
This thing then is certain : seven stands for the covenant relation of GOD with his people. Now, why?
.II D
34 SEVEN. [S».
And first notice : the number seven may be made up in three ways : 6 -f I, or 5 -}- 2, or
3 + 4-
Now carefully observe ; whenever it is divided at all in the Bible, it is always into 3 -}- 4. I believe you cannot produce one single instance of either of the other distributions. In the Lord's Prayer : three petitions about the glory of GOD : (Hallowed be Thy Name : Thy King dom come : Thy Will be done :) four for the good of man. In the seven great parables of the Church : four spoken by the sea-side ; then a pause ; then three in the house. So in the Apocalypse, when four trumpets have sounded, it proceeds : " And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, crying with a loud voic*e, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpets of the three angels, which have yet to sound!" So in the vials : after the third, the angel of the waters speaks ; and another angel answers : then come the other four. So, with regard to the seven Epistles : in the three first the exhortation to stand fast precedes, in the four last it follows, the promise to him that overcometh. In the seven Words, three are addressed to man : To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise ; Woman, behold thy son ; I
IV.] SEVEN. 35
thirst; the other four to GOD, in marvellous analogy with the Lord's Prayer. So in the Beatitudes : four have to do with earth, three with heaven : namely, Blessed are the poor in ' spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;. Blessed are the pure in heart; Blessed are the' peacemakers. And I might, and you may, largely go on.
Well then, have three and four any mystical meanings of their own ? Most surely, yes. Three sets forth GOD : four, the world. These numbers, brought into contact and relation, ex press, in seven, the token of the covenant be twixt the two.
I need not show you that three is the number of GOD. But now about four. Not to speak of the four elements and the four seasons, which are not mentioned in Holy Scripture, we have the four winds. In Ezekiel : " Come from the four winds." In S. Matthew : " They shall gather together His elect from the four winds of heaven." In the Apocalypse : " Four angels standing on the four corners of the earth," hold ing the four winds of the earth. See in Revela tion, the four Living Creatures, emblems of all- created life, and, in Ezekiel, with four faces and four wings ; the four beasts in Daniel, lion, bear, leopard, and monster, representing the
D 2
36 SEVEN. [SER.
four great world-powers successively to arise ; the four metals in the great world-image ; gold, silver, brass, iron ; the same metals again when the offerings of regenerated earth are catalogued in Isaiah : " For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron;" the four Gospels, type of the preaching through the whole world ; the sheet S. Peter saw, knit at the four corners, full of all manner of beasts ; the four horns in Zechariah, the sum total of all the world-powers as arrayed against the eternal ; the four sore judgments in Ezekiel : sword, famine, evil beasts, pestilence ; and compare that with S. John's vision, where power was given to the rider on the ghastly horse to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, (that is disease,) and with the beasts of the earth. The enumeration of diseases by S. John, " Impotent, blind, halt, withered ;" and finally, the repeated enumeration of the in habitants of the world, by " kindreds, and tongues, and people, and nations."
Thus you see how the world is reconciled to GOD in this most mysterious number ; and what the GOD of Grace orders, the GOD of Nature typifies. What is the sign of the covenant be tween GOD and man but the rainbow with its seven colours ?
IV.] SEVEN. 37
I have been speaking to you for some time, and yet we have only gained the threshold of our text. That, with GOD'S help, must be for this evening. And though what I have now been saying should seem less profitable to you than it might have been, if it only teaches us all, that, the more we search the Scriptures, the more exhaustless they are : that the outward first sense is like a rich wheat field in Australia, and that we must dig deep through that if we would get the nuggets of gold : if it helps to show us all in these days of blasphemy against the Word of GOD how marvellously infinite is the wisdom by which it hangs together, it will be enough.
And now, &c.
SERMON V*
LISTLESSNESS.
" Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead" — REV. iii. i.
IT is not of this verse by itself that I am so much going to speak : but of it, as the Antiphon, so to say, to the whole Epistle ; ay, and to that also to Laodicea. And nothing can concern us more nearly. Every Religious House, in these times at least, must have a name that it liveth. It must be, and is, so with you. Im possible that you should carry on the works you are carrying on, without others concluding at once that they must be done from the pure love of GOD, and in simple dependence on the HOLY GHOST. But I wonder how we should feel if a direct message came to us from the LORD as it did to Sardis : with what terrible anxiety we should listen to it; the exquisite joy if it were — " Because thou hast kept the
* Preached Second Sunday after Epiphany, 1863.
LISTLESSNESS. 39
word of My patience, I also will keep thee in the hour of temptation ;" the misery, if we heard, " Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth ;" the rapture of : " Thou hast borne, and hast patience, and for My Name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted : " even though it were checked with : " Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee ;" and, lastly, the almost despair of: "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead."
Now before I go on notice this. Considering how common in the Apocalypse are plays upon words, it is very possible that the proper name of the Angel of the Church of Sardis had something to do with life : such as Vitalis in Latin ; Zosimus in Greek. So the terrible irony as touching himself would be all the more bitter.
Now what strikes me first of all as the great characteristic in common of these two unhappy Churches, is the absence of all mention of ex ternal trouble, or inward temptation. Ephesus is vexed by Nicolaitanes ; Smyrna shall have tribulation ten days ; Pergamum is twice said to dwell " where Satan's throne is" ; " where Satan dwelleth." Thyatira is tempted by "that woman Jezebel " to the lusts of the flesh ; Philadelphia is harassed " by them of the synagogue of Satan,
40 LISTLESSNESS. [Sis.
which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie." But dead Sardis, and miserable Laodicea, have no fears, no trouble, no enemy. Satan knew too well to harass them. They were, as the Prophet says, settled upon their lees. Now, my Sisters, what is true of Churches is true of individuals. Therefore there may be comfort, or there may be warning here. Who would not rather be tempted with Philadelphia than have the peace of Sardis ? And notice this. Next to Smyrna and Philadelphia, to whom not one word of blame is said, perhaps Thyatira comes highest : she whose last works and love were more than the first ; that is a glorious advance. She it is who is attacked by the most loathsome temptation : that of " that woman Jezebel." Now, whether this really were the founder of a sect, or merely a personifica tion of the Gnostics, still the trial to the Church was the same. They taught that it was a small thing for a man to despise the tempta tions of the flesh, if he fled from them and avoided them. No, they said : the true, the glorious victory was to remain superior to such pleasures while tasting them to the full ; to give up the senses to all they could desire, while the spirit remained in a calm, pure region above them. This, they said, was
v.) LISTLESSNESS. 41
defying Satan in his own kingdom and strong hold.
And a masterpiece of Satan's that was : and thousands it drew away to hell. And, singu larly enough, the very name, Jezebel, has an analogy with the teaching. We know, from the Old Testament, the kind of life she led ; we know from other history that she, before her marriage with Ahab, was the priestess of Astarte, the Venus of the Zidonians, and yet her name is said, in the old Phoenician, to mean pure; just as Agnes in Greek.
And Smyrna again is tempted to open blas phemy : Smyrna, the spotless Church.
So, my Sisters, try to learn this. Tempta' tions, let them be what they may, if only they are resisted, are the mark of growth : it is that terrible stagnation, when nothing has to be resisted, that all true servants of our dear LORD ought earnestly (His dearest servants most ear nestly) to pray against.
Another thing to be observed. I have spoken so much and so lately about this, that I should not have entered into it again, had it not been there so plainly. Our LORD continues, about Sardis : " I have not found thy works perfect before GOD." Now perfect is not the right translation. It means literally, not having been
42 LISTLESSNESS. [San.
filled up to the brim; that is, not thorough. You know how small a thing this appears to us. I say us, because I am to blame in that sense as much as any of you. " That will do" I doubt if that sentence has not done as much harm in the English language. That will just prevent open failure, and make the work keep on ; the rest is useless labour. If I needlessly put off a Confession, because to-morrow will do as well ; if I needlessly repeat what I have said before, instead of writing for you afresh, that is not thorough. If you, — but the rest I leave to your several consciences.
Well ; — and as I said, we might think this, — a fault, certainly, — but see the judgment which He, the Most Merciful, as well as the Most Just, pronounces on it. This is the whole sum and sub stance of the sin ; you heard the sentence before : "Thou hast a name that thoulivest, and artdead." This is only the declaration of the earthly, trans figured by the Heavenly Solomon : " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.''
My Sisters, if any of you feel in your heart of hearts that you have so offended, (and He that wrote these Apocalyptic Epistles only knows), we have not so long entered on the new year but that it is comparatively unspoiled ground. Begin again once more.
V.] LISTLESSNESS. 43
And, with respect to that, the threatening to the Laodiceans has much to do. " I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot : I would thou wert cold or hot." How are we to understand that? Better not love GOD at all than love Him half-heartedly? It is well to look at that : for there is certainly a difficulty ; and three ways have been proposed of explain ing it. The first •would make it a mere expres sion of (as they say) holy impatience, against half-and-half love. Just as we say, when we object strongly to any measure, " Anything rather than that," meaning thereby, certainly not anything; but under very great limitation, and in a most confined sense. But, if we realize how completely these Epistles were the exact verbal words of our LORD to the Churches, we could hardly allow that He could so have spoken. For, of a perfect Being, it would not be a holy, but an unholy impatience. Then ; another explanation : as food, if quite hot, or quite cold, is acceptable ; but neither one nor the other, is to us disgusting ; so the hot and the cold are, here, both good ; only the luke warm evil. But I suppose we all feel that such a low interpretation is utterly below the dignity of a common prophecy,-— to say nothing of the especial glory of this book. No : the
44 LISTLESSNESS. [Sun.
cold, addressed to a Church, situated in the midst of a heathen country, signifies those who have never given ear to the True Faith ; who have never received the Gospel : better heathen, unregenerate, than regenerate, lukewarm Chris tians.
Then, there is so very dear a thing in this Epistle. Sardis, at this time, was not only one of the most luxurious, but one of the most populous of the cities of Asia Minor. Notice then : our LORD will not allow the few names, insignificant in the eyes of the world though they might be, to think that they are overlooked by Him. And only a few names, rather than a few ? Surely with reference to that Book of Life in which the names of all who have fought the fight well,— who have run the race well, are even now enrolled. But see how our LORD takes care that, even in that general condemnation, even when He so speaks of the Church as dead, He is careful that His own dear servants, few though they be, should feel that they are not overlooked by Him. It is the old story over again, " Wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five?" And the five, though they were not to be found, yet had they been found, would have been precious in the LORD'S sight.
And now remember, my Sisters, unless the
V.I LISTLESSNESS. 45
matter had been, as it were, so completely pressed on me, by a text which I took without the slightest reference to that, I would not have spoken to you about listlessness and the doing a thing without putting your whole heart and soul unto it. I told you just now how, if you fail in that respect, these Epistles pronounce a deeper condemnation than we might have ex pected : now, I remind you, how, if you succeed in what seems to be a little, trifling, insignificant thing, you will have your part in the blessing pronounced on those who have thus con tended, and those who have thus conquered — (the Church that had little strength) — " Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy Crown." And now, &c.
SERMON VI*
A LITTLE STRENGTH.
" / know thy works .- behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it : for thou hast a little strength" — Rev. iii. 8.
I THINK, my dear Sisters, that you will all con fess that part of this verse applies to each of you. " Thou hast a little strength." I am sure that you must all feel that some strength you have : that you are able to do some things which in the native weakness and infirmity of your nature you could never do : that some victories you obtain, which, if you went forth to the battle trusting in yourselves, you never could win ; that if as yet you cannot do every thing, at all events you can do much through CHRIST which strengtheneth you. And this I am sure you all know : that this strength is but a little strength ; that when you would do good, evil is present with you : that in trying, — and
* Preached on the evening of the Twenty-sixth Sunday after Trinity, 1856.
A LITTLE STRENGTH. 47
you do try, — to conquer yourselves and your great enemy, you are often cast down and overcome.
Well then ; — if this be so, the promise to the Church of Philadelphia must also hold good to you. " I know thy works : behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it."
Now, to understand this promise, we must remember that in one sense an open door is set before every man, whether he be in earnest or not, whether hereafter he shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven or not. But this is an especial blessing, and far beyond that : let us see what it means.
And I think you may judge for yourselves, by yourselves. You know that GOD has put it into your hearts to serve Him in a more espe cial and immediate way. He has given you, my dear Sisters, the resolution to give up every thing else for His love. That, in your case, is the open door : and for your comfort it is written that no man can shut it. No man ? No : nor any power of earth or of hell : that is your strength as well as your consolation.
An open door, — by which you are to enter into — what ? And the answer is easy. What sort of lives — to view them as the world does—
48 A LITTLE STRENGTH. [Su».
all your future lives will be, I think you know. There is not one natural taste or feeling or wish that you will not, in turn, be called to give up. There is nothing that you must think too mean to do for our LORD'S sake : there is nothing that you must think too difficult to do for His sake. You have all asked a hard thing;, and a hard thing cannot be obtained in an easy manner. But then the promise goes on to assure you that there is no amount of self- denial too difficult for you to obtain ; no service that you can render to GOD too difficult to be performed. No man can shut it.
And mind, — He does not say, No man will, shut it; but no man can : can, that is, save by your own consent. That Satan will try again and again to shut it — that he will endeavour his very utmost to shake your resolution, to make you look back from the plough, to make you fainthearted in your own particular battle, I do not doubt. He has temptations enough : and he knows how to suit them to the particular mood of the moment. And of course, for it is only to be expected, he will, of all people, endeavour to attack you ; because this is your very profession, your name, your glory, that you endeavour to attack him. And there are three ways by which he tries to shut this door.
VI.J A LITTLE STRENGTH. 4Q
Sometimes it is after the fashion of Judas : sometimes after that of the twelve spies : some times after that of the men sent to search out Ai. Sometimes it is, — " To what purpose is this waste ? You are sacrificing time," strength, it may be life itself, — at all events everything that can make life dear or valuable ; and why ? why not be content to serve .GoD as others ? why choose out the roughest road, and take up the heaviest Cross ? Then again, — he tries to close the door on you as the unfaithful spies endeavoured to close the entrance of Canaan on the children of Israel. " Surely the land floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. Nevertheless the people be strong; we be not able to go up against them, for they are stronger than we." Or yet again, like those who went to spy out Ai, — who said, " Make not all the people to labour thither, for they are few." He would set before you that you may still lead this life, that you may still more especially serve GOD, without so much watchfulness, without so continual prayer, without obedience, without self-denial. Yes : he does indeed try to close that door of serving GOD : and your comfort must be in one word of the text. "I have set before thee an open door." " I, even I, am He that com-
II. E
5O A LITTLE STRENGTH.
forteth you : who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid ? "
And see how the promise in the Revelation follows the praise given to the Church of Phila delphia. " Thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My Name. Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of tempta tion." And, as you know, that has been marvel lously fulfilled in the case of Philadelphia. This Church, that had a little strength, — this Church, the only one with which no fault is found, — this Church, which was .to be guarded in the hour of temptation, — this Church, alone of the seven, Ephesus excepted, (and that scarcely excepted,) still exists. That " little strength " bears fruit still, — that little strength is still prevalent, nearly 1800 years after the Epistle was written. That open door never has been shut, never could be shut ; in spite of persecu tion, and fire, and sword, and famine, it is open still.
And your little strength, my dearest Sisters, believe me, it is sufficient for anything, if you will only make good in yourselves the commen dation of this Church. " Because thou hast kept the word of My patience." It is a remarkable expression : not patience only, but My patience.
VL] A LITTLE STRENGTH. 5!
And what are we called to remember by that ? My patience : when He endured such contra diction of sinners against Himself; — My patience : when He laboured so long, and appa rently to so little effect : — My patience : when He was denied by His chief Apostle, betrayed by another, forsaken by all ; My patience: when, in the very moment that He was taken by the soldiers, He said, " Suffer ye thus far;" My patience : when He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, when He hid not His face from shame and spitting.
" Ye have need of patience : that after ye have done the will of GOD, ye might inherit the promise." Because we are all for reversing that order : we want first to see the fulfilment of the promise, and then to perform the will of GOD. But it will not do : it is not GOD'S order. I know how difficult it is : but then, if it is diffi cult, see what a glorious promise it has to its reward. " Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation." Ah, dearest Sisters, and it must be My patience in another sense too : not only a following of our dear LORD'S patience, but a patience that none but He can give us. " My hour is not yet come, but your time is
E 2
52 A LITTLE STRENGTH. [8aa. VI.
alway ready " : " LORD, wilt Thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel? It is not for you to know the times and the seasons." That was His answer then : that is His answer to all such questions now.
"Thou hast a little strength." But it is written, " They shall go from strength to strength." Ad vent is drawing very near ; and then it will be a time for you all to examine with all your strength and earnestness, whether this is so. And GOD grant that, in its fullest and deepest sense, the promise may be fulfilled to you. " Because thou hast kept the word of My patience," I will keep thee from the hour of temptation, — that last and fiercest flood of temptations in the moment of death : that temp tation which, once over, the very name of temp tation can never so much as be heard again.
And now, &c.
SERMON VII*
THE OPEN DOOR.
" And to the angel of the church In Philadelphia (write ; These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no man shutteth ; and shutteth, and no man openeth ; I know thy works : behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it : for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name.'' — REV. iii. 7, 8.
LAST Sunday we heard of those who, having a name to live, were dead : who thinking them selves to be rich, and increased with goods, and in need of nothing, knew not that in very deed they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. Now let us hear of a Church, weak, despised, attacked, and yet gloriously to be kept in the hour of temptation. And first notice, that when it is translated, "Thou hast a little strength," which would rather be an acknowledgment of power than of weakness, it ought to be, "Thou hast little
* Preached on the Conversion of S. Paul, 1863.
54 THE OPEN DOOR.
strength." All the more comforting, that, for those who feel that they have little strength, who doubt their own power to fight the long hard battle of a Religious Life, who tremble lest they should not persevere to the end. " My strength is made perfect in weakness."
You must join, my Sisters, the two verses together : " I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it," with His title Who thus has opened it, " He That hath the key of David upon His shoulder." And you may take that door in two senses. The power of spread ing the Gospel among the surrounding heathen, as S. Paul speaks : "A great door and effectual is opened to me." Or, it may be, that more blessed door, the entrance to be abundantly ministered into the Kingdom of Heaven. Either way, the reason that follows is one of those divine arguments so infinitely above the reason ings of man. " I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it ; for thou hast little strength." What, impossible to be conquered, because we are weak ? Even so : because that very weakness enlists omnipotence on our side. It was, no doubt, from reasoning after the manner of men, that our translators put in, contrary to the Greek, that word a. Not so the HOLY GHOST. It U something after the same
VII.] THE OPEN DOOR. 55
method of argument as that sublime passage of Tertullian : "The SON of GOD went about healing disease and infirmity : it is possible because it is unlikely ; and died on the Cross for us : it is probable because it is incredible ; and rose again the third day : it is certain because it is impossible." And take the opposite side of the picture, and see how the blessed Apostle of to-day speaks of that, with the bitterest irony he ever allows himself to use : " Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us : and I would to GOD ye did reign, that we also might reign with you."
" I have set before thee an open door." Now, my Sisters, if that may be said of any set of persons, it certainly may be so said of you. You know how many open doors have been set before us ; you know too how hard men have tried to shut them ; and you know, best of all, that we have little strength. Little strength in respect of numbers : were you half as many again it would not be more than sufficient to do properly the work you have in hand. And little strength individually ; each of you feels that for herself better than any one else could tell her. Then the question is, whether the conclusion of the clause is true of
56 THE OPEN DOOR. [Sun.
you also. " Thou hast little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My Name." That Name to which you are more especially bound: that dear Name which goes up from your mouths every morning as incense to be presented at the heavenly altar : that name on which we have even now been calling, which even now we have been praising. You do deny it, if, so dedicated to it, you act before others so as to bring dishonour on it ; and that, not only in things absolutely wrong, but in those that, as S. Paul says, are not convenient : you do deny it if, whatever your hand finds to do, you do with less than all your might, giving a portion only of strength, and energy, and labour to Him who has a right to the whole of it. You do deny it, if by constantly and pertinaciously shirking (to use the common word) any duty, and so giving trouble to those above you, you so gain a place, an office, more to your own fancy. You do deny it, if you pick and choose between different duties, so that you throw all your power into the one you like, and slur over and perform in a slovenly way that which you do not like.
" I have set before thee an open door." That is, in the other sense, that gate which is of one solid pearl and which leads into the King's
VII.] THE OPEN DOOR. 57
City, that City whose light is like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal ; that gate through which nothing shall in any wise enter that defileth. Set before you indeed ! And how, or by what way you enter in, so only you do enter in, that, GOD be praised, is in His Hands, not in yours. Only, as this day's Apostle says : " And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there ; " (and which of us can tell what glorious things will befall us in that Heavenly Jerusalem to which we are professing to go ? but he continues :) " Save that the HOLY GHOST witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me." So you may be almost certain that you will have trial, and temptation, and trouble enough before that open gate is reached at last. And then the thing is, that you for yourselves, and I for each of you, and for myself too, should be able to take on our own lips the glorious words which follow : " But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy."
It may be that one or more than one of you may so be called to die ; GOD has taught you that you have no charmed lives. If so, such an one
58 THE OPEN DOOR. [Sun
is the happier. But anyhow, so far as I have the power, no one shall ever join us without being fully aware that no one can become a Sister without trial and distress enough : and that if it be not trouble from without, it will be tempta tion from within. And remember what we were saying last Sunday ; that the only two Churches of the seven which have no kind of trial or temptation mentioned, are those to which it was said — to the one, "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead;" to the other, " So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth."
And before we go on, see how our LORD has gloriously made good His Title of the Faith ful and the Amen, the True Witness. Two Churches only were free from blame ; two Churches only have survived till now : Smyrna and Philadelphia. Smyrna, the less praised, though still not blamed, flourishes in a worldly point of view ; and, therefore, it is less wonder ful that many Christians should still survive there. But Philadelphia, though a poor little weak place, maintained its independence against the Turks, when the rest of Asia Minor was in their hands for eighty years : then made good terms for itself, and now is the most flourish-
VH.l THE OPEN DOOR. 59
ing Church of Asia. Must we not say that our dear LORD'S promise has been dearly made good ?
And next : " I have set before thee an open door." What opened it ? The key of the House of David. Ah ! how wonderfully the Prophets, and the Evangelists, and the Apostles agree in one ! We first read of this where mention is made of Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, Hezekiah's faithful servant. Let him have been never so glorious an Old Testament Saint, (and a glorious Saint he must have been,) the noble sayings of Isaiah were seen even by the Jews not to have their final termination in him. '
" And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will com mit thy government into his hand : and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah."
Now mark : " The key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder." Look at that other passage in the same most marvellous of all Prophets : in the same Fifth Evangelist. " Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given : and the government shall be upon His shoulder."
In both cases, why shoulder, and not shoulders? besides, who would speak of so carrying a key,
60 THE OPEN DOOR. [8KB.
of so laying a government ? Surely for this cause : That key which opens the Kingdom of Heaven, that government which is exalted above all powers, both in heaven and earth, is none else than the Cross. And how was that borne ? Was it not on the shoulder ? Could it have been carried otherwise ? So see, my Sisters, your guide to victory in this world, if GOD so grant it, will be the opener for you of Paradise in the next. Ah me ! Is not this another lesson how there is but one way, if for all true servants of the Cross-bearing King, so especially of those who more especially profess to take up His Cross ? who wear it openly displayed on their breasts, who can scarcely enter a room in their own house without seeing it the one chief ob ject, the one dearest pattern ?
That is the key, and the only key, which unlocks this door : and a singular thing it is, how the old type has kept its place physically, when the metaphorical meaning has long been forgotten. Did you ever see an elaborate key of which the wards were not made crosswise ? And notice this : on account of that especial promise to Eliakim, the Jews connected the idea of a key with that of the coming of the Messiah. Further, mediaeval Saints tell us why it should have pleased our LORD to submit to
VII.] THE OPEN DOOR. 6l
the necessity of bearing His Cross on one shoulder : namely, that is, that we, bearing it after Him, must bear whatever our especial Cross is, for ourselves. It is written, " It cost more to redeem their souls : so that he must let that alone for ever." In the same way, we all know how human sympathy cannot go be yond a certain point : how, dearly as we may love each other, sometimes in the hardest straits we are left to Him only Who has perfect fellow ship with us. I shall never forget how it was once said to me, many, many years ago, by one whom I dearly loved, how, looking at our dear LORD only in His human character, there was the glorious completeness of His sympathy : that when our conscience tells us we are right, though we may thereby offend the dearest of earthly friends, we do but join ourselves (if you wish the literal Greek expression in the New Testament), glue ourselves to Him. I know it is a very simple, common-place remark, but it is just those things that so fix themselves in the heart.
Anyhow : this " little strength," and this "open door:" you have the one; GOD grant you may keep the other!
And now, &c.
SERMON VIII* FAINT, YET PURSUING.
•" Behold, 1 come quickly : hold fast that thou hast, that no man take thy crown." — REV. iii. u.
IT is impossible to approach Advent, — the first Advent we have thus spent together, the first Advent in which we have openly undertaken the especial service of GOD, — without thoughts which this verse seems exactly to express ; the two clauses : one of which may well make us tremble, while the other is full of brightness and of hope. Just so I feel with respect to all of you ; now more than at other times, because such a season cannot pass over you without doing you either great good or great harm. Each of you has besetting sins to overcome, against which, if she have not made consider able progress by Christmas, she will be much further off from the goal of her hopes, the crown of her struggles, a joyful recompense
» Preached on the last Sunday after Trinity, 1856.
FAINT, YET PURSUING. 63
from her LORD and her GOD. Each of you has some gcod resolution to cherish, which the coming season has the power of fostering and drawing out, as warm spring weather does the buds and flowers. And, if they are not so drawn out, they will be checked and nipped, if not utterly cut off, before we come to the glorious festival to which we are now beginning to look forward. Then with all these thoughts comes that also, — that if it be so, if any one of you, my dearest Sisters, go back instead of advancing, the fault, it is true, will also be yours, but neither, perhaps, may I be altogether guiltless. So that, on the whole, the approach of any season like Advent, and more especially its approach in a House like this, where we know who will ask the question, " What do ye more than others ? " might well make us say, " Who is sufficient for these things ? "
But then, on the other hand, if Advent calls us to look on to that fearful day in which the righteous scarcely shall be saved, then the last week of the Church's year invites us to look back. And when I see how GOD has hither to led you all safely on, not indeed without many falls and weaknesses, but still on — how, having obtained help of GOD we all stand before Him this day — I can also say with S. Paul, " Being
64 FAINT, YET PURSUING.
confident that He which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of JESUS CHRIST." And I say to you, in looking back to the last year, and especially to that latter part of it, since we have been more closely knit together, since we have been fixed in this place, " Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy GOD led thee, and humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna " — (Ah, my dear Sisters, you know how often ! ) " that He might teach thee that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live."
Yes, you all come to this Advent in a far different way from that in which you have approached the Advents of past years. Never before had any of you the responsibility of so many Holy Communions, never before had you so much strength given you by the Body and Blood of Him That is all strength. Since last Advent, several of you have made your first Confessions, have passed through all the shame and misery of preparing for them, have known the blessedness and comfort of being able to forget the things that -are behind, and reaching forth to those things that are be fore ; have gone through fire and water, and have
VIII.] FAINT, YET PURSUING. 65
been brought out into a wealthy place. ' And all of you have at least been more regular in Con fession — all of you in the very nature of things more regular in prayer — all of you approach this holy season for the first time averring : " As for me and my house, I will serve the LORD." Dearest Sisters, knowing what you each of you know of yourselves, do not you think that I have some reason to be anxious for you all ? Every reason indeed, were it not for one thing : — I know that He Whom you serve is able to keep that which you have committed unto Him against that day ; and I know that the promise still holds good.
Now listen again to the first part of the text : " Behold I come quickly ; hold fast that thou hast." Now, at first sight, this seems one of those disappointing verses, of which I have spoken to you before, where, after some great grace or blessing is pronounced, the duty or consequence of it is so much less — to say it with all reverence — so much poorer, than we might have expected. For example : " Take unto you the whole armour of GOD, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to " — what ? Having done all, to stand ; and that is all. " Therefore, seeing that we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we " —
II. F
66 FAINT, YET PURSUING. [Ssiu
what ? " We faint not." And now, again : " Be hold, I come quickly " — and how might we have expected the verse to conclude ? Would it not have been : " And we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is." Would it not have been: " Behold, I come quickly. Even so, come, LORD JESUS ?" And yet you see how much less, how much tamer, the exhortation at first sight seems. " Hold fast that thou hast ! " What ! we might ask, is this all ? looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great GOD and our Saviour JESUS CHRIST ; that appearing, the anticipation of which might enable us to do anything, to endure any labours, to despise any sufferings — is this all ? Only to hold fast that we have ? Only not to go backward ? Yes ; but this is not all the sense, as we shall see presently ; yet still, in that sense, there is a great lesson for us. Not to go back in any thing is to advance most surely. Never to permit ourselves to do less for GOD in any one way than we have ever done, necessitates us to take many and many a step onward ; else we cannot hold our own. S. Paul says, They mea suring themselves by themselves, and compar ing themselves among themselves, are not wise. But this much at least we may do, we may
VIII.] FAINT, YET PURSUING. 67
resolve by the grace of the HOLY GHOST never to do less than we have done at the best ; and, notwithstanding falls and shortcomings, to re solve on keeping what we have gained, and to remember that most true proverb, " He that, in running, stumbles without falling takes a step quicker."
But after all, " Hold fast that thou hast," is best explained by the latter part of the verse, " That no man take thy crown." The crown then is yours already, only hold it fast. It may well be called " that thou hast," because nothing else is worth having at all. But the very ex pression, "hold it fast," shows what a struggle you must expect for it. Well then, this verse gives us the great comfort of the season of Advent. If it be a hard struggle, it cannot be a long one. Venerable Bede told us, at All Saints, " For the ineffable and unbounded good ness of GOD has provided this also, that the time for labour and for agony shall not be ex tended, not long, not enduring, but short, and, so to speak, momentary : that in this brief and little life should be the pain and the labour; that, in the life to come, which is eternal, should be the reward ; that the labours should come quickly to an end ; but that the reward of endurance should be without end ; that after the darkness
F 2
68 FAINT, YET PURSUING. [S*B.
of this world, they should behold the most beautiful light." And notice, that the same com mand is given to two of the seven Churches, and in both cases is joined to the same declara tion. To Thyatira it is written, " That which ye have already, hold fast till I come." To Phila delphia, as we have heard, " Behold I come quickly : hold that fast which thou hast." Till I come. I wish we had those words constantly in our hearts ; a hard struggle to carry on, a hard race to run ; but then it is only " Till I come." Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might — because the night is at hand when no man can work — because it is only " Till I come." There is but a short time to do deeds of love ; there is but a short time to fight the good fight of faith ; there is but a short time to exercise hope. " Behold, I come quickly " ..." So much the more as ye see the day approaching." And now, my dearest Sisters, you must each for yourselves resolve to take some special task in hand this Advent, ay, and resolve further that Christmas shall not find it undone. You have yet time to make up your determination about this before the old year of the Church, whose sands are fast running out, shall have come to an end. For my part, as you all know, I am ready, as I am bound, to
VIII.] FAINT, YET PURSUING. 69
help you to the uttermost of my power; but, after all, remember that it is very poor help that any earthly assistance can be. " It is not in me ; GOD shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." "That no man take thy crown." S.Bernard says, "It is well said : thy crown. For to all that have contended here, although in different fights, to all that have run well here, although in dif ferent races, a special crown is appropriated ; as the Martyrs shall wear a diadem of ruby, the Confessor of gold, so also for Chastity is there a crown of snow-white brilliancy."
And not so only : but as the cunning artificer decks the crown which he has in hand with many and various jewels, according to the riches and the pleasure of him for whom it is made, so each good work done by the elect in this world, forms as it were a separate gem in the diadem of their blessedness on high. Each, therefore, has his crown ; as each has his own sorrows and trials in this valley of misery, So each has his own reward and coronation in the Kingdom of Glory: according to that saying, " The heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy." " Hold fast that thou hast " against Satan, against the world, against yourself. Against Satan, whom our King was slain that He might
70 FAINT, YET PURSUING. [Sis. VIII.
conquer ; against the world, which our Saviour was manifested that He might redeem ; against yourselves, whose likeness the Infant of Bethle hem took on Himself, whose nature He assumed, to whom He left an example that we might follow His steps. He indeed held fast that He had. He laid His hand on this world to deliver it from the power of the enemy; and not even in death did He relax His grasp, till He had led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. He will hold us fast, never doubt it ; if only we have grace and courage to cling to Him in spite of all hindrances, to go with Him in spite of all dangers, to abide with Him in spite of, and through, all temptations. And now, &c.
SERMON IX.*
THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED.
" And they sing the song of Moses the servant of GOD, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Thy ^vorks, LORD GOD Almighty ; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints. Who shall not fear Thee, 0 LORD, and glorify Thy name ? for Thou only art holy .- for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest. And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in Heaven was opened: and the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles" — REV. xv. 3-6.
WE have come to the other extremity of the glorious Easter rainbow. The Feast of the LORD'S Resurrection is over: the Octave, " Be cause I live, ye shall live also," takes its place. And so in the text we hear of those songs and of that music, of those victors, those happy palm-bearers, who are keeping the true Feast of Tabernacles : who with' joy and gladness
* Preached on Low Sunday, 1863.
72 THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. [SHE.
have been brought, and have entered into the King's Palace. And we hear too of the mighty tribulation through which they passed : how they got the victory over the fourfold enemy, over the Wild Beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name. That Antichrist, who, conquered, the warfare of the Church will be accomplished, her iniquity par doned : that image, no doubt some devilish caricature of the miracle of the Resurrection ; and his mark and his name, the impressing of which, whatever it may be, will bring on the final persecution. It is worth while to notice how, from the very beginning, Satan has seemed to exult in imitating GOD'S miracles : as when Jannes and Jambres cast down their rods, and they were turned into serpents ; or changed water into blood, or brought forth frogs on the land. So, as the greater number of holy writers piously believe, that deadly wound of the wild beast which was healed, will be a diabolical parody of the Resurrection. For it goes on directly, "All the world wondered after the wild beast ; " as if that were the crowning, the stupendous miracle, which clinched his authority. And notice : as we are marked in our foreheads with the LORD'S sign, so will his unhappy servants be with the mark of the wild
IX.] THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. 73
beast ; and as the promise to him that over- cometh was the white stone and the new Name, the LORD'S new and everlasting Name, written on it, so must the others have the wild beast's name : or (and time only will show what is the difference), the mark of his name. Owing to that unhappy division into chapters, you may never have noticed the antithesis in these, at the end of the thirteenth and at the beginning of the fourteenth : " And he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads : and I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads."
And yet once more. Notice how the accla mations on earth, " Who is like unto the Wild Beast ? Who can make war with him ? " find their counterpart in the triumphal hymn of Heaven, " Who shall not fear Thee, O LORD, and glorify Thy Name ?"
It is not useless, my Sisters, to look on to that time of terrible tribulation, when the fountains of the great deep of temptation will be broken, and to the victors that even over that shall conquer ; and then to look back to our own little trials, and consider how we, who
74 THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. [SEE*
so often fail now, could hope to stand then ? It is very probable, after all, that the famous number, six hundred and sixty-six, is only a type of concentrated and supernatural temp tation; six being, as we have often seen, the number of temptation. Doubtless it may also have reference to some especial name ; but that the other meaning was intended to be there also, I can hardly doubt. A fearful thought : these daily trials, these petty tempta tions, these fearful assaults of Satan are the same in kind, and only different in degree, with that final trial of which the terror is so great that, except those days were shortened, no flesh could be saved ; that GOD has but to relax for one moment the chains which hold Satan, and he would fall on us, as he will fall on them. It is as with the inhabitants of a volcanic coun try; subject, every now and then, to slight shocks of earthquakes, foretelling that terrible eruption, which, though they little think it, is some day to overwhelm their country.
But now, "If ye then be risen with CHRIST, seek those things which are above." It is a marvellous thing, that, while they fully make good what S. Paul tells us, that it is impossible for one who had been admitted for awhile into heaven, to explain to earthly minds what he
IX.] THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. 75
had seen, yet that (if I may use the word without irreverence) those sketches of heavenly scenery should, while so mysterious, have such ravishing beauty. Here, for example, " The sea of glass mingled with fire ; " there, in that description in Exodus, when the elders saw the GOD of Israel, " There was under His feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of Heaven in his clearness :" or again, in Ezekiel : " The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl : and they four had one likeness ; and the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creatures was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above." Ah me ! Sometimes, when I speak to you of that next world, and realize to my self that some of you (some, who have listened to me here, as you now), know what it is ; have given in their account, perhaps are present here, adoring that Body of their LORD and ours, which now they can never again receive : I think with what a kind of tender pity they must hear what I say, they must enter into what we all feel. " That the happy world ? These the good things prepared ? " It must indeed, my Sisters, be the wonder: — "Oh how could we have imagined, in our wildest imagina-
76 THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. [Ssa.
tion, that only which is so utterly below the reality ! "
And, about the sea of glass. Notice : there was but One, Who, in this world, walked even on the sea : His one follower, who so desired to walk, — we know how his attempt ended. But, put the whole mystery together — the boundlessness of the sea, the transparency of the glass, the brilliance of the fire. I re member once when, in one of the narrow sea- straits that divide the little islands of Denmark, I was voyaging this way and that way a whole summer day, with nothing to do, but to lean over the boat-side, and to watch how the glorious rays of the sun shot in through the pure green sea, working out those ripples of gold and emerald which no earthly words can describe : how the sight brought to my mind that true sea ; that sea, glorious in its boundless ness, and in its depth, but which yet has the element of fire added to it, and perhaps some little thing more of that Future Kingdom was then made known to me.
Then, they shall not pass over it ; then they shall not say, " LORD, if it be Thou, bid me that I come unto Thee upon the water." No : then they shall stand on the infinite abysses of GOD'S judgments : shall see how all things
IX.] THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. 77
have worked together for good to them that love GOD ; shall perceive how all the waves of this troublesome world were bearing them onwards to the calm of the Everlasting Port ; and that, with the clearness of the glass ; that, with the love of the fire. They stand on the sea of glass.
And they sing — what song ? The song of Moses ; and not only that, but of Moses the servant of GOD, and of the Lamb. Yes ! it is a wonderful testimony to the oneness of the two worlds. That we are one, we and they, in some sort, we know : as a holy man of old says, " So far as I can judge, they who, by the infi nite mercy of GOD, enter into that Kingdom, will be astonished at this above all things, how things earthly are but the types of things heavenly. But," he continues, (for he was speaking to a Religious House) "whether that or not, what matters ? If only we attain it, whether in the transfiguration of our old way of seeking Him, or in a new life in, and to Him, why should we care?"
But, a little more yet. The song of Moses : Of Moses : with what title ? The servant of GOD. As if we were thereby taught that all these hymns, all this ritual, is not of earth, earthly, only : GOD forbid !
78 THE GLORY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED. [SEE. IX.
More or less :
" The Church on earth, with answering love Echoes her mother's joys above."
[The train of thought thus abruptly broken of£ is thus carried on in another unpublished Sermon :]
Can we doubt then that there is a marvel lous analogy between the service of the two ? especially when we know that even now they' sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. One then of our Canticles they do employ : why not more ? Music we know they have ; the temple music was from the pattern of that, as ours from the temple ; and surely, if it were only for the remotest possibility that our tones are some faint shadowings out of the celestial harmonies, and that when we come to the other side, we shall but find their transfiguration, is not that a reason for clinging to them with all our strength ?
SERMON X*
THE HEAVENLY JOY OF HEAVENLY SERVICE.
" His servants shall serve Him." — REV. xxii. 3.
THEY tell a story that once, in a certain monas- tery, the Theologian, as he was called, that is, the brother whose office it was to give instruc tion in theology, was catechising the younger monks on the Book of Revelation. Among the other questions, he asked of each one present what promise or saying in the Apocalypse seemed to him the most full of comfort ? One would have it, — " GOD shall wipe away all tears from their eyes:" another, " There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be anymore pain:" another, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit down with Me in My Throne." He praised them
* Preached on Tuesday in the Eleventh week after Trinity, August 25, 1857.
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according to their deserts : and then, turning to the youngest, who had not yet spoken, " Now, Thomas," he said, " let us hear what you think." The answer was, " His servants shall serve Him :" and that young monk, Thomas Hammark, is now known all through the Church as Thomas a Kempis.
Yes : and I think that it was an answer not unworthy of him who was afterwards to write the work, which, of all uninspired books, was to be the greatest comfort to GOD'S servants in this world. Not only because it showed deeper love : but because it also exhibited more self- knowledge. It was not that he should rest from sorrow, or from watchfulness, or have no more occasion to fear, as the others had said : but that he should serve, in reality, above, Him Whom he had only tried to serve below. He was thinking of his LORD, not of himself: he was eager rather to accomplish His Will, than to receive His happiness.
Now, dear Sisters, there is a wonderful lesson, and a very comforting lesson for us, too, in that text. Surely, if ever any Saint of GOD, still in the flesh, were ever raised above the flesh, were in a state of ecstacy nearest approaching the Beatific Vision, it must have been John, on the evening of that Easter Day, when his vision
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was coming to an end. What Saint ever so likely as he, then, to take the highest possible view of a Christian's daily life and walk on earth ? to find all things practicable ? to look for deeds of grace and faith in every one, that none but the most favoured of GOD'S servants have attained to ? And yet, if one of his brightest and happiest promises is this, "His servants shall serve Him," it implies that even then he realized how little they could serve Him on earth ; how often they were sore let and hindered in running the race which was set before them ; how they were set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of their nature they could not always stand upright. Our loving LORD and Master caused this verse to be written for our especial comfort.
Dearest Sisters, you would serve Him, — is it not so ? — with every power of your soul and body. How many hindrances, vexatious temp tations, drawbacks of every sort come in be tween your reasonable service and yourselves, you all too well know. It is very sad : but you are not to think it strange ; it is very sad : but you are to take courage ; it is very sad, but it will not always be so. You are not to think it strange, when every one of the Saints in their
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generation has so bitterly complained that he could not do the things that he would ; that he was carnal, sold under sin ; has been ready to cry out over and over again, " My soul cleaveth unto the dust;" has thousands of times had need of that earnest ejaculation, " LORD, I be lieve : help Thou mine unbelief." You are to take courage, knowing that we are not better — as Elijah said — than our forefathers. It is S. Peter's great argument to resist discourage ment. " Whom resist," says he, " stedfast in the faith : " and why ? " Knowing that the same • afflictions are accomplished in your brethren which are in the world." And it will not always be so. O happiness indeed of that blessed place, where, what we seek to do now, we shall be able to do for ever: where we shall want no rest in GOD'S service : where we shall not undo with one hand what we do with the other : where we can never flag, but whatever we take in hand will indeed be done with all our might !
I had not intended, dearest Sisters, to have spoken to you on this morning, fearing lest I should weary you by talking to you so many times, as it has happened from the concurrence of the Sunday and Festival. Bear with me, however, if it should be so. I can have no
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dearer wish than that of each of you, even in this world, the text should become more and more true ; and of that of which one most thinks, and for which one most prays, one can not well help speaking.
" His servants shall serve Him." And this is the school where you are to learn that service which will then be made perfect. Many and many a lesson it will cost you — some painful, some pleasant : but whether painful or pleasant matters not, so they be real lessons, and so they be well learnt. Sometimes our dear LORD takes you in hand Himself, opens your hearts Himself to understand, communes with you as once with His disciples going to Emmaus. When you kneel in silence in this Oratory, — when you kneel in solitude before the Blessed Sacrament — (and yet what do I say ? how can you be alone, when He is with you ?) I hope that He often and often speaks to you, puts earnest desires of His service into your minds, — soothes away fears, — removes difficulties, — calls you in such sort that you cannot but say, " LORD, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." Then again, another of your great lessons is the recitation of those Psalms which are indeed, in a lower sense, our daily bread. How wonderfully they teach us, in what-
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ever frame of mind we are, whatever we want to know ! Like the Jewish tradition about the manna, they have that taste for us which at the time we most desire. To each of you the same Psalm at the same time may be speaking with a different voice : saying to each of you the exact thing which she most needed, and which would help her most. Further, another of your chief lessons is in your self- examinations, and when you sum them toge ther in your Confessions. Then GOD teaches you of your dangers, that you may have the better knowledge of the only way of safety : then He brings to remembrance your falls, that the weight may be more resolutely laid aside, the sin which doth most easily beset you wrenched from you, and the race set before you run with the eye and heart more entirely fixed on JESUS, the Author and Finisher of our faith.
" His servants shall serve Him." And if I had to sum up the three greatest and most necessary rules for this your education in His service, they would not be far to seek. The first would be, to think nothing little in it. The second, to strive against all discouragement as the most dangerous of temptations. The third, never to be weary of beginning over again. Of
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every thing that comes before you in the day you may most truly say, This is a great work, for it is done for GOD. Oh, how it would hallow and transfigure everything you do, — oh, what a little heaven it would make this place, if you could but bear that constantly in mind ! When one of you, the other day, left off her work for a moment, and knelt by her scouring-pail for her Priest's blessing, it seemed to make me realize the Apostle's command, " Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of GOD." Yes : — I know how true this ought to be everywhere : I long that it were ten thousand times more true of myself: but in a religious community surely it must apply with an emphasis that it cannot elsewhere attain.
That is the first and most necessary thing of all : — but the second scarcely less so : Never to be discouraged. The misery of allowing ourselves to be disheartened, we all know : but we scarcely think enough about its sin. Dearest Sisters, we have not time to be dis couraged. Satan will not cease his attacks, while we are mourning over a fall. GOD'S work will not stand still for our leisure, while we are trying to animate ourselves to undertake it. This is one of the many blessings of that blessed Sacrament of Penitence, that it enables
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sn so much more quickly to rise from a fall. We yield to temptation : we know it : we grieve for it : we go through the sad details of our fall in that night's self-examination, — and what then ? Are we always to be going over the same ground again and again ? — always harping on the same circumstances ? Surely not : lay them by till your next Confession, and do not let them hinder you or distress you in the mean while. We, dearest Sisters, who know that we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we speak of this ministry of reconcilia tion, we, who know in Whose word we have believed when we kneel at that tribunal where we are ourselves the accusers and ourselves the criminals, — we can do this. We lay our burden aside for a while, — not that we would forget it,— not that we think lightly of it, — but that we may the more effectually carry it to the foot of the Cross, and lay it in the LORD'S Tomb. Oh, dear Sisters, believe me that there is nothing which from the very beginning of a Sister's life you have need to cultivate more than that most blessed grace of hope ! Some of you may be tired of hearing this so often : but I say only to you what I say to myself. If at the beginning of my life as a Priest I had only had some one to insist on this truth as I
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now insist on it to you, oh, how many mistakes and how much misery I should have been spared! how often I should have found out that what I took for repentance was in real truth only a kind of despondency ! The more dearly I love you all, — the more earnestly I long for your advance in the Christian Life, — the more I see how GOD'S first message in the most glorious series of prophecies that ever were spoken, is His first message now, " Com fort ye, comfort ye, My people." That was the first text on which I ever preached, and I pray GOD that it may be the chief thing, and, if it be His will, the last, which I ever do as a Priest !
And the third thing I mentioned springs directly from that : the constantly beginning over again, as if we had never done anything before. Doing each recurring duty, as if we had never hitherto attempted it at all. Each time you come into this Oratory, for instance, forget past times with all their wandering thoughts, all their coldness and deadness, and begin afresh. Each time you receive the ^LORD'S Body and Blood, forget all past want of love and hope and faith, and begin all over again. But above all, each new day, commence it as if it were a new life. This is one of the chief
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rules that all the masters of spiritual life have given us : and depend upon it, none can be more helpful. Try it, and you will say, like the Samaritans of old, " Now we believe, not because of thy saying."
" His servants shall serve Him." In this way, while yet in the school of this world : but how in the Home of their Country ? Ah ! that, as yet, must be all guess-work and fancy ! But so it be GOD'S work, that is enough for us: happy work it must be in its very nature : per fect work it must be in those who are no longer imperfect. They rest not day nor night. Now then, as far as may be, let us try to follow that example. So much to be done, and so little time to do it in : so much work needed in our selves, so much for others, and the night so rapidly coming, when no man can work. You, of all, ought to be most careful in having your work always, so to speak, made up ; — your service always in hand. For you know that the life you have chosen involves not only more labour, but more risk than others. We know that any of you may at any one moment be called to labour in imminent peril : and that it is more than probable that some one of us now here before GOD will some day be, by that means, taken home to Him. I know that none
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of these things move you : — I believe that you would not, like S. Paul, count your lives dear to yourself so you might finish your course with joy. Only remember that your lamps must always be burning, — your oil always ready, — it will not do for any of you, no, not for one moment, to slumber or sleep.
" His servants shall serve Him." Will you try now, more than before, that of this House the words may be true ? that you will more earnestly use the help you have, — more reso lutely set a watch over all your ways, — more carefully improve every means of grace ? Dear Sisters, I wish I could do more for you. I wish, so far as I may do so in accordance with GOD'S will, that I had greater power of helping you : but I absolutely wish — because it is in accordance with His will — that what powers I have were used better. Standing in the relation we do to each other, oh how much you fail in your duty to yourselves as well as to me, if you do not constantly and earnestly pray for me! How can you expect that GOD will enable me to help you, unless, to the very utmost of your ability, you help me? Never a fitter time to ask that, or any thing else, than when you kneel in the presence of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world ! Oh that now, as
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one after another you enter into this His then most sacred Palace, the HOLY GHOST, the Comforter, may teach you how to pray, and give you earnestness in prayer ! may suggest the petition, and return the answer ! may show you the need, and supply the remedy ! These mornings, so spent, are indeed much to be re membered. They bring a great opportunity ; they incur a most heavy responsibility. Often and often my thoughts turn here, as those hours pass by ; often and often my prayers go up that whoever at that moment is kneeling before her LORD and her GOD may so kneel as becomes one dedicated to Him, as becomes one who is close to Him, close to the Flesh which He took in the Womb of Mary, close to the Blood which He poured forth on the Hill of Calvary; often and often I use that Psalm, " The LORD hear thee in the day of trouble : the Name of the GOD of Jacob defend thee ; send thee help from the sanctuary : and strengthen thee out of Sion ; remember all thy offerings : and accept thy burnt sacrifice ; grant thee thy heart's desire : and fulfil all thy mind."
Oh, truly happy Sister, who after thus having in her earthly life poured forth her soul to Him in His Sacramental Presence, advancing all the
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while from strength to strength, growing all the while in His grace and knowledge, shall finally be taken home to the perfect blessedness and perfect holiness of seeing Him as He is I And now, &c.
SERMON XI*
ALPHA AND OMEGA.
" 1 am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last" — REV. xxii. 13.
I NEED not tell you, my Sisters, how next, in the first place, to your own personal holiness, and in the second, to your work for CHRIST in His poor, this is my third desire for you, that you should see HIM everywhere, at all times, by all means, in Holy Scripture. Therefore it is that we have had our — to me at least — happy classes for so many years ; therefore it is that now, lately, I have tried to make you do for your selves, in our Antiphons and Psalms, what all along I have been endeavouring to do for you.
But, while we take separate passages, in dividual psalms, isolated paragraphs, in their Evangelical sense, this above all things we have occasion to learn, that it is not in this nor in that little bit — it is not in this lesson, and in
* Probably preached in 1862.
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that gospel, and in the other prophecy, but everywhere, first, last, and middle, that our dear LORD is the whole aim of the Bible. What I want to impress on you more and more deeply, is this : that just as there is no parable in the gospel which may not have been also a literal fact, so, in the Old Testament, there is no fact which may not be a parable.
We know how sadly, sadly this has been for gotten by the later Church. Some few types we seize on, and all the rest we lose. And those few that we do take, we are apt to apply them only in the second and higher sense, for getting their literal meaning. I think, dear Sisters, that very probably some of you, when rejoicing in that most glorious prophecy, " Be hold a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His Name Immanuel, GOD with us," have not remembered that in the low, temporal, passing sense, the words simply meant, that a Jewish maiden, then a virgin, should, by her marriage with Isaiah, conceive, and bear a son; which son, as the prophecy goes on, should not have come to a knowledge of his right hand and his left, before the fearful confederacy of Syria and Israel, then formed against Judah, should be utterly overthrown, and have come to nought. I think it very possible that in those dear words,
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"They pierced my hands and my feet; I may tell all my bones ; they stand staring and look ing upon me ; " you have seen the Son of David alone, and not remembered that in some of his sufferings they must have been also applicable to the earthly David. Or again, that " They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture," refer to the irruption into the palace by the rebels under Absalom, firstly ; and then, secondly — but oh, how much more gloriously ! — to the day of Calvary. Nay ; if this now strikes any one for the first time, I should not wonder if you thought me to be debasing these prophecies, by allowing that there is a first meaning at all. Not so. It is because in every history I want to see a prophecy ; therefore, in every prophecy, I am willing to see a history. There is a grain of truth in all heresy. There is a grain of truth in that book, whose writers may GOD in His infinite mercy bring to repentance, Essays and Reviews. And this is it : Those prophecies which we take of our LORD were prophecies of others. They were ; of others also, and in the loveliest sense ; of Him in the deepest, dearest, loveliest, most glorious, most celestial meaning,, We scarcely, I think, remember how much that one expression would teach us ; where it is
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said of our LORD, that He, going with His disciples to Emmaus, beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
And, no doubt, could you read the Old Testa ment as they read it, new meanings, new sym bolism, would open out on every side. Suppose, for example, that all through the Book of Joshua, wherever his name is read, it were written, as it is in the Greek, Jesus, would that show you no closer analogy between the two ? So of Judas and Judah ; so of Simon and Simeon ; so of many others.
Now let us take an example of what I mean. One who is never mentioned in the Gospels ; one to whom allusion, as foreshadowing CHRIST, is never made. I mean Joseph. We never can be content with the loose bundle of figurative events, which we are accustomed to discover in his life, without seeking for some closer string to bind them together. But now, will you at tend while I pass shortly before you what we may gain from his whole story. I will speak deliberately; follow me with your best memory.
Hundreds of times, I have no doubt, we have all read the part borne by Simeon and Judah in saving Joseph, and seen no great type of Gospel history therein. Listen now. When
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we come to read how it was jfudas (according to the old version), who proposed to betray the righteous man for twenty pieces of silver, because there would be no profit in his blood when he went down into the pit ; when we find another of the twelve, Simeon (the same as Simon — think of Simon of Cyrene) visited with exemplary punishment, (" he took Simeon and bound him before their eyes ") as though guilty of a special denial of the Just. When lastly we see Reuben, the unstable man of power, seeking, like Pilate, to deliver the captive from his brethren : proposing, like Pilate, to punish the innocent, and to release him : What then ? Why then ; we see that the great Passion of future ages is already being acted : we see that an unconscious, fearful rehearsal was taking place among the twelve sons of Israel, Then all the parts of the tale fall into their place. Attend, my Sisters : I will speak slowly that you may follow. We see in Joseph the beloved of his father, yet the rejected of his brethren ; observed in every saying by his earthly parent, inheriting the birthright, yet born late in time. We see him falsely accused (to Potiphar), by slanderous influence con demned, delivered up to the Gentiles (the Egyptian judges), brought before a heathen
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ruler; promising life to one of the two male factors condemned with him, leaving the other to his fate ; giving life to that first, through some mysterious connection with the squeezing the grapes, (the new wine in the glorious king dom,) into the king's chalice ; ministering to the spirits in prison — raised from that prison to proclaim GOD'S will in a far country, and at once raised to the highest offices of that country, every knee bowing before him, every tongue saluting him as Zaphnath-paaneah, the Saviour of the world.
Once more, we see him departing into the far-off land, even Goshen ; to prepare a place for those that were aforetime his enemies: sustaining the life of all nations by miraculous supplies of bread : receiving honour from Gentiles and from Jews : raising up his brethren, as he himself had been raised on the third prophetic day (you remember that it was after two full years that Pharaoh dreamed that dream which was the origin of Joseph's de liverance) ; lastly, his body preserved from cor ruption, and actually accompanying the chosen people in their entrance into the Promised Land.
Then at last we see that the fascination of the story does not chiefly depend on its in-
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trinsic beauty ; that the shadow of the Cross, and the glory of the Crown, rest on it, and give it that mysterious interest which a child can feel, but which a S. Thomas cannot wholly fathom
See again. The only story of our LORD'S childhood, the three days' search, is paralleled by the three days' search for Elijah, when he, too, was gone to his Father's house. His first miracle corresponds with the first of that glorious series by which Israel was set free. The same element of water changed, in one case, into blood for the destruction, in the other into wine for the support, of life. The last two, also, of Moses' miracles remain as signs to us Chris tians. Before our dear LORD'S ministry was completed, GOD'S people had already changed places with His enemies ; and the plagues are now no longer fulfilled by contrast, but literally. He sends a thick darkness over all the land ; in the one case, of three hours : in the other, of three days. It is a heathen now (mark, my Sisters, the remarkable apposition of ideas) it is a heathen now who entreats the Jewish people to spare the true Israel's life, beseech ing the persecutors (only more hopelessly than Moses ever besought Pharaoh) to let Him go. A few years, and the plague of the first-
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born has its terrible octave in the destruc tion of Jerusalem ; the abomination of desola tion gives the warning of the destroying angel ; the true Jacob, forewarned, escapes ; the rest perish.
Again : see how our dear LORD'S miracles had almost all been foreshown. Once more follow me in your thoughts, as I slowly point them out.
In the preservation of Moses from the slaughter of the innocents ;
In the healing Jeroboam's withered hand ;
In the forty days' fasts of Moses and Elijah ;
In the raising the poor widow's son at Zare- phath (think of Nain) ;
The noble person's child at Shunem (think of Jairus);
" The iron did swim ; " and the LORD walked on the water.
Jonah, at his own desire, exposed to the sea and sinking, is brought up from destruction. Peter, at his own desire walking on the water, beginning to sink, is saved.
In the rebuking of the Red Sea by Moses :
In the blasting of the fig-trees by his power (he smote their vines also, and Jig-trees] :
In the glorification of his countenance by a divine light ;
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In the cure of Naaman in Jordan, and of him that was washed in Siloam ;
In the resurrection from the dead when a troop was nigh : (and then think of the keepers at the sepulchre ;)
In the Ascension to Heaven of Elijah. Are not these marvellous likenesses ? marvellous proofs of the One SPIRIT ?
Sometimes the hint has to be thought out. Take an example. You have all of you read that dark saying, " As the shepherd delivers from destruction two legs, or the piece of an ear." Did you ever connect it with the way in which of the Good Shepherd it is written, " They brake not His legs ; " and again how " He touched his ear, and healed him ? "
Some day next week, if it please GOD, we will see how in His words as well as in His deeds, that same LORD is beginning, middle, and end ; the Alpha of the Old Testament, the Omega of the New.
Meanwhile here we will rest : only let me ask you, my Sisters, now that we are drawing so very near to that most Holy Week, more than ever to lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset you, and to run with patience the race that is set before you.
Finish this week, and we look away from
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ourselves and our sins to Him Who for us was made sin, that we might be made — as He grant that you, above others, may in the Eternal Easter be made — the righteousness of GOD in Him. And now, &c«
SERMON XII*
DEUS MEUS ET OMNIA.
" I saw no Temple therein" — REV. xxi. 22.
LET us confess, my Sisters, that if we now for the first time heard these words — heard them, too, after the ravishing description of our True Home which precedes them, they would fall rather blank on the ear. What ! we, whose highest and best times have been in the Temple of GOD on earth, we, who believe that the most glorious services below are but the poorest shadows, the most wretched photographic nega tives of the perpetual Liturgy there : to be told at last, " I saw no Temple therein ! " What is the use of all the art, all the skill, all the labour, all the cost, to make our Churches less un worthy of the indwelling of Him whom Heaven and the Heaven of heavens cannot contain ? What is the use of those great speeches which
* Preached at S. Margaret's, on the Tenth Sunday atter Trinity, August 2Oth, 1864.
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glow like a warm coal at one's very heart. " The house which I am about to build shall be wonderful great :" and that resolution of the Spanish Chapter, " Let us build such a cathedral, that they who come after us may take us to have been mad when we imagined it ;" if, after all, when these things are passed away, " I saw no Temple therein." Again, what should we say of that city in a Christian land, of which a traveller, bringing home the description, should, as one of its most noteworthy peculiarities, write those words ? Three of you, my Sisters, have not so long since stood with me before that wonderful picture of the Adoration of the Im maculate Lamb in the Cathedral of Ghent. There you remember what the vision of the great artist concerning New Jerusalem was : — how, far in the background, far beyond the lovely groups of Martyrs, and Virgins, and Confessors, and righteous judges, and righteous warriors, and the LAMB in the midst, on the Altar, as it had been slain, he saw not one Temple only, but many Temples : You remember how behind the everlasting foliage of the Garden of Para dise, there cluster, in all imaginable beauty, towers, and spires, and lanterns, with peeps of the utmost bound of everlasting hills between them. That was the dream of the great Christian
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painter of all ages. What was the real vision of the Apostle ? " I saw no temple therein." Yes : let us confess that at first hearing, the words do sound rather blank.
But then : O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of GOD ! This is not the only instance in which, as regards that our future home, what might in one point of view be taken so differently, is, if looked at aright, so glorious.
" They rest not day nor night." That we know is said of the glorious City ; said of it too, as concerning one of its chief glories and blessings. But is it not also true of the city of misery ? They rest not day nor night. So, over and over again, we find that the " very excellent things " spoken, or to be spoken, of the City of GOD, are things which, except for the perfect happiness of that place, might be anything but blessings : they might be curses. "The gates of it shall not be shut at all." Would that be any happiness, here on earth, to us in our warfare ? " For there shall be no night there." Would that be any blessing to us, here on earth, wearied as we often are : as our dear LORD, according to His Manhood, was before us ? But the most re markable lesson we have is in that most glorious self-contradiction, to say it with all reverence,
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in Isaiah, when that fifth Evangelist, setting forth to us those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, says : " The sun shall be no more thy light by day ; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee : but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy GOD thy glory." And then : " Thy sun shall no more go down ; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."
So we come back to that : " I saw no Temple therein." And, lest any man should say, " This is a hard saying: who can bear it?" S.John gives us the reason : " For the LORD GOD Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of it." That is, the One Temple, and the All Temple, that which cannot be seen, even then, with the bodies of our Resurrection, is this, and this only, The Beatific Vision.
There is something wonderfully solemn, as well as wonderfully comforting, in the way in which the early and mediaeval Saints speak of that. How the whole heavenliness of Heaven is summed up in that, and well nigh in that alone. I know nothing that so shows the de clension of the last three or four centuries, as
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the little prominence (comparatively speaking) that, in every part of the Church, the holiest writers give to that. No one would say that either primitive or mediaeval doctors failed in reverence to, in longing to be near, in realizing their communion with, the Saints. But find them preaching or writing of heaven, and the one great thought swallows up all the rest. Infinitely beyond, infinitely above all things, it is that Beatific Vision to which they point. Saint after Saint, page after page, I might quote ; all to the same effect. Hear no giant of the Church, but an earnest, simple Abbot in the eleventh century ; how he writes :
" And you ask what is this Vision concerning which I have related to you such wonders ? Would to GOD, my brethren, I knew it for my self ! but if I knew it, yet none the more should I be able to set it forth to you. If a Seraph, that is perfect in love, came among us, in his love desirous to tell us of it, he would but waste that love and that labour. If one of the Cherubim, that are complete in knowledge, spake to us of it, his wisdom would to us be fool ishness. Moses besought that he might see the glory of GOD ; and, say the Jews, it pleased GOD that one spark of that glory should fall on one of the mountains that stood round about Sinai ;
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and the mountain fell, the selfsame moment, to dust. And yet, my brethren, it is — not one spark — not the half- revealed, half-concealed Majesty of the Ever-Blessed TRINITY — but Its fullest manifestation, that is to be our eternal happiness. And oh, what change, what most miraculous change, must that great Sacrament of Death have wrought on us, that the very glory which we could not, in its slightest mani festation, behold and live, we shall then only live, only truly live, because we do behold ! Consider what holy Job saith. ' Though after my skin worms destroy this body:' there you have the infinite humiliation of these bodies of ours; 'yet in my flesh shall I see GOD;' there you have their infinite strength."
So he writes ; and, in very truth, that next world is a subject which we do not try to realize enough ; to consider, not only, as one of our later divines so well said, how much we must be changed : how much holiness, how much purity, how much love, that waiting time in Paradise must give our souls : but also how much strength that waiting time in the earth must give our bodies. I was reading a story the other day which may well come in here. It was in the narrative of a traveller who wished to reach the North Pole. In some very
108 DEUS MEUS ET OMNIA.
high latitude, where, as you know, the Northern Lights are magnificently brilliant, one night he was called from his berth by the captain of the ship : " Come on deck at once : the world is on fire ! " They stood gazing at the sight for hours : and the description which that traveller has left us, only shows that he, too, had seen unspeakable things, which it is not possible for a man to utter. But when the glory was dying away, he said to the captain, " This has been terribly beautiful." " So terribly beautiful," replied the captain, an earnest Christian man ; "so terribly beautiful, that I pray and beseech GOD I may never see the like again."
And once more : Liftupyour hearts. If that can be said of a drop in the ocean, what of the ocean itself? What the Beatific Vision is, we can only fancy by knowing what it is not. And keeping all this in view, small regret shall we have in " I saw no temple therein," when that Beatific Vision itself will be our Temple. It is that GOD Who is Love, filling His happy servants with the outpouring of that love : it is the GOD Who is Light, satisfying them with the perfect brilliancy of that Light. And always remember, that into that height of glory our Human Nature has entered : that there, in
XH.1 DEUS MEUS ET OMNIA. IOg
its fullest blaze, a Man is seated at the Right Hand of the FATHER : that eyes, in every point fashioned as our eyes, behold Him there, Whose Face, however afar off, we could not see and live.
But this absence of a Temple must remind us also of the absence of other things dear to us here as our very lives. As we know, there can be no Sacraments there. " What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for ? " And who shall tell how the blessed ones hereafter will look back on their Sacraments here, especially on the Chief and Crown of all Sacraments. Regret there can be none in that world ; and the loving remembrance of what will then be passed for ever, who can interpret for them ? By way of type and shadow : when, in GOD'S good time, we have our own chapel as worthy of GOD'S service as we can make it, we shall still lovingly remember this : — when we have our own quadrangle, we shall hold in dear remembrance this house, however inferior to that. " Forgetting the things that are behind, let us press forward to those that are before." And it ought only to open our eyes a little more to see how the glory of the Latter House shall be greater than of the former, when we learn that the things which had been most precious
110 DEUS MEUS ET OMNIA. [Sim.
and blessed to us here, are precisely the things that, to be without, will show our infinite near ness to our LORD there. Who would desire a Temple, who will worship in the Beatific Vision? Who would desire to see the LORD of Lords under the form of Bread and Wine, when, eye to eye, face to face, they shall behold Him : when from those lips they shall hear, (if they have first heard those most blessed words of wel come, " Well done, thou good and faithful servant,") shall hear anew, as the Apostles of old time, the " Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
And one thing more. " I saw no temple therein." That is the highest, truest glimpse we can get of New Jerusalem. Then, my Sisters, if that be so, does it not elevate, ennoble, trans figure, that part of the lives of any one of you which is spent away from any especial means of grace, of regular times of prayer, of the Sacraments ?
Might it not thus also be most truly said, of hours either away from here, or, as I was saying this morning, in what the world would call drudgery, here : " I saw no temple therein." Be it so : be it so a thousand times over, if
XII.] DEUS MEUS ET OMNIA. Ill
only you can take the end of the same verse on your lips : " For the LORD GOD Almighty and the LAMB are the Temple of it." That which is almost the finishing stroke put by the Apostle of Love to his description of Heaven, cannot be an unblessed estate on earth. See how GOD sets the stamp of that True Home, not only on sufferings, but on depri vations borne for Him.
" I saw no Temple therein." GOD grant, my Sisters, that every time we worship Him in any of His dear temples, we may be made more and more meet for that yet more blessed Templessness above : that every time we draw near to any of the Sacraments in this world, we may be preparing ourselves for that Country where Sacraments are at an end : that City of which it is written, by one who had beheld it : " Now we see though a glass, darkly, but then face to face : now we know in part> but then shall we know, even as also we are known."
And now, &c.
SERMONS
ON
THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS.
n.
SERMON I*
THE NAME OF STRENGTH.
" Thou, O LORD, art in the midst of us, and <we are called by Thy Name ; leave us not" — JER. xiv. 9.
You are expecting that I should speak to you of that Name which is exalted above every Name : that Blessed Name which is as oint ment poured forth : that dear Name which, as I hope, is dearer to each of you than any other thing : that holy Name which whosoever names, ^ust depart from iniquity: that happy Name which they who bear in their hearts here, shall bear in their foreheads there : as it is written : "And they shall see His Face, and His Name shall be in theirforeheads." But, my dear Sisters, what am I that I should speak of that Name of which so many Saints when preaching have said both to themselves and others : " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where on thou standest is holy ground ? " You heard last night f what S. Bernard said in his own
* Preached August 7th, 1856.
f The reference is to the lessons from a Sermon of S. Bernard
I 2
Il6 THE NAME OF STRENGTH. TSBR.
religious house, then in the first fervour of its devotion. And I thought, as we were then
in the second nocturn of the Office of the Holy Name. The passage, as given by Dr. Neale, may be acceptable to the reader.
Thy Name is as ointment poured forth. There is no doubt a similitude between oil and the Name of ;JESUS, the Bridegroom of our souls : nor does the HOLY GHOST, without a purpose, compare the one to the other. Oil shines, 'oil feeds, oil anoints, It cherishes fire ; it nourishes flesh ; it diminishes pain. Oil, then, is light, food, and medicine. Thus, too, the Name of the Bridegroom : it shines when preached : it feeds when meditated : it soothes when invoked. Whence, think you, so great and so sudden a light of faith in the whole world, unless by the Name of JESUS preached ? In the light of this Name, GOD hath called us to His wonderful light. Whence it is written, "Ye were sometime darkness, but. now are ye light in the LORD." Art not thou strengthened as often as thou re- memberest It ? What is there which so restores the darkened senses, so increases virtues, so strengthens goodness, so cherishes love ? All meat is dry, if it be not sprinkled with this oil : insipid, if it be not savoured with this salt. JESUS is honey in the mouth, jubilation in the heart. We said that the Name of JESUS was medicine. Is any one among you sorrowful ? Let the Name of JESUS come into his heart, and thence leap into his mouth: and behold, as the light of that Name arises, every cloud is scattered and fair weather returns. Does any one fall into sin, and run, in despair, on the highway of death ? If he invokes the Name of Life, shall he not forthwith be restored to life ? If the fountain of tears be exhausted in any, let the Name of JESUS be invoked, and it will flow forth more abundantly, and more sweetly. Is any one hesitating, and trembling in danger ? This Name of virtue being invoked, at once gives courage and repels fear. It is written, "Call upon Me in the time of trouble, so will I hear thee, and thou shalt praise Me." Nothing so re strains the impetuosity of anger, so brings down the swelling of pride, so heals the wound of envy, so extinguishes the flame
I.] THE NAME OF STRENGTH. 1 17
hearing those words of his, on fire as they are with love, how true it is that JESUS CHRIST is, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. We, at all events, seek to know no other Name than, those Saints knew: on it we hang all our hopes as they did : in it we desire to find all our comfort as they did : to its honour, we pray that we may live as they did : in its cause, if GOD so willed, we should ask Him to, give us grace to die as they did. And see now, for a moment what this most dear and blessed Name has been, from the time that it was first heard till now. Think first of those early Saints
of luxury, so tempers the thirst of avarice. When I name JESUS, I think of a Man meek and gentle, sober, chaste, and merciful, and resplendent with all beauty and glory, and that same Man, Almighty GOD : may He heal me by His example, and lead me by His assistance. Thou hast an universal medicine, O my soul, laid up in the shrine of this Name, the healthful Name of JESUS : there is not one disease in which it is ineffi cacious. Ever be it in your breast, ever in your hand : let all your senses and acts be directed to JESUS. He invites thee to this, when He says, Set Me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm. O how fair art Thou to Thine Angels, O LORD JESUS in the form of GOD, in the day of Thine Eternity, among the splendours of the Saints : Splendour and Figure of the Sub stance of the FATHER, and brightness of everlasting life ! How beautiful art Thou to me, O my LORD, in the laying aside of this Thy Glory, when Thou didst empty Thyself, and didst put off Thine imperishable light ! Then love chiefly was shown, then mercy principally was manifested, then grace was more plainly displayed.
Il8 THE NAME OF STRENGTH. [SB*.
that, in the amphitheatre, were called to glorify GOD by giving their bodies to the wild beasts : how, while eighty thousand pitiless eyes were eagerly expecting their last agony, while the hinges of the dens were opening, and the lion preparing for his fatal spring, this Name was, in many and many an instance, the Martyr's last word, so that " JESUS, be Thou my JESUS," is recorded to have been thus said again and again. Think again of those whom you would more especially desire to resemble in their holi ness, in their purity, in their love to the Heavenly Bridegroom, how it is recorded of them, that by the virtue of this Blessed Name they were preserved unpolluted in dens of infamy, were guarded safely from sacrilegious hands. Think of those who died for the sake, absolutely and expressly for the sake, of this Name; the countless Martyrs made by those who denied our LORD to be GOD of GOD, very GOD of very GOD, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. Think again how many Christian souls have departed out of this world with that very Litany on their lips which we say every morning : dying in it, so that the old question might again be debated with respect to them, whether their last supplication or their soul were first before the Throne of GOD. It is
I.] THE NAME OF STRENGTH. Iig
recorded of one of the Martyrs of the fierce persecution that raged in Cochin China some two hundred years ago, that kneeling down (as the custom was) before the elephant that was to destroy her, she said this same Litany, and when she came to the suffrage, " Jesu, Bridegroom of the Virgins," the beast struck her through with his tusks, and so she entered into glory. A hundred years before that, there is the account of a Portuguese ship which foundered in the Atlantic, and the few survivors reported that in the moment of its going down, the sailors were uniting in the Litany of the Name of JESUS. So, in the great plague at Milan, this same Litany was constantly to be heard in the dif ferent wards of the lazar-houses, strengthening and comforting the last rough passage of the sufferers.
Why do I remind you of all these things ? Because, as you have this same Litany daily on your lips, so, if you could but each resolve for herself whatever strength it has given others, that, by GOD'S grace, she would have too. My dearest Sisters, do not deceive your selves. This is entirely in your own power. That Name is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. It had no value centuries ago that it has not still. It may, if you so will,
I2O THE NAME OF STRENGTH. [SKR.
be as dear to you as it was to any of those blessed men who once took it so joyfully on their lips, and who now see face to face the King in His beauty. I am persuaded that there are none of you who have not longings — not always equally strong, but sometimes very strong indeed — not to be a whit behind them in their cause. Can there be a better day than to day to cherish any such ? Can there be a better day than to-day to give yourselves again to Him Who is chief among ten thousand, and alto gether lovely? Than to-day, than this very hour, your hour of especial prayer ?
Hear what S. Bernard said to the Sisters of Citeaux: "Not," he says, "that I doubt whether GOD is among you of a truth or not. This I see: this I rejoice and exult to know, O you whom I love so dearly in our LORD. But, when you exert yourselves much, why should you not exert yourselves more ? Believe me, if the effort is greater, the comfort is beyond comparison, proportionably greater still. What need I to hear of one angry thought, of one evil desire, of one indulgence in sloth, of one envious word, of one misunderstanding, of one defection to the right hand or to the left ? It was not so that our happy brothers and sisters in the old time entered into the Land of the Living. Cry to
I.] THE NAME OF STRENGTH. 121
Him therefore with all your heart : ' Draw me : we will run after Thee.* And note the humility of the prayer. My weakness Thou knowest : my infirmities are all hid from Thee : I cannot run — run ? I cannot even walk — walk ? I can not even stand, without Thy grace ; draw me, me the least of Thine handmaidens, me the unworthiest, me the lowest, me the most un grateful : draw me, and we will run after Thee. Thou hast given Thy grace to others : they will arise and do Thy bidding : give it to me, that with them I may also rise, with them also run, with them live for Thee, with them live to Thee, with them die to Thee, with them reign with Thee everlastingly."
Is there anything that was said by that great Saint to those servants of CHRIST seven hundred years ago, that I might not say to you now ? Have I any new motives to give you ? Have I any less strength to offer you ? Have I any less dear hope to set before you ? No. It is the same prayer : they used it, and so must we : " Thou, O LORD, art in the midst of us : and we are called by Thy Name : leave us not." Thou art in the midst of us. I cannot but feel that it is so of a truth. I must not doubt GOD'S love and mercy, I must not dishonour this day by forgetting the Almightiness of the Name it
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bears, because I know — O how much ! — my own unworthiness, and because, my dear Sisters, I know your sins and weaknesses. I could not but feel this morning as to one after another I gave the Living Bread that cometh down from heaven, and the Wine that blossoms into purity, that the text was true. I might have said then : " Thou, O LORD, art in the midst of us. By my hands, albeit altogether miserable and un worthy, Thou hast vouchsafed to come among us. Thou seest each of these Thy children kneeling before Thee. Thou knowest their wants: Thou pitiest their weaknesses. Give to her that grace which Thou seest her so much to need : give to her strength against that temptation by which Thou knowest her to be so much assailed: enable her to strive with all her might to keep that resolution which Thou knowest her so earnestly to have made. Thou, O LORD, art in the midst of us : Thou hast begun the good work, Thou must perform it. Thou hast loved all these with an everlast ing love, Thou must give them more and more love. Thou, O LORD, art in the midst of us, and we are called by Thy Name. It is the Name we take on our lips oftener than any other : it is the Name we desire to bear in our hearts beyond all other : it is the Name to which
L] THE NAME OF STRENGTH. 123
we keep this day holy, and to which we desire to be ourselves holy : we are called by Thy Name : leave us not."
Yes : this day ought to be a day of strength for us. " The Name of the LORD is a strong Tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe." This is that Tower which GOD planted in the midst of this vineyard, as Isaiah sets forth. And it is worth while to notice in that parable the connection of these two things. It says, " He built a Tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein." If the Name JESUS is our Tower, it is because He trod the winepress alone : because He so loved us as to shed the uttermost drop of His Blood for us : because His having thus, once for all, ransomed us, is the very reason that He will be our safe guard to the end. This day is a day of comfort for us, as it is written in the book of Micah : " For all people will walk every one in the name of his God, and we will walk in the Name of the LORD our GOD for ever and ever."
And what follows then ? This : " In that day, saith the LORD, I will assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted : and I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation: and the LORD shall
124 THE NAME OF STRENGTH. SEB.
reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth, even for ever."
Halted we all have, in following our LORD : driven out we have all been, from resolutions and determinations innumerable : afflicted we have all been, by the burden of our sins : let us only say, " We will walk in the Name of the LORD our GOD for ever and ever," and depend upon it the prophecy of Isaiah will be fulfilled : " A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation." This day is a day of courage for us : " Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remem ber the Name of the LORD our GOD ;" and be well assured that it will follow, "They are brought down and fallen : but we are risen and stand upright." This day is the day of peace and unity : for it is written in the prophecy of Zechariah, " In that day shall be One LORD, and His Name One."
Let us remind our LORD of His own promise : " He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward." This is indeed that Prophet that should come into the world : and we receive Him in the Name of JESUS, the Name of prophecy: "He shall be called JESUS," prophesied the Angel of old : " for He shall save His people from their sins."
1.] THE NAME OF STRENGTH. 125
" And he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward." We do indeed re ceive the LORD in the Name of a Righteous Man when we hail Him by that Name which, as the prophet says, put away iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness.
I do not, as a general rule, like to ask you to confine yourselves at this hour to any particular prayer. But to-day it shall be otherwise. As soon as you have received the blessing, I should like each of you to take her Litany, and to go through it slowly and deliberately, and with especial reference to her own needs. Thus, "]ESU, most mighty," that is, mighty to pro tect against temptation : and there you would call to mind the temptation from which you would most desire to be protected. " JESU, most powerful," that is, most powerful to preserve in temptation : and then you would recall the means at former times in which He has so delivered you. "JESU, most gentle :" and you would remember how He has led you out of fears and difficulties. " JESU, most patient :" and then, how often He has borne with each of you, ay, even since the time of her last confession. This is the way to fly to that most holy Name ; this is the way to give the LORD the honour
126 THE NAME OF STRENGTH. [SiB. I
due unto His Name ; this is the way to say, " Some put their trust in horses, and some in chariots ; but we will remember the Name of the LORD our GOD." Ourselves, and one or two others excepted, is there any one, think you, in this place, who has remembered to what this day is holy ? Let this your unspoken Litany, then, be a Litany of reparation ; let others do as they will, let others say, " We will not have this Man to reign over us," let us, at all events, say in our hearts as well as in our lips, " The LORD'S Name is praised from the rising up of the sun even to the going down thereof." Thus, my dear Sisters, or rather let me now say, my dear children, try to do ; and may JESUS that died on the Cross, JESUS, that ascended into heaven, JESUS, that evermore liveth to make intercession for us, accept and bless you !
And now to that same JESUS, Who is taken from us into Heaven, but Who shall so come in like manner as we believe that He went into Heaven, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.
SERMON II.*
THE NAME OF BLESSING.
" Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My Name ? And He blessed him there" — GEN. xxxii. 29.
WE have come, dear Sisters, once more to your own day : the day consecrated to that Name which gives holiness to every holy name : bestowed by an angel in the act of the greatest wonder that the world ever knew — the Incarna tion : itself lifted up in the hour of the LORD'S deepest agony and humiliation — the Passion : and now by right exalted above every name, and, hereafter, that reward which is beyond every reward : " And they shall see His Face, and His Name shall be in their foreheads." We have come to that day ; and the same voice which then in the stillness of the night, and by the ford of Jabbok, said, " Wherefore is it that Thou dost ask after My Name?" might still, here, after so many centuries, does still here put the same question to you.
" Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My
* Preached August 7th, Feast of the Holy Name, 1857.
128 THE NAME OF BLESSING. [SB*.
Name ? " Truly, dear Sisters, because without continually seeking for that Name, the life, which you have chosen, would be impossible. For this is the Name of One that went about doing all good, and bearing all harm : speaking as never man spake, and answered with — " Say we not well that Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil ? " Well acquainted with fatigue, cold, solitude, coming not to be ministered to, but to minister. Because they who desire most closely to tread in His steps, must also most ardently seek after His Name : for so said the Bride long before, " Thy Name is as oint ment poured forth : therefore do the virgins love Thee." Of all Christians, Sisters are they who have most need to have continually in their minds those words of S. Bernard which we heard last night. " Every meat is insipid if it be not sprinkled with this oil ; unsavoury, if it be not purified with this salt : it is honey in the mouth ; melody in the ear ; jubilation in the heart." Or hear how he speaks of it in another place ; what he said to those early Sisters of his own order, how still more ardently would he say then, if he could have the glory of his Master, to you now! "Yesterday, we celebrated the Transfiguration of JESUS on the exceeding high mountain : to-day we celebrate
II.] THE NAME OF BLESSING. I2Q
His humiliation in the lowest parts of the earth. Yesterday, what He was with the FATHER He showed by the exceeding bright ness of His mortal body : to-day He manifests how His humility, by taking man's flesh, wrought out man's salvation. Yesterday, by His splendour He set forth that which we hope to be : to-day He teaches, by the very sound of His Name, how we ought to live. Yesterday, He displayed the glory that is to be our reward : to-day He makes known the love whereby we may merit to be rewarded. The one in the Country, the other in the way. The one in glory accomplished : the other, in co-operating grace." " Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My Name ? " And you might each of you say, " Because Thou, that knowest all things, and knowest that I love thee, knowest also how miserably weak and unstable I am, — and there fore I seek the Name of all strength : how, over and over again, when I have most firmly resolved against temptation, I yield to it, — and therefore I seek the Name of all forgiveness : because I, who have professed to give up every thing for Thee, have yet so much in my inmost heart that is so unlike Thee, and so far unbefitting Thy Temple, — and therefore I seek the Name of all purity : because I have so many trials and
II. K
130 THE NAME OF BLESSING. [Sa».
difficulties, — and therefore I seek the Name of all blessedness." My dearest Sisters, I know that this is what you feel; that this is what you mean. It is not for nothing that, sihce we last kept the anniversary of this Feast, you have said our Litany so many hundred times, and in such various situations, that I have said it with some of you when, to all human appearance it seemed likely to be nearly the last earthly sound that you would ever hear ; that we know our absent Sisters to be at this time remembering, even if in the midst of GOD'S more active work they can only remember, that His Name through faith in His Name must be all their salvation and all their desire. No : as that good man of old said — when the Sisters of that day, labouring in the midst of a naughty and miser able generation, were taunted with the honour they bestowed on that Name, — "To us thio Holy Name is a great honour and a singular joy. Over and over again our Sisters name JESUS: above all other things they worship JESUS: before and above all the names of all
the Saints they love and adore JESUS, the SON
of the Living GOD, Whom ye deride and
despise."
"Wherefore is it that that thou dost ask
after My Narre ? " Join it with that which
:
II.] THE NAME OF BLESSING. 13!
follows: "And He blessed him there." / Where ? In the first place, where he had been spending the earlier part of the night in labour ing for others : in providing for the safety of his family : in so arranging matters that even if he fell, they might escape. So of you. In hospitals or cottages, where you are working, not for yourselves, but for others — and for others, because they are redeemed by the Precious Blood of Him, Whose Name this day we worship — by sick beds which others have left, in places of danger to which others will not dare to approach — only seek after this same Name, only let it be as close to your affections as those external crosses are to your hearts, and I can prophesy that of you also it might well be said : And He blessed her there.
Jacob was alone. Dearest Sisters, you all know something of that which is the worst of loneliness — isolation among others : where they have no feelings in common with you, no sympathy for you, no understanding of what you are aiming at, no love for those things which to you ought to be dearer than the life itself. Very well : let it be so. That is for this world. There is a world where loneliness is impossible. When that more blessed day of Pentecost shall be fully come, you will be
K 2
132 THE NAME OF BLESSING. [S«.
indeed with one accord in one place. The Apostle tells you the number of those whom he saw in the streets of New Jerusalem — or rather, — language fails him when he tries to tell it — " ten thousand times ten thousand, and thou sands of thousands." In the meanwhile, that which your dear LORD said of the FATHER, that you must say of Himself, " And yet I am not alone, for He is with me : " in the meanwhile, of that same Blessed LORD and each of you, must that saying be fulfilled : " So they two went on together." And if that be so, there is but one end and result of such loneliness and isolation : And He blessed her there.
Well : and further, it was night. And even night could not separate the true servant from the True Master. That GOD Who in the begin ning said, "Let there be light, and there was light : and He saw the light that it was good " — that GOD Who is Light, and in Him is no dark ness at all, that GOD has also said that He would dwell in the thick darkness. He Who by the space of three hours endured the dark ness of Mount Calvary, darkness to the body, darkness to the soul, — He did it to this end, ythat in all the darkness of His people He might be a very present help in time of trouble. The Prophet speaks of this His comfort in con-
H.] THE NAME OF BLESSING. 133
nection with the very Name of this day : " Who is there among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of His servant ; that walketh in darkness, and hath no light ? let him call upon the Name of the LORD." I have often enough said, and you know very well, dearest Sisters, that plenty of this darkness you must expect, until you come to that land of Goshen where all the ransomed people of Israel have light in all their dwellings. You know that I might change Solomon's words without hurting their meaning, and might tell you that a Sister was born for adversity. Think then of this darkness of Jacob : think of the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, and remember that " He blessed him there."
But this was not all. Jacob was in expecta tion of a terrible struggle. The man that for one morsel of meat had sold his birthright, the fornicator and profane person, he that found no place for repentance, he was advancing towards Jacob, and four hundred men with him. And « you know whom, and whose attacks, you must always be expecting. You know how ardently Satan desires to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : you know that a Sister is to be pre pared for more temptation than others, just as the advanced post of an army must expect the
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most frequent attacks and the loudest disturb ances. But of this too it is written, " He blessed him there."
And why ? " Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a Man with him until the break ing of the day. And he said, I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me." There the mystery is explained : there is the light that riseth up in the darkness : there is the victory that overcometh the world : there is the violence by which the Kingdom of Heaven is taken: there is the importunity by which GOD allows Himself to be vanquished. " He blessed him there." Those desks must be your there, dear Sisters : the scenes of as earnest wrestling as Jacob's, if you would wish to prevail like Jacob : there over and over again you must say, I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me : there over and over again you must find this blessed Name to be the strong Tower into which you run and are safe. The old legend goes that when S. Ignatius had played the man in the amphitheatre, and had been torn to pieces by the lions, the Name of JESUS was found written in his heart. What was said of him in an allegory must be true of you in reality : that let whatever lions of temptation come upon you, that Name may be so written in your
II.] THE NAME OF BLESSING. 135
hearts as to fulfil that promise, " Though I walk in the midst of trouble, yet shalt Thou refresh me: Thou shalt stretch forth Thine Hand upon the furiousness of mine enemies, and Thy Right hand shall save me."
And He that bears that Name is about to come among you in His own presence : to come among you, more truly than when He wrestled with Jacob : to give Himself to you, that you may be one with Him : to bestow Himself on you under the form of Bread and Wine, that hereafter He may give Himself to you amidst the splendours of the Saints. Now then is the time to say : I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me : now is the time, as a prince to obtain power over GOD and over man, and to prevail. The day is breaking even now : that eternal day which ends darkness, solitude, struggle, danger, at once and for ever. This Feast which your LORD makes to you is the twilight of that day : you must wait for its sun rise till you see that Face which was once so marred and defiled for you, but will then be the fountain of everlasting joy : till that Name which has here been your strength and comfort shall then, once for all, and for ever, be written on your foreheads.
And now, &c.
SERMON III.*
THE NAME OF HEALING.
" Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none ; but such as I have give I thee : In the Name of JESUS CHRIST of Nazareth rise up and walk? — ACTS iii. 6.
DEAR Sisters, if I were to begin as the old preachers in the middle ages often used to do, I should say that, with respect to this miracle you had to notice : Who : Whom : What : Where : and Why. Who performed it : on whom it was performed : what it was : where it was wrought : and why it was wrought. In every of one these things there is a lesson for you, not only as Christians, but more especially as Sisters of Mercy.
And to begin with the Why : of which the very day calls me to speak. The reason of the miracle was not so much the benefit of the poor man, as the exaltation of our LORD'S Name. I like exceedingly to think that we have now
* Preached September 8th, 1867, being the Second Tuesday in September.
0*3,4
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every month a more especial day for remember ing and for worshipping that glorious Name : just as it is my joy and pride for you all that you should all be under its protection, as it is written, " The Name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe : " that you should all resolve to make it your boast here, according to that saying, " I will praise the Name of the LORD with a song, and magnify it with thanksgiving : " and as it is my earnest hope that it will be your most lovely reward hereafter: "They shall see His Face, and His Name shall be in their foreheads." That Name which then healed the impotent man, that Name which has been the rallying point of so many a Christian struggle, the last consolation of so many a Martyr, the perpetual support of so many a Confessor, the life-long study of so many a Doctor, the bundle of myrrh so tenderly cherished by many a Virgin-soul, that Name, dearest Sisters, is here, in this House, by our unalterable resolution, to be chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely : that Name is to be the one Name above all others that you are to hear from me, when I speak to you in common here, when I speak to you by yourselves in Confession, when I pray with you; — as it would be the only one Name of which I
138 THE NAME OF HEALING. [Sun.
should speak if it pleased GOD that I stood by any of your deathbeds, or of which I should desire to hear if any of you stood by mine. And thus much for the Why.
Next, Who : Who wrought this miracle ? Peter and John. That is to say, Zeal and Love : the Apostle who was always the most forward in word and in action; and he who was the nearest in earthly relationship, and the dearest in love. Peter and John. That is to say, earnest repentance, and unspotted innocence: the Apostle who most griev ously denied, who denied thrice, who began to curse and to swear, " I know not this Man of whom ye speak ;" and he who, when all the rest fled, came and stood by the Cross, and into whose charge the Virgin Mother was entrusted. Peter and John ; the one among the eldest, the other the youngest, of the Apostolic band : the one to suffer by a cruel martyrdom, the other to end his days in peace : both witnesses of the glory of the Transfiguration : both present at the Agony of Gethsemane : both, alone of the Apostles, at the Sepulchre of the LORD : both to be delivered from imminent death, the one from the dungeon of Herod, the other from the caldron of Domitian, by virtue of that Name which to each of them was dearer
III.] THE NAME OF HEALING. 139
than the life itself. And so of you, my dear Sisters ; different talents and means of doing good you have : by very different trials you will be purified : different temptations you must expect : but in one thing you must all be alike ; The Name of JESUS, as S. Ber nard said last night, must be in your heart, and from thence be ready to leap forth to your lips.
Then, Whom : on whom the miracle was wrought. An impotent man, lame from his mo ther's womb, and poor ; and it was a miracle that not only healed the body, but, it would seem, was healing to the soul. Like Hezekiah, the sign of his healing was that he went into the House of the LORD. Now notice this first. The man was above forty years old ; therefore he had been in Jerusalem all the time that our LORD went about doing good, exercising His public ministry, and healing all manner of sick ness and all manner of disease. Put these two things together. He was laid daily before the gate of the Temple which is called Beautiful : which gate led into the porch of the Temple that is called Solomon's. Now, only two years before, we read, " JESUS walked in the Temple, in Solomon's Porch." He must then have seen this poor man, must have passed by him, must
140 THE NAME OF HEALING. [Sun.
have known that he had now been a long time in that case ; and yet, no gracious word of kindness, no command of healing : this Priest, this Great High Priest, came that way, and when He saw him, He passed by on the other side. Why ? Doubtless out of tender love to the man himself, that the refuge from trouble should come at its due time, and not before : but also out of love to His disciples, that they might have so wonderful a testimony to give of their having been sent by Him ; — and most of all, because He saw that the glory of His Name would be more increased by the delaying of this miracle till after His Resurrection and Ascen sion. And so, dearest Sisters, believe me, when He walks among you day by day, as He does in this His most Blessed Sacrament, and still seems to leave some weakness or infirmity in your hearts unhealed, still leaves you a prey to some temptation, still allows Satan to vex and to harass you : what is the reason, but that on the whole, this is for your good, on the whole, this is for His glory ? The impotent man shall be made whole in time : the trouble you suffer shall be removed in due season : in the meantime, as the hymn says :
" Now with gladness, now with courage, Bear the burden on thee laid,
III.] THE NAME OF HEALING. 14!
That hereafter these thy labours
May with endless gifts be paid : And, in everlasting glory,
Thou with joy may'st be array'd."
What the miracle was, we have seen : lame ness cured ; and the lame man taken, between Peter and John, into the Temple of the LORD. They ministered then to his soul as well as to his body : and therein they left a pattern, dear Sisters, of your vocation. Could there be a more glorious reward of any suffering and labour, than that, as then the lame man entered into the Temple between these two Apostles, so any one of those to whom you had been ministering should hereafter be received into that heavenly Temple, that house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens, through your instrumentality ? You know that nothing could be higher than this : you know that for this any affliction were well endured. Only depend on it, if that most sweet and blessed Name be not in your mouths, as it was then on the lips of those two loving and valiant Apostles, you can never hope for this honour : you can never by any possibility expect to turn any from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to GOD. That Name has lost none of its virtues : that ointment,
142 THE NAME OF HEALING. [Sia
poured forth, loses none of its sweetness ; by it the same wonder will be done as of old time : by it the spiritually lame will walk and leap when he enters into the Temple of GOD.
And lastly, Where : where the miracle was performed. In the Beautiful Gate — and that, as I just now said, belonged to the porch called Solomon's. My dearest Sisters, these words are as it were written for you, and applicable to none but you. What is the Temple, but that City which hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it ? for the glory of GOD doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof: that Jerusalem which is built as a city that is at unity in itself : that place whither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the LORD, to testify unto Israel, to give thanks unto the Name of the LORD. And, if that blessed abode of the ransomed, that happy and bright dwelling-place of the first-born, written in Heaven, that city wherein dwell the innumerable company of the Angels, — has any porch on earth joined to itself, but not in itself; joined to itself but yet projecting into the care and turmoil of an ungodly world, into the thoroughfare of a careless and earthly life, what can it be but such a Religious House as this ? By this, as by a Porch, you trust that some day you will be sent for by the King into
IIL] THE NAME OF HEALING. 143
His Chambers : this is the ascent by which Esther must enter into the Palace of King Ahasuerus : this is the vestibule of that House where the Beloved of your heart dwells. And it is Solomon's porch : it belongs to that peace ful King, Who bequeathed peace in the night of His Agony, Who bestowed it on the day of His Resurrection : it belongs to that glorious King Whose riches are the innumerable souls whom by His Precious Death He acquired to Him self: it belongs to that wise King, Who from all Eternity devised that wonderful plan whereby His banished ones should be restored to Him : the only Wise GOD. And then, Solomon's porch had the Gate called Beautiful. Yes : and so those lives of yours, dearest Sisters, must be. Think the dress, when you assume it, ugly, if you will : but resolve with GOD'S help that the life of which that dress is a pledge, shall be fair: try so to lead it that hereafter it may be said, " Thou art beautiful as Jerusalem, comely as Tirzah :" that one day you may hear those most joyful words, " Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee."
But that is not all : there is a far greater mystery than so. You read in S. John : " It was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And JESUS walked in the
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temple in Solomon's Porch." Could anything apply more exactly to yourselves ? In this house there ought to be a perpetual feast of dedication ; you, pledged to Him, you, dedicated to Him, you, sealed for Him, cannot but keep every day holy to Him. And it is a cold and wintry world indeed : heartlessness, bitterness, want of love everywhere : in that, as of old, the Son of Man hath not where to lay His Head : in that inn as of old time, there is no room for Him : they reject Him there : they will not have this Man to reign over them there : as He says in the Canticles, His Head is wet with dew, and His locks with the drops of the night : and to you, as to that dear Bride there, He calls to be taken in. Let it be so, dearest Sisters. It is winter there : let JESUS come and walk in this your Solomon's Porch. Walk, not only in His Sacramental Presence in this Oratory, but by His Grace everywhere ; this holy and spotless Lamb must be like the poor man's lamb in the parable : that did eat of his own bread and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom. It is well written then, that in Solomon's Porch the lame man was healed : it is well said also, JESUS walked in the Temple, in Solomon's Porch. And now one thing more. We have none of
I] THE NAME OF HEALING. 145
us much of this world's goods to offer to our dear LORD. So much more like the Apostles. But now turn your eyes from that earthly Temple, from the wondering crowds, from the lame man healed : fix them on that Heavenly City, on the adoring multitude of Angels, on the' Man — Man as well as GOD — Who was once so poor, Whose Feet were once nailed to the Cross, and bear even now the prints of the cruel nails : and say to Him : " Silver and gold have I none, O LORD JESUS : but such as I have give I thee. I have but myself: I have but a heart full of all manner of imperfection, impurity, sin : I have but desires of serving Thee that are sometimes all but lost and ex tinguished : I have but a love that is oftentimes very cold and listless : nevertheless, such as I have, give I Thee. Every power of my soul, every faculty of my body, I desire them to be Thine : a poor little gift, a poor, miserable, un worthy offering : but Thou wilt not despise nor reject the low estate of the poor. Take me, O LORD, and do with me as seemeth good unto Thee : let Thine handmaid be a servant of the servants of my LORD : a poor wretched gift, but it is all I have : a poor offering, but it comes with love, it comes from love. Thou knowest that I love Thee : an unworthy oblation, but it
II. L
146 THE NAME OF HEALING. [Sun. III.
is my all : all that a man hath will he give for his life, for Thee, the true life, Thee, the better than life itself. Here I offer and present unto Thee, O LORD, myself, my soul and body: LORD JESUS, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I Thee ! to be a reason able, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee. And now, &c.
SERMON IV*
THE NAME OF GLORY.
" / will praise the Name of the LORD most High" — Ps. xiii. 6.
FIRST let me tell you of the place, before you hear of the persons, and of the thing done.
A huge, solemn church, but simple and plain to severity : the grand piers and arches tower ing up without one sculpture or wreath of flowers to decorate them : the glass, colourless and grey, no figures of Saints, no histories of Martyrdoms, no quaint devices or symbols : the building itself of cathedral size, but no tower, no preparations for a tower : the enormous service-books, bound in solid oak, knobbed with the mighty scutcheons of brass, and backed with huge hog's skin, all in plain black letter, — for your decorations, dear Sisters, were not allowed in that Order. So far as you can see, — for it is Matins, and there are but two lights on the Altar, and one by the preacher, — in the deep, deep chancel two rows of monks (there may * Preached on the Commemoration of the Holy Name, 1858.
L 2
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be three hundred) in the white habit: their cowls drawn over their heads, for it is in tensely cold, the lantern of each on the ground by his side, to be flashed out upon the Anti- phonary when the Responses have to be sung : — but now intense silence, while the Abbot, stand ing in his place, preaches to his brethren.
The church is in the then newly founded Abbey of Citeaux : the Abbot is the last Father of the Church, Saint Bernard.
Ah ! dearest Sisters ! those days of huge monasteries, those days when thousands of men and women took upon themselves the LORD'S yoke, and bare His burden, are gone in every part of the Church : and, from the very nature of things, cannot return. The piles stood, though all the fervour was fled: Citeaux re mained, the place where a few luxurious scholars passed their time in literary indolence : but the life and love and earnestness had gone, before the destroyer swept away the framework ; the kernel had decayed, before he also crushed the shell. But ah ! dearest Sisters, though of that Abbey not one stone stands now upon another, though, in the neighbouring villages of that part of France, the farm-horses are watered from the stone coffins of those early monks, that of which the Abbot was preaching
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remains ever fresh, ever new : will remain to the end of the world : is to be our comfort, our hope,, our joy, no less than it was to those Cistercians in the first fervour of their exist ence : for he was preaching the Sermons we still have on the Name of JESUS.
Dear Sisters, it is a singular pleasure to me whenever the monthly day of our Commemora tion of that most dear and blessed Name comes round : a day, I hope, we should not forget, even when we may be for a season dispersed in the service of GOD. And this I have thought : that it might not be without its profit to you, nor yet to me, if on these days I were always to speak to you on that one subject, and no other. No fear of our exhausting its glories : no fear of our coming to the end of its comfort, were we to live together long after the time when, in all probability, the last survivor of us will be returned to dust. Those old Saints of the middle ages, how dearly they loved to set it forth, everywhere, by all means, in every curious work of art : not merely of church art, mind you, but of household and domestic furniture. Go, for example, into many of the farms round here, and notice the fire-dogs that stand in the yawning chimney : how they are wrought at the sides into those most blessed of
IfO THE NAME OF GLORY. [SEB.
all letters, the I. H. C., by which our dear LORD is set forth. Nothing so mean, that it was thought unworthy of this monogram : nothing so glorious, that it was considered unfit to have that excelling glory added thereto. There they taught us the great lesson that I would fain teach you, — " Do everything in the Name of the LORD JESUS." Yes : silver and gold and gems conspired together to mark out this Name on the paten, or the chalice, or the shrine : the manufacturer of Limoges worked it out in his enamel, the art of producing which we are only beginning to recover : in the monastery pot teries they burnt it in on their tiles : in convents they embroidered it on chasuble and cope : in the glorious windows of churches the light came in, sanci.iSed, as it were, and hallowed by the Name of the True Light. I know all this very well. But I know also that the poor peasant was encouraged, with his clasp knife, to consecrate his house by carving the same Name on the hutch of his door, or the barge- boards of his roof: the Name of Salvation could never be out of place among the dwellings of those who looked to be saved : the Name which to adore will be the work of eternity, could never be out of place for the meditation and the worship of earth. Then, what hymns did
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they not write, the great poets of the middle ages, from the Golden Meditation of S. Bernard, part of which you have now been singing, downwards ! What Litanies did they not make in its honour, investing it with every attribute that the heart of man can conceive, all too weakly, all too coldly, to satisfy the intense fervour of their own love ! This Saint wrote sequence after sequence in its honour: that Saint composed a JESUS Psalter: and on all hands there came in a flood of beautiful legends, which, told as allegories, or mere tales at first, were by the simple faith of ruder hearers assumed to be, and related as, matters of fact : as that when the blessed Martyr Ignatius had been torn in pieces by the lions of the amphitheatre, this Name was found inscribed on his heart. Then, not content with seeing the same Name in Joshua, the leader of his people to the Land of Canaan, in Joshua the son of Josedech, the noble High Priest, the man "wondered at " of the Jewish Restoration, they saw it also in deeper and more recondite mysteries. In the three hundred and eighteen servants of the Father of the faithful, they saw the three letters, /. E. S., which make up the monogram of our LORD'S Name. They took those letters in their later form, /. H. C., or /. H. S., (the
152 THE NAME OF GLORY. [8KB.
H. being, as some of you may not know, only the long E which it is intended to represent,) and in I. H. S. some saw the initials of JESUS Hominum Salvator : JESUS the Saviour of men : other some, of In Hoc Signo, by this sign : in /. H. C., some saw JESUS Hominum Consolator : JESUS the Comforter of men: some, JESUS Hominum Conservator : JESUS the Preserver of men. And then again, as the great Doctors of the middle ages had each their own especial title, — as S. Bernard was the honey-mouthed Doctor, as S. Bonaventura was the Seraphic, as S. Thomas Aquinas was the Angelic, as Alan of Lisle was the Universal, so for our dear LORD the love of those centuries made a title also, and worshipped Him as the Luminous Doctor. It would be easy enough to write a whole volume on the history of the worship of this Name of JESUS, and plate after plate might be filled with the devices in which it occurs. But with you, dearest Sisters, I must look at it in another way, as all our salvation, all our desire, the Name to which you are dedicated, the title which you bear. I always trust that, whether here or absent, there is not one of my dearest Sisters who does not daily consecrate her lips by the repetition of that Litany — that Litany which so few times, since we were knit together
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as we are, have omitted, and for those few we need that dear LORD'S pardon, Who has not forgotten us, though we have forgotten Him. Take it again in that way, and think how many faithful followers of the Crucified have breathed out their souls with this word on their lips — the last word which GOD grant I may utter myself, the last word, if He allows me to stand by the deathbed of any of you, which I would hear from you. It is this Name, my Sisters, which must sweeten every bitter cup we have to drink : this Name, which must smooth every hard path we have to tread : this Name, which must lighten every labour: this Name, which must soothe every pain. The only Name worth a life-long labour, a life-long suffer ing, worth life itself: worth life ! it is life : it is eternal life : it is everlasting blessedness. If it pleases GOD to give us means ever to erect our new house, where, as I hope, He may long be served, we will endeavour to have some out ward and visible sign in its very fabric that this Name we desire to honour above and beyond all created names : that for the sake of this Name we desire to live : that, in the strength of this Name we hope to die.
And as