rule yourselves; rule the advocates of sin and folly; rule every evil thing that would assault and thwart you. In the name of Christ your Saviour be kings and priests. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Go forth in this confidence; go forth from strength to strength. You will meet with difficulties; stand up to them with dauntless front. You will meet the sorceress-drive her to her knees. Stronger are they that are with, than they that are against you. Against you are all the shams, the emptinesses, the frivolities, all the passing fashions; all the lying atheisms; all the prurient vanities;-with you is all that is sweet and strong, all supreme and noble men, all divine and eternal principles; and above all, there is your Father God. With the aid of His Holy Spirit in the present, with the gift of His free forgiveness for all the past, be faithful to Him, be faithful to yourselves, be faithful to your fellow-men; and then, let the earth be smitten into ruin, and the heaven be shrivelled into smoke, but you-like all the saints and children of the kingdom-you shall be partakers of God's eternity, and even in this world shall not have lived in vain.

October 18, 1874. (Preached also at Eton.)

SERMON XXVII.

NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

MARK Xii. 34.

"Thou art not far from the kingdom of Heaven.”

A CERTAIN Scribe, struck with the wisdom with which our Blessed Lord had silenced the captious questions of Pharisees and Sadducees, stood up and asked Him "Which was the first and greatest commandment?" It is one of those miserable questions which are sure to come in vogue when the letter is exalted above the spirit, and theology held in more account than life. The rabbis, with the fatal ingenuity of a perverse literalism, had counted up the 365 prohibitions and 248 precepts of the Mosaic Law; and, understanding nothing of the royal unity of law as directly involved in the unity of God-nothing of the fact that outward service is valueless without the love of the heartnothing of the fact that a man may only offend in one point, and yet be guilty of all-they were constantly discussing the relative importance of fringes and phylacteries, the relative heinousness of forswearing by the temple and forswearing by its gold. Not so our Lord. He, as ever, going straight to the heart of the matter, laid down one eternal principle. Pointing, perhaps, to the Scribe's phylactery, in which, on a strip of folded.

parchment, was written the text to which He referred, He said, "Hear, oh Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord;" and He added that we must love God with all the heart that lives and worships, with all the soul which enjoys and feels, with all the understanding which thinks and questions, with all the strength which achieves and wills. And this alone comprises all; but, being fallen and guilty, man requires something more, both as an illustration and a test. Love to man, then, is the natural sequence, the necessary condition of love to God. The second table is but a method of our fulfilment of the first; there is no less, no greater; nothing subordinate, nothing unnecessary. Was not this what Moses himself had symbolized when he had bade them wear tassels on the hem of the garment-two, as the tables of the law were two-each consisting of various threads, as the details of the general commandments were many, but both bound together by one prominent cord of brilliant blue, as if to show that their unity-nay, their very existence-depended on the one indivisible law of heavenly love? Of this even the better Pharisees were aware. The Scribe at once recognised the truth-at once referred it to that grand passage of the prophet Micah, which had shown that to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God, was better than holocausts and hecatombs of all the cattle upon a thousand hills.

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1. Our Lord was pleased with the wisdom, the enthusiasm, of his reply. It was His special tenderness, it was His immense love, that He would never break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax. In His infinite holiness, in His heavenly innocence, He did not loathe the leper's touch or the harlot's tears. Though these Scribes and Pharisees

would have embittered to the very dregs any life less noble than His, He could praise even His worst foes, and gently and kindly said to the Scribe, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven." To such a nature as that of the Scribe-a nature not ungenerous, if very faulty, not unenlightened, though much misled-how precious, how healing, would these words have been. Oh! let us not be all so afraid of words of hearty encouragement and honest praise. They reinspire the fading effort; they reinvigorate the trembling arm; they fall like the dew of heaven upon the fainting soul. The sunbeam touches the mountain, and at its touch the heavy load of winter which the hurricane could not dislodge melts and slips insensibly away, and where but yesterday was snow, to-day is green grass and gentian flower. It is even so with words of sympathy, which are so rare, alas! while they can cheer or bless, but which only, when they are useless, fall thick as a dust over the buried dust. But Christ was not thus jealous of making anyone a trifle happier. He knew how to give natural encouragement and generous praise. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona;' "Behold an Israelite indeed;" "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel;" "She hath done what she could;" "Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven:"such are a few of Christ's words of approval. It is something to abstain from slander, and censoriousness, and the hard luxury of injustice; something to be like that good man who passed everything which he had to say of others through the three sieves: Is it just? Is it necessary? Is it kind? But it is more to be like Christ, to be generous and cordial, to have "the glow of sympathy" with "the bloom of modesty;" not to be too vain to appreciate; not to be too envious to help and cheer.

2. "Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven." What was this kingdom of heaven? Our Lord, at different times, used it in different senses: sometimes of the new dispensation which was dawning on a weary and wicked world; sometimes of individual righteousness and joy in believing; sometimes of the glory in heaven to come. But with Him who is an eternal Now, these three senses are one. To be of the kingdom of heaven is nothing less than Christianity, salvation, eternal life. And this Scribe was not far from the kingdom of heaven; he was listening to its precepts; he was talking to its King; it was but to believe, to repent, to pray, and all-the secret of the past, the blessedness of the present, the glories of the futureall, all were his.

And is it not ours? is it not yours and mine? Oh, as far as mere privileges are concerned, it is infinitely more ours than it was this Scribe's. The cross upon our foreheads can only be obliterated, the title-deeds of our birthright only lost, by our own apostasy. The late king of Prussia was one day playing with some little children, and asked them to what realm of nature various things belonged. He showed them a precious stone, and they said to the mineral kingdom; a rose, and they said to the vegetable; a leopard's skin, and they said to the animal. "And to what kingdom do I belong?" he asked, pointing to himself. “To the kingdom of heaven," said one sweet little voice in prompt reply. Yes; oh that we had the grace always, at all moments, to remember it! You, and I, and every baptised Christian in this Christian land, are by birth, by baptism, by inheritance, by privileges, members of the kingdom of heaven.

3. I see you seated in this fair house of God, silent,