Come to yonder holy table this day, and there claim your share in
Christ, who is absent from you in the body, but ever present in the
spirit. Come to that table, that you may live by Christ's life, and
learn to love what he commandeth, and desire what he doth promise,
that so your hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to
be found; namely, in the gracious motions and heavenly inspirations
of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, who proceedeth from the Father and
the Son.
SERMON XXI.--ENDURANCE
I PETER ii. 19.
This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief,
suffering wrongfully.
This is a great epistle, this epistle for the day, and full of deep
lessons. Let us try to learn some of them.
'What glory is it,' St. Peter says, 'if, when ye be beaten for your
faults, ye take it patiently?' What credit is it to a man, if,
having broken the law, he submits to be punished? The man who will
not do that, the man who resists punishment, is not a civilized man,
but a savage and a mere animal. If he will not live under
discipline, if he expects to break the law with impunity, he makes
himself an outlaw; he puts himself by his rebellion outside the law,
and becomes unfit for society, a public enemy of his fellow-men. The
first lesson which men have to learn, which even the heathen have
learnt, as soon as they have risen above mere savages, is the
sacredness of law--the necessity of punishment for those who break
the law.
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