Now you all, I suppose, think it a good thing to be gentlemen and ladies.  All of you, I say.  There is not a poor man in this church, perhaps, who has not before now said in his heart, ’Ah, if I were but a gentleman!’ or a poor woman who has not said in her heart, ‘Ah, if I were but a lady!’ You see round you in the world thousands plotting and labouring all their lives long to make money and grow rich, that they may become (as they think) gentlemen, or, at least, their sons after them.  And those here who are what the world calls gentlemen and ladies, know very well that those names are names which are very precious to them; and would sooner give up house, land, money, all the comforts upon earth, than give up being called gentlemen and ladies; and these last know, I trust, what some poor people do not know, and what no man knows who fancies that he can make a gentleman of himself merely by gaining money, and setting up a fine house, and a good table, and horses and carriages, and indulging the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life; for these last ought to know that the right to be called gentlemen and ladies is something which this world did not give, and cannot take away; so that if they were brought to utter poverty and rags, or forced to dig the ground for their own livelihood, they would be gentlemen and ladies still, if they ever had been really and truly such; and what is more, they would make every one who met them feel that they were gentlemen and ladies, in spite of all their poverty.

Now, people do not often understand clearly why this is.  They feel, more or less, that so it is; but they cannot explain it.  I could tell you why they cannot; but I will not take up your time.  But if they cannot explain it, there are those who can.  St. Paul explains it in the Epistle.  The Lord Jesus Himself explains it in the Gospel.  They tell us why money will not make a gentleman.  They tell us why poverty will not unmake one:  but they tell us more.  They tell us the one only thing which makes a true gentleman.  And they tell us more still.  They tell us how every one of us, down to the poorest and most ignorant man and woman in this church, may become true gentlemen and ladies, in the sight of God and of all reasonable men; and that, not only in this life, but after death, for ever, and ever, and ever.  And that is by charity, by love.

Now, if you will look two or three chapters back, in the Epistle to the Corinthians—­at the 11th and 12th chapters—­you will see that these Corinthians were behaving to each other very much as people are apt to do in England now.  They all wanted to rise in life, and they wanted to rise upon each other’s shoulders.  Each man and woman wanted to set themselves up above their neighbours, and to look down upon them.  The rich looked down on the poor, and kept apart from them at the Lord’s Supper; and no doubt the poor envied the rich heartily enough in return.  And