belonged to:  he, but two years ago the idle, selfish country lad, now stumbling cheerful on in the teeth of the iron hail, across ground slippery with his comrades’ blood, not knowing whether the next moment his own blood might not swell the ghastly stream.  What matter?  They might kill him, but they could not kill the regiment:  it would live on and conquer; ay, and should conquer, if his life could help on its victory; and then its honour would be his, its reward be his, even when his corpse lay pierced with wounds, stiffening beneath a foreign sky.

Here, my friends, is one example of the blessed power of fellow feeling, public spirit, the sense of belonging to a body whose members have not merely a common interest, but a common duty, a common honour.

This Christian country, thank God! gives daily many another example of the same:  and every place, and every station affords to each one of us opportunities,—­more, alas, I fear, than we shall ever take full advantage of:  but I have chosen the case of the soldier, not merely because it is perhaps the most striking and affecting, but because I wish to see, and trust in God that I shall see, those who remain at home in safety emulating the public spirit and self-sacrifice which our soldiers are showing abroad; and by sacrifices more peaceful and easy, but still well-pleasing unto God, showing that they too have been raised above selfishness, by the glorious thought that they are members of a body.

For, are we not members of a body, my friends?  Are we not members of the Body of bodies, members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven?  Members of Christ—­we, and the poor for whom I plead, as well as we; perhaps, considering their many trials and our few trials, more faithfully and loyally by far than we are.  There are some here, I doubt not, to whom that word, that argument, is enough:  to whom it is enough to say, Remember that the Lord whom you love loves that shivering, starving wretch as well as He loves you, to open and exhaust at once their heart, their purse, their labour of love.  God’s blessing be upon all such!  But it would be hypocrisy in me, my friends, to speak to this, or any congregation, as if all were of that temper of mind.  It is not one in ten, alas! in the present divided state of religious parties, who feels the mere name of Christ enough of a bond to make him sacrifice himself for his fellow Christians, as a soldier does for his fellow soldiers.  Not one in ten, alas! feels that he owes the same allegiance to Christ as the soldier does to his Queen; that the honour of Christianity is his honour, the history of Christianity his history, the life of Christianity his life.  Would that it were so:  but it is not so.  And I must appeal to feelings in you less wide, honourable and righteous though they are:  I must appeal to your public spirit as townsmen of this place.