even as He lived, and to be justified thereby, even as He was justified by being declared to be God’s well-beloved Son, and by being raised from the dead.  He will show thee what is good; He has shown thee what is good, when He showed thee His own blessed self, His story and character written in the four Gospels.  This is thy God, and this is thy Lord and Master; not a silent God, not a careless God, but a revealer of secrets, a teacher, a guide, a ‘most merciful God, who showeth to man the thing which he knew not;’ that same Word of God who talked with Adam in the garden, and brought his wife to him; who called Abraham, and gave him a child; who sent Moses to make a nation of the Jews; who is the King of all the nations upon earth, and has appointed them their times and the bounds of their habitation, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him; who meanwhile is not far from any one of them, seeing that in Him they live, and move, and have their being, and are His offspring; who has not left Himself without witness, that they may know that He is one who loves, not one who hates, one who gives, not one who takes, one who has pity, not one who destroys, in that He gives them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness.  This is thy God, O man! from whose face thou desirest to flee away.

Next, ‘He hath showed thee, O man.’  Not merely, ’He hath showed thee, O deep philosopher, or brilliant genius;’—­not merely, ’He hath showed thee, O eminent saint, or believer who hast been through many deep experiences:’  but, ‘He hath showed thee, O man.’  Whosoever thou art, if thou be a man, subsisting like Jesus Christ the Son of Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh; thou labourer at the plough, tradesman in thy shop, soldier in the battle-field, poor woman working in thy cottage, God hath showed thee, and thee, and thee, what is good, as surely and fully as He has shown it to scholars and divines, to kings and rulers, and the wise and prudent of the earth.

And He hath showed thee; not you.  Not merely to the whole of you together; not merely to some of you so that one will have to tell the other, and the greater part know only at second-hand and by hearsay:  but He hath showed to thee, to each of you; to each man, woman, and child, in this Church, alone, privately, in the depths of thy own heart, He hath showed what is good.  He hath sent into thine heart a ray of The Light who lighteth every man who comes into the world.  He has given to thy soul an eye by which to see that Light, a conscience which can receive what is good, and shrink from what is evil; a spiritual sense, whereby thou canst discern good and evil.  That conscience, that soul’s eye of thine, God has regenerated, as He declares to thee in baptism, and He will day by day make it clearer and tenderer by the quickening power of His Holy Spirit; and that Spirit will renew Himself in thee day by day, if thou askest Him, and will quicken and soften thy soul more and more to love what is good, and strengthen it more and more to hate and fly from what is evil.