And then it will matter little what opinions we hold about deep things, which the wisest man can never put into words.  And it will matter little, whether what I have been telling you to-day about the heaven of heavens be exactly true or not; for what says St. Paul of such deep matters?  That we know in part, and prophesy in part; and that prophecies shall fail, and knowledge vanish away:  but charity, love, and right feeling, and right doing, which is the very Holy Spirit of God, shall abide for ever.  And if that Spirit be with us, he will guide us in due time into all truth; teach us all we need to know, and enable us to practise all we ought to do.  Amen.

SERMON XXXI.  CHRISTMAS PEACE

(Sunday before Christmas.)

Phil. iv. 4.  Rejoice in the Lord alway:  and again I say, Rejoice.

This is a glorious text, and one fit to be the key-note of Christmas-day.  If we will take it to heart, it will tell us how to keep Christmas-day.  St. Paul has been speaking of two good women, who seem to have had some difference; and he beseeches them to make up their difference, and be of the same mind in the Lord.  And then he goes on to tell them, and all Christian people, why they should make up their differences.

And for that reason, I suppose, the Church has chosen it for the epistle before Christmas-day, on which all men are to make friends with each other, and rejoice in the Lord.  Let your moderation, he says, be known to all men.  The Greek word signifies forbearance, reasonable dealing, consideration for one another, readiness to give way, not standing too severely on one’s own rights.  Now this is just the temper in which we ought to meet our friends at Christmas—­ forbearance.  They may not have always behaved well to us.  Be it so.  No more have we to them.  Let us, once in the year at least, forget old grudges.  Let us do as we would be done by; give and forgive; live and let live; bury our past quarrels, and shake hands over their graves.

For the Lord is at hand.  Close to all of us:  watching all we do, and setting the right value on it.  He cannot mistake.  He sees both sides of a matter, and all sides—­a thousand sides which we cannot see.  He can judge better than we.  Let him judge.  Why do I say, Let him judge?  He has judged already, weeks, months ago, as soon as each quarrel happened:  and, perhaps, he found us in the wrong as well as our neighbours; and, if so, the least said the soonest mended.  Let us forgive and forget, lest we be neither forgotten nor forgiven.