What, then, is this thing?  St. John tells us that it is born of God; and that it is our faith. Faith will enable us to overcome the world.  We shall overcome by believing and trusting in something which we do not see.  But in what?  Are we to believe and trust that we are going to heaven?  St. John does not say so; he was far too wise, my friends, to say so:  for a man’s trusting that he is going to heaven, if that is all the faith he has, is more likely to make the world overcome him, than him overcome the world.  For it will make him but too ready to say, ’If I am sure to be saved after I die, it matters not so very much what I do before I die.  I may follow the way of the world here, in money-making and meanness, and selfishness; and then die in peace, and go to heaven after all.’

This is no fancy.  There are hundreds, nay thousands, I fear, in England now, who let the world and its wicked ways utterly overcome them, just because their faith is a faith in their own salvation, and not the faith of which St. John speaks—­Believing that Jesus is the Son of God.

But some may ask, ’How will believing that Jesus is the Son of God help us more than believing the other?  For, after all, we do believe it.  We all believe that Jesus is the Son of God:  but as for overcoming the world, we dare not say too much of that.  We fear we are letting the world overcome us; we are living too much in continual fear of the chances and changes of this mortal life.  We are letting things go too much their own way.  We are trying too much each to get what he can by his own selfish wits, without considering his neighbours.  We are following too much the ways and fashions of the day, and doing and saying and thinking anything that comes uppermost, just because others do so round us.’

Is it so, my friends?  But do you really believe that Jesus is the Son of God?  For sure I am, that if you did, and I did, really and fully believe that, we could all lead much better lives than we are leading, manful and godly, useful and honourable, truly independent and yet truly humble; fearing God and fearing nothing else.  But do you believe it?  Have you ever thought of all that those great words mean, ’Jesus is the Son of God’?—­That he who died on the cross, and rose again for us, now sits at God’s right hand, having all power given to him in heaven and earth?  For, think, if we really believed that, what power it would give us to overcome the world, and all its chances and changes; all its seemingly iron laws; all its selfish struggling; all its hearsays and fashions.

1.  Those chances and changes of mortal life of which I spoke first.  We should not be afraid of them, then, even if they came.  For we should believe that they were not chances and changes at all, but the loving providence of our Lord and Saviour, a man of the substance of his mother, born in the world, who therefore can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and knows our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking, and orders all things for good to those who love him, and desire to copy his likeness.