This is true, for the Scripture says so; this must be true, for reason and conscience—­the voice of God within us—­tell us that God is just; that God must be true, though every man be a liar.  ‘Hear,’ says our Lord, ’what the unjust judge says:  And shall not God (the just judge), avenge his own elect, who cry day and night to him, though he bear long with them?’ Yes, my friends, God’s promise stands sure, now and for ever.  ’Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’

But now comes in a doubt—­and it ought to come in—­What are our works at best?  What have we which is fit to offer to God?  Full of selfishness, vanity, self-conceit, the best of them; and not half done either.  What have we ever done right, but what we might have done more rightly, and done more of it, also?  Bad in quality our good works are, and bad in quantity, too.  How shall we have courage to carry them in our hand to that God who charges his very angels with folly; and the very heavens are not clean in his sight?

Too true, if we had to offer our own works to God.  But, thanks be to his holy name, we have not to offer them ourselves; for there is one who offers them for us—­Jesus Christ the Lord.  He it is who takes these imperfect, clumsy works of ours, all soiled and stained with our sin and selfishness, and washes them clean in his most precious blood, which was shed to take away the sin of the world:  he it is who, in some wonderful and unspeakable way, cleanses our works from sin, by the merit of his death and sufferings, so that nothing may be left in them but what is the fruit of God’s own spirit; and that God may see in them only the good which he himself put into them, and not the stains and soils which they get from our foolish and sinful hearts.

Oh, my friends, bear this in mind.  Whensoever you do a thing which you know to be right and good, instead of priding yourself on it, as if the good in it came from you, offer it up to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to your Heavenly Father, from whom all good things come, and say, ’Oh Lord, the good in this is thine, and not mine; the bad in it is mine, and not thine.  I thank thee for having made me do right, for without thy help I should have done nothing but wrong; for mine is the laziness, and the weakness, and the selfishness, and the self-conceit; and thine is the kingdom, for thou rulest all things; and the power, for thou doest all things; and the glory, for thou doest all things well, for ever and ever.  Amen.’

SERMON X. RELIGIOUS DANGERS

(Preached at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1861, for the London Diocesan Board of Education.)

St. Mark viii. 4, 5, 8.  And the disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? . . .  How many loaves have ye?  And they said, Seven. . . . so they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets.