Now what is the mistake here?  Saying that it is natural to us.  We are not meant to live according to nature, but according to grace; and grace must conquer nature, my friends, if we wish to save our souls alive.  It is nature, brute nature, which makes some dogs fly at every strange dog they meet.  It is nature, brute nature, which makes a savage consider every strange savage as his enemy, and try to kill him.  But unless nature be conquered in that savage, it will end, where following brute nature always ends, in death; and the savages will (as all savages are apt to do) destroy each other off the face of the earth, by continual war and murder.  It is brute nature which makes low and ignorant persons hate foreign people, because their dress and language seem strange.  But unless that natural feeling had been in most of us conquered by the grace of God, which is the spirit of justice and of love, then England would have remained alone in conceit and ignorance, hated by all the nations; instead of being what, thank God! she is—­the Sanctuary of the world; to which all the oppressed of the earth may flee; and find a welcome, and safety, and freedom, and justice, and peace.

And so with us, my friends.  It is natural, and according to the brute nature of the old Adam, to dislike this person and that, just because they do not suit us.  But it is according to grace, and the new Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, to honour all men; to love the brotherhood; to throw away our own private fancies and personal antipathies; and, like the Lord Jesus Christ, copy the all-embracing charity of God.  And no one has a right to answer, ’But I must draw the line somewhere.’  Thou must not.  I am afraid that thou wilt, and that I shall, too, God forgive us both! because we are sinful human beings.  We may, but we must not, draw a line as to whom we shall endure in charity.  For Christ draws no line.  Is it not written, ’No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.’  Is not the Spirit of Christ in a Christian man, unless he be a reprobate? and who is reprobate, we know not, and dare not try to know; for it is written, ’Judge not, and ye shall not be judged:  condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned.’

But what has the text to do with all this?

My friends, is not this just what the text is telling us?  I said this moment, that the Spirit of Christ was in a Christian man, unless he be a reprobate.  And the text says further, that there are diversities of gifts in Christian men:  but the same spirit in all of them.

Yes:  people will be different one from another.  There are diversities of gifts.  Differences in talents, in powers, in character, in kinds of virtue and piety; so that you shall find no two good men, no two useful men, like each other.  But there is the same Spirit.  The same Spirit of God is in each, though bearing different fruit in each.  And there are differences of administrations,