thousand years.  And in one day of bitter misery he can teach us lessons, which we could not teach ourselves in a thousand years of reading and studying, or even of praying.  But our prayers, we shall find, have not been in vain.  He has not forgotten one of them; and there is the answer, in that very sorrow.  In sorrow, he is making short work with our spirits.  In one terrible and searching trial our souls may be, as the Poet says—­

Heated hot with burning fears,
And bathed in baths of hissing tears;
And battered by the strokes of doom. 
To shape and use.

Yes.  He will make short work at times with men’s spirits.  He grinds hearts to powder, that they may be broken and contrite before him:  but only that he may heal them; that out of the broken fragments of the hard, proud, self-deceiving heart of stone, he may create a new and harder heart of flesh, human and gentle, humble and simple.  And then he will return and have mercy.  He will show that he will not contend for ever.  He will show that he does not wish our spirits to fail before him, but to grow and flourish before him to everlasting life.  He will create the fruit of the lips, and give us cause to thank him in spirit and in truth.  He will show us that he was nearest when he seemed furthest off; and that just because he is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, who dwelleth in the high and holy place, for that very reason he dwells also with the humble and the contrite heart; because that heart alone can confess his height and its own lowliness, confess its own sin and his holiness; and so can cling to his majesty by faith, and partake of his holiness by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit.

God grant that we may all so humble ourselves under his mighty hand, whenever that hand lies heavy upon us, that he may raise us up in due time, changed into his divine likeness, from glory to glory; till we come to the measure of Christ, and to the stature of perfect men, renewed into the image of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord!  Amen.

SERMON XVIII.  ST. PETER

Matt. xvi. 18.  Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.

This is St. Peter’s day.  It will be well worth our while to think a little over St. Peter, and what kind of man he was.  For St. Peter was certainly one of the most important and most famous men who ever lived in the whole world.  You just heard what our Lord said to him in the text.  And certainly, from those words, and from many other things which are told of St. Peter, he was the chief of the apostles—­at least till St. Paul arose.