Alas!  How often have I seen men whom that description would fit but too well—­men who have kept themselves respectable till they have got back their character in the world’s eyes:  and when they get into years, and have risen perhaps in life, and made money, are looked up to by their fellows:  but what are they at heart?  As great scoundrels as they were thirty years before—­cunning, false, covetous, and hypocritical—­and indulging, perhaps, the unclean spirit of youth, as much as they dare without being found out.  God help them! for their last state is worse than their first.  But that is the fruit of trying to mortify and kill their own vices by mere worldly prudence, and not by the Spirit of God, which alone can cleanse the heart of any man, or make him strong enough really to conquer and kill his sins.

And what is this spirit of God?  We may know in this way.  What says our Lord in the Gospel?  ‘The tree is known by its fruits.’  Then if we know the fruits of the Spirit, we shall surely know something at least of what the Spirit is like.  What then says St. Paul, ’The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.’  Therefore the Spirit is a loving spirit—­a peaceable, a gentle, a good, a faithful, a sober and temperate spirit.  And if you follow it, you will live.  If you give yourselves up honestly, frankly, and fully, to be led by that good spirit, and obey it when it prompts you with right feelings, you, your very self, will live.  You will be what God intended you to be; you will grow as God intended you to grow; grow as Christ did, in grace; in all which is graceful, amiable, worthy of respect and love; and therefore in favour with God and man.  Your character will improve and strengthen day by day; and rise day by day to fuller, stronger, healthier spiritual life.  You will be able more and more to keep down low passions, evil tempers, and all the works of the flesh, when they tempt you; you will despise and hate them more and more; for having seen the beauty of goodness, you will see the ugliness of sin.  So the bad passions and tempers, instead of being merely put to sleep for a while to wake up all the stronger for their rest, will be really mortified and killed in you.  They will die out of you; and you, the real you whom God made, will live and grow continually.  And, instead of having your character dragged down, diseased, and at last ruined, it will rise and progress, as you grow older, in the sure and safe road of eternal life.  To which God bring us all in his mercy!  Amen.

SERMON XXIV.  THE UNRIGHTEOUS MAMMON

(Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)