2.  And then, again, there is a second reason:  we have not learned to look for Christ among the common things of life.

“Let us build three tabernacles,” said the wondering disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the speech betrayed a tendency of thought which was in time to prove fatal to the Church.

The Christ without a tabernacle, the free, familiar Christ of the lake or the wayside was everybody’s Christ; but the moment Christ is shut up in a church or a tabernacle He becomes the priest’s Christ, the thinker’s Christ, the devotee’s Christ, but He ceases to be the people’s Christ.

I remember five years ago standing in the great church of Assisi, which has been erected over and encloses the little humble chapel where Francis first received his call.  You will scarcely be surprized if I confess that I turned with a sense of heart-sick indignation from the pomp of that splendid service in the gorgeous church to the thought of Francis, in his worn robe, going up and down these neighboring roads, touching the lepers, calling them “God’s patients,” pouring out his life for the poor; and I knew Christ nearer to me on the roads that Francis trod than in that church, which is his mausoleum rather than his monument.  And as I felt that day in far-off Umbria, so I have felt to-day in England; my heart goes out to Catherine Booth; to Father Dolling, to these Christs of the wayside, and it turns more and more from the kind of Christ who lives in churches and nowhere else.  My brethren, you will let me say that we do but make the church Christ’s prison when we forget that all the realm of life is His.  Oh, you good people, you do love your church, but often think and act as tho the presence of Christ can be found nowhere else.  Lift up your eyes and see this risen Christ, a fisherman upon the shore, busy in no loftier task than to have a meal prepared for hungry fishermen.  Unlock your church doors, let Christ go out among common people; nay, go yourselves, for it is here that He would have you be.  Remember that wherever there is toil, there is the Christ who toiled; and there you should be, with the kind glance, the warm hand-grasp, and the loving warmth of brotherhood.

Christ stands amid the common things of life; where the fire is lit, there is He; where the bread is broken, there is He; where the net of business gain is drawn, there is He; and only as we learn to see Him everywhere shall we understand the dignity and the divinity of human life.

III.  “And Jesus said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.  They cast, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.”