free, he may have the joy of utter submission to an absolute master in Christ.  If you and I are lonely, we may feel all the delights of society by union with Him.  If surrounded and distracted by companionship, and seeking for seclusion, we may get all the peace of perfect privacy in fellowship with Him.  If we are rich, and sometimes think that we were in a position of less temptation if we were poorer, we may find all the blessings for which we sometimes covet poverty in communion with Him.  If we are poor, and fancy that, if we had a little more just to lift us above the grinding, carking care of to-day and the anxiety of to-morrow, we should be happier, we may find all tranquillity in Him.  And so you may run through all the variety of human conditions, and say to yourself—­What is the use of looking for blessings flowing from these from without?  Enough for us if we grasp that Lord who is all in all, and will give us in peace the joy of conflict, in conflict the calm of peace, in health the refinement of sickness, in sickness the vigour and glow of health, in memory the brightness of undying hope, in hope the calming of holy memory, in wealth the lowliness of poverty, in poverty the ease of wealth; in life and in death being all and more than all that dazzles us by the false gleam of created brightness!

And so, finally—­a remark which has no connection with the text itself, but which I cannot avoid inserting here—­I want you to think, and think seriously, of the antagonism and diametrical opposition between these principles of my text and the maxims current in the world, and nowhere more so than in this city.  Our text is a revolutionary one.  It is dead against the watchwords that you fathers give your children—­’push,’ ‘energy,’ ‘advancement,’ ’get on, whatever you do.’  You have made a philosophy of it, and you say that this restless discontent with a man’s present position and eager desire to get a little farther ahead in the scramble, underlies much modern civilisation and progress, and leads to the diffusion of wealth and to employment for the working classes, and to mechanical inventions, and domestic comforts, and I don’t know what besides.  You have made a religion of it; and it is thought to be blasphemy for a man to stand up and say—­’It is idolatry!’ My dear brethren, I declare I solemnly believe that, if I were to go on to the Manchester Exchange next Tuesday, and stand up and say—­’There is no God,’ I should not be thought half such a fool as if I were to go and say—­’Poverty is not an evil per se, and men do not come into this world to get on but to get up—­nearer and liker to God.’  If you, by God’s grace, lay hold of this principle of my text, and honestly resolve to work it out, trusting in that dear Lord who ‘though He was rich yet for our sakes became poor,’ in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will have to make up your minds to let the big prizes of your trade go into other people’s