breath, 'Lord, as long as I had any power, I tried to do my work. I tried to seek the Kingdom of God and Thy righteousness.' Then shall the blessed voice reply, 'The pleasures that are at the right hand of God for evermore shall be added unto you.'

X

Thirteenth Discourse.

ON SACRIFICE.

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 11, 1872.

N Sunday last I endeavoured to clear the way, both for you and myself, to the proper understanding of what I called the doctrine

I

of pleasure.' I tried to show you that God did not intend us to be the less happy because we were Christians; but that on the contrary he intended us to enjoy pleasure in mind, pleasure in body, and pleasure in spirit. I also tried to lay down what appeared to me to be the limits within which such pleasure was lawful. showed you how impossible it was to solve the mystery of our nature by attempting to crush out of it its own wholesome instincts; we saw how asceticism had been tried and had failed; that asceticism might be a good exception to a law, but when sought to be set up as a law itself, it was a bad law. There are but two justifications for the ascetic's view of life and its duties; the one founded upon the corrupt state of the community in

general, and the other upon the corrupt state of the individual. If society be so eaten up, so riddled through and through, with vice and uncleanness, that all its recreations and amusements are inevitably tainted with the foul elements of contagion, then we may perhaps be justified in withdrawing ourselves for a season from the pernicious influences of such a wicked world. But modern society, bad though it may be in some respects, is not reduced to such a state as that; and although all the amusements and recreations of mankind probably contain some element which may be developed into mischief by the wickedly inclined, still it does not therefore become an act either of reason or duty to shut ourselves up and turn our backs upon

The world, with all its lights and shadows,
All the wealth and all the woe!

The other ground for asceticism is the corruptness of the individual. There are many men about in the world who now enjoy the reputation of being very good men, but who in the early part of their career have led most abandoned lives. They have subsequently, however, been what is called 'converted;' and so hot is the zeal arising out of their new conversion that they look with horror upon every act of their past lives, and go up and down crying indiscriminately in the marketplace, without distinction between things wholesome and things unwholesome, 'Unclean, unclean!' You will treat the ministrations of individuals such as these with all due reverence, but at the same time you will make allowance for the circumstances under which they

address themselves to your notice. There are, however, some, and it is within the bounds of possibility that there may be some even in this congregation, who cannot resist particular temptations. There are men, for instance, who cannot refrain from drinking what is not good for them, or from drinking too much of what is good for them. In their case it is of course best that they should be kept away from all fermented liquors, and from everything else that they cannot use without abusing it. But special failures afford inadequate grounds for laying down an ascetic law for all society.

143. I know that the obvious answer to some part of what I said last Sunday is, that it is utterly unnecessary to tell people they may go and enjoy themselves, because they are all prone enough to do that without being told. To this, however, I take leave to remark, that it is precisely because human nature is prone to seek its own enjoyment that it is important to point out the right grounds for so doing, and to set forth the proper limits within which the enjoying tendency of our nature may be indulged. It is just because you are always more ready to lay hold of that which promises pleasure than to lay hold of that which leads to pain, that therefore you settle all the more clearly in your own minds what kind of pleasure is lawful and what is not. It is quite as mischievous for a man to do right things believing them to be wrong, as it is to do wrong things believing them to be right.

144. I assume that you have grasped what I endeavoured last Sunday to lay down as the Doctrine of Pleasure; and I now proceed to another topic, which I have entitled The Doctrine of Sacrifice.' It is sacrifice which balances pleasure in connection with your work, and with all the duties you owe to your fellow man. The great doctrine of sacrifice it is that arrests a man when he is rushing on in his career of gratification, and says to him firmly, 'Thus far shalt thou go,' but, by a higher law than that of pleasure, 'no farther.' The great law of sacrifice runs through the whole of creation; it is the law upon which the world itself reposes; it is the law without which no human society could hold together; it is the law, I had almost said, without which no animal life, or animal functions, could go on for more than a very limited period of time.

We shrink from sacrifice and we are drawn towards it. It is at once so difficult and so consolatory; so entirely opposed to our dear self-indulgence, and so inseparably connected with all our highest sympathies; so nearly connected with the central figure of our religion; so intimately interwoven into the highest theory and practice of Christian ethics, that we must return to it again and again. We must question it; we must not let it go until it has given us a blessing; we must wrestle with it in our hearts and in our spirits, aye, and like Jacob, with our very bodies—I say, we must wrestle with the doctrine of sacrifice until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. This veiled though angelic