Lecture II. The Sovereignty of God over the Will of Man

These words, taken by the Apostle from the Book of Psalms, are the words of the Son of God, speaking in prophecy, of His advent and His mission in the world: '^Behold, I come: in the head of the book' — that is, in the outset of prophecy — 'it is written of Me.' It was of this that God spoke in the beginning, when He foretold that the seed of the woman should crush the serpent's head. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world was for the fulfilment of the will of God. Throughout the Gospels we read from His own lips that His work on earth was to do His Father's will. (I came down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.'1 * My food is to do the 1 St. John vi. 38.¹

will of Him that sent Me.'2 The obedience of Jesus Christ to the will of God was the recognition of the sovereignty of God over the will of man. Obedience to the Divine will is the first law of the soul of man, and in this is his perfection; which is our next subject.

Our last subject was the sovereignty of God over the intellect; and the sovereignty of God over the intellect is the means and condition to the sovereignty of God over the will; for God, being Perfect Intelligence, requires of no man an irrational obedience. He requires of all men an obedience according to the laws and perfections of the human reason, and to the laws and perfections of truth. It is a law of our nature, that we can will nothing that we have not first known. Our intellect must first know the object upon which we would set our will, or the will can make no act either of desire or aversion. The intellect, therefore, is the channel through which the sovereignty of God reaches the will of man. In proportion as we know God more perfectly, our will ought to be more perfectly conformed to the will of God. The will in man is defined 2 St. John iv. 34.

to be a rational desire, and it is made up of two things. There is in it the desire after good, and there is the reason guiding that desire: so that the will is, as philosophers call it, a rational appetite; but with this peculiar office and power — it can control the appetite; it has the power of originating our actions, and of controlling itself. Now the intellect of man has analogy to the eye. The eye, which is the organ of sight, is under the control of the will. We may fix the eye on any given object, or we may turn the eye away from it, or we may either look intently or languidly at it. All the day long we see a multitude of things without looking at them. The eye is filled with the light of day, and with the objects round about it; but the eye can be fixed for the time only upon one, and that one is the only object upon which we can be said to look. We see a multitude of objects, which perhaps we do not recognise at the time, nor remember a moment after. So it is with the intellect. It is controlled by the will, which can determine on what object it shall be fixed; and whether it shall look fixedly and steadfastly at truth, or whether it shall turn the intellect away from truth, or make it look at truth so cursorily and languidly as not to recognise it. Now this constitutes our personal responsibility in regard to truth. As I have said before, the words of our Divine Lord, 'He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned,' express the voluntariness of the act of faith. Faith is a virtue and a grace of the Holy Spirit; but it is also an act of obedience on the part of man: and we are responsible for our unbelief, and shall be judged for it, because God has given a sufficient light and evidence, both for the truths of the natural and supernatural order. He will not require of any man to know any truth which is physically beyond his power to know; He will only require of man to answer for the truth which he knew, and that which he might have known. He will not require that which is impossible; for God never commands impossible things. He is a God of justice, and His justice is perfect equity. ' He weigheth the spirits,' and He knows with Divine precision what is possible and what is not possible to each one of us. He may require, indeed, that which is morally difficult, because that which is only difficult is not

D impossible. We are responsible to know all truth ~which is sufficiently proposed to us, and all that by diligent search we may find; and therefore we shall be inexcusable at the last day if we do not see the lights of nature, which are so abundant, inundating the world, and if we have not known the truths to which they testify — that is to say, the existence of God, His eternal power and Divinity, His perfections, the distinction of right and wrong, the law of conscience, our own free will, the soul and its immortality — and therefore our responsibility to our Creator. These are truths of the natural order, apart from and anterior to revelation. They are within our reach to know. All men, even those who are not only out of the Catholic Church, but most remote from it, are bound to know these truths. To those who are within the unity of the Catholic Church, there is not a doctrine of revelation which is not within their reach. God has given sufficient light and evidence for all who are within the unity of the Catholic Church to know all the truths of revelation. To those who are out of the unity of the Church, their probation depends on this — \whether their separation from that unity and the light contained therein be a conscious and voluntary act of their own. If so, then they are responsible. But if it be an inherited state of privation, as I have said before, like the condition of people robbed, by the sin of forefathers, of their inheritance of perfect light, such as our own country, then many are not responsible. They will not be called to answer for light they have never known, and never could have known. By them the visible Church has never been seen, the voice of the Church has nev.er been heard: and things that do not appear are. as things that do not exist. They have never stood face to face with it as we do; the light of Catholic faith has never fallen upon them. They have been brought up repeating the baptismal creed, 'I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church;' but between that article of creed and their conscience has intervened a coloured medium, and a false object. They have believed themselves to be in the Catholic Church, because they have mistaken a system of human creation for the Church of Jesus Christ.

The law of God, then, is this; that in proportion as we possess sufficient evidence to know the truth, He will require of us to give an account of that truth at the last day. We must give an account of what we have known, and what we have not known, and the reasons why we have not known that which we might have known. In this, therefore, consists the sovereignty of God over the will; and I wish you to bear in mind, that when I speak of faith as of the highest act of the human reason, and the most rational exercise of the human intellect, such faith is not a blind and obscure act of the superstitious and the credulous, who hide their heads in twilight. Faith is an act of the human reason, expanding itself towards God its Maker, and receiving the noontide light of revelation with the fullest development of its intellectual powers. And in proportion as it receives the truth, and submits its created intelligence to the uncreated wisdom of God, it is elevated and made perfect.

We will now go on to our next subject, namely, the sovereignty of God over the will. To make it as clear as I can, let us consider the relations in which the human will has hitherto stood, and will stand, to the sovereignty of God.

1. The first relation was when God made man

' to His own image and likeness;' that is, He imparted to him a spiritual nature. He gave him an intelligence and a will like His own. Man was the image or reflection of his Maker. The will, as I have said, consists in this: it has the power of originating our own actions. The lower animals have a power of spontaneity in following their natural desires, such as for food and rest; but they have no will. Everything voluntary is spontaneous, but not everything which is spontaneous is voluntary. The lower animals, though they have this spontaneous power, have no will, because the will, as I said in the beginning, is a rational desire or appetite guided and elevated by the reason; and as the lower animals, though they have instincts, are irrational — that is, have no reason — they have no will. The will, then, is the power of originating rational actions, and those rational actions are the actions of a will in conformity with the reason, and of the reason in conformity with the intelligence of God. But we are wont also to speak of the freedom of the will. Now, everything that is free is voluntary, but not everything which is voluntary is free, because the blessed in heaven voluntarily love God and voluntarily worship Him; but they are not free not to love Him or not to worship Him. The very perfection of their nature necessitates their love and worship; and yet the will in its voluntary action is perfect. It is the most perfect and entire spontaneousness, elevated and guided by reason, and by the illumination of the whole soul of the blessed. There is therefore a kind of freedom or liberty which does not belong to the perfection of the will.

When God made man in the beginning, He gave him a perfect liberty. Hd was not constrained by any external authority which deprived him of his freedom; he was not necessitated, as the blessed are, by a final perfection. He had therefore these three kinds of liberty: first, he had the power either to do or not to do, to act or to refrain from acting; secondly, he had a power, within the limits of good and justice, to do this or that act — he was not compelled to any specific acts of goodness or of justice; lastly, he had a power which the blessed in heaven have not— of doing good and evil. But this power of doing good and evil is indeed a part of our liberty in our present state of probation and of imperfection; but it is not a part of the

OVER THE WILL OF MAX. 39> perfect liberty of the will. The use of the will is to do good; but the abuse of the will is to da evil. It is an abuse of the power of originating our actions if we act contrary to reason, contrary to justice, contrary to the will of God. In the beginning, God created man with this threefold liberty, to put him upon trial or probation; and yet there was no cause or need or excuse why lie-should offend and fall, for God constituted him in original justice. There never was a moment when the created will of the first man was not sanctified and sustained by the Holy Ghost, when he had not the presence of abundant grace within him to sustain him in the full equilibrium of his liberty. There was, then, no necessity — nay, no reason whatsoever except the abuse of his freedom— why he should do evil. His whole soul was under the dominion of the Divine knowledge and love, and his heart was the throne of God reign- -• ing supreme within it. This, then, was the first relation of the will to the sovereignty of God.

2. The second relation was introduced by the Fall of man; and see how it came about. The entrance of sin into the world was by the abuse of the will. Sin came through the intellect. The temptation was addressed to the reason, which, being perverted, perverted the will; but the will was free to listen or not. The temptation was addressed with an exquisite subtlety of malice. It began by a question, and that question began by the word * Why,' which was then spoken for the first time. The tempter came and said, ' Why hath God commanded T This was a temptation to criticise the ways and to question the justice of God. ' Why hath God commanded you, that you shall not eat of every tree of Paradise f This awakened a questioning, perhaps a murmuring, spirit. The next step of the temptation was a contradiction. ' Ye shall not die the death.' In this was insinuated a contradiction of the known truth. Thirdly, there was an insinuation of injustice against God. ' For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods;' as if to say, God is jealous lest a creature of His hands should be equal to Himself. Now, the first temptation came through the intellect, and as it passed through the thoughts it wrought upon the soul, it undermined the steadfastness of the will, it inflamed the passions, it made them impatient of restraint, and thereby it inclined the will to abuse its liberty and power. The abuse of its liberty and power was this: to do evil, to break the known law, to violate the commandment of God. In doing so, it acted irrationally; the will, in doing evil, then lost its rational character. It was an abuse and debasement of its nature; and the will being debased by this irrational action, deprived of its supernatural perfection, forfeited the grace of the Spirit of God. It biassed its own working, it warped its own nature. As a perfect machine, if it be rudely jarred, loses its perfect action, and all its operations are thrown out of gear, so with the soul of man, when by a wilful abuse of his rational power he acted irrationally. In the moment when he rebelled against the sovereign will of God, his passions and affections — which before were in subjection, and in perfect harmony and conformity to his will, obeying its dominion and government — rose up and rebelled against him. The passions were both disordered and inflamed; they were no longer within the range and control of reason. The affections, losing their reasonable character, became internal temptations, so that the words of the prophet were verified in the first man: 'The wicked are like the raging sea, which cannot rest, and the waves thereof cast up dirt and mire.'3 The tumultuous passions and affections of the heart cast up desires and cravings which are irrational, and destructive of the soul of man. Just as one poisonous root will propagate and spread over a fertile garden, and one spark of fire will kindle a boundless conflagration, so one perverse will, beginning in irrational disobedience, has multiplied itself throughout mankind, and the whole world is set on fire by its perversity. The human will, becoming carnal and irrational in the Fall of our first parents, has been reproduced in all their children. 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh.'4 We inherit that nature as children of wrath. This, then, is the second relation of the will to the sovereignty of God, by the irrational abuse of its own freedom.

3. Then, thirdly, as man fell by irrational disobedience, he is redeemed by an obedience which is in perfect conformity to the intelligence and will of God. St. Irenseus says: ' The obedience of Mary broke the chains forged by the disobedience of Eve. What Eve had bound by unbelief,

3 Isaias Ivii. 20. 4 St. John iii. 6.

Mary has unbound by faith.'5 That is to say: the will fell by the unbelief of Eve, the first virgin, and was restored through the faith of Mary, the second •virgin. The first Eve listened to the tempter, and fell; the second Eve listened to the angel, and believed. When the angel saluted her with, * Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!' and revealed to her the mystery of the Incarnation, her intelligence, overcome for a moment by the splen- •dour of supernatural light, asked, 'How shall this ibe done f 6 But at once she made an act of perfect submission and of perfect faith: ' Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word.' Here was a perfectly obedient will restored to mankind, a will reconstituted in;that state of perfect submission to the sovereignty:of God in which man was in the beginning. Of!her was born One more perfect still, because He is the Incarnate Son of God, in Whom the words of prophecy were fulfilled: * Behold, I come, to - do Thy will, 0 God.'

The fulfilment of the will of God was the whole work of redemption. Obedience unto death was the restoration of mankind. When the Son of

5 St. Iren. Adv. Haer. iii. 34. 6 St. Luke i. 34.

God took our humanity, He took a human soul; and in that soul a human intelligence and a human will, in all things like our own. But between the Sacred Humanity and ours there was this difference: the human will of Jesus had in it 110 rebellions. It had what we distinguish as a superior and an inferior will; that is, He had a reason and conscience like our own, but both were perfect. He had also affections and infirmities, and, as the theology of the Catholic Church says, not passions — for the word by tradition has an evil meaning — but * pro-passions;' that is, those affections of our humanity which are passions in us, in Him are perfections. Nevertheless, the superior and the inferior will of the Son of God in the Garden of Gethsemani were seen, not in conflict, but each exerting its proper and natural perfections. The sensitive or inferior will shrank from the vision of sin, from the foresight of the death of the world, from the anticipation of the Passion, from the agony which He then already suffered, from the Divine fore-knowledge of the anguish of that night, and of the desolation on Calvary. Human nature in Him shrank from pain and death, just as we do; but the superior will stood steadfast. Knowing that it was for the glory of God, and the redemption of the world, that He should accept and drink the chalice of His Passion, He said: ' 0 My Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.'7 There was no wavering of imperfection in that agony of our Divine Lord. He being God, the will that was in Him was deified. It was united to the perfections of the Son of God; it was sanctified by the presence of the Holy Ghost; it was constituted in the Divine perfections of freedom and obedience; it could be used with the utmost liberty of human freedom; it could never be abused, because of His perfection both as God and as man. That which constituted the merit of our Lord's Passion was this: though it was necessary, from His twofold perfection, human and Divine, that He should love God, and obey Him, and fulfil His will with perfection, it was not necessary that He should suffer the agony in the Garden, nor the Crucifixion upon Calvary, These things were freely chosen by Him, out of love to mankind. ' Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'8 It was an act of the love of the Son of 7 St. Matt. xxvi. 39. 8 St. John xv. 13.

God to give Himself for three-and-thirty years to mental sorrow, and to His agony on the Cross, for our redemption. He freely chose that way of redemption— the way of blood-shedding, passion, humiliation — because it was a more profuse revelation of perfect love. This way of redemption was not required by any necessity, but freely ordained in the wisdom of God.

4. Fourthly, there is still another relation of the will to the sovereignty of God, and it is that in which we all stand now to Him. We are not like the first Adam, in a state of original justice. We are not like Adam after the Fall, in a state deprived of grace. We are not like the second Adam in His Divine perfections; but we are regenerate members of the second Adam, and there is a perfection which comes by the Holy Ghost to all those who are united as members of the Body of Christ. The will of their Divine Head pervades the will of those that are born again. You, in your baptism, passed from the state of nature to the state of grace. ' That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'9 You have been born of water and of the 9 St. John iii. 6.

Holy Ghost, and 'Christ Jesus is in you, unless perhaps you be reprobates.'10 Your will is a regenerate will. It is the will of the Son of God. What Jesus had by nature, because He is the Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, you have by grace, because by adoption you are made the sons of God. St. John writes: ' As many as received Him, to them He gave power to be made the sons of God.'11 The power has been given to you all; not to become equal and co-eternal with the Incarnate Son of God, but to be sons of God by adoption. Again, St. Paul says: 'You have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father).' 'For who-soever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.'12 And as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they have a regenerate will, elevated by faith, hope, and charity, raised by the sanctifying grace of God, to a union with God Himself. The Apostle says: 'He who adheres to the Lord is one spirit;'13 and they who are united, by the Spirit of God dwelling in

'o 2 Cor. xiii. 5. « St. John i. 12.

12 Rom. viii. 15, 14. " 1 Cor. vi. 17.

them, to our Divine Lord and Saviour, the Head of the mystical Body, partake of the sanctity and strength of His will. His will is transcribed into them; they become partakers of the loves and the hatreds of Jesus Christ. Together with Him they love God and their neighbour, they hate sin and falsehood in all its forms. The will, according to the promise of God, becomes a law to itself. * This is the testament which I will make unto them after those days, saith the Lord; giving My laws in their hearts, and in their minds I will write them.'14 And the Apostle says, * The law is not made for the just man, but for the unjust and disobedient.'15 As the seven notes of the octave are not to be perpetually learned by the skilful musician, and the twenty- four letters of the alphabet are left behind by the cultivated intellect, so the law of commandments is no longer necessary to those who have the law of God written by the Holy Ghost upon their hearts. They fulfil, indeed, the letter of the commandments, because that is the least thing they can do; but that which is required of them is more than this. St. John says: ' Every one that is born of God, doth not commit sin, for 14 Heb. x. 16. 15 1 Tim. i. 9.

His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God;'16 that is, there grows up a moral impossibility to commit wilful sin. The love of God and our neighbour makes it morally impossible that we should abuse the freedom of our will by disobedience to God, and injustice to our neighbour. The hatred of sin, falsehood, impurity, jealousy, malice, and the like, makes it morally impossible for the soul, renewed by the indwelling of the Spirit of God, to violate its own renewed nature by willingly doing these things. Therefore, the will becomes a law to itself, and it is so strengthened in the state of regeneration that the Apostle could say: < I can do all things in Him who strengthened me.'17 When buffeted by the messenger of Satan, he thrice prayed to be delivered from temptation; but the answer of God to him was, ' My grace is sufficient for thee: for power is made perfect in infirmity;' and he adds: * Gladly, therefore, will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.'18 And again, * Work your salvation with fear and trembling;' and for what reason? ' For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, 16 1 St. John iii. 9. 17 Phil. iv. 13. 18 2 Cor. xii. 9.

according to His good will.'19 The supremacy of the good will of God, holy, pure, just, and mighty, flows into the soul, and pervades the will of those who, being born again, are subject to the sovereignty of God by the free action and use of their own deliberate will.

5. Lastly, there is, as I have said before, a final relation of the will to God; and that is the state of the blessed, when there will be no more temptation without, no more conflict within. We shall then have passed from a state of warfare, and from the condition of wayfarers, into the eternal rest and peace, in the vision of God. The intellect, illuminated by the Light of God, which i& the Holy Ghost Himself, shall see Him. The will, united with the eternal love of God by the Holy Ghost, who is the Charity of God, will be eternally and indissolubly united to Him in obedience and adoration of His perfect sovereignty, when God shall be all in all. This is the last and eternal perfection of the will.

To draw from this one practical conclusion^ let us remember what is our probation now. It is to subject our will to the will of God. And 19 PM1. ii. 12, 13.

how does God illuminate us to know what that sovereignty is? I have already said, by faith. I have said that our submission to Him is the most rational and perfect act of our reason. Take, for example, the lights of nature, the existence of God, the distinctions of morality, the immortality of the soul. You would all hold, that any man who should refuse to submit his will to the sovereignty of God, revealing these things to us by the light of nature, would be guilty before Him of pride and infidelity. And why, but because the evidence for them is sufficient? Let us go one step farther. Is there not sufficient evidence in the world, by the lights of Christendom and by the effulgence of the Universal Church, which is ' like the lightning which cometh out of the east, and shineth also to the west'? Is not the testimony of the Universal Church throughout the world a sufficient light, or motive of credibility, to convince the intellect of man that that Church is the Church of God, and, therefore, that He founded it? Is not the world-wide testimony of the Church sufficient to convince any reasonable intellect, that He who founded it was the Son of God Incarnate; and that, according to the promise of the Son of

God, the Holy Ghost descended upon that Church, and made it His dwelling-place and the organ of His voice, in which He preserves the original revelation of God; and through which, as the organ of His voice, He makes that revelation known to the world? And if there be a sufficient light to know these things, is not the intellect bound to submit itself to the uncreated reason of God, by whom these things are revealed? And if so, is not the will, through the intellect, bound to submit itself to the light and sovereignty, which is thus made known? And if so, the voice of the Church is the voice of God Himself: ' He that heareth you, heareth Me;' and the authority of that voice is Divine, and the unity of truth is Divine, and the duty of submitting to it is from God. This light of faith comes to us through the most rational action of the human intellect, and this act of faith is an act reasonable and free in all its parts. Faith is not a credulity, nor a superstition; but they who will not believe are truly irrational and superstitious. They fall from perfect light into the twilight, where half-truths are seen, as * men like trees walking;'20 and believiog in them, 20 St. Mark viii. 24.

the intellect is warped and narrowed. They who reject Divine faith credulously believe in human opinions, which are both false and superstitious. What, then, is the whole of our life on earth but an education? Is not the sovereignty of God round about us? Are we not under its guidance, training, and discipline? Is it not training us up to dwell in our Father's house? Are not all the visitations and chastisements of our lot so many teachings of His Divine hand? In joy and sorrow, prosperity and poverty, sickness or strength, — are not all these distinctly Divine agencies around us and upon us? Are they not the manifestations of the Divine sovereignty over the course of our life? And they who recognise, by the light of faith, the sovereignty of God in all things, will recognise the sovereignty of God in the daily and hourly details of their own personal life, and in the changes of their lot. They will not chafe against His will when He chastises them, nor wear themselves out, nor break their hearts by contending with impossibilities; but, conforming their will to the sovereign will of God, and submitting gladly to it, they will be sustained and sanctified in their faith.

And, further, there are two other ways in which the sovereignty of God works in us. The one is by the silent, secret, and sweet inspirations of His grace, by the lights that fall upon our intellect without our asking for them, and the love that is poured out in the Divine superabundance of His.generosity and tenderness. As He makes the sun to rise upon the evil and the good, so He sends down the lights of truth on the intellects of those •who have not sought for Him; and He pours out over their hearts the drops of consolation, of which the Psalmist speaks when he says, < Thou hast prevented him with blessings of sweetness.'21 This is something which, in experience, you all will know. You will understand me, though I cannot put it in words. There have been in your life times and seasons— sometimes in joy, sometimes in sorrow, sometimes in prayer, sometimes in solitude, sometimes in the midst of the world — when there has come down almost a sensible sweetness to your taste, almost a perceptible fragrance in your thoughts. And what is this sweetness and fragrance? It is the Divine Presence scattering abroad ' the benedictions of sweetness.' That fragrance comes from 21 Ps. xx. 4.

the golden censer which is in the hand of the angel before the throne. And why are these things sent to us? To win and to persuade our will freely to submit itself to His sovereignty. The throne of His sovereignty is the Blessed Sacrament upon the altar. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ our Lord and King is there always reigning, by the power of His love, attracting the human will in all its freedom to Himself. Out of the unwilling, He creates the willing; not by constraint, but by the sweetness of His Presence, which makes them voluntarily cast off their unbelief and disobedience, and of their own free will submit themselves to Him.

Lastly, when hereafter we shall stand before Him as our King and Judge, the Apostle St. James declares that we shall be 'judged by the law of liberty.'22 He bids us, therefore, to use it wisely: ' So speak ye and so do, as being to be judged by the law of liberty.' In that day we shall not be judged for anything we could not do or leave undone, nor for anything we could not know. We shall be judged for that which we might have known, and might have done or refrained from 22 St. James ii. 12.

doing. We shall be tried by that which we have known and done; and wfe shall be compelled to lay our hand upon our mouth, and to confess that, in all our life, we never did evil in thought, word, or deed, but we might have refrained from doing it, and might have done good instead, if we had had the will; that every act of evil was a free act, and an irrational and immoral abuse of our will.

Time forbids me now to draw out examples of this evident truth. Take any habit in which at this moment you may be entangled, — such as ambition, pride, sloth, self-indulgence, jealousy, insincerity, be it what it may, — tell me whether the first acts of it were not altogether voluntary, and the second and the third — ay, and the first, second, and third years of its continuance *? If now it has become ingrained in your character — if now you have become, and are at this time, proud, ambitious, slothful, jealous, insincere, so that you cry in secret: ' I am fast bound in these chains of iron: how can I ever break these bonds V — know that you have forged them for yourselves, and at the last day will have to give an account of every several and voluntary act, whereby you have willingly wrought those links. You laid them upon the anvil, and have deliberately welded them with your own hand, until by your own will you have fastened them upon yourselves.

Lastly, we shall have to give an account of all the good we have left undone; and it is certain that we neglect, all day long, opportunities of doing good, of making acts of love of God and of our neighbour. In that day our Lord will say to each one of us: 'I was hungry, and you gave Me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me not to drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me not in; naked, and you clothed Me not; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.'23 All the day long, our life and lot are full of these opportunities, and we allow them to pass away. They are golden opportunities, like the seed-time and the harvest, which, with all their treasures, pass with the year and return no more. We shall have to give an account in that day of the free use we have made of all our manifold stewardship: of the gifts of nature; of the faculties of the soul; of the graces of the Holy Ghost; of the providences of God over our life; of the opportunities which have been so countless

23 St. Matt. xxv. 42, 43.

and so fertile, surpassing even our recognition; and of all the loving visitations of God, whereby He would have brought us to Himself.

Kemember the words you have said this morning, and before you lie down will say again tonight. Kemember the obedience of Jesus, when on your knees you say the prayer which He has taught us: ' Thy kingdom come' — let Thy sovereignty reign over my will. 'Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,' — let Thy most holy, most sweet, most perfect will be done in me, and by me, and about me, in all things, and always, now and for ever.

Footnotes

1. Behold, I come: in the head of the book it is written of Me, that I should do Thy will, 0 God! Hebrews x. 7. ↩