Sermon VIII. The Divine Commonwealth

At the Pro-Cathedral, Kensington, Kosary Sunday, 1871.

I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and know not what to eat; and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. MATT. xv. 32.

It is always with reluctance that I turn to any other matter than those divine and interior truths, which are necessary to our salvation; but the times in which we live, and the errors that are rife, together, with the ever-growing audacity of those who contradict the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and lift up their heel against the divine authority of His Church, compel us to lay aside the simple work of evangelists, and to bear witness for the truth on the great laws and facts which affect the course and conduct of this world.

Kosary Sunday, the great festival of our Blessed Immaculate Mother, which we celebrate to-day, the commemoration of great victories which her Divine Son has accomplished, through her intercession, for His Church, reminds us, every year, of the deadly warfare of the world against the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It has also fallen out of late, year after year, that this time and this festival have been marked by some great event in the hostility of Italy against the Holy See; and as each year came round it has fallen to my lot to speak to you upon those events. To-day it will be impossible to be silent.

Those who have watched the course of revolution in the last twenty years have not been surprised and have not been discouraged to see that the adversaries of the Holy See have become more and more audacious, and to the eyes of the world more and more triumphant. We well knew, that false principles, once put in motion, would inevitably pursue their whole career and complete their circle. As the storms at sea, which, we are told, revolve upon an axis, and do not disperse until they have completed their revolution, so is it with the risings of men against the Church of God. Therefore it is, that the event of the 20th of September in last year, which accomplished and filled up the whole measure of the antichristian revolution of Italy, was to us no surprise, and is no cause of alarm. We look upon it as nothing more than the last act of an insolent usurpation against the Church of God.

Now it is because every day you are assailed by the voices of men, who rejoice over what they believe to be the downfall of the temporal and spiritual power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, it is because every day your ears are filled with exultings of this kind, and because you may be in some degree not shaken, but saddened, and perhaps amazed and out of heart at the apparent failure of all you revere as sacred, that it is our duty to encourage you by bidding you not to fear, and to point out how what has now befallen Rome is only one more in the series of unrelenting storms against the Holy See, which will pass as all have passed before.

Rosary Sunday is, as you remember, the feast on which we commemorate the great battle of Lepanto. The Mahometan power, then threatening to encompass Christendom, was suddenly struck down, and so entirely scattered that from that day to this it has ceased to be a cause of fear. It so falls out that this year 1871 is the third centenary of that great victory; for it was in 1571, in the pontificate of Pius V., that this great victory was won.

But there is, as I have said before, at this day another antichristian power which has arisen, and one more formidable to us for many reasons.

The Mahometan Antichrist was external to Christendom, and the Christian nations of the world were united; but there is now an Antichrist which is within the circuit of the Christian world; 'and unhappily the Christian nations of the world are so miserably torn asunder, that they cannot unite for common action. It has been well said, that, so great was once the power of that Mahometan Antichrist, that all the chivalry of the Christian world united could not overthrow it; and now it is so feeble, that any one Christian power might overthrow it if the jealousy of the other Christian nations did not intervene. What, then, is, that new Antichrist which has risen in this day? It is the Antichrist of apostate Christians — the Antichrist of an ti- social revolution-— the Antichrist of men without God. The next conflict will be between God and society on the one hand, and atheism and anarchy on the other. The Antichrist of this hour is the Antichrist of infidelity, and the Antichrist of disorder.

Now I have taken those words of our divine Lord to guide me in what I shall say, because they are not political. But these divine words contain the very life and spirit of all true Christian politics: ' I have compassion on the multitude.' The divine King thought for the multitude of His people. His compassion was not upon classes or distinctions of men, but upon the whole multitude. It was for mankind that He became incarnate, and with mankind He was closely bound in the most tender and loving human sympathy. He had compassion upon their faintness and thirst and hunger. They had been with Him three days, and had nothing to eat. He-would not send them away fasting, lest they should faint by the way. He wrought a divine miracle, that they might be filled.

Here, then, we have the true example of a Christian king; we have the true laws that ought to govern Christian nations — charity, compassion, sympathy, fellow-feeling, and along with these, equity, justice, and mercy. I have lately endeavoured, according to my power, to explain to you the foundations of the Christian world, and the distinction of the two societies which God has founded. I shall therefore assume that those principles are present in your mind. I will now add only one farther point: God, who is the Author of the civil or political society of the world, has given to it no fixed constitution of any sort. It may be an empire, a monarchy, a republic, a democracy, — it may be what you will, if only it is founded upon His natural law. But to the supernatural society of the world — that is, to His Church — He has given a constitution so precise, so definite, so inflexible, that no man without sin can depart one jot or tittle from it. He has enthroned His Vicar upon earth, invested with the plenitude of His communicable authority; and under him He has instituted the Episcopate to watch over and to govern His whole flock on earth. This His constitution is so precise and inflexible, that no man can depart from it without ceasing to be a Catholic Christian.

Therefore the Church of God, in its dealings with the civil state of this world, can unite itself in amity and peace with any form of government whatsoever. The Holy See recognises, at once and freely, in all parts of the world, any true and legitimate government, of whatsoever form or constitution it may be. Once for all, then, cast out of your mind the idea that the Church is committed or entangled with any form of political government or constitution on the face of the earth. If I were now to enter farther upon such a question as this, the matter would become political, and I should break my word. I will therefore set it aside, and treat chiefly of religion, industry, education, and morals; that is to say, of those social elements without which states cannot exist. In order to make this matter clear, we will take three pictures. The one shall be the Jewish commonwealth, the second shall be the Christian commonwealth, and the third shall be the commonwealth without Christianity.

I. In the Jewish commonwealth the constitution of Israel was given by God Himself. This is the singular and only instance in the history of the world in which the Divine will directly gave what may be called a form of political government. God called one man to be the lawgiver of that people. To Moses He joined a council, who should assist him in the government of the tribes. He guided him by His inspiration in the framing of laws. He instituted tribunals of justice. Let us now see what were the statutes of this divine commonwealth.

The first law of Israel was: ' Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.' The first law of the Jewish commonwealth was piety towards God. Impiety was a capital crime, and the offender was stoned with stones. Next, crimes committed against the people, or against the rulers of the people, were punished not only as offences against society, but as sins against God. Not only the danger, but the sinfulness of crime was the motive of punishment. Bear these two principles 'in mind, and we shall see hereafter how the civil order of the world has apostatised from God.

Next, in matters of justice, the legislation of God was minute, equitable, and merciful. It was ordained that any man who found a rohber breaking into his house in the darkness of night might kill him in self-defence; but if the robber entered after sunrise, no man could take his life without committing homicide: so fine were the distinctions of justice. Again, any man guilty of man -stealing, that is, who by violence reduced another to slavery, was capitally punished. Once more, the sin of adultery, which Christian nations do not punish as a crime against God, was punished capitally. Again, a son who cursed his father or mother was to be put to death. The laws of domestic morals were thus protected by Divine sanctions and punishments of the last severity. Then as to property: every fiftieth year all the land in Israel which by sale had exchanged owners returned to the original possessor. No land could be alienated from any man, family, or tribe, except for the period of fifty years, whereby the state of permanent poverty became almost impossible. Once more: usury, or the exacting interest for money which the possessor did not need for his own uses, thereby taking advantage of the poverty of those who needed help, was rigorously forbidden: and farther, if any man should ask a loan of a neighbour, the lender was forbidden to take as pledge of repayment the stones with which the borrower ground his corn, or the raiment with which he covered himself from the cold; or if the garment were taken during the hours of the day, the law required that it should be restored by sunset, that the.poor man might sleep in his own raiment. More than this: in every seventh or sabbatical year all debts were cancelled; every debtor went free; and there was an express prohibition lest any rich man, when a poor man asked of him a loan of money, should say to himself, ' I will not lend, for the seventh year is near at hand;' that is, they were forbidden to consider the nearness of the year of restitution, so as to shut up their hand from their poorer brethren in need. Kunning through the whole law of Israel there is this tender and Divine compassion for the poor.

It was expressly forbidden for any man in reaping his harvest to reap it down to the ground, in order that much might be left for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; and if, in carrying the harvest, a sheaf was left in the field, he was forbidden to go back and take it away, because it had become the right of the poor. In gathering the grapes of the vineyard, or the olives in the oliveyard, the Israelites were forbidden to go twice over the vines or the olive-trees. What they gathered in the first gathering was their own, but what they passed by oversight remained for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. I may also remind you of the commandment, — * Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn on the floor.' God had mercy on the dumb beast that laboured for man.

Such was the constitution God gave when He legislated for His people in the political order. The instances I have given will warrant this conclusion, that the whole Jewish commonwealth was pervaded by the presence and will of God; its whole administration was carried out, as it were, in the sight of God; the spirit of mercy, justice, and compassion animated it throughout. This, then, was the commonwealth which God gave as a pattern in the Mount. He gave it as the example of what legislatures, kings, and rulers should do for the government of their people.

II. The Christian commonwealth is our next picture.

In the second chapter of the Book of Acts we read that the disciples had all things in common, that the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and that no man said anything which he possessed was his own; that those who had possessions and lands sold them, and brought the price and laid it at the Apostles' feet, distribution being made to all who had need.

Here we see the first foundations of the Christian commonwealth: all were brethren, and lived in common. Upon this, some who wrest, or do not know, the Word of God, have founded the monstrous error, that there ought to be no such thing as property among Christian men; that all things are to be thrown into a common stock, and all private rights extinguished. The very words of the Book of Acts prove the contrary. We read, in the case of Ananias and Saphira, that the Apostle said: ' Whilst it remained, did it not remain to thee? And after it was sold, was it not in thy power?'2 Ananias held the property, and his right to that property was recognised. The Gospel never extinguishes any rights of man; it tempers, sanctifies, and protects them. It extinguishes none that are legitimate; and nothing which is illegitimate can be a right.

Next, we read in the Epistle to Philemon, the rich Christian of Colosse known to St. Paul, that the Apostle had found in Rome a runaway slave of the name of Onesimus. The Apostle converted him to the Christian faith: and instead of enfranchising or emancipating the slave, as, according to the Divine law, he justly might, he sent him back to his master, and 2 Acts v. 4.

expressly told Philemon that he would not emancipate the slave because he desired the master to do it; that he wished it to be done, not so as by necessity, but by his free will; and that he sent him back not only as a servant, but more than a servant — as a brother in the Lord. Here we have the most positive proof that no right whatsoever was extinguished by any violent action of authority; but by the spirit of mercy and compassion infused into the whole political and social order of the world, men freely and unostentatiously did that which they knew to be prescribed by the perfect law of God.

We read also, in the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, that Christians were commanded to lay by their contributions, of their own free will, on the first day of the week, according to the measure in which God had prospered them. Therefore it is evident they possessed their own, and gave of their own. The very injunction to give alms, which runs through the whole Gospel, proves the existence of property. For how can alms be given by those who do not possess? I say this in passing, that you may have an answer to guard you against the errors you will no doubt read and hear.

There was then a community and brotherhood among Christians. Christians did not account what they possessed to be their own for their own exclusive enjoyment. What they possessed they held from God as a stewardship of His bounty, to be distributed to those who had need, and to be shared in common with their brethren.

Nay, so marked is this, that a separate and sacred order, which exists in the Church of God to this day — the order of Deacons — was instituted specially for the care of the poor. In the Book of Acts it is expressly recorded that the seven deacons were ordained to distribute to the widows and others in need. The sacred order which assists in the holy Mysteries of the Altar took its rise from the law of charitj^ Such is the Christian commonwealth, or the Church; and the spirit of charity was infused by its presence, into the civil and political order of nations.

When what we call the world became Christian, it began to learn this spirit of mercy and compassion. The powers and rulers, who before were despotic, at once were limited by the divine law of justice and compassion. Next, the obedience of subjects was no longer constrained and forced, but glad and willing. Thirdly, rich men could no longer be exclusive, selfish, and luxurious, unless they violated conscience. Their riches were regarded as a trust. Once more, the state of poverty was sanctified and ennobled by the example of our divine Master, the first and greatest of the poor; poverty became a sacred state in life. Lastly, an equality was introduced among men. The distinctions of classes and the inequalities of the social order were mitigated by the spirit of compassion, which equalised all men, but did not level any lawful inequalities. It cast nothing down; it lifted the poorest to an equality with the rich, because they were created by the same Maker, redeemed by the same Saviour, sanctified by the same Holy Spirit, regenerated in the same Baptism, fed by the same Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at the altar. In the sight of God they were equal. They were to appear before the same Judge, to be tried by the same law, to be buried side by side in the same dust, which makes no distinction between crown and sceptre or spade and scythe. The great leveller is not man, but God. Grace and death are His weapons, that level all men; and the spirit of charity is that which equalises all classes upon earth, and binds them together in mutual compassion, kindness, and service. Such, then, is the Christian commonwealth. And where, dear brethren, does now it exist?

I will simply say, what I believe from my heart, and from the evidence of my own eyes: what therefore from my own experience I can affirm, that there does not, or rather did not, exist upon the face of the whole Christian world any civil government which in its principles, its laws, its spirit, its administration, was so closely conformed to the divine law given of old, and to the Christian law given by our divine Master, as the government of the Vicar of Jesus Christ over the city of Rome. I do not speak from, hearsay; for six or seven years, from time to time, I lived in that city. I know it intimately. I know its people: I have lived among them, freely conversed with them — with men of every grade; both high and low; and I declare that I know of no government so just, so merciful, so benign, so compassionate; I know of no people so equal in their rights; no society in which the yawning chasms which divide class from class in all other people are so filled up by mutual sympathy; I know no race whatever that seemed to me to possess a commonwealth embodying principles of brotherhood, equality, and liberty so perfectly as the citizens of Rome. Nevertheless, it is against that city, government, and ruler that the antichristian revolution of the world has gathered and hurled all its assault; it is such a ruler and such a government that the princes and kings and ministers of the Christian nations of Europe have forsaken.

They have stood gazing — whether in fear or in secret treason it is not for me to say — betraying one and all the duties which they owe to the Head of the Christian world. You may ask me why it is that all governments have turned their faces from the government of the Sovereign Pontiff. I have no difficulty in finding a reason. It is the most explicit, the most luminous manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth. Kome is the seat of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and therefore the throne of His Master among men; it is the city of the Incarnation, the city of the Blessed Sacrament, the city of our Blessed and Immaculate Mother; it is the Jerusalem of the new law; and therefore I am not surprised that an antichristian, anti- social revolution, gathering its numbers everywhere, an international conspiracy against God and His Christ, His Vicar and His King upon earth, should concentrate itself upon that one city and upon that one person. As I said in the beginning, the false principles set in motion twenty years ago have now simply completed their circle in the outrageous and sacrilegious usurpation of Kome, which belongs to God and Christendom, and not to men nor to Italy.

III. There remains now one more picture to draw, and that is the commonwealth without Christianity.

I have so fully, and I am afraid to your patience so tediously, in times past explained what the society of the world without God is, and whence it comes, that I will not repeat it to-day. I will simply remind you of one fact. For three hundred years all the governments and all the Christian nations of Europe have been withdrawing themselves, one by one, from the unity and authority of the Catholic Church. I say the governments; I do not say the people. I believe the people of Christendom are faithful, and that when thrones and governments are swept away, the people of Christendom will reconstitute the Christian commonwealth. The Christian world is not yet dissolved; thrones and sceptres are shattering every day; governments are being swept into the abyss they have opened for themselves; but the Christian peoples of the world still remain, and there is One Who looks upon them and says, ' I have compassion upon the multitude.' They will be gathered again round about His feet. But the action of the civil authorities and rulers and governments of the world, for three hundred years, has been faithless and apostate. The Pagan world was not Christian, indeed, but it was not apostate. The world once Christian has become antichristian. And the last state is worse than the first. We see a strange paradox — the civil powers become more absolute, and less able to govern. The State is deified. We have once more the Dea Roma and the Lex Regia of ancient Rome; but the very first principles of obedience, legality, and loyalty are dying out; Governments are compelled, in self-defence, to use a rigour and severity which the Christian law would condemn and restrain. We see the multitude of people turbulent and excited by insubordination and conspiracy against civil authority. We see a wide-spread hatred against every shadow of the sacred laws of faith. Obedience is no longer for conscience' sake, but for fear. Men conspire in secret against all authority that is over them. Riches become every day greater in the hands of those who possess them; poverty, festering in its wounds, day by day, grows more miserable. Rich men claim to be the lords and masters of that which they possess, so that they may, without limit or restraint, do, as they say, what they will with their own. We see lands cleared, homes pulled down, homesteads broken up, the rooftrees burned in the fire under which, from generation to generation, the poor, with all the sanctities and charities of home, have dwelt in peace from father to son. All this is done because the will of wealth is supreme. We see labour and capital warring against each other. Money makes law for labour, which to labour becomes intolerable. We talk about the ' labour market,' as if men were to be bought like cattle or like slaves. We see, on the other side, labour maddened, rising violently, or conspiring in the dark to overthrow the just and legal rights of property.

There are, no doubt, corruption and injustice on both sides. But men are not cattle to be sold in the market, nor chattels to be worn-out in the using. There is a limit to the strength of men and to the hours of honest labour. The men who toil from twilight to twilight have no time to fulfil the duties of fathers to their homes. The poor-law, which ought to lighten poverty, pauperises those whom it relieves. And yet, if there were not a poor-law in our country, God only knows what would have become of the people. He who has compassion on the multitudes because they have nothing to eat, has, in His providence, fed them in the midst of us. A poor-law is a duty of every Christian people, and woe to the people that ever abolishes it. Every man has a right to labour or to food, and no commonwealth can shut up its hand from those who are in need. We have indeed a poor-law; but what do we see in the administration of it? I bring no accusations against any man, but I say the administration of that merciful law is in the hands of those who are, above all men, interested to diminish to the utmost the amount given to the poor. Its administration has broken down in two ways. It lays heavy burdens on those who have to pay, and it does not adequately relieve those who are in need. And how do we regard the state of poverty? Is it sacred, ennobled, honoured amongst us? Are the poor regarded as the brethren of Jesus Christ? Are they treated as if they were the representatives of our divine Master? Time and my own will forbid me to draw out a picture of our workhouse charity and our official relief of paupers.

Let us turn next to our present social state. Look at the condition of morals. If I were to enumerate the mere heads of the moral corruption of our times, I know it would be boldly denied. Nevertheless these things are written in the book of God's remembrance, and with your eyes you see%and know them. Where in our commonwealth is the unity of Christian brethren? The rich and poor parted widely asunder, the classes of society yawn and separate like the timbers of a sinking ship. The sympathies between Christian men are broken up; each class lives for itself, and fortifies itself in self-defence against all others. Such is the condition to which the commonwealth must inevitably tend when it has ceased to ohey the law of God. You know well there is hardly left in the whole of Christian Europe a government which has not declared the state as such to have no religion. The state as such, therefore, is not Christian. The people are Christian as individuals, hut the state is Christian no longer. We in England have not indeed yet reached such a candid declaration as this, but we are tending to it; and unless men who have their hand on the helm of power are governed by the fear of God rather than by the fear of man, or by the desire of popularity, or by the craving for power, to this we shall come at last, and who knows how soon? And now, if I go on farther, I shall be forced to speak upon what I declared I would not touch; I shall therefore only deal with one other point.

Some months ago, when speaking to you in this place, I made a mistake. I said that Liberalism, as it is called, is first-cousin of the Commune. I was in error, but only in the degree of consanguinity; for Liberalism is the elder brother of the Commune. Liberalism, which rejects, in the order of politics, the authority of the Church, the unity of worship, the unity of religion, and religious education, is the

P elder brother of the atheistic Commune, which was manifested the other day in Paris. God grant it may never root itself elsewhere. I say then that Liberalism is the elder brother of the Commune for this reason: Liberalism consists in casting off the public religion of the state, and Communism consists in casting off the public government of the state. They who begin by casting off Christianity set the example of casting off government; because they who cast off Christianity, in casting off the Church cast off the supernatural society which God has founded; and they who cast off government complete the revolt by casting off the civil society of the world, which God has ordained in the order of nature. Therefore it is that the Communist is more logical, consistent, and complete in his arguments than the man who calls himself a Liberal Catholic. Those who are out of the unity of the faith and of the unity of the Church have no principles that are definite and fixed; but, as I said in the beginning, God has given to His Church a constitution so inflexibly precise, that no man can depart from it. But it is this that the Liberal Catholic does. To show you why I call the Commune atheistic, I will read to you a few words copied out of a declaration made by the chief secretary of that anomalous government some months ago. It completely sums up what I have said: and will suffice to convince you, that in what I have said I have drawn nothing from my imagination, nor made any departure from the truth.

At an assembly of the Commune in Paris, the secretary expressed himself, in the midst of tumultuous applause, in these words:

' We must conquer or die. To that end we must boldly deny God, family, and country. We must withdraw our children from the stupefying influences of priests, of kings, and of nationality. To deny God is to proclaim man the sole and veritable ruler of his own destinies; it is to slay the priest, and abolish. religion. In the denial of Divinity man only asserts his own strength and independence. As to the family, we reject it with our utmost might in the name of the emancipation of the human race. To the idea of the family it is that we owe the enslavement of woman and the ignorance of children. The child belongs not to his parents, but to the state; it is for the state to instruct him, to rear him, to make him a citizen. To deny family is to confirm the independence of man even from his cradle, to snatch woman from the thraldom in which she has been cast by the priest and by a putrid civilisation.'1

1 Paris Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.

We see then to what the throwing off of Christianity hrings the civil order of man. It abolishes government; it abolishes family; it abolishes home; it casts the child upon the public alms of society. Shall the children of Christendom be workhouse boys, reared as cattle by the state? To this then we come. And what is the emancipation of woman? A degradation, a demoralisation, an abandonment of the law of Christ; a relapse into the state in which woman was of old in the heathen world — the tool, the sport, the prey 'of man. Such is the tendency of civilisation without Christianity. And where the equality and liberty and brotherhood of such a state may be, you will easily conclude.

The antichristian, anti- social power, which is conspiring in the dark everywhere, which is reaching its arms over all frontiers and all seas, binding itself together into one with a world-wide organisation, with an unity of will, and a vast concentration of power, as sure as the sun will rise to-morrow, will gain in strength until it comes into ultimate conflict with the Kingdom of God on earth. I said in the beginning, that in Rome the Vicar of Jesus Christ is hemmed in by an antichristian revolution. There is at this time a dead -lock in the state of Rome. Men and governments are looking on in wonder to know who shall make the first move. That lock has three keys. The first key that would unlock it would be an European war; the second, the rising of antichristian revolution which should overthrow the monarchy of Italy; the third, both war and revolution together. This last seems to be the most likely, indeed the almost certain, destiny of the future.

I have said these things upon Rosary Sunday, because it is our usual day of intercession for the Vicar of our Lord. I have called on all the faithful of this diocese, through the clergy, to make to-day once more a day of special prayer. We are not, however, only to pray; but we must learn to act. I call on you, therefore, one and all, to study and to practise the compassion of Christian brotherhood one with another, and above all with the poor. Secondly; to strengthen and uphold the authority of home, and to sanctify your families. Lastly, to educate your children, and to promote by all the power you have the Christian education of the children of the poor. Here is the root of the whole question of the day. The root of society is in the child; the education of the child is the first obligation of the law of God on men. Satan knows well, that if he can separate religion from instruction, he has cut through the roots of the Christian civilisation of the world. For that reason, all the art, all the wiles, all the frauds, all the false politics of this day, are directed to what is called secular education, national education, imperial education — anything you like, only not Christian education.

Be firm, then, and inflexible; not only in your own homes and for your children, but use all the power you have by word and deed to hinder and to render impossible the de - christianising of the education of our country. The education of these kingdoms is traditionally Christian still; and if you are faithful, and stand firm, it will never lose its religious character. But we are now at a crisis, in which the tide seems to hang wavering between ebb and flow. Remember that the children of today are the prophecy of the future. A generation of men brought up without Christianity, and England will be under an antichristian commonwealth. As the harvest springs from the seeds, and every seed bears its own fruit, so education without Christianity can have no other harvest. The Jews had two proverbs: the one, that the state is upheld by the breath of the school-children, that is, by the prayers and obedience of its youth; that the state is solid where the children of a people are educated in the fear and love of God. Again, they used to say that even the building of the Temple must be stayed, that the children may be educated; that is, money is squandered, wasted, cast away, while children are uneducated, even though applied to the building of the material House of God.

I have tried to draw out before you a mere outline of three pictures, and in one word the result from them is this: Without God there is no society; without society there is no commonwealth. There may be a crowd of men told by the head; but the united and organised life of man — the social order of mankind — is impossible without the love, fear, and law of God. Where these things are not, there is anarchy, disorder, confusion, the deliberate suicide of government and of nations.

The Vicar of Jesus Christ is at this moment in the hands of an antichristian rebellion, and the world is full of joy, believing that it has gained the victory at last. You perhaps are cast down and sad, because of the insults and outrages heaped upon him. Sad we may be; but cast down never. The Vicar of Jesus Christ' has sat for eighteen hundred years upon that throne, and he has seen a Roman empire pass away; he has seen the empire of Constantinople disappear; he has seen a Frankish empire melt and cease to be; I know not how many empires — Saxon, Suabian, Bavarian — descend from Germany and pass over the earth as shadows. He has seen two French empires; and where are they? He has seen United Italics go to dust like the bodies of the dead. He has seen before now at least a score of kings of Rome. He has seen also two-and-twenty anti-popes — for I took the trouble to count them. He has seen a multitude of sacrileges; and now he sees one more. That, which Peter sitting calmly in his boat has seen these eighteen hundred years, he sees at this hour — gusts, storms, tempests, currents, whirlwinds, waterspouts; the rising of the great deep of men's iniquity. Round about him kingdoms and empires are foundering and going to pieces; races and people are scattered as the foam before the wind. There he sits unmoved, and there he will sit even to the end. Be not afraid, then; for, walking upon that same great deep is the Son of God, holding Peter's hand. And Peter is safe, not only because he is upheld, but because Peter no more can doubt. His faith cannot fail; and his successor is infallible. Though the night be dark in the heaven above, the Star of the Sea is bright, and the lights of the firmament are a multitude which no man can number, and the Father of Lights is in the midst of them, and His watch and power are over His Church.

The words of Jesus, then, are not spoken now to Peter, nor to his successor, but to you: ' 0 thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?'2

2 St. Matthew xiv. 31.

IX. THE TKIUMPH OF THE CHUECH:

St. Mary's Church, Liverpool, Sunday September 22, 1872.

THE TKIUMPH OF THE CHUKCH,

We give thanks unto God, who maketh us always to triumph in Christ Jesus, and manifesteth the odour of the knowledge of Him by us in every place. For we are a good odour of Christ unto God both in them that are saved and in them that perish; in the one indeed an odour of life unto life, in the other an odour of death unto death. 2 COB. ii. 14-16.

Such was the confidence of the Apostle in the face of all that was most hostile, mighty and triumphant in the judgment of this world. He was confident that through God his mission in the world was being accomplished, that the word of God was triumphing over all the power of men. They may well have said to him, ' What is this triumph you speak of? If this be triumph, what is defeat? You were stoned the other day at Lystra; you were imprisoned at Philippi; you were scourged at Jerusalem; you were saved out of the hands of the people only by Roman soldiers; you were confounded by the philosophers at Athens; and you were refuted out of the Holy Scriptures by the Jews of Berea. If this is triumph,