SERMON XX.

THE HONOUR OF THE HOLY APOSTLES.

(Preached at St Mary's, on St Andrew's Day, November 30, 1844).

LUKE XXII. 28, 29, 30.

Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

IN this sentence our Lord describes the highest honours of that kingdom, which in the verses preceding he had distinguished from all others founded by man. Unlike the four universal empires that had gone before it, which the king of Babylon saw in vision, and the prophet Daniel expounded to him, this kingdom, made without hands, should last for ever: more durable than gold and silver and brass and iron, itself should never be destroyed,—while all others should fall, and be broken to pieces before it. And in its path of advancement and glory, this kingdom of God should be as distinguished from all human predecessors, as in its materials and its perpetuity. Its eternal Sovereign and Founder has here said, that whereas the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they who in the third brazen empire and

others, assumed the name of Evergetæ, or Benefactors, were those who held in their hands the strongest implements of material force and coercion, not so was it to be in the kingdom He was to establish. The nobles and princes and judges of that kingdom were to be formed on the type and model of Him, who, being in the form of God, took on Him the form of a servant,-who came on earth among his own creatures, not to be ministered to, but to minister, who was among his own followers as one that served,—and ended by offering his life on a cross of ignominy for the ransom of all. Even so were the disciples, who were not greater than their Lord, to attain the highest posts under Him: the chiefest among them was not he who most ambitiously courted pre-eminence, but he who most humbly and perseveringly served the necessities of his brethren. Those twelve especially, who had thus followed Him, who had continued with Him in his trials, are they for whom a kingdom is appointed by the Son of God, even as for the Incarnate Son himself by the Father. To these is it given to eat and drink in his kingdom at that table, of which on earth they had dispensed the blessings in due portions to mankind; to sit on thrones of judgment and authority over the twelve tribes of God's chosen Israel.

The Church of Christ-that great visible society, the city set on a hill that all may behold, the appointed representative of that kingdom which will last for ever in the highest heaven,—has shewn in this and other solemnities, continued from age to

age, how she has ever treasured up and regarded these words of her Eternal Lord. Her great and all-containing object of contemplation is indeed He whose course from this season of Advent till Pentecost she traces ever year by year; first viewing Him in the dawning of his ancient manifestation, containing the germs both of redemption and judgment, and placing his first and second coming thus as it were in conjunction; then celebrating his lowly Nativity and blessed Epiphany to the world; then following Him in his temptations and sufferings, to his atoning Death and burial; thence, in her Easter thanksgiving, beholding Him as her Saviour risen from the dead and alive for evermore, and from the right hand of the Father, whither He has ascended, dispensing the Holy Spirit in his manifold gifts to his household of faith for evermore. But while the Church thus contemplates her living Head in his unapproachable glory, she also assigns the place which He has assigned to his special servants and representatives. Where the Lord has thus displayed the emblems of his familiarity, together with the moral marks of faith and patience, through which it was attained, the Church recognizes these as marks of glory no less than of goodness: she venerates and hallows their memory accordingly. And in her worship, of which the object is but One, as our noble morning hymn expresses, the Thrice Holy Lord God of Sabaoth, whom the hosts of heaven adore,-while the Holy Church throughout all the world is introduced as paying the united homage of the king

dom with ourselves, the several high ranks of the kingdom are first enumerated: the glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, the white-robed army of Martyrs, are foremost in that adoring confession. And this they are described as performing, not barely in time past, as we do now, but even now with us; encompassing us as a cloud of witnesses in our daily walk and service, and swelling the chorus of our acknowledgement.

This is indeed a great truth of Christianity, of which each Saint's day especially reminds us. Almighty God, who has knit together his elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, has appointed, as a necessary consequence and proof of that unity, a sympathy of each one part with every other: if one member suffer, the whole suffer with it: the scandals that afflict, the schisms that rend one part, are felt, in proportion to the general vital soundness, as grievances and sharp wounds throughout: while, on the other hand, whatever of act or suffering bears in any part the impress of God's Holy Spirit, redounds by a mysterious process to the benefit of all the rest. If then this is the case with the Church militant here on earth,-where no member can say of any other, however different in vocation or talent, that he has no need of that other, is this band of sympathy broken with that happy portion which has passed the barrier now thinly dividing the seen from the unseen world? Must it not rather be exalted and perfected by

their transfer into a state where the sins and disorders that impeded the free exercise of that holy sympathy here are now washed away? Assuredly they feel more truly with the difficulties of those yet in the flesh, from their partaking more thoroughly of the mind of Christ, who in his glorified humanity is Himself not untouched with the same. Thus the spirits of the martyrs, whom St John saw in vision, cry from beneath the altar for the furtherance of the cause in which they died, and for which their brethren left behind still labour. And therefore the "spirits and souls of the righteous" are included in the general invocation we make to all things above and around us, to join us in praising and magnifying the one God in whom we all live. Such then as is the Church's language in both her morning canticles respecting the union of the departed with us in worship,-such is and ever must be her language and sentiment. It belonged to the obscurity of the old dispensation to say, "The dead praise not thee, O God, neither all they that go down into silence"; though this is immediately with implicit faith denied to be the case for ever with those who are the true Israel of God. But since Christ died and rose again, we talk not of our brethren in Christian language as dead, but as falling asleep and resting in Him: much less do we talk of his glorious saints and confessors as dead men and women, as some men now profanely and foolishly speak, when they think to speak religiously. For, as God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, and the souls of the ancient patriarchs