sons.

They show that the God who is beyond all power of thought above us, if we look to His omnipresence or His eternity, has yet a something in common with that which He has put within us. God has given us the power to love. We can love one anotherand so, though we cannot apprehend the mystery of the Trinity, we can yet, after our feeble measure, apprehend the Persons of the Godhead loving one another; and so lovehuman love-the love within us, even though it be feeble and transitory, is a help to us to apprehend a Trinity in which is the Father loving the Son, and this Father and this Son loving the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost the Father and the Son.

And in another way are our hearts drawn, as it were, to the doctrine of the Trinity, and prepared for its devout reception.

There is nothing that draws one heart to another so much as the sight of self-sacrifice.

Now, if we hold aright the Catholic Faith respecting the Trinity, we see self-sacrifice, we see the giving up of self in the very Godhead, for we see God the Father parting with His Son, and we see God the Son giving Himself up to suffer-not doing His own will, but the will of His Father-not seeking His own glory, but the glory of Him that sent Him. And the Holy Ghost glorifies the Son. He speaks not of Himself, but of the Son, to whom He bears witness.

When we see humility and self-surrender in another, we are sensibly drawn to him in whom we see it and so we are drawn in heart to the Son of God, who glorifies, not Himself, but His Father; and to the Holy Ghost, whose one work it is to witness, not to Himself, but to the Son.

And this is Scripture teaching. It is by secing the love that there is in the Godhead, and the honouring of One Another that there is in the Godhead, that we learn most effectually that there are three co-equal and co-eternal Persons in the Godhead.

My brethren, if these things are so, then what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness—we, that is, who have been baptized into the name of this Father, this Son, this Holy Ghost-we, who have so often joined in prayer that "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost," may be with us all? How ought we to see that this high and blessed truth has not been revealed to us in vain? It has not been revealed to us in vain, if, "through Christ, we have access by one Spirit unto the Father." It has not been revealed to us in vain if we "pray in the Holy Ghost, and keep ourselves in the love of God, and look for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

379

SERMON XXVI.

MIRACLES.

ST. JOHN X. 25.

“The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me."

IN these words our Lord Jesus Christ told the Jews, that the miracles which He was continually working before their eyes showed plainly that He came to them with a message from God.

There are men now, who call themselves Christians, who are saying that a miracle under any circumstances is incredible—that it is contrary to that reason which God has implanted in us as our guide in all matters both of religion and everyday life, to believe that God ever interferes with those laws of nature which He has established. But these men, as I said, are professing Christians. You will ask, then, on what grounds do they believe in Christ at all? They say, in answer, that we are to believe in Christ's words, or in certain of His words, not because He did wonderful things to prove that His words are true, as He says expressly in my text, but

because we have a sort of moral sense and verifying faculty within us to which His words appeal, and to which they commend themselves. So that, in the end, it comes to this, that we are ourselves, each one for himself or herself, the judges of what we are to accept as the words of Christ and of how far we are to accept them.

If certain words in the Bible seem to affect us for the better, or appear to be calculated to do so, they are the words of God to us. If they are not verified by that which is within us, (whatever it is,) to which they are supposed to appeal, or if they appear contrary to our educated judgment or conscience, then we are at liberty-nay, a sacred necessity requires us -to explain them away.

Now, instead of all this, Christ Himself plainly declared that His words were to be believed, not merely because they commended themselves to men's consciences, but because they were sealed by His miracles. And if you think for a moment, you will admit that it must be so, for it is quite plain that though some of our Lord's discourses and sayings at once come home to the conscience, and commend themselves to that sense of right and wrong that God has implanted in us, others do not do not at once, I mean.

Let me explain what I mean by two examples.

When our Lord says, "Whatsoever ye

would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them," He says a thing that needs no miracle to enforce its reception. The more we think of such a precept, the more we see how admirably it meets every complication of life-how, if it was but steadily adhered to, almost all the evils of society would disappear or be greatly alleviated.

But it is vastly different with such a saying as "I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die;" or that other saying, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you."

To say "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them," requires no credentials; but for the same Man to rise up and say that "all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth," requires that He should show that He has authority from the Maker of all things to say such a thing, for the Maker of all men alone can remake them after their bodies are dissolved.

Well, we look into Christ's discourses and we find that they are full of things that no man can possibly call upon his fellow-men to believe unless he have the most sufficient credentials to confirm his words. Christ by no