immortality, after a godly life here live with God hereafter, the tears wiped from our faces, the scars of sin and sorrow healed in our souls, not a little lower, but higher, than the angels, crowned with a glory and honour which can never fade or be dimmed again, and with Death itself, the last of all our enemies, vanquished and crushed beneath our feet.

VII.

RIGHTEOUSNESS THE STRENGTH OF NATIONS.

(Preached before the National Rifle Association, in the Volunteer Camp at Wimbledon, July 15, 1866.)

1 Cor. xvi. 13.-"Quit you like men, be strong."

SURELY the time at which we are assembled gives to this noble exhortation an unwonted emphasis. Meeting as we do at a moment when the battle-fields of Europe are still encumbered with their unburied slain,—meeting at the close of a few days during which the great boundaries of Europe have been altered, perhaps for ever,fresh from the spectacle of a brave and military nation, with an army the best disciplined in Europe, yet forced after one day of raging battle to succumb in hopeless ruin to a surer weapon, -while the messages of battle are being daily flashed to our quiet homes, and the destiny of empires is being weighed in the balances of war, -surely I say at such a time, when our eyes are

open to the possibilities of the future, and our blood stirred by the tidings of 400,000 gallant men wrestling in a gigantic struggle, the command must come with a more thrilling emphasis, Quit you like men, be strong. The camp, indeed, in which we are gathered is a peaceful camp, nor is the heather we tread on wet with blood; but over two other and vaster camps. on this very summer-day may be hanging the smoke of battle, and in other ears on this quiet Sabbath may be thundering the roar of artillery and the shock of strife. With what widely different thoughts and feelings, if they be gathered for worship, must the worshippers be actuated in those other camps, the one intoxicated with the triumph of victory, the other prostrate in humiliation and despair. But for us, thank God, there is neither the dangerous flush of victory, nor the burning anguish of shame. Never for centuries has our national existence been imperilled; never for centuries has our flag been trampled, or an enemy set hostile foot on our inviolate shore. And to-day, though our gathering bear the aspect of war, it is a gathering subservient to the purest interests of peace, and our thoughts are not of defiance but of defence; our purpose not a purpose of aggression or of

aggrandisement, but the calm and fearless attitude of the strong man armed.

Yet the tidings of the last few days force us to a serious and sober estimate of our actual position. Happily we have no cause to blush for the memories thus evoked. We call to mind how, six years ago, there was some dim menace, some uncertain whisper of danger or of invasion. Founded or unfounded, that mere whisper of peril, that intangible rumour of attack, was enough; at once the slumbering embers of a patriotism, which seemed only to be buried under the ashes of self-interest, burst into a flame, and, with an ardour which some nicknamed a panic, the passionate manhood of England sprang to its feet. The foolish ridiculed it as a mania, the frivolous sneered at it as an illusion; but wise statesmen approved, and greyhaired veterans generously welcomed it; and if it were a panic it was a panic, not turbulent, transitory, and irregular, but disciplined with the soberest precision and developed into the solidest results. And as the yew-tree used in old days to be planted in the very shadow of the churches, so that our ancestors might at any moment cut their national weapon from ground hallowed by God's worship and their fathers' graves, so now

that National Church, for whom, weakened though she be by factions, and though her voice have lost something of the noble and the ringing tone which it had of yore, yet for whom we have not lost as a nation our honour and our love, came forward to cheer the movement with her encouragement,-to lend to it the sanction of her most solemn services, and to bless it with her uplifted hand.

That was six years ago, when many said with a sneer that the mania would be evanescent, yet we are here to-day, and trust to be here for many years. Sirs, had it been evanescent it would have been contemptible. But it sprang from causes holier and deeper than a fugitive alarm. We did not wish to bequeath to our children a tarnished name, an abnegated mission, a glory obscured or shorn away. We knew that a great nation, if she cannot (which is best) be loved, must at least be honoured and feared. The effort was made, and at once the waning star of England shone with new lustre among the nations. Our volunteers, if they did not save us from aggression, yet, without controversy, won us respect. They were a witness against the base old scandal that we are a nation who care only for the counter and the till; they were