of faith, submission, docility, and also of self-will, impatience, pride, is complete. It is a remarkable fact, that an insubordinate temper in trifling and external matters seems to have been always the peculiar characteristic of those who have little faith in the holy Sacraments. The sacramentarian error appeared to prepare the way for contests about vestments and postures. And how should it be otherwise? for what can be more unmeaning, wearisome, and irritating, than a careful obedience to small precepts and appointments which are destitute of spiritual grace, empty, carnal, dead, legal, and the like? The smaller they are, to such minds the more provoking. But the fact of the provocation reveals the fact of the unbelief. It is the index of a scheme of doctrine, and of a theological school. The command to wash in Jordan detected the unbelief of Naaman. Though he had come all the way out of Syria, with much profession and circumstance, to the prophet in Israel, it is plain that he had little faith after all. The prophet proved him, as the Head of the Church through the visible order of it proves us now.

3. Another obvious remark is, how great are the consequences which flow from these little things.

At the baptism of our Lord He was proclaimed to be the Christ, by the word of the Baptist, by the voice of the Father, by the descent of the Holy Ghost. He at that time received without measure the anointing of the Eternal Spirit. Surely this is a type of the graces which descend on holy obedience. It is a silent pledge to us that the lowly, patient, submissive, docile heart shall be greatly sanctified. And so, indeed, we find it. Whatsoever may be said in praise of the earnestness, zeal, activity, and laboriousness, of those who resist the authority of the Church, there is a perceptible difference of spirit and cha

racter distinguishing them from those who live in submission to its rule. Whatever may be said of the active side of their character, it is certain that we look almost in vain for the gentleness, patience, softness, meekness, self-control, self-chastisement, the largeness and elevation of mind, the passive charity, which belong to the obedient. The whole theory of life and devotion is lower. I am speaking of good and sincere people, not of the turbulent and self-conceited; but of those who unhappily have been drawn into the same general school, and though they keenly see its faults, cannot bring themselves to forsake it. Good as they are, their standard is personal and earthly, drawn from their own inward views and feelings, or from the example or opinions of individuals of the same school. This is strikingly true of those who have been brought up in sects; and also of all such schools within the communion of the Church, as have by following particular minds, lost the tone and habit of the catholic spirit. It is not necessary to say more than that the very temper of devotion, self-renunciation, reverence, submission, which is the peculiar grace of the obedient, is by them looked upon and even denounced as superstition, weakness, bondage, and slavishness. Their own estimate of the saintly character as unfolded in the Church is the best test and portrait of their own. We can do them no wrong in believing that what they censure they do not imitate. There can be no doubt that the principle of submission is peculiarly trying to some minds; and that the very habit which makes it unpalatable is that which seriously obstructs the improvement of the whole character. It is rarely seen that people grow to ripeness of faith, and to that undefinable mellowness and gentleness of spirit which is the very character of our Lord, without learning the great lesson of obedience and submission, even in little

things, to the will and authority of others; that is, without obeying God in His Church. This temper is either the cause or the consequence of their growth in grace. Either way it seems inseparable from it; and to lack this, much more to be consciously opposed to it, is a bar, no one can say how great to our advance in learning the humility and the mind of Christ.

I have hitherto spoken only of the direct moral effects in the way of self-discipline; but there is a higher condition of our sanctification which may be seriously affected by a captious, impatient, insubordinate temper-I mean, the direct gifts of grace which fall upon the lowly and submissive heart. Like water-springs, the Spirit leaves the ✓ lofty hills, and gathers in low places. The Spirit of the Dove does not descend and abide on the unruly, headstrong, self-willed. We know not what they forfeit. Yet so it has been from the beginning. The outward and visible Church, since the world entered into it, has always been turbulent and disordered: its rule disputed, its discipline infringed, its doctrine gainsayed. Men of unsubdued tempers and headstrong wills have at all times troubled the outer courts of the Church; but there is a sanctuary of holy obedience into which they cannot enter. There is around every altar a fellowship of the contrite, humble, and submissive; who see Christ in His Church, and in it both minister to Him and obey Him. And they have a peace which is from the God of peace. The Spirit of peace, in gentleness, quietness, meekness, dwells in them, and shelters them even in this rough world from the strife of tongues. They look out upon the angry buffeting face of the visible Church with calmness and a stedfast heart; knowing that all these things must be for the trial and manifestation of the sons of God. They know that at the best the Church in this world is no

more than an imperfect realisation of its perfect idea; an approximation to a type which is in heaven alone. All the struggle, and strife, and lofty looks, and swelling words, and rebellious deeds, of the disobedient and lawless are no more than must be while the kingdom of the new creation is spreading its dominion over the corruption of the old.

Let us, then, never be out of heart, though the face of the Church be ever so much marred and smitten by the spirit of misrule, and by the sway of disobedience. Let its effect on us be to make us cling closer to the guide which God has given us. Let us render a submissive, uniform, glad obedience to the Church; to its doctrine, discipline, ritual; to its precepts of fasting and humiliation; to its lightest counsel; to the least intimation of its mind and will. Let us watch not only against openly rebellious motions of our hearts, but against vanity, affectation, love of singularity, peculiar ways, habits, and choices, by which men are tempted to bend and tamper with, or, as they would say, to adapt and accommodate the system of the Church to their times and to themselves. Some men cannot even say the prayers of the Church without needless and fanciful changes. This is nothing less than simple exaltation of self above the Church; and making themselves a rule for its orders and doctrines, instead of simply obeying it. Let us mortify self in all its forms; not in the grosser alone, but in those refined shapes in which it keeps its hold upon so many. How few men can endure to be put out of sight and forgotten. All that they say and do has about it something subtil and subdued, hardly preceptible, yet never unperceived, by which self again comes into view. Even in the most sacred things, and in the holiest actions, and with the precepts of self-renouncement in their mouths, there is a something, not so much as a word, but a tone, a look, an

air, which expresses in full the presence and consciousness of a will not dead to its own choice. Let us seek with our whole heart the gift of holy obedience, that in all things we may submit to Christ ruling in His Church, as He submitted to St. John baptizing by the commandment of His Father. Let us, by prayer and self-chastisement, so cross and keep under our likings, preferences, views, opinions, judgments in all things, when the will of the Church is made known, that we may in all things obey "as unto the Lord, and not unto men," with him who said: "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."