Ask, and you shall
receive! Comfort from sorrow, peaceful assurance of God's good will
toward you, deliverance from your sins, and a share in the likeness
of Him who on this day made Himself of no reputation, and took on Him
the form of a slave.
VI--TRUE ABSTINENCE
FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT.
I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.--1 COR. ix. 27.
In the Collect for this day we have just been praying to God, to give
us grace to use such abstinence, that our flesh being subdued to our
spirit, we may follow His godly motions.
Now we ought to have meant something when we said these words. What
did we mean by them? Perhaps some of us did not understand them.
They could not be expected to mean anything by them. But it is a sad
thing, a very sad thing, that people will come to church Sunday after
Sunday, and repeat by rote words which they do not understand, words
by which they therefore mean nothing, and yet never care or try to
understand them.
What are the words there for, except to be understood? All of you
call people foolish, who submit to have prayers read in their
churches in a foreign language, which none, at least of the poor, can
understand. But what right have you to call them foolish, if you,
whose Prayer-books are written in English, take no trouble to find
out the meaning of them? Would to Heaven that you would try to find
out the meaning of the Prayer-book! Would to Heaven that the day
would come, when anyone in this parish who was puzzled by any
doctrine of religion, or by any text in the Bible, or word in the
Prayer-book, would come confidently to me, and ask me to explain it
to him! God knows, I should think it an honour and a pleasure, as
well as a duty.
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