themselves living in the midst of strangers. "Our citizenship," says
St. Paul to the Philippians, "is in heaven:" here they were not
citizens, but sojourners. Why, then, should not the early Christians
have joined altogether in the feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should
not they, too, have felt and said, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
strange land?"

The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because Christ had
not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come again to them by his
Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the midst of them; because they
were not exiles from the temple of God, but were themselves become God's
temple; because through the virtue of the one offering for sin once
made, but for ever presented before God by their High Priest in heaven,
they, in God's temple on earth, were presenting also their daily and
acceptable sacrifice, the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though
as yet they were a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone
formed without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the
whole earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs;
the whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the
kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth,
redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that God's
servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.

But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although God's
temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not offered, the
living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by spreading, become
weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ's kingdoms in name alone;
are we, then, come back once more to the condition of the Jews in
Babylon? are we exiles from God, living amongst strangers? and must we,
too, say, with the prophet, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a
strange land?"

This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do to make
our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore that true sign
of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his Holy Spirit pervading
every part of his temple? I mean, what can we do as individuals? for the
question in any other sense is not to be asked or answered here. But we,
each of us, must have felt, at some time or other, our distance from
God. Put the idea in what form or what words we will, we must--every one
of us who has ever thought seriously at all--we