anger, like the lost sheep? Are there none here who are carrying about
some secret sin which poisons all their life? If there are such, I say,
come and make trial of Christ's love _to-day_. "Come, drink of the water
of life freely." Come with your sin, your sorrow, your trial, your
temptation, to the feet of Jesus, and you shall learn "the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge."

SERMON LII.

THE PRISON-HOUSE.

(Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.)

EPHESIANS iv. 1.

"The prisoner of the Lord."

This is what Paul the aged called himself in writing to the Ephesians.
He had appealed unto Caesar, and he was a captive at Rome. But he does
not style himself Caesar's prisoner, but the prisoner of the Lord,
whose he was, and whom he served. Let us think first of the place and
manner of St. Paul's imprisonment. The place was Rome, the capital of
the world. A city full of glorious memories of the past, and famous in
the present for art, and eloquence, and learning. Its soldiers could
boast that they had conquered the world, and could point out the tombs
of Pompey and of many another hero along the Appian Way. Its streets
had been trodden by some of the greatest of poets, and its Senate-House
had echoed with the burning words of the first orators of the world.
Rome was full of contrasts, wealth and beggary, beauty and squalor, the
palace of Caesar, and the haunt of vice and shame, were close together.
The city was ruled over by a cruel tyrant, at once a hypocrite and a
monster of iniquity.

It was in such a place, so glorious and so shameful, that S. Paul was a
prisoner. He was not, however, confined in a dungeon. By the favour
of the Praefect of the Praetorian Guard, whose duty it was to take
charge of all prisoners awaiting trial before the Emperor, the Apostle
was allowed to live in a hired house of his own, to have free access to
such friends as he had, and to preach the Gospel freely to those who
would hear him. But still S. Paul was a prisoner. After the Roman
fashion, he was chained to a soldier, and at night probably two
soldiers were linked to him. Perhaps no such wonderful sermons have
ever since been preached as those spoken by S. Paul, "the prisoner of
the Lord." We can fancy the old man, grey-haired, and bent with
suffering, and want, and hardship, bearing on his wrinkled face and
scarred body those marks of the Lord Jesus, of which he tells us, and
yet brave, unflinching as ever. We