peak the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. And may the God of all truth give your strength.

SERMON XLI.

ALIVE UNTO GOD.

(Sixth Sunday after Trinity.)

ROMANS vi. 11.

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but
alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Every baptised person belongs to God. He is His absolute property,
marked with the sign of the great King. As the broad arrow is the mark
that certain property belongs to the British Government, so the Cross
of Holy Baptism is the sign and pledge that we are God's. Think of
that, my brothers, you are not free to choose your own way, your own
masters; you belong absolutely to Jesus Christ. He made you His
property by taking your flesh, by suffering in it, by dying in it, by
rising with it in triumph. In Baptism you are made partakers of all
these benefits. You are baptised into the Death of Christ that your
old sinful nature may die and be buried. You are baptised too in His
Resurrection, that you may after Baptism begin a new and higher life,
with Jesus as your Ruler and Guide. From this fact come two others;
first that we are not free to sin, because if we do wrong, we sin not
against ourselves, but against Jesus Christ, "whose we are, and whom we
serve." I do not say that sin will not come in our way, will not tempt
us. We must, in passing through the world, encounter foul smells,
hideous sights, dirty roads. But we can turn away from the foul smell,
we can shut our eyes to the bad sight, we can pick our way carefully
over the dirty road. So if sin meets us, we must turn aside from it,
we must stop our eyes and our ears to the evil sight, or sound, we must
try to keep in a clean path. The strength which our Master, Jesus,
gives us in the Sacraments will be sufficient for us. And the second
fact is that, as baptised people, we are never alone, never forsaken.
A great part of our life, and our work, must be solitary, and yet we
are not alone, for God is with us. We must _do our work alone_. No
one can tread the path of duty for us, or fight the good fight on our
behalf. Like the solitary sower in the fields, we are all sent into
this world to sow some seed, to do some work, _alone_. There may be
crowds around us, and yet each of us has his thoughts, and hopes, and
feelings, with which others cannot intermingle; no two men think or
feel exactly in the same way, each of us is alone. We know