merciful to your fellow-men. And then, when your conscience wakes you up
at times, and cries, Prepare to meet thy God! you will be terrified and
anxious at the thought of judgment, and shrink from the thought of
Christ's seeing you. My friends, that is a fearful state, though a very
common one. What is it but a foretaste of that dreadful terror in which
those who would not see in Christ their Lord and Saviour will call on the
mountains to fall on them, and the hills to cover them, from Him that
sitteth on the throne, and from the anger of the Lamb?

But, again: you may think of Christ as His truest servants, though they
might have been long in darkness, in all ages and countries have thought
of Him, sooner or later. And they thought of Him, as the disciples did;
as of One who was about their path and about their bed, and spying out
all their ways; as One who was in heaven, but who, for that very reason,
was bringing heaven down to earth continually in the gracious
inspirations of His Holy Spirit; as One who brought heaven down to them
as often as He visited their hearts and comforted them with sweet
assurance of His love, His faithfulness, His power--as God grant that He
may comfort those of you who need comfort. And that thought, that Christ
was always with them, even to the end of the world, sobered and steadied
them, and yet refreshed and comforted them. It sobered them. What else
could it do? Does it not sober us to see even a picture of Christ
crucified? How must it have sobered them to carry, as good St Ignatius
used to say of himself, Christ crucified in his heart. A man to whom
Christ, as it were, showed perpetually His most blessed wounds, and said,
Behold what I have endured--how dare he give way to his passion? How
dare he be covetous, ambitious, revengeful, false? And yet it cheered
and comforted them. How could it do otherwise, to know all day long that
He who was wounded for their iniquities, and by whose stripes they were
healed, was near them day and night, watching over them as a father over
his child, saying to them,--"Fear not, I am He that was dead, and am
alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of death and hell. Though thou
walkest through the fires, I will be with thee. I will never leave thee
nor forsake thee." Yes, my friends, if you wish your life--and therefore
your religion, which ought to be the very life of your life--to be at
once sober and