time and space into the silent night shall we all return
into the spirit world--the everlasting twofold mystery--into the light-
world of God's love, or the fire-world of His anger--every like unto its
like, and every man to his own place.

"Choose well, your choice is
Brief but yet endless;
From Heaven, eyes behold you
In eternity's stillness.
There all is fullness,
Ye brave to reward you;
Work and despair not."

SERMON XXXII. REFORMATION LESSONS

Eversley. 1861.

2 Kings xxiii. 3, 4, 25, 26. "And the king stood by a pillar, and made a
covenant before the Lord, to "walk after the Lord, and to keep his
commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart
and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were
written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant. And the
king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second
order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of
the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and
for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the
fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Beth-el. . . . And
like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with
all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according
to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.
Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great
wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the
provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal."

You heard this chapter read as the first lesson for this afternoon's
service; and a lesson it is indeed--a lesson for you and for me, as it
was a lesson for our forefathers. If you had been worshipping in this
church three hundred years ago, you would have understood, without my
telling you, why the good and wise men who shaped our prayer-book chose
this chapter to be read in church. You would have applied the words of
it to the times in which you were living. You would have felt that the
chapter spoke to you at once of joy and hope, and of sorrow and fear.

There is no doubt at all what our forefathers would have thought of, and
did think of, when they read this chapter. The glorious reformation
which young King Josiah made was to them the pattern of the equally
glorious Reformation which was made in En