you would they
should do unto you,"--feel that that voice is a good voice and a right
command, which must be obeyed, and which it is beautiful and delightful
to obey, and so obey it; may we not hope then, that Christ, who has
called them, will perfect His own work; and in His own good way, and His
own good time, deliver them from their sin and ignorance, and vouchsafe
to them at last that knowledge of the true and holy God, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, whom truly to know is everlasting life? They are Christ's
lost sheep: but they are still His sheep who hear His voice. May He not
fulfil His own words to them, and go forth and seek such souls, and lay
them on His shoulder, and bring them home; saying to His Church on earth,
and to His Church in heaven, "Rejoice with Me: for I have found my sheep
which was lost?"

Now if we can thus have hope for some among the heathen abroad, shall we
not have hope, too, for some among the heathen at home? for some among
that mass of human corruption which welters around the walls of so many
of our cities? I am not going to make vain excuses for them; and say
they are but the victims of circumstance. The great majority of them are
the victims of their own low instincts. They have chosen the broad and
easy road of animalism, which leads to destruction. They have sown to
the flesh, and they will of the flesh reap corruption. For the laws of
God are inexorable; and the curse of the law is sure, namely, "The wages
of sin are death." Neither dare I encourage too vast hopes and say, If
we had money enough, if we had machinery enough, if we had zeal enough,
we might convert them all, and save them all. I dare not believe it.
The many, I fear, will always go the broad road; the few the narrow one.
And all we dare say is, if we have faith enough, we can convert some. We
can at least fulfil our ordination vow. We can seek out Christ's sheep
scattered abroad about this naughty world, and tell them of His fold, and
try to bring them home.

But how shall we know Christ's sheep when we see them? How, but by the
very test which Christ has laid down, it seems to me, in this very
parable? Is there in one of them the high instincts--even the desire to
do a merciful act? Let us watch for that: and when in the most brutal
man, and--alas that I should have to use the words--in the most brutal
woman, we see any touch of nobleness, justice, benevolence, pit