o halves of the virtue which
is here put before us--unmurmuring submission and bold continuance in
well-doing, whatsoever storms may hurtle in our faces.

Now, in both of these aspects, the life of Jesus Christ is the great
pattern. As for the passive side, need I remind you how, 'as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'? 'When He was
reviled He reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that
judgeth uprightly.' No anger ever flushed His cheek or contracted His
brow. He never repaid scorn with scorn, nor hate with hate. All men's
malice fell upon Him, like sparks upon wet timber, and kindled no
conflagration.

As for the active side, I need not remind you how 'He set His face to go
to Jerusalem'--how the great solemn '_must_' which ruled His life bore
Him on, steadfast and without deflection in His course, through all
obstacles. There never was such heroic force as the quiet force of the
meek and gentle Christ, which wasted no strength in displaying or
boasting of itself, but simply, silently, unconquerably, like the
secular motions of the stars, dominated all opposition, and carried Him,
unhasting and unresting, on His path. That life, with all its surface of
weakness, had an iron tenacity of purpose beneath, which may well stand
for our example. Like some pure glacier from an Alpine peak, it comes
silently, slowly down into the valley; and though to the eye it seems
not to move, it presses on with a force sublime in its silence and
gigantic in its gentleness, and buries beneath it the rocks that stand
in its way. The patience of Christ is the very sublimity of persistence
in well-doing. It is our example, and more than our example--it is His
gift to us.

Such passive and active patience is the direct fruit of love to God. The
one chamber opens into the other. For they whose hearts dwell in the
sweet sanctities of the love of God will ever be those who say, with a
calm smile, as they put out their hand to the bitterest draught, 'the
cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?'

Love, and evil dwindles; love, and duty becomes supreme; and in the
submission of the will, which is the true issue of love, lies the
foundation of indomitable and inexhaustible endurance and perseverance.

Nor need I remind you, I suppose, that in this resolve to do the will of
God, in spite of all antagonism and opposition, lies a condition at once
of moral perfection and of blessedness. So,