despised, they, like their great prototype and likeness in the
Jewish Church, are the silent healers who bind up the wounds of
their age in spite of itself; they are the good physicians who bind
together the dislocated bones of a disjointed time; they are the
reconcilers who turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, or
of the fathers to the children. They have but little praise and
reward from the partisans who are loud in indiscriminate censure and
applause. But, like Samuel, they have a far higher reward, in the
Davids who are silently strengthened and nurtured by them in Naioth
of Ramah--in the glories of a new age which shall be ushered in
peacefully and happily after they have been laid in the grave.' {0b}

That such, my dear Stanley, may be your work and your destiny, is
the earnest hope of

Yours affectionately,
C. KINGSLEY.
EVERSLEY RECTORY,
July 1, 1863.

SERMON I. GOD IN CHRIST

(Septuagesima Sunday.)

GENESIS i. I. In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth.

We have begun this Sunday to read the book of Genesis. I trust that
you will listen to it as you ought--with peculiar respect and awe,
as the oldest part of the Bible, and therefore the oldest of all
known works--the earliest human thought which has been handed down
to us.

And what is the first written thought which has been handed down to
us by the Providence of Almighty God?

'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'

How many other things, how many hundred other things, men might have
thought fit to write down for those who should come after; and say--
This is the first knowledge which a man should have; this is the
root of all wisdom, all power, all wealth.

But God inspired Moses and the Prophets to write as they have
written. They were not to tell men that the first thing to be
learnt was how to be rich; nor how to be strong; nor even how to be
happy: but that the first thing to be learnt was that God created
the heaven and the earth.

And why first?

Because the first question which man asks--the question which shows
he is a man and not a brute--always has been, and always will be--
Where am I? How did I get into this world; and how did this world
get here likewise? And if man takes up with a wrong answer to that
question, then the man himself is certain to go wrong in all manner
of ways. For a lie can never do anything but harm, or breed
anything but harm; and lies do breed,