the bed of a woman as fallen as yourself,--Christ bade you watch, and you
watched by Him. For that drunken ruffian, whom you, a drunken ruffian
yourself, leaped into the sea to save, Christ bade you leap, and like St.
Christopher of old, you bore, though you knew it not, your Saviour and
your God to land." And if they shall make answer, "And who is He that I
did not know Him? who is He that I should know Him now?" Let us point
them--and whither else should we point them in heaven or earth?--to
Christ upon the cross, and say, "Behold your God! This He did, this He
condescended, this He dared, this He suffered for you, and such as you.
This is what He, the Maker of the universe, is like. This is what He has
been trying to make you like, in your small degree, every time a noble, a
generous, a pitiful, a merciful emotion crossed your heart; every time
you forgot yourself, even for a moment, and thought of the welfare of a
fellow-man."

If that tale, if that sight, if that revelation and unveiling of Christ
to the poor sinful soul does not work in it an abhorrence of past sin, a
craving after future holiness, an admiration and a reverence for Christ
Himself, which is, ipso facto, saving faith; if that soul does not reply-
-it may not be in words, but in feelings too deep for words,--"Yes; this
is indeed noble, indeed Godlike, worthy of a God, and worthy therefore to
be at once imitated and adored:" then, indeed, the Cross of Christ must
have lost that miraculous power which it has possessed, for more than
eighteen hundred years, as the highest "moral ideal" which ever was seen,
or ever can be seen, by the reason and the heart of man.



SERMON XXXVIII. THE LORD'S PRAYER