Page:A Sermon Preached in Westminster Abbey (Lichfield).djvu/9

 should know the truth, and that the truth should set them free."

Ought we not, therefore, brethren, to think ourselves happy, and highly privileged, if He enables us in any measure (and which of us does He not enable in some measure?) to be His instruments in communicating the knowledge of this soul-emancipating truth to His and our brethren? for, as His brethren no less than as ours, He permits us, in wondrous condescension, nay, requires us, to think and speak of all the members of that great Christian family of which He is "the first-born," and the head. Ought we not readily and thankfully to avail ourselves of whatever means He may afford us of thus winning over new subjects to that "perfect law of liberty," "the glorious liberty of the children of God," which is laid down in His Gospel; to that "service" which (as our ever scriptural Book of Common Prayer describes it) "is perfect freedom"?

By a mysterious indeed, but most certain dispensation, God has been pleased to make mankind dependent upon one another for the supply of their spiritual, as well as of their temporal wants: and in both cases, when we "see our brother have need," we are bound not to "shut wp our compassion from him." In both cases, "as every man hath received the gift," even so should we "minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."

Something certainly may be done by "every man" among us in his individual capacity for the discharge of this unquestionable, and,in its consequences, most momentous duty: but much, very much more, when we associate ourselves for this high and holy purpose with our fellow-Christians. An association, it is surely not presumptuous or vain to suppose, such as may be regarded with complacency, and even with joy, by the angels of God,—those pure and beneficent spirits who are "sent forth" (it is written) "to minister for them which shall be heirs of salvation" (Heb. i. 14); and such as we may humbly trust cannot but be good and acceptable in the sight of Him "who" (it is written again) "will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. ii. 4), that is to say, to come to the knowledge of the truth, in order that thereby they may be saved.

It is on behalf of such an association, friends and brethren, that I have been asked by one in authority here to address you to-day. Would that my power to do this were equal to my will. But it may be that, in the case of a society whose principles cannot be