he Church, and
when you partake of her Sacraments, you are simply saying 'Lord,
Lord'--a very good and righteous thing to say; but of no more use or
benefit to your souls than an echo from a blank wall, unless you also do
the will of Him who is in Heaven.

"I know that there are many specious sayings invented by those who have
reasons of their own for trying to prove that when the Son of God spoke
these words He didn't mean what He said; and those who have invented
these things are amongst the worst enemies of God and His Church on
earth, no matter whether they say these lying words in the drawing-room
or from the pulpit. They seek to comfort their consciences and the
consciences of such as you by saying that times have changed since these
words were uttered; that it would be quite impossible to put a literal
interpretation upon them now.

"Now the man who tells his fellow men that, no matter what his position
in the world, is a liar and a hypocrite, and, what is worse, he is a
maker of hypocrites, for it is my duty to tell you that every man and
woman who professes Christianity before the world on Sunday and during
the week disobeys the command of Christ as set forth here in His own
words, is, consciously or unconsciously, a liar and a hypocrite also.

"Let us see what these sayings look like when tested by ordinary logic,
by that faculty of distinguishing the right from the wrong, the true
from the false, which is perhaps the greatest of all God's gifts to men.

"'Times have changed since the Son of God delivered the Sermon on the
Mount.' That is one of those half-truths which are infinitely worse than
a lie. Times _have_ changed. That is to say mortal men and mortal
manners have changed; but does that warrant us in believing that the
mind and will of the Immutable God have changed too; that what Christ
himself declared to be fatal to salvation two thousand years ago, is
compatible with salvation now? That what was unlawful then is lawful
now--in short, that the Omniscient God, in whose eyes a thousand years
are as one day and one day as a thousand years, who read the minds of
men then as He reads them now, has altered the decrees of Eternal
Justice and changed Eternal Truth into a lie?

"If you believe these people, then you must believe that too. That
Christ himself foresaw, as He must have done, that such false teachers
as these would arise both in His Church and outside it is clearly proved
by His own words: