truck with our silence, and gloominess, and careworn faces, and
our want of merriment and cheerfulness. And yet, with all this, we are
the greatest of nations at this day--the strongest and the most
industrious and the wisest. The gospel of Jesus Christ is preached
oftener, and more simply, and more fully here in England than in any
nation, and I dare to say it, that in spite of all our sins, there are as
many or more of God's true saints, more holy men and women among English
people at this moment, than among any people of the earth. And why?
because there are so many among us who have hope in Christ beyond this
life, who look for everlasting salvation through all eternity to His
name. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, truly of all people
we should be most miserable; but Christ is risen from the dead, and He
has ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, and received gifts
for men. He sits even now at God's right hand praying for us. To Him
all power is given in heaven and earth, and He is our covenant God and
Saviour, He is our King. He is ours; and He will have us put on His
likeness, and with Him be made perfect through sufferings--_through
sufferings_, for sorrow is the gate of life. Through much tribulation we
enter into the kingdom of God; without weary pain none of us is born into
the world; without weary labour not a harvest in England is grown and
reaped; without weary thought, and teaching, and correction, not a child
among us is educated to be a man; without weary thought and weary labour,
not one of us can do his duty in that station of life to which Christ has
called him. Not without weary struggles and arguings and contentions, by
martyrdoms, by desperate wars, our forefathers won for us our religion,
our freedom and our laws, which make England the wonder of the world.
This is the great law of our life--to be made perfect through sufferings,
as our Lord and Master was before us. He has dealt with us, as my text
tells you He dealt with the Jews, His chosen people of old, as He deals
with every soul of man on whom He sets His love. "All the commandments
which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live,
and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto
your fathers. And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God
led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to
prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whet