stumbling cheerful on in the teeth of the iron hail, across
ground slippery with his comrades' blood, not knowing whether the
next moment his own blood might not swell the ghastly stream. What
matter? They might kill him, but they could not kill the regiment:
it would live on and conquer; ay, and should conquer, if his life
could help on its victory; and then its honour would be his, its
reward be his, even when his corpse lay pierced with wounds,
stiffening beneath a foreign sky.

Here, my friends, is one example of the blessed power of fellow
feeling, public spirit, the sense of belonging to a body whose
members have not merely a common interest, but a common duty, a
common honour.

This Christian country, thank God! gives daily many another example
of the same: and every place, and every station affords to each one
of us opportunities,--more, alas, I fear, than we shall ever take
full advantage of: but I have chosen the case of the soldier, not
merely because it is perhaps the most striking and affecting, but
because I wish to see, and trust in God that I shall see, those who
remain at home in safety emulating the public spirit and self-
sacrifice which our soldiers are showing abroad; and by sacrifices
more peaceful and easy, but still well-pleasing unto God, showing
that they too have been raised above selfishness, by the glorious
thought that they are members of a body.

For, are we not members of a body, my friends? Are we not members
of the Body of bodies, members of Christ, children of God,
inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven? Members of Christ--we, and the
poor for whom I plead, as well as we; perhaps, considering their
many trials and our few trials, more faithfully and loyally by far
than we are. There are some here, I doubt not, to whom that word,
that argument, is enough: to whom it is enough to say, Remember
that the Lord whom you love loves that shivering, starving wretch as
well as He loves you, to open and exhaust at once their heart, their
purse, their labour of love. God's blessing be upon all such! But
it would be hypocrisy in me, my friends, to speak to this, or any
congregation, as if all were of that temper of mind. It is not one
in ten, alas! in the present divided state of religious parties, who
feels the mere name of Christ enough of a bond to make him sacrifice
himself for his fellow Christians, as a soldier does for his fellow
soldiers. Not one in ten, alas! feels that he ow