at mass of men are neither very white nor very black, but a
kind of neutral grey. Yes, they are--on the surface. But if you go down
to the bottom, and grasp the life in its inmost principles and essential
nature, I fancy that Jesus Christ's narrowness is true to fact. At all
events, there it is.

Now, following out the imagery of our text, I wish to bring before you
the two foundations, the two houses, the one storm, the two endings.

I. The two foundations: Rock, Sand.

Now, to build on the Rock, Jesus Christ Himself explains to us as being
the same thing as to hear and do His sayings. The one representation is
plain fact, the other is metaphor which points precisely in the same
direction. It is scarcely a digression if I pause for a moment, and
point you to the singular and unique attitude which this Carpenter's Son
of Nazareth takes up here, fronting the whole race with that
'whosoever,' and alleging that _His_ sayings are an infallible law
for conduct, and that _He_ has the right absolutely to command
every man, woman, and child of the sons and daughters of Adam. And the
strange thing is that the best men have admitted His claim, have
recognised that He had the right, and have seen that His precepts are
the very ideal of human conduct, and, if they have ventured to criticise
at all, their criticism has only been that the precepts are too good to
be obeyed, and contemplate an ideal that is unreachable in human
society. Be that as it may, there stands the fact that this Man, in this
Sermon on the Mount, which so many people say has no doctrinal teaching
in it, assumes an attitude which nothing can warrant and nothing explain
except the full-toned belief that in Him we have God manifest in the
flesh.

But what I desire to point to now is the significance of this demand
that He makes, that we shall take His sayings as the foundation of our
lives. The metaphor is a very plain one, by which the principles that
underlie or dominate and mould our conduct are regarded as the
foundation upon which we build the structure of our lives. But the
Sermon on the Mount is not all of these 'sayings of Mine.' It is
fashionable in certain quarters to-day to isolate these precepts, and to
regard them as being the part of Christian Revelation by which men who
set little store by theological subtleties, and reject the mysteries of
the Incarnation and the Atonement, may still abide. But I would have you
notice that it is absurd to isola