All Saints’ Day Sermons. 1871.
Fellowship of Sorrow. May 14.
How was He,
The blessed One, made perfect? Why, by grief—
The fellowship of voluntary grief—
He read the tear-stained book of poor men’s souls,
As we must learn to read it. Lady! lady!
Wear but one robe the less—forego one meal—
And thou shalt taste the core of many tales,
Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel’s songs,
The sweeter for their sadness.
Saint’s Tragedy, Act ii. Scene v.
1847.
Heaven and Hell. May 15.
Heaven and hell—the spiritual world—are they merely invisible places in space which may become visible hereafter? or are they not rather the moral world of right and wrong? Love and righteousness—is not that the heaven itself wherein God dwells? Hatred and sin—is not that hell itself, wherein dwells all that is opposed to God?
Water of Life Sermons.
The Awfulness of Life. May 16.
Our hearts are dull, and hard, and light, God forgive us! and we forget continually what an earnest, awful world we live in—a whole eternity waiting for us to be born, and a whole eternity waiting to see what we shall do now we are born. Yes, our hearts are dull, and hard, and light. And therefore Christ sends suffering on us, to teach us what we always gladly forget in comfort and prosperity—what an awful capacity of suffering we have; and more, what an awful capacity of suffering our fellow-creatures have likewise. . . .
We sit at ease too often in a fool’s paradise, till God awakens us and tortures us into pity for the torture of others. And so, if we will not acknowledge our brotherhood by any other teaching, He knits us together by the brotherhood of suffering.