to have produced fruits easily described, such as peace and love, and purity, and good works; but instead of these, and threatening their destruction, there had sprung up dissension and strife, party spirit, self-conceit, and gross sins which I need not name.
In all this there was grief, disappointment, bitterness; for did they not prove that his work was threatened with failure?
Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin and failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always aims at inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is the true method, because there is nothing which exercises an influence so strong to uplift and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the life above us, and that we are degrading our life when we forget this or ignore it. And herein is the value of this word of his that God is dwelling and working in us. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, that the Holy Ghost
dwelleth in you, and that God’s temple is holy? and if any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy.”
Let us then begin again our common life with a determination to bear in mind the possibilities and the sanctity of each separate soul that comes amongst us.
Living in crowds, we are apt to forget this; and, forgetting it, some treat their own souls as if they were of no value, and some the souls of others, and so the work of sin and waste goes on from generation to generation.
But in our best moments, in our times of serious thought, if we have been once enlightened, we can never again cease to feel the dignity and the value of each human life.
When we think of God’s care for us we feel it; when we think of the possibilities He has ordained for us we feel it; when we think of the endless life that lies before us we feel it; above all, we never fail to feel it when our thoughts revert to any life that has been snatched away from us. Some of
you are thinking to-day of the master whose home is darkened by the presence of the angel of death. You think of her whom God has taken, who was moving among you not so long ago, as your tender, considerate, and helpful friend. It may be that you were not uninfluenced by her self-devotion and holiness.
When you think of such an one you feel no doubt about the value and the sanctity of each human life.