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an alien excellence to the fallen nature of man, and therefore it is that probably the severest part of this day's cross will be the occasions in which your self-will is excited, wounded, crossed. It may be from the merest trifles the pain you suffer will arise, for trifles certainly "make the sum" of social "life;" you should therefore be especially on the watch for these trifles, which are to show to you, at once a mournful and a blessed discovery, that the pain experienced from this daily cross is caused by the sin within you, not by the circumstances without you. When that truth is clearly seen, the most difficult part of your work is over. The empire of sin is an empire of darkness; its power is effectually shaken when light enough enters to reveal its true aspect. The discipline of this day, if rightly used, may throw that light upon many actions of your past life and hitherto unsuspectedly erroneous courses of conduct.

It is not only in domestic life that the exercise of the spirit of obedience is requisite. The teaching of our Church, founded on numerous apostolic precepts, gives the sanction of the fifth commandment to the authority of "spiritual pastors and masters," as well as to those legal authorities which there are seldom any temptations to resist. But there are, not unfrequently, temptations to resist, or at least to contemn and evade, ecclesiastical authority; here there are, not unfrequently, opportunities of betraying the instinct of insubordination.

In the lower classes, dislike to established authority manifests itself by seizing the first excuse offered by any fancied neglect or inconsistency or incapacity in the parish minister, to leave the mother Church and to join the ranks of dissent. The opportunity of asserting a power of choice, of displaying an independence of control in a very important matter, is a great tempta

tion to any who are at all inclined to think for themselves.

Public opinion exercises a stronger check over the conduct of the upper classes, and influences them differently under the same circumstances. They do not, unless unusually deficient in judgment and temper, abandon their Church when the spirit of insubordination is excited by the strict uniformity and rigorous simplicity of its ritual or the errors and neglect, real or fancied, of its ministers. Here however are ordinarily only worldly motives and very seldom any real exercise of the true spirit of obedience. For here neither, is it recognised as a ground of obedience and respect that those "who have the rule over them"*

authority conferred by God. insubordinate spirits would

possess an

How many

shrink from

that it was by an

confessing the only justifiable principle of

their insubordination,

* Hebrews, xiii. 17.

unlucky chance, and not under heavenly guidance, that such and such "spiritual pastors and masters" fell to their lot! There is no superstition in believing that ex cathedrâ,-that is, in virtue of their office alone,—persons equally deficient in spirituality and capacity may yet be the means of imparting great spiritual blessings to the humble and obedient learner. Whatever the dulness and deficiencies of the sermon, it will always convey some message from God to those who listen to the preacher as a messenger from God to them. However careless the administering of the ordinances of religion, they will always be profitable to those who receive them as from God, because through His appointed minister, and trace any failure in their efficiency to themselves, not to others. In such cases there is the due union of objective and subjective truth which constitutes the essence of religion.

It may be a part of your daily cross to

experience what you deem neglect or incapacity or undue assumption of authority in the "spiritual pastor" who is appointed over you. This is often a grievous trial, but it is a matter in which we are seldom ourselves quite guiltless. It would be only a repetition of the same subjects for self-examination which I have before urged on you with respect to other species of authority, if I pointed out the several ways in which you may have brought upon yourself, or at least added to the weight of, the annoyance you experience. You may almost unconsciously have pursued an altogether erroneous course of conduct. You may have been almost unconsciously deficient in due submission, in proper deference towards your "spiritual pastor," you may have been neglectful in prayer for him. Had you fulfilled your duty in this most important particular, how differently might he have

* 1 Thess. v. 25. 2 Thess. iii. 1. Heb. xiii. 18.

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