Town and Country Sermons | Page 3

I may learn from him how to
suffer, if need be, at the call of duty; at least, to stir up in me obedience,
usefulness, generosity, that I may go back to my work cheerfully,
willingly, careless what reward I get, provided only I can do good in
my station.
But, after all, will not the text tell us best how to keep Passion Week?
Will not our Lord's own example tell us? Can we go wrong, if we keep
our Passion Week as Christ kept his?

And how did he keep it? Certainly not by shutting himself up apart.
Certainly not by mere thinking over the glory of self-sacrifice. He
taught daily, we read, in the temple. Instead of giving up his work for a
while, he seems to have worked more earnestly than ever. As the
terrible end drew near; and his soul was troubled; and he was straitened
as he looked forward to his baptism of fire; and the struggle in him
grew fiercer (for the Bible tells us that there was a struggle) between
the Man's natural desire to save his life, and the God's heavenly desire
to lay down his life, he threw himself more and more into the work
which he had to do. We hear more, perhaps, of our Lord's saying and
doings during this week, up to the very moment before he was betrayed
to death, than we do of the whole three years of his public life. His
teaching was never, it seems, so continual; his appeals to the nation
which he was trying to save were never so pathetic as at the very last;
his warnings to the bigots who were destroying his nation never so
terrible; his contempt for personal danger never so clear. The Bible
seems to picture him to us as gathering up all his strength for one last
effort, if by any means he might save that doomed city of Jerusalem,
and in his divine spirit, courting death the more, the more his human
flesh shrank from it.
This--the pattern of perfect obedience, perfect unselfishness, perfect
generosity, perfect self-sacrificing love--is what we are to look at in
Passion Week. This, I believe, is what we are meant to copy in Passion
Week; that we may learn the habit of copying it all our lives long.
Why should not we, then, keep Passion Week somewhat as our Lord
kept it before us? Not by merely hiding in our closets to meditate, even
about _him_: but by going about our work, each in his place, dutifully,
bravely, as he went? By doing the duty which lies nearest us, and trying
to draw our lesson out of it.
Thus we may keep Passion Week in spirit and in truth; though some of
us may hardly have time to enter a church, hardly have time for an
hour's private thought about religion.
Amid the bustle of daily duties; amid the buzz of petty cares; amid the
anxieties of great labours; amid the roar of the busy world, which

cannot stop (and which ought not to stop), for our convenience; we
may keep Passion Week in spirit and in truth, if we will do the duty
which lies nearest us, and try to draw our lesson out of it.
For practice--and, I believe, practice alone--will teach us to restrain
ourselves, and conquer ourselves. Experience--and, I believe,
experience alone--will show us our own faults and weaknesses.
Every man--every human spirit on God's earth has spiritual enemies--
habits and principles within him--if not other spirits without him, which
hinder him, more or less, from being all that God meant him to be. And
we must find out those enemies, and measure their strength, not merely
by reading of them in books; not merely by fancying them in our own
minds; but by the hard blows, and sudden falls, which they too often
give us in the actual battle of daily life.
And how can we find them out?
This at least we can do.
We can ask ourselves at every turn,--For what end am I doing this, and
this? For what end am I living at all? For myself, or for others?
Am I living for ambition? for fame? for show? for money? for pleasure?
If so, I have not the mind of Christ. I have not found out the golden
secret. I have not seen what true glory is; what the glory of Christ is--to
live for the sake of doing my duty--for the sake of doing good.
And am I--I surely shall be if I am living for myself--straggling,
envying, casting an evil eye on those more fortunate than I; perhaps
letting loose against them a cruel tongue? If I am doing thus, God
forgive me. What have I of the mind of