SERMON XVI.

JOHN, xiii. 13, 14.

Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye ought also to wash one another's feet.

OF all the words and actions of our Lord that have been recorded in the Gospels, there is none, perhaps, more remarkable, none more unlike every other system of morals with which we are acquainted, than the action alluded to in the text. It was done deliberately and purposely for our instruction; to leave us a lesson of a particular kind, such as Christ well knew that we most needed. Indeed, it is a lesson which we all need, the old and the young alike; we need it at every time of life, we need it at every age of the world, we need it in every condition of society: but yet, if there be one period of life, one age of the world, one country, and one particular condition, in which it be particularly wanted, I may say with truth that yours is that period of life, and that ours is that age of the world, that country, and that condition.

Some of you have heard me, on other occasions, dwell on the fearful contrast between the effects which Christianity ought to have produced, and which are spoken of in Scripture as its natural consequences, and those which have actually flowed from it. Our Saviour said, " By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one towards another." This love of one another was to be the mark and seal of Christians; it was to distinguish them from other men; so that those who were not Christians, looking upon their lives, and seeing them free from the jealousies, the quarrels, the violent and bad passions of other men, might confess that God was in them of a truth, and that so heavenly a fruit could proceed from nothing else than the tree of life eternal. Now, if we look through history, or if, without going to books, we look round upon our own neighbourhood, -nay, even if we come still closer home, and look round our own household, upon those with whom we eat and drink daily at the same table,-nay, if coming nearer still, we look upon our very own relations, the parents, the wives and husbands, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, between whom love might surely be expected to reign,-what is the sight that we shall witness? But better and more fitting is it to look into one place which will speak more clearly and certainly to us than all the rest let us each look into our own hearts, and ask

our consciences what we find there. Alas, my brethren, if he only dwelleth in God who dwelleth in love, surely we are not in God, nor God in us. Even the kindest and most benevolent of us all, they in whom, to the eyes of others, nothing ungentle, nothing uncharitable is visible, even with them the heart knoweth his own bitterness; they know-and God, who is greater than their heart, knoweth also how much that is harsh, and selfish, and violent, and unkind, mingles itself with their inmost spirit; how far they are distant from that perfect love with which God loved us, and with which we ought also to love one another.

But the text speaks of one particular kind of love more especially, the love of our poorer brethren. It must have been a solemn lesson which our Lord chose to teach so earnestly on that last night of his presence with his disciples; and which he not only gave in words, but expressed it in a most significant action, to impress it the deeper on their minds and ours. Observe the connexion of the words of the Evangelist: "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God:" what did he upon this knowledge? Did he reveal to them some high mysteries concerning the divine nature, such as kings, and prophets, and sages had long desired to learn? No: "he riseth from supper, and laid aside his gar

ments, and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. This was what Jesus did, "knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God." Surely no diviner comment could be given upon the words of the Scriptures, that "God is love, and he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him!" A command so given and so enforced must surely have been of the deepest importance: "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another's feet."

I call this text a command to one particular kind of love, "the love of our poorer brethren.” It is sometimes said, that it was a command to practise humility: and so it was in one sense of the word; but they who so explain it, deprive it of a great portion of its peculiar value. Our Lord taught humility, in the common sense of the term, when he took a child, and set him in the midst of his disciples, and said, "Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." But it is manifest that by washing his disciples' feet, and telling them that they ought also to wash one another's feet, he did not mean exactly the same thing as this. His

meaning was, to enforce not so much a sacrifice of pride, as of luxurious and careless selfishness; to teach us to do, not those things which it was humiliating, but which it was troublesome, unpleasant, and disagreeable to do; that is, precisely, to perform duties of kindness, even to the most humble sort, to those who need them the most,-not to shrink from the meanest offices in visiting and relieving the bodily wants and sufferings of the poor.

If there were nothing else, I am sure that the unwillingness with which we hear this command, and our anxiety to affix another meaning to it, would alone show how much we require it. It is, too, I am sure, particularly needed by us who are here assembled. The duties of attending on sickness are so much more familiar to women, even of every condition, and there is so much more of the kindness required for them in woman's nature than in man's, that it is our own sex, in particular, and, above all, our own station in society, that needs this lesson. To us the abodes of the poor, and still more their sick-beds, are a sight with which we are but little acquainted:-in fact, our knowledge of the poor, that is, of the largest portion of our Christian brethren living immediately around is, is next to nothing. And it is chiefly from this ignorance, I think, that our feelings and relations towards the poor altogether are

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