SERMON III.

FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.

(S. STEPHEN'S DAY).

ACTS VII. 59.

"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

YESTERDAY We saw the Child Jesus laid in the manger. To-day we see Him with Stephen standing in heaven. Yesterday He was in the arms of Mary, to-day at the right hand of God.

How rapid a transition! Yesterday, suffering Himself, to-day, in the person of His martyr. Yesterday, in deepest abasement,to-day, in highest glory. Yesterday, coming to His own to be rejected, to-day, receiving His own for ever.

"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not," says S. John, and to-day we see that

"the disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord. It is enough for the disciple to be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord."

1.

The resemblance between the servant and the Lord, between disciple and the Master, came out very remarkably in death. When our Lord was dying on the cross, He prayed for His murderers, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and now, see! the disciple is dying, and what is his prayer? "Lord lay not this sin to their charge." As the Master forgives, so does His disciple. As the Lord prays for His persecutors with His last breath, so does the servant. Christ had taught His disciples to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." His first martyr, boldly confiding in this position, gives perfect forgiveness to those who are crushing his head with stones, and at once sees Jesus extending His arms to receive him. Heaven opens to the forgiving spirit.

I think that one great lesson we may learn from S. Stephen is readiness to forgve injuries. His readiness is great indeed, it comes together with the injury. As the stones fly, so flies forth his forgiveness, as they fall on his head, his prayers

rebound in blessings upon theirs. There is no hesitation, no apparent struggle within, there is a ready-schooled mind, and the pardon returns as promptly as the wrong had come.

When the first Jesuits built a house at Saragossa, the mob attacked it, and smashed doors and windows with stones. Then S. Francis Borgia said, "Treasure every stone that has been flung at us, and therewith we will build a new house." If we would receive injuries in the same way, we should build with them a house eternal in the heavens. Every wrong done us would be forgiven, and each act of forgiveness would be a work of righteousness, a precious stone laid in the building of that house of ours, not made with hands, invisible but enduring, the edifice of our salvation.

But how do we behave when a stone is thrown at us? I mean when a bad word, or an ungenerous act, or even a rude look meets us? Do we not take it up and throw it back again? and then begins a mutual pelting, which goes on, and nobody knows when it will stop.

I know two sisters who were bitterly estranged for years because one wanted a window open, and the other wanted it shut. One said something

sharp, and the other answered more sharply, then ensued mutual recriminations, bitter feeling, wrath and separation. Christmas came, and neither would draw near the altar, each felt that she could not worthily receive Him Who came to bring peace on earth, and good will towards men, because of the anger and resentment she felt against her sister. That was nearly twenty years ago, and they are estranged yet.

I know a little town on the Rhine, so small, that nearly all in it are kinsfolk. Four years ago I was staying in a house there, at the marriage of one of the daughters to a young man of that town. This year I returned to the little town, and found that the father and his son-in-law and daughter were not on speaking terms. Not only 80, but the town was divided into two parties, full of rancour against each other, the sisters sided with their father against the married sister, and would not speak to her, nor allow their children to go into her house, and the husband's family passionately took his side against his father-in-law. During these four years there had come two little children to the newly-married pair, and these were growing up without knowing their grand

father or their aunts, and estranged from their cousins. What do you suppose was the occasion of this feud? Why this-shortly after he had been married, the son-in-law had taken away a beehive which he believed belonged to his wife, but which the father insisted was his property. How long did this last ?-Four years after the rape of the beehive, the strife is so fierce that I fear it will last as long as the generations concerned in it. Think of the hard speeches ! Think of the bitter thoughts! Think of the slanderous insinuations !-all bred of this beehive. Why, the tongues have stung sharper than the bees! Why, the bitterness could not be sweetened by all their honey.

Verily instead of receiving stones, and throwing back prayers, Christian men and women spend their days in pelting one another with the hardest things they can lay hold of, and, too often, about nothing. Would that, of the stones cast at them, they would build the house of their salvation, instead of raising out of them a heap over their enemies, as Israel made a cairn above Achan in the valley of Achor.

II.

"Vengeance is Mine: I will repay, saith the Lord, therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed