Save me, O God, for the waters are
come in even unto my soul: I am come into deep waters; so that
the floods run over me.—Ps. lxix. 1, 2.
I am brought into so great trouble and misery: that I go
mourning all the day long.—Ps. xxxviii. 6.
The sorrows of my heart are enlarged: Oh! bring Thou me out of
my distress.—Ps. xxv. 17.
The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping: the Lord will
receive my prayer.—Ps. vi. 8.
In the multitude of the sorrows which I had in my heart, Thy
comforts have refreshed my soul.—Ps. xciv. 17.
Each heart knows its own bitterness; each soul has its
own sorrow; each man’s life has its dark days of storm and
tempest, when all his joys seem blown away by some sudden blast
of ill-fortune, and the desire of his eyes is taken from him, and
all his hopes and plans, all which he intended to do or to enjoy,
are hid with blinding mist, so that he cannot see his way before
him, and knows not whither to go, or whither to flee for help;
when faith in God seems broken up for the moment, when he feels
no strength, no purpose, and knows not what to determine,
what to do, what to believe, what to care for; when the very
earth seems reeling under his feet, and the fountains of the
abyss are broken up.
When that day comes, let him think of God’s covenant and
take heart. Is the sun’s warmth perished out of the
sky because the storm is cold with hail and bitter winds?
Is God’s love changed because we cannot feel it in our
trouble? Is the sun’s light perished out of the sky
because the world is black with cloud and mist? Has God
forgotten to give light to suffering souls, because we cannot see
our way for a few short days of perplexity?
No. God’s message to every sad and desolate heart
on earth, is that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all;
that God is Love, and in Him there is no
cruelty at all; that God is One, and in Him there is no change at
all. And therefore we can pray boldly to Him, and ask Him
to deliver us in the time of our tribulation and misery; in the
hour of death, whether of our own death or the death of those we
love; in the day of judgment, whereof it is
written—“It is God who justifieth us; who is he that
condemneth? It is Christ who died, yea, rather who is risen
again, who even now maketh intercession for us.” To
that boundless love of God, which He showed forth in the life of
Christ Jesus; to that perfect and utter will to deliver us which
God showed forth in the death of Christ Jesus, when the Father
spared not His own Son, but gave Him freely for us; to that
boundless love we may trust ourselves, our fortunes,
our families, our bodies, our souls, and the bodies and souls of
those we love.
National Sermons.
To all, sooner or later, Christ comes to baptise them with
fire. But do not think that the baptism of fire comes once
for all to a man, in some one terrible affliction, some one awful
conviction of his own sinfulness and nothingness. No; with
many—and those perhaps the best people—it goes on
month after month, year after year. By secret trials,
chastenings, which none but they and God can understand, the Lord
is cleansing them from their secret faults, and making them to
understand wisdom secretly; burning out of them the chaff of
self-will, and self-conceit, and vanity, and leaving only the
pure gold of righteousness. How many sweet
and holy souls, who look cheerful enough before the eyes of man,
yet have their secret sorrows. They carry their cross
unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night; and
they will carry it perhaps for years and years, and to their
graves, and to the throne of Christ before they lay it down; and
none but they and Christ will ever know what it was; what was the
secret chastisement which God sent to make that soul better which
seemed to us already too good for earth. So does the Lord
watch His people, and tries them with fire, as the refiner of
silver sits by his furnaces watching the melted metal till he
knows that it is purged from all its dross by seeing the image of
his own face reflected on it.
Town and Country Sermons.
By sufferings was Christ made perfect; and what was the
best path for Jesus Christ is surely good enough for us, even
though it be a rough and thorny one. Let us lie still
beneath God’s hand; for though His hand be heavy upon us,
it is strong and safe beneath us too; and none can pluck us out
of His hand, for in Him we live and move and have our
being. He waits for us year after year, with patience which
cannot tire; therefore, let us wait awhile for Him. With
Him is plenteous redemption, and therefore redemption enough for
us and for those likewise whom we love. And though we go
down into hell with David, with David we shall find God there
(Ps. cxxxix. 8; Ps. xvi. 10), and find that He does not leave our
souls in hell, nor suffer His holy ones to see corruption.
Yes, have faith in God. Nothing in thee which He
has made shall see corruption; for it is a thought of
God’s, and no thought of His can perish. Nothing
shall be purged out of thee, but thy disease; nothing shall be
burnt out of thee but thy dross; and that in thee of which God
said in the beginning, “Let us make man in our own
image,” shall be saved and live to all eternity. Yes,
have faith in God, and cry to Him out of the deep, “Though
Thou slay me, yet will I love Thee, for Thou lovedst me in Jesus
Christ before the foundation of the world.”
Sermons—Good News of
God.
Oh, sad hearts and suffering! Anxious and weary
ones! Look to the cross of Christ. There hung your
King! The King of sorrowing souls, and more, the King
of Sorrows. Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion,
death and hell—He has faced them one and all, and tried
their strength, and taught them His, and conquered them right
royally. And since He hung upon that torturing cross,
sorrow is divine, godlike, as joy itself. All that
man’s fallen nature dreads and despises, God honoured on
the cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and consecrated for
ever. And now blessed are the poor, if they are poor in
heart as well as purse; for Jesus was poor, and theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the hungry, if they hunger
for righteousness as well as food; for Jesus hungered, and they
shall be filled. Blessed are those who mourn, if they mourn
not only for their sorrows, but for their sins; for Jesus mourned
for our sins, and on the cross He was made sin for
us, who knew no sin; and they shall be comforted. Blessed
are those who are ashamed of themselves, and hate themselves, and
humble themselves before God, for on the cross Jesus humbled
Himself; and they shall be exalted. Blessed are the
forsaken and despised; did not all men forsake Jesus in His hour
of need? And why not thee, too, thou poor deserted
one? Shall the disciple be above his Master?
No. Every one that is perfect must be as his Master.
National Sermons.
Never let us get into the common trick of calling unbelief
Resignation; of asking, and then because we have not faith to
believe, putting in a “Thy will be done” at the
end. Let us make God’s will our will, and so say,
“Thy will be done.” There is a
false as well as a true and holy resignation. When the
sorrow is come or coming, or necessary apparently for
others’ good, let us say with our Master in the Agony,
“Not what we will, but what Thou wilt!” But up
to that point, let us pray boldly.
Letters and Memories of Charles
Kingsley.
Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as well as
the divine affections. I am happy; for the less hope, the
more faith. God knows what is best for us. I am sure
we do not. Continual resignation, I begin to find, is the
secret of continual strength. “Daily dying,” as
Bœhmen interprets it, “is the path of daily
living.”
Letters and Memories.
In all the trials of life, there is still some way of
escape to be found if a man goes to the right place to look for
it; and, if not of escape, still of compensation. I speak
of that which I know. Of my own comfort I will not
speak—of the path by which I attained it I will. It
was simply by not struggling, doing my work vigorously where God
had put me, and believing firmly that His promises had a real,
not a mere metaphorical meaning, and that Psalms x., xxvii.,
xxxiv., xxxvii., cvii., cxii., cxxiii., cxxvi., cxlvi., are as
practically true for us as they were for the Jews of old, and
that it is the faithlessness of this day which prevents men from
accepting God’s promises in their literal sense with simple
childlike faith.
Letters and Memories.
Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the
bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign
that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining
still—that up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight
and warmth and cloudless blue sky. Believe in God’s
covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds,
warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will
conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer
sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the
devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life,
God is peace and joy eternal, God is without change, and labours
to give life and joy and peace to man and beast and all created
things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. It is a
witness that God, who made the world, is the
friend and preserver of man; that His promises are like the
everlasting sunshine which is above the clouds, without spot or
fading, without variableness or shadow of turning.
National Sermons.
If I did not believe in a special Providence, in a perpetual
education of men by evil as well as good, by small things as well
as great—if I did not believe that—I could believe
nothing.
Letters and Memories.
Let us be content; we do not know what is good for us, and God
does.
It is true, and you will find it true (though God knows it is
a difficult lesson enough to learn) that there should be no
greater comfort to Christian people than to be made like Christ
by suffering patiently not only the hard work of every-day
life, but sorrows, troubles, and sicknesses, and all our heavenly
Father’s corrections, whensoever, by any manner of
adversity, it shall please His gracious goodness to visit
them. For Christ Himself went not up to joy, but first He
suffered pain. He entered not into His glory before He was
crucified. Therefore those words which we read in the
Visitation of the Sick about this matter are not mere kind words,
meant to give comfort for the moment. They are truth and
fact and sound philosophy. They are as true for the young
lad in health and spirits as for the old folks crawling towards
their graves. It is true that sickness and all sorts of
troubles are sent to correct and amend in us whatsoever doth
offend the eye of our heavenly Father. It is true,
and you will find it true, that whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth.
All Saints’ Day
Sermons.
“That ye through patience and comfort of the Scriptures
might have hope,” says St. Paul; and, again, “Let
patience have her perfect work.” But where are we to
get patience? God knows it is hard in such a world as this
for poor creatures to be always patient. But faith can
breed patience, though patience cannot breed itself; and faith in
whom? Faith in our Father in Heaven, even in Almighty God
Himself. He calls Himself the “God of Patience and
Consolation.” Pray for His Holy Spirit, and He will
make you patient; pray for His Holy Spirit, and He will console
and comfort you. He has promised that Spirit of
His—the Comforter—the Spirit of
Love, Trust, and Patience—to as many as ask Him. Ask
Him at His Holy Table to make you patient; ask Him to change your
wills into the likeness of His will. Then will your eyes be
opened; then will you see in the Scriptures a sure promise of
hope, and glory, and redemption for yourself and all the world;
then you will see in the blessed Sacrament of the Lord’s
body and blood a sure sign and warrant, handed down from hand to
hand, from age to age, from year to year, from father to son,
that His promises shall be fulfilled—that patience shall
have her perfect work—that hope shall become a
reality—that not one of the Lord’s words shall fail
or pass away till all be fulfilled.
National Sermons.
God means some good to you by prostrating
you—perhaps He means by giving you blessings almost without
your asking, to show you how little avails morbid sensitiveness
or self-tormenting struggles. Synthetical minds are subject
to this self-torture. Such a period in your life is the
time to become again a little child! I do not mean a
re-regeneration, but a permitting of the mind to assume that tone
of calm wonder and infantile trust, which will allow all the
innate principles within—all God-bestowed graces which have
been bruised and bowed by the tempest, to blossom gently upwards
again, in “the clear shining after rain”—a
breathing time in life—not too much retrospection or
self-examination—keep that for the healthy and vigorous
hours of the mind—but a silent basking in the light
of God’s presence—a time for faith, more than for
labour; for general and unexpressed, more than for particular or
earnest prayer.
Letters and Memories.
Sorrow, though dreary, is not barren. Nothing need be
barren to those who view all things in their real light, as links
in the great chain of progression, both for themselves and for
the universe. To us, all Time should seem so full of life;
every moment the grave and the father of unnumbered events and
designs in heaven and earth, revealing the mind of our God
Himself—all things moving smoothly and surely, in spite of
apparent checks and disappointments, towards the appointed
End!
Letters and Memories.
In all the chances and changes of this mortal life, it
is our one comfort to believe firmly and actively in the
changeless kingdom, and in the changeless King. This alone
will give us calm, patience, faith, and hope, though the heavens
and the earth be shaken around us. For so only shall we see
that the kingdom, of which we are citizens, is a kingdom of
light, and not of darkness; of truth, and not of falsehood; of
freedom, and not of slavery; of bounty and mercy, and not of
wrath and fear; that we live and move and have our being, not in
a “Deus quidam deceptor,” who grudges His children
wisdom, but in a Father of Light, from whom comes every good and
perfect gift; who willeth that all men should be saved, and come
to the knowledge of the truth. In His kingdom we
are; and in the King whom He has set over it we can have most
perfect trust. For us that King stooped from heaven to
earth; for us He was born, for us He toiled, for us He suffered,
for us He died, for us He arose again, for us He sits for ever at
God’s right hand. And can we not trust Him? Let
Him do what He will. Let Him lead us whither He will.
Wheresoever He leads must be the way of truth and life.
Whatsoever He does, must be in harmony with that infinite love
which He displayed for us upon the Cross. Whatsoever He
does must be in harmony with that eternal purpose by which He
reveals to men God their Father. Therefore, though the
heaven and the earth be shaken around us, we will trust in Him;
for we know that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever.
National Sermons.
If we believe that God is educating men, the when, the
where, and the how, are not only unimportant, but considering Who
is the teacher, unfathomable to us; and it is enough to be able
to believe that the Lord of all things is influencing us through
all things.
Essays.
Provided we attain at last to the truly heroic and divine
life, which is the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by
what strange and weary ways, or through what painful and
humiliating processes, we have arrived thither. If God has
loved us, if God will receive us, then let us submit loyally and
humbly to His law—“Whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”
All Saints’ Day
Sermons.
I believe that the wisest plan of bearing sorrow is
sometimes not to try to bear it—as long as one is not
crippled for one’s every-day duties—but to give way
to sorrow, utterly and freely. Perhaps sorrow is sent that
we may give way to it, and, in drinking the cup to the
dregs, find some medicine in it itself which we should not find
if we began doctoring ourselves, or letting others doctor
us. If we say simply, “I am wretched, I ought to be
wretched;” then we shall perhaps hear a voice, “Who
made thee wretched but God? Then what can He mean but thy
good?” And if the heart answers impatiently,
“My good? I don’t want it, I want my
love!” perhaps the voice may answer, “Then thou shalt
have both in time.”
Letters and Memories.
After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one,
for it solves itself—so very soon at best—by
death. Do what is right, the best way you can, and wait to
the end to know. . . .
If, in spite of wars, and fevers, and accidents, and the
strokes of chance, this world be green and fair, what must the
coming world be like? Let us comfort ourselves as St. Paul
did (in infinitely worse times), that the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that
shall be revealed. It is not fair to quote one text about
the creation groaning and travailing without the other, that it
will not groan and travail long. Would the mother who has
groaned and travailed and brought forth children—would she
give up those children for the sake of not having had
that pain? Then believe that the day will come when the
world, and every human being in it who has really groaned and
travailed, would not give up its past pangs for the sake of its
then present perfection, but will look back on this life, as the
mother does on past pain, with glory and joy.
Letters and Memories.
I write to you because every expression of human sympathy
brings some little comfort, if it be only to remind such as you
that you are not alone in the world. I know nothing can
make up for such a loss as yours. [26] But you will
still have love on earth all round you; and his love is
not dead. It lives still in the next world for you, and
perhaps with you. For why should
not those who are gone, if they are gone to their Lord, be
actually nearer us, not further from us, in the heavenly world,
praying for us, and it may be, influencing and guiding us in a
hundred ways, of which we in our prison-house of mortality cannot
dream?
Yes, do not be afraid to believe that he whom you have loved
is still near you, and you near him, and both of you near God,
who died on the Cross for you. That is all I can say.
But what comfort there is in it, if one can give up one’s
heart to believe it!
Letters and Memories.
. . . All that I can say about the text, Matt. xxii. 30
[of Marriage in the world to come], is that it has nought to do
with me and my wife. I know that if
immortality is to include in my case identity of person, I shall
feel for her for ever what I feel now. That feeling may be
developed in ways which I do not expect; it may have provided for
it forms of expression very different from any which are among
the holiest sacraments of life. Of that I take no
care. The union I believe to be eternal as my own soul, and
I leave all in the hands of a good God.
Is not marriage the mere approximation to a unity that shall
be perfect in heaven? And shall we not be reunited in
heaven by that still deeper tie? Surely if on earth Christ
the Lord has loved—some more than others;—why should
not we do the same in heaven, and yet love all?
Do I thus seem to undervalue earthly bliss? No! I
enhance it when I make it the sacrament
of a higher union! Will not this thought give more
exquisite delight; will it not tear off the thorn from every
rose; and sweeten every nectar cup to perfect security of
blessedness in this life, to feel that there is more in store for
us—that all expressions of love here, are but dim shadows
of a union which will be perfect if we but work here, so as to
work out our own salvation?
Letters and Memories.
That is an awful feeling of having the roots which connect one
with the last generation seemingly torn up, and having to say,
“Now I am the root, I stand self-supported, with no other
older stature to rest on.” [30] But this one
must believe that God is the God of Abraham, and that all
live to Him, and that we are no more isolated and self-supported
than when we were children on our mother’s bosom.
Letters and Memories.
Believe that those who are gone are nearer us than ever; and
that if, as I surely believe, they do sorrow over the mishaps and
misdeeds of those whom they leave behind, they do not sorrow in
vain. Their sympathy is a further education for them, and a
pledge, too, of help, and, I believe, of final deliverance for
those on whom they look down in love.
Letters and Memories.
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; for they rest
from their labours, and their works do follow them.”
They rest from their labours. All their struggles,
disappointments, failures, backslidings, which made
them unhappy here, because they could not perfectly do the will
of God, are past and over for ever. But their works follow
them. The good which they did on earth—that is not
past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for
ever, following on in their path long after they are dead, and
bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men
whom they never saw, and in generations yet unborn.
Good News of
God—Sermons.
“A little while and ye shall not see me, and again a
little while and ye shall see me, because I go to the
Father,” said our Lord when speaking of His own death to
His sorrowing disciples. And if it be so with Christ, then
is it so with those who are Christ’s, with those whom we love. They are the partakers of His death,
therefore they are the partakers of His resurrection. Let
us believe that blessed news in all its fulness, and be at
peace. A little while and we see them, and again a little
while and we do not see them. But why? Because they
are gone to the Father—to the source and fount of all life
and power, all light and love, that they may gain life from His
life, power from His power, light from His light, love from His
love—and surely not for nought. Surely not for
nought. For, if they were like Christ on earth, and did not
use their powers for themselves alone, if they are to be like
Christ when they shall see Him as He is, the more surely will
they not use their powers for themselves, but as Christ uses His,
for those they love? Surely, like Christ they may come
and go even now unseen. Like Christ they may breathe upon
our restless hearts and say, “Peace be unto
you.” And not in vain—for what they did for us
when they were yet on earth they can do more fully now that they
are in heaven.
They may seem to have left us, and we may weep and
lament. But the day will come when the veil shall be taken
from our eyes and we shall see them as they are—with Christ
and in Christ for ever—and remember no more our anguish,
for joy that another human being has entered into that one true,
real, and eternal world, wherein is neither disease, disorder,
change, decay, nor death, for it is none other than the bosom of
the Father.
All Saints-Day Sermons.
And what if earthly love seems so delicious that all
change in it would seem a change for the worse, shall we
repine? What does reason (and faith, which is reason
exercised on the invisible) require of us, but to conclude that
if there is change, there will be something better there?
Letters and Memories.
What is the true everlasting life—the life of God and
Christ—but a life of love, a life of perfect active,
self-sacrificing goodness, which is the one only true life for
all rational beings, whether on earth or in heaven—in
heaven as well as on earth. Form your own notions as you
will about angels and saints in heaven, (for every one must have
some notions about them,) and try to picture to yourself what the
souls of those whom you have loved and lost are doing in the
other world; but bear this in mind, that if the saints in heaven
live the everlasting life, they must be living a life of
usefulness, of love, and of good works.
There are those who believe what we are too apt to forget, and
that is that the everlasting life cannot be a selfish and idle
life, spent only in being happy oneself. They believe that
the saints in heaven are not idle—that they are eternally
helping mankind, doing all sorts of good offices for those souls
who need them. I cannot see why they should not be
right. For if the saints’ delight was to do good on
earth, much more will it be to do good in heaven. If they
helped poor sufferers, if they comforted the afflicted here on
earth, much more will they be willing to help and comfort them,
now that they are in the full power, the full freedom, the
full love and zeal of the everlasting life. If their hearts
were warmed and softened by the fire of God’s love here,
how much more there! If they lived God’s life of love
here, how much more there, before the throne of God and the face
of Christ!
And if any one shall say that the souls of good men in heaven
cannot help us who are here on earth, I answer—When did
they ascend into heaven to find out that? If they had ever
been there, let us be sure they would have had better news to
bring home than this, that those whom we have honoured and loved
on earth have lost the power which they used once to have of
comforting us who are struggling below.
No, we will believe—what every one who loses a beloved
friend comes sooner or later to believe—that those whom we
have honoured and loved, though taken from our
eyes, are near to our spirits; that they still fight for us under
the banner of their Master, Christ, and still work for us by
virtue of His life of love, which they live in Him and by Him for
ever.
Pray to them, indeed, we need not, as if they would help us
out of any self-will of their own. They do God’s
will, and not their own; and go on God’s errands, and not
their own. If we pray to God our Father Himself, that is
enough for us. And what shall we pray? “Father,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Good News of God,
Sermons.
Is not that one thought that our beloved ones sleep in Christ
Jesus enough? They sleep in Jesus, and therefore in
infinite tenderness, sympathy, care, and love. They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Life, and therefore they
sleep in Life. They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Light,
and therefore they sleep in Light. They sleep in Jesus; and
He is Love, and therefore they sleep in Love. And what
better? This is better—that they who sleep in Jesus
must surely awaken. For, as it is written, His is a
quickening, awakening, life-giving Spirit, and so to sleep in Him
is to sleep in the very fount and core of life and power.
If from Jesus all our powers and talents come here on earth,
surely He will give us more and nobler, when we sleep in Him, and
wake in Him to a risen and eternal life. And more, it is
written that them that sleep in Jesus will He bring with
Him. At the last day we shall see face to face those we
loved—and before that—oh! doubt it not.
Oftentimes when Christ draws near our spirits He comes not alone,
but loving souls, souls whom we knew in the flesh on earth, bear
up His train, and hover near our hearts and join their whispers
to the voice and inspiration of Him who loved us, and who will
guide us with counsel here, and after that receive us into glory,
where we shall meet those beloved ones—not as our
forefathers dreamed, as meagre shadows flitting through dreary
and formless chaos—but as we knew them once—the body
of the flesh alone put off, but the real body, the spiritual body
to which flesh and blood was but a husk and shell, living and
loving more fully, more utterly, than even before, because it is
in Christ who is the fount of life, and freed in Him for ever
from hell and death.
And if you wish for a sign that this is so, come to holy
communion and take the bread and wine as a sign that your bodies
and theirs, your souls and theirs, are fed from the same fount of
everlasting life—the dead and risen and ever living body of
Christ Jesus, which He has given to be the life of the world.
MSS. Sermons.
We know that afflictions do come—terrible bereavements,
sorrows sad and strange. There they are, God help us
all. But from whom do they come? Who is Lord of life
and death? Who is Lord of joy and sorrow? Is not that
the question of all questions? And is not the answer the
most essential of all answers? It is the Holy Spirit of
God; the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son;
the Spirit of the Father who so loved the world, that He spared
not His only begotten Son; the Spirit of the Son who so loved the
world that He stooped to die for it upon the Cross; the Spirit
who is the Comforter, and says, “I have seen thy ways and
will heal thee, I will lead thee also, and restore comforts to
thee and to thy mourners. I speak peace to him that is near
and to him that is afar off, saith the Lord; and I will heal
him.” Is not that the most blessed news, that He who
takes away, is the very same as He who gives? That He who
afflicts is the very same as He who comforts?
All Saints-Day Sermons.
Oh! blessed news, that God Himself is the Comforter.
Blessed news, that He who strikes will also heal; that He who
gives the cup of sorrow will also give the
strength to drink it. Blessed news, that chastisement is
not punishment, but the education of a Father. Blessed
news, that our whole duty is the duty of a child—of the Son
who said in His agony, Father, not my will, but Thine be
done. Blessed news, that our Comforter is the Spirit who
comforted Christ the Son Himself; who proceeds both from the
Father and the Son, and who will tell us that in Christ we are
really and literally the children of God, who may cry to Him in
our extreme need, “Father,” with full understanding
of all that that royal word contains.
All Saints-Day Sermons.