ment, your personal freedom, the safety of your life, the sacredness of your home, the security of your property, your measure of influence in the affairs of your town, your government, your nation, the world. All this is represented in the word "citizenship." Your respect for your own or your neighbours' claims, your share in the benefits of national prosperity or the reverse; your sense of shame if your country is humbled among the nations of the earth; your pride in the glory of any national triumph, in war, in politics, in trade, in art. All these are yours by virtue of your being a citizen. The respect in which your nation's name is held is a light which shines on your individual head if your nation is betrayed, degraded, disgraced among men, you must bear your share of the contempt.

And at the present day this very citizenship is becoming more and more the subject of earnest consideration. And men are talking fiercely, and savage words are bandied to and fro, and evil motives are freely imputed and reckless assertions made, and society is stirred up to the very depths; and not the honest sons of toil, but the livers by sinful idleness, claim their share in the disposition of events; and some are impetuous and some are immovable; and loud voices scream above the storm, and quiet people hold their breath with terror; and all agree upon this only-that at home and abroad, for weal and for woe, it is a crisis we are passing through.

But, beloved, there is a lesson in all this. Men feel or fancy-I am not going to take either side in this

place that they have this citizenship by right; that they must and will have it, in fact. Hence they think, they organize, they work.

citizen's place, a

And we too have a citizenship-a citizen's duties, a citizen's rights. We have it by right, we have it in our power; have we it in enjoyment?

66

S. Paul and the early Christians had no need to make this precautionary distinction. He and they could say honestly, and without reserve, "Our citizenship is in heaven." He, when he stood before the council, made the same statement in even a more solemn manner: As a citizen I have lived in all good conscience before [or with] God, unto this day," where his citizenship in the state over which God presides places in a still stronger light of holiness and importance that which is described in the text as being citizens in heaven.

Now S. Paul's application of this expression to his own case will help us to see how far we are justified in adopting it. He had surrendered all earthly prospects for the sake of Christ. In the strongest words which language can supply he repudiates the idea of anything standing between him and Christ. This Hebrew of the Hebrews, this enfranchised Roman, this citizen of no mean city, this political leader of God's chosen people, this apt scholar, this rising public man, gave up all-home, friends, prospects, comfort, safety, all-for the sake of Christ, to live as a wanderer, to flee as an outcast, to suffer as an evildoer; and from his very prison-house he writes-such

is the tremendous force of real conviction that it will not recognise, and therefore overcomes, what might be difficulties to others as well as to himself from the very prison-house at Rome he writes to urge others to follow him, others to do and dare and suffer what he has done, to walk so as they had him for an example . . . for-—an incontestable reason- our citizenship is in heaven." All our rights as men, all our hopes of glory, all our calculations of profit and advantage, all our nationality, all our patriotism, is centred in this, that " we are citizens of a better country, that is, an heavenly." By this fact he explains his life.

66

"For

But he says sorrowfully, there are others. many walk," he says, "of whom I have told you before, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the Cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who "—here comes the key of their lives— "mind earthly things."

Which, oh, which of these includes you and me, brethren? Is it not enough to bow the head with shame, to think that in this place, at any rate, it should be possible to ask such a question with anything like cause? Does it shame you, brethren, to hear it as it shames me to ask it? or does it make you angry? And if it makes you angry, are you angry with me, or with yourselves, or with the Bible? Angry because I have told you the truth? or because the idea of asking such a question is so unjust, so unfair, to any who come to church, to any "who profess and call themselves Christians"?

:

Let us look and see. You will say perhaps, and very truly, things are different now from when S. Paul acted as we have said. The world frowned on him, and on religion; or the more plain-spoken society turned upon these Christians and put them to death whenever it could. Things are different now. The world reads S. Paul's writings, or at any rate hears them read. The world has Christian people at its parties, and its races, and its amusements, and its business and in return the world will supply the Christian intellect with books, will guide the channels of Christian expenditure, will manage the affairs of Christian states, will alter the status of Christian life, will provide fuel for the fire of character to feed upon in every place of occupation and position. Now, I am not saying that all parties, all amusements, are absolutely wrong. I am not saying that the duties of life for a Christian involve an abstinence from all public affairs. Far, very far from it. But it is just because the respectable part of worldly pleasure is so apparently harmless that it is so really dangerous. If you are to be drowned, the result will be much the same whether the liquid in which you are plunged is the purest water or some (sweet though) deadly poison. The process may be a few seconds shorter in this latter case, but the result is the same. So in worldly matters: the danger nowadays for professing Christians is the being drowned, more than of being, in them; or, if you will drop the metaphor, being engrossed with them: the whole being-body, soul, and mind—is taken up by them, and so those who

begin by minding earthly things end with being "enemies of the Cross of Christ." For the two states are at variance—the kingdom of this world and the heavenly city; and those who are full of one cannot have room in their hearts to love the other.

Therefore, brethren, there must be in all cases an examination, in many cases an emptying of ourselves, before we can say with truth that "our citizenship is in heaven." Let the examination take some such form as this: What do I really care for? Among the unemployed it may be nearly the same to say, on what do I spend my money? How often do I fast? How often do I refuse any worldly engagement because it deprives me of time to think about my soul? How often do I stop from buying something pretty, either because I cannot honestly afford it, or because the money should go for God's service? Then again, how bored I am with talk about the Church, about my neighbour's spiritual condition, about the progress of Christianity, about the meaning of sacred words I often say, and solemn things that are often done. How much more pleasant the study of politics or sport; the result of an election or the starting of a branch business; the getting a day's holiday, or the doing something advantageous for my family. Now remember, in putting these things so I am speaking to those who profess to believe in Him who said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you," to those whose cry ought to be with truth, "Our citizenship is in heaven." Now, to bring the matter to a point, let