Epistle.
Hebrews ix. 11-15.

Brethren:
Christ being come a high-priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation: neither by the blood of goats, nor of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of a heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? And therefore he is the mediator of the new testament: that by means of his death, for the redemption of those transgressions, which were under the former testament, they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Gospel.
St. John viii. 46-59.

At that time: Jesus said to the multitude of the Jews: Which of you shall convince me of sin? If I say the truth to you, why do you not believe me? He that is of God, heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God. The Jews, therefore, answered and said to him: Do not we say well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? Jesus answered: I have not a devil; but I honor my Father, and you have dishonored me. But I seek not my own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Amen, amen, I say to you: if any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever. The Jews therefore said: Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste death for ever. Are thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself? Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say that he is your God. And you have not known him, but I know him. And if I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know him, and do keep his word. Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad. The Jews therefore said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am. They took up stones therefore to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.

Sermon LII.

But Jesus hid himself.
—St. John viii. 59.

Thick and fast, dear brethren, the shadows of the Great Week begin to fall upon us. Only a few more days and it will be Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. To-day we are left, as it were, alone. The crucifix, with its figure of the dead, white Christ, is veiled; the dear, familiar faces of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph are veiled also; and even the saints before whom we were wont to kneel are all hidden behind the purple veil of Passion-tide. Not till Good Friday will Jesus look upon us again, not till Holy Saturday will the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, and the saints once more come forth to our view. We are, then, alone by ourselves. God wants us to stand up before him just as we are. Jesus has hidden his face for a while. The crucifix has bidden you good-by. In what state were you last night when devout hands veiled the figure of Christ? Will you ever look upon the old, familiar crucifix again? It may be, before the purple veil is lifted from this cross, you will have looked upon the face of Christ in judgment. O brethren! to-day the face of Jesus is hidden. May be the last time you looked upon it you were in mortal sin, and are so still. When and how shall you look upon it again? If you live till Good Friday you will see it then held aloft by the priest, and afterwards kissed by all the faithful. If you die before then, and die, as you may, without warning or preparation, then you will look upon the face of Christ upon the judgment seat, then you will hear the awful words: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." Or perhaps—and may God grant it!—you will next see the face of Jesus in the person of his priest in the confessional, and there it will be turned upon you in mercy and forgiveness. There are some of you, I know, who are as dead men. There are some of you who, even up to this late hour, are holding out against grace. Still in mortal sin! I point you to the veiled Christ. I ask you, here in the sacred presence of God, I ask you in the most solemn manner, when and how will you look upon his face again? He has bidden you good-by to-day, he has said farewell, and as he said it he saw that you were a blasphemer, a drunkard, an adulterer, a slanderer, a creature full of pride, full of sloth, full of all kinds of sin. Oh! say, shall he still find you so when he returns? Say, when he is uncovered on Good Friday can you, dare you add to his grief by still being what you are now? And to us all, even the most devout, this lesson of the veiled crucifix ought not to pass unheeded. Christ has gone from us to-day! How will he come back to us? All torn and bloody, all thorn-scarred, all spear-pierced, nailed to the cross, and all for love of us! We, too, brethren, who are trying to walk strictly in the narrow path—we, too, may ask ourselves. When and how shall we see him again? Perhaps before Good Friday, ay, perhaps even before our hands can grasp the green palm-branch of next Sunday, we may see the unveiled face of our Beloved. Are we afraid of that? Oh! no. We have loved the face of suffering too well to dread the face of glory. We only expect to hear from his lips words of love and welcome. Brethren, there is a day coming when all veils shall be lifted. There is a time nearing us when all must look upon the face that died on Calvary's Mount. On that day and at that time will take place the great unveiling of the face of Christ: I mean the day of general judgment. O solemn, O awful thought for us to-day before the veiled image of our Lord! May be the judgment day will come before that light veil is lifted from the well-known crucifix. Great God! our next Good Friday may be spent either in heaven or in hell. Go home, brethren, with these thoughts fixed deeply in your hearts. Come here often to pray. If you have sins come here and confess them; and often and often as we turn to the veiled Christ, let us most devoutly cry: "Jesus, when and how shall we look upon thy face again?"

Rev. Algernon A. Brown.

Sermon LIII.

Under the false accusations of the Jews how calm and self-possessed our Lord remains! He does not return passion for passion, anger for anger, accusations for accusations, violence for violence; but he meets calumny with the assertion of truth, and confounds his enemies by humility and meekness. They accuse him of sin; with the sublime simplicity of a pure conscience he dares them to convince him of sin. They call him names: "Thou art a Samaritan"; to so evident a falsehood he deigns no reply. Blinded by anger, they accuse him of being possessed: "Thou hast a devil"; a simple denial, "I have not a devil," the leaving of his own glory to his Father, the assertion of his divine mission, is the answer to the blasphemous calumny. "Now we know thou hast a devil," repeat they, waxing more passionate; but, unimpassioned, Jesus rises above their rage to the calm heights of the Godhead, and affirms his eternal generation. Finally, losing all control of themselves, they take up stones to cast at him; but he quietly goes out of the temple and hides himself, for his hour—the hour when he would bear in silence the accusations and indignities of man, and allow himself to be led to slaughter—had not yet come.

In this our Saviour teaches us how we should behave when the passions of others fall upon us and we are made the butt of accusations, just or unjust. In such circumstances what is generally your conduct? By no means Christian, I am afraid, but very worldly; for the world counts it true valor and justice to give tit for tat, to take tooth for tooth and eye for eye. Do you not give back as good—and often worse—than you get? Prudence, let alone Christianity, should dictate to you quite another conduct. Your counter-accusations do but strengthen and confirm the calumny; they allow it to stand, "You're another" and "you're no better" are poor arguments to clear yourselves. It's a flank movement that does not cover your position, a feint that does not save you from attack. The answering of a question by asking another question is a smart trick, but no answer. A calm denial, if you could make it, or dignified silence would do the work more surely and thoroughly. And so the fight of words goes on in true Billingsgate style; to and fro they fly thick and hot, hotter and hotter as passion rises on both sides. "One word brings on another," until white heat is reached and all control of temper lost. Then, as the Jews ended with stones, so you perhaps come to more serious passion than mere words. The result is quarrels, deadly feuds, bodily injuries, and worse, may be—bloodshed and the jail. A cow kicked a lantern in a stable, and Chicago was on fire for days. Some frivolous accusation that you pick up, while you should let it fall, starts within you a fire of anger that makes a ruin of your whole spiritual life and throws disorder all around you; families are divided; wife and husband sulk, quarrel, live a "cat and dog" life; friends are separated, connections broken. Peace flies from your homes, your social surroundings, your own hearts; the very horrors of hell are around you. Christian charity has been wounded to death, and the slightest of blows, the lightest of shafts has done it. All for the want of a little patience and self-possession! How often we hear it said: "Oh! I have such a bad temper; I'm easily riz, God forgive me! I've a bad passion entirely." Well, my dear brethren, learn from this Gospel how you should control yourselves, how you should possess your souls in patience. One-half the sins of the world would be done away with, if only the lesson of this Gospel were laid to heart and put into practice. What is the lesson?

Firstly, never seek self-praise in self-justification. Jesus turns aside the calumny of the Jews, but leaves the glorifying of himself in the hands of his Father, "who seeketh and judgeth." Secondly, pay no attention to accusations that are absurd, evidently untrue, and frivolous. When Jesus is called names and is made out to be what every one knows he was not—"a Samaritan"—he makes no answer. Thirdly, if serious calumny, calculated to injure your usefulness in your duties and state of life, assail you, it then becomes your right, and sometimes your duty, to repel the calumny, as Jesus did when he was accused of "having a devil." But in this case your self-justification, like that of our Saviour, should ever be calm, dignified, and Christian. It should be a defence, never an attack. The true Christian parries, he does not give the thrust; he shields himself from the arrows of malice, he does not shoot them back. Superior to revenge, he pities enemies for the evil they do; he forgives them and prays for them, as our Lord has commanded. This is Christian charity, and Christian humility as well. But as it avails little to know what we should do, if we have not God's grace to enable us to do it, let us often say, especially in temptations to impatience: "O Jesus, meek and humble of heart! make me like unto thee."

Sermon LIV.

Why is to-day called Passion Sunday, my brethren? There does not seem to be any special commemoration of our Lord's sacred Passion in the Mass, as there is next Sunday, when the long account of it from St. Matthew's Gospel is read; and most people, I think, hardly realize that to-day is anything more than any other Sunday in Lent.

But if you look into the matter a little more you will notice a great change which comes upon the spirit of the church to-day, and remains during the two following weeks. The Preface of the Mass is not that of Lent, but that of the Cross; the hymns sung at Vespers and at other times are about the cross and our Lord's death upon it; and all the way through the Divine Office you will see evident signs that the church is thinking about this mystery of the cross, the commemoration of which is consummated on Good Friday.

And if you look about the church this morning you will see the pictures all veiled, to tell us that during these two weeks we should think principally of our Lord's suffering and humiliation; that we should, as it were, for a while forget his saints and everything else connected with his glory. And even the cross itself is concealed, for it is after all a sign of triumph and victory to our eyes; it is waiting to be revealed till Good Friday, when the sacrifice shall be accomplished and the victory won.

To-day, then, is called Passion Sunday because it is the opening of this short period, from now till Easter, which the church calls Passion-time.

What practical meaning has this Passion-time for us, my brethren? It means, or should mean, for us sorrow, humiliation, sharing in the Passion of our Lord. Lent, all the way through, is a time of penance; but more especially so is this short season which brings it to a close. Now, surely, is the time, if ever, when we are going to be sorry for our sins, when we cannot help thinking of what they have made our Divine Saviour suffer. Now is the time to think of the malice and ingratitude of sin; to see it as it really is, as the one thing which has turned this earth from a paradise into a place of suffering and sorrow; to see our own sins as they truly are, as the only real evils which have ever happened to us, and to resolve to be rid of them for our own sake and for God's sake; for he has suffered for them as well as we.

Now is the time to go to confession, and to make a better confession than we have ever made before, or ever can make, probably, till Passion-time comes round again. For now is it easier for us to be sorry for our sins, not only because we have everything to show us how hateful they are, but also because God's grace is more liberally given. He has sanctified this time and blessed it for our repentance and conversion. He calls us and helps us always to penance, but never so much as now.

Hear his voice, then, my brethren, and, in the words with which the church begins her office today: "To-day if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Do not obstinately remain in sin, and put off your repentance and confession to a more favorable time. There is no time nearly as good as this; this is the time which God himself has appointed. You must make your Easter duty, if you would not add another terrible sin to the many which you have already made our Lord bear for you; make it now before Easter comes. Take your share now in the Passion, that you may have your share of the Easter joy.

And there is another reason why you should come now to confession; for there is another unusual grace which God now offers you—the grace of the Jubilee, which you heard announced last Sunday. Now, a Jubilee is not a mere devotion for those who frequent the sacraments; it is a call and an opportunity for those who have neglected them. I beg you not to let it be said that you have allowed this opportunity to go by. Come and give us some work to do in the confessional; the more the better. We will not complain, but will thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The best offering you can make to your priests, as well as to the God whose servants they are, is a crowded confessional and a full altar-rail at this holy Passion-time.