Epistle.
Ephesians iii. 13-31.

Brethren:
I beseech you not to be disheartened at my tribulations for you, which is your glory. For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power by his Spirit unto the inward man. That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. Now to him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we ask or understand, according to the power which worketh in us: to him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, world without end. Amen.

Gospel.
St. Luke xiv. 1-11.

At that time:
When Jesus went into the house of a certain prince of the Pharisees, on the Sabbath day, to eat bread, and they were watching him. And behold, there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy. And Jesus answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? But they held their peace. But he, taking him, healed him, and sent him away. And answering them, he said: Which of you whose ass or his ox shall fall into a pit, and will not immediately draw him out on the Sabbath day? And they could not answer him to these things. And he spoke a parable also to them that were invited, marking how they chose the first seats at the table, saying to them: When thou art invited to a wedding, sit not down in the highest place, lest perhaps one more honorable than thou be invited by him: and he who invited thee and him, come and say to thee: Give place to this man; and then thou begin with blushing to take the lowest place. But when thou art invited, go, sit down in the lowest place: that when he who invited thee cometh, he may say to thee: Friend, go up higher. Then shalt thou have glory before them that sit at table with thee. Because every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Sermon CXXIV.

They were watching him.
—St. Luke xiv. 1.

How condescending and kind, brethren, was the spirit of our Lord when he entered into the house of the Pharisee to eat bread; how base and ungracious, on the other hand, the conduct of the latter and his friends, who, as the Gospel says, "were watching him"!

They watched him that they might catch him breaking the laws of the Sabbath.

They envied him because his reputation was great with the people.

They watched him because "he had a daily beauty in his life which made theirs ugly," and tried to find something to carp at, something to find fault with.

He was their guest; they were bound to treat him with respect and kindness; yet they violated the rules of hospitality, deceitfully making the banquet a cover for their plan to catch him.

He was their Saviour and the benefactor of their people; one who, as they well knew, had healed the sick, given speech to the dumb, and made the blind to see. The knowledge of his goodness and power only moved them to envy. He was greater than they, and so they watched him that they might find something in his conduct which would lessen his reputation and good name.

Are there not found some in our own day who imitate the conduct of the Pharisee and his friends?

Jesus is often near you; you often meet him in your every-day life, often have him in your house in the person of one of his pious servants—I mean any one of your neighbors whose life is better than your own.

There are many who watch such an one with the spirit of envy and criticism, and they try to find out worldly motives for their neighbor's piety. Such persons say, as Satan did of old, "Does Job serve God for naught?" Often they exclaim, "I see my neighbor frequently at Communion, but she only goes for show; I should like to see some change in her life"; or "What does she run to church so much for? It would be a great deal better for her if she stayed at home and minded her family."

Again, many watch the prosperity of their neighbor with an envious eye; they hate to see their neighbor in a better house than their own, don't like him to have more money than themselves, and so forth. All this is watching Jesus as the Pharisee did.

There are many, too, whose consciences must accuse them of watching Jesus in the persons of his priests, who envy the priest's position, envy his authority over them, and such like. These people try to pick a hole in the priest's ways, to pass their opinion on his manner, his judgments, his actions. They watch him in his words, at table in their own houses, to see if perchance they can find something to make a dish of scandal out of. Yes, brethren, there are many such watchers as these, and Pharisees are they all.

Envy, which prompts this horrible spirit of unchristian criticism, is one of the worst offences against the great and fundamental virtue of charity.

Envy has inspired the hearts of men with the most wicked crimes. Envy delivered the innocent Lamb of God to a cruel death. Envy, therefore, is a grievous sin.

Envy and the spirit of criticism spring from pride. Envy makes us watch others, and such watching is from pride.

Watch yourselves rather than your neighbor and your superiors.

"Brethren," says St. Paul, "if a man be overtaken in any fault, you, who are spiritual, instruct such an one, in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted."

Walk and pray lest ye enter into temptation. Watch Jesus and his servants, if you will, but do so to be edified, do so to learn something good. Watch Jesus, who is meek and humble of heart, that you may learn the lesson which he tried to teach the proud and envious Pharisees: "Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

Rev. Algernon A. Brown.

Sermon CXXV.

Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled.
—St. Luke xiv. 11.

That was an unlucky guest who sat down in the first place and was sent to take the lowest. No wonder he was covered with shame; served him right. To be humbled in the very act of exalting ourselves is indeed hard punishment, sharp and painful as a pang in a tenderly sore spot. It is like being caught in a theft or a lie. For, truly, pride is theft. We have no right to be proud, because we own as our property nothing that we may be proud of. All that we have that is good is God's; to pride ourselves on that is to rob God of his due, and appropriate what does not belong to us. And pride is a lie, a deceit; "for if thou hast received," says St. Paul, "why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?" A vain boast is simply lying.

To lie and to steal are very mean things to do. To be caught lying and stealing makes us feel very mean in the eyes of others; and that is what comes to us when our pride is evident and is found out by our fellow-men, and then we are humbled as was the poor guest spoken of in the Gospel. Truth is the badge of honor among men. Humility is truth, because humility is to know our place and keep it; in this is truthfulness and comfort also. We feel at ease when we are where we ought to be. A bone dislocated is a torture; anything out of place is an offence and a nuisance, whether it be a misshapen limb or a stove-pipe that doesn't fit and smokes. You remember in the fable the fate of the foolish frog who wanted to be as big as the ox—he blew until he burst and collapsed.

Now, is there not a great deal of that kind of work among us—I mean getting too big, reaching above us, exalting ourselves—in a word, not knowing our place? Let me instance: The poor will pass for rich: fine dress and flashy jewels in broad daylight on the street; at home, dirt, wretchedness, almost starvation. The ignorant will know more than they have learned, and so stretch themselves all out of shape, and wed in the most repulsive manner pretentious speech to gross ignorance. Not only is one man as good as another, but a great deal better. The layman will teach theology and canon law to the priest. The ward politician, who buys votes at five cents a glass, and trades them off for street contracts or other valuable consideration, can run the world, the Holy See not excepted. Our American boy of twelve thinks the old folks not a circumstance to him, and shows it in his behavior. The school girl who can do a sum and thump an "easy exercise" on the piano scorns domestic work, leaves the kitchen to "ma," and cultivates the fine arts in the parlor. Our talk, our press even, is fall of unreality, inflated bombast and buncombe. We have no degrees of comparison but the superlative. God help us for a vain, boastful set! What is it all but untruthfulness, want of humility, strutting up to the head of the table in one way or another? Our conversations are full of ourselves; we threaten horrors or we promise wonders; and it all issues, like the mountain in travail, in ridiculous failures. Let us know our place, or humiliation will teach it us. Adam and Eve were well off, and might have been till this day had they known their place and been satisfied; but they wanted to go up, to become as God—and they came down to all the miseries of fallen nature. Simon the Magician started, with the help of the devil, to ascend into heaven like our Saviour; but God brought him down before he got very far. "He that exalteth himself shall be humbled." Moreover, pride finds its punishment in the very ridiculousness of itself. The fool imagines himself to be other than he is; the insane insists on taking to himself a character which is not his. Well, brethren, the mock-king and queen of the asylum are not more foolish and insane, because not more untruthful, than the proud man.

The lesson, then, is this: Keep to the place God has given you, don't put yourself forward in conversation, acknowledge your nothingness before your Creator, be true and real to your fellow-men; thus you will escape shameful humiliation and deserve to be exalted in the esteem of others and in the kingdom of heaven.