And, lastly, you want God to forgive your sins? You want men to condone your offences and look over your shortcomings and defects? Then love your neighbor as yourself. If he has injured you, pardon him; if he has done wrong, overlook it; if he has got defects, bear with them. "All things," says one of the saints, "are easy to him who loves." So, then, love God, love your neighbor, and all things will be easy to _you_. This life will pass away all the more pleasantly, and the life to come will be all the more bright and its reward all the more precious, if you will only remember and act upon this great commandment: "Thou shalt _love_ thy neighbor _as thyself_." Rev. Algernon A. Brown. ---------------------- Sermon CXXVII. _With patience, supporting one another in charity._ --_Ephesians iv._ 2. We hear a great deal nowadays, my dear brethren, about toleration. It is a thing which the nineteenth century takes a special pride in. It seems to imagine that it is really a great deal more charitable and patient than any previous one, and that, in fact, the apostles themselves might learn a lesson of Christian virtue from it, if they could come back to the earth. {423} I wish that such were actually the case; but if we examine this pretended toleration and charity we shall have to confess that it is simply a sham, having nothing whatever in it to make it deserve the name it takes. You would not say of any man that he was of a tolerant and patient disposition because he was quite willing that some stranger should be interfered with, provided he himself was let alone. Well, that is precisely the tolerance of the nineteenth century. The world is now tolerant about all things in which the rights of Almighty God are concerned, because it has made him a stranger to itself; but it resents interference with itself, and insists on being let alone in its own enjoyments as much as, or more than, ever. The world, then, has not yet learned to be tolerant, patient, or charitable in any true sense of those words, in spite of all its boasting; and it is much to be feared that it never will. After all, it is not much wonder that it has not; for this is a very difficult lesson, and one which one must have the help of God to learn. True tolerance or patience, bearing with others when they interfere, not with somebody else, but with ourselves, is a fruit of grace rather than of nature. It cannot be expected from those who have rejected the grace of God as a needless encumbrance in the journey of life. If they have the appearance of it, it is only an outside finish of what is called politeness, put on merely to save trouble and make things more comfortable on the whole.