Yes, dear friends, ours is to strive, to contend with self, with a nature that is fallen, with a proneness to evil, with desires that are selfish and carnal. To contend with the world, to disavow its principles, not to listen to its temptations; to realize and to confess that pleasure, success, ease, money, fame, are not the objects for which a noble soul must seek, but that God is our true end, and that mortification and self-denial, the cross, are the true means to arrive at that end, the way to come to union with God. To be at peace with the world; yes, I admit that it is a thing to be desired, but only so that we are at peace with Almighty God, too. And how is that peace gained? Only by the keeping of his law. At peace with the world, because the world cannot disturb one at peace with God; this is the Christian's life. But so great a boon is not gained without a strife, as the joy of Easter is not till the sorrow of the Passion has passed. Our duty, then, dear brethren, is to strive, and to keep the law of God, that first law written on our hearts, that law which he has given to us both by his words and by his life on earth, and which he still repeats to us through his holy church. {224} Foolish, indeed, are we above all others if our Easter joy is only that of the worldling, and our peace that which the world gives. This is not the peace that comes after looking at his hands and his side; not the joy that the disciples felt as they gazed on the risen Saviour, who stands to-day here in our midst, as he did among those his first followers, and says to us, as he said to them, "Peace be to you." We may have that peace, my brethren, if we are willing to obtain it and to deserve it as they did. We shall have it descend upon us, if, while we gaze at his hands and his side, we are conscious that we have indeed shared his Passion and cross. May indeed be ours this peace of God, which shall keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. ------------------- Sermon LXVI. True And Lasting Peace. _Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them: "Peace be to you."_ --From the Gospel of the Sunday. Peace be to you! This is our Lord's Easter blessing, thrice repeated in the Gospel of to-day; and a blessing which all his faithful may obtain. And it is the one for which we are continually seeking, each in his own way, but which we can find nowhere but with him who to-day offers it to us. {225}