prisoners of the Lord, let us welcome the chain of trial, of sorrow, of self-denial, of persecution. There are prisoners who are not the Lord's. There are some fast bound in the misery and iron of bad habits, and habitual sin. These are lying in the condemned cell, bound hand and foot with the devil's chain. The drunkard, the impure man, the unbeliever, these are prisoners, but not the Lord's. I do not speak now of them. I speak to you, my brothers, who are trying to live a godly and a Christian life, the life of duty. And I tell you that you will often find this life a prison-house, where you must give up your own will, deny yourselves, learn to endure hardness, and to bear the chain which suffering, or neglect, or ignorance put upon you. If you are indeed the prisoners of the _Lord_, the iron of your chain will make you brave to suffer and be strong. The same hope which sustained Paul the aged long ago will sustain you now; the glorious certainty that after a while the Lord looseth men out of prison, and receives them into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. SERMON LIII. FIRM TO THE END. (Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity.) 1 COR. i. 8. "Who also shall confirm you unto the end." Steadfastness is one of the most important characteristics of a Christian. Perhaps you will tell me that love, and self-denial, and patience, and faith are the chief marks of Christ's followers. And I answer that these things are useless without steadfastness. It will not avail us to be very loving, and self-sacrificing, and patient, and trustful for a little while, and then to fall away, and be selfish, and impatient, and faithless. It is not the best regiment of soldiers which makes the most headlong charge, but which can _stand firm_ against the enemy. The Spartans of old were forbidden by their laws ever to flee from a foe. In the Pass of Thermopylae stands a monument to Leonidas and his followers, bearing this inscription--"Go, stranger, and tell at Lacedaemon that we died here in obedience to our laws." My brethren, what we want, as soldiers of Jesus Christ, is not so much zeal, or enthusiasm, or outward profession, as _firmness_ to the end, steadfastness to die, if need be, for the laws of our God.