But some of you, perhaps, are saying to yourselves, How will my being changed and renewed by the Spirit of God, render the laws less burdensome, while the crime and sin around me remain unchanged? It is others who want to be improved as much, and perhaps more than I do. It may be so, my friends; or, again, it may not; those who fancy that others need Gods Spirit more than they do, may be the very persons who need it really the most; those who say they see, may be only proving their blindness by so saying; those who fancy that their souls are rich, and are full of all knowledge, and understand the whole Bible, and want no further teaching, may be, as they were in St. Johns time, just the ones who are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked in soul, and do not know it. But at all events, if you think others need to be changed by Gods Spirit, pray that Gods Spirit may change them. For believe me, unless you pray for Gods Spirit for each other, ay, for the whole world, there is no use asking for yourselves. This, I believe, is one of the reasons, perhaps the chief reason, why the fruits of Gods Spirit are so little seen among us in these days; why our Christianity is become more and more dead, and hollow, and barren, while expensive and intricate laws and taxes are becoming more and more necessary every year; because our religion has become so selfish, because we have been praying for Gods Spirit too little for each other. Our prayers have become too selfish. We have been looking for Gods Spirit not so much as a means to enable us to do good to others, but as some sort of mysterious charm which was to keep us ourselves from the punishment of our sins in the next life, or give us a higher place in heaven; and, therefore, St. Jamess words have been fulfilled to us, even in our very prayers for Gods Spirit, Ye ask and have not, because ye ask amiss, to consume it upon your lustssave our selfish souls from the pains of hell; to give our selfish souls selfish pleasures and selfish glorification in the world to come: but not to spread Gods kingdom upon earth, not to make us live on earth such lives as Christ lived; a life of love and self-sacrifice, and continual labour for the souls of others. Therefore it is, that Gods Spirit is not poured out upon us in these days; for Gods Spirit is the spirit of love and brotherhood, which delivers a man from his selfishness; and if we do not desire to be delivered from our selfishness, we do not desire the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God will not be bestowed upon us. And no man desires to be delivered from his own selfishness, who in his very prayers, when he ought to be thinking least about himself alone, is thinking about himself most of all, and forgetting that he is the member of a familythat all mankind are his brethrenthat he can claim nothing for himself to which every sinner around him has an equal rightthat nothing is necessary for him, which is not equally necessary for everyone around him; that he has all the world besides himself to pray for, and that his prayers for himself will be heard only according as he prays for all the world beside. Baptism teaches us this, when it tells us that our old selfish nature is to be washed away, and a new character, after the pattern of Christ, is to live and grow up in us; that from the day we are baptized, to the day of our death, we should live not for ourselves, but for Jesus, in whom was no selfishness; when it teaches us that we are not only children of God, but members of Christs Family, and heirs of Gods kingdom, and therefore bound to make common cause with all other members of that Family, to live and labour for the common good of all our fellow-citizens in that kingdom. The Lords prayer teaches us this, when He tells us to pray, not My Father, but Our Father; not my soul be saved, but Thy kingdom come; not give me, but give us our daily bread; not forgive me, but forgive us our trespasses, and that only as we forgive others; not lead me not, but lead us not into temptation; not deliver me, but deliver us from evil. After that manner the Lord told us to pray; and, in proportion as we pray in that manner, asking for nothing for ourselves which we do not ask for everyone else in the whole world, just so far and no farther will God hear our prayers. He who asks for Gods Spirit for himself only, and forgets that all the world need it as much as he, is not asking for Gods Spirit at all, and does not know even what Gods Spirit is. The mystery of Pentecost, too, which came to pass on this day 1818 years ago, teaches us the same thing also. Those cloven tongues of fire, the tokens of Gods Spirit, fell not upon one man, but upon many; not when they were apart from each other, but when they were together; and what were the fruits of that Spirit in the Apostles? Did they remain within that upper room, each priding himself upon his own gifts, and trying merely to gain heaven for his own soul? If they had any such fancies, as they very likely had before the Spirit fell upon them, they had none such afterwards. The Spirit must have taken all such thoughts from them, and given them a new notion of what it was to be devout and holy: for instead of staying in that upper room, they went forth instantly into the public place to preach in foreign tongues to all the people. Instead of keeping themselves apart from each other in silence, and fancying, as some have done, and some do now, that they pleased God by being solitary, and melancholy, and selfishwhat do we read? the fruit of Gods Spirit was in them; that they and the three thousand souls who were added to them, on the first day of their preaching, were all together, and had all things common, and sold their possessions, and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need, and continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their bread in gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people. Those were the fruits of Gods Spirit in them. Till we see more of that sort of life and society in England, we shall not be able to pride ourselves on having much of Gods Spirit among us.
But above all, if anything will teach us that the strength of Gods Spirit is not a strength which we must ask for for ourselves alone; that the blessings of Gods kingdom are blessings which we cannot have in order to keep them to ourselves, but can only enjoy in as far as we share them with those around us; if anything, I say, ought to teach us that lesson, it is the Sacrament of the Lords Supper. Just consider a moment, my friends, what a strange thing it is, if we will think of it, that the Lords Supper, the most solemn and sacred thing with which a man can have to do upon earth, is just a thing which he cannot transact for himself, or by himself. Not alone in secret, in his chamber, but, whether he will or not, in the company of others, not merely in the company of his own private friends, but in the company of any or everyone, rich or poor, who chooses to kneel beside him; he goes with others, rich and poor alike, to the Lords Table, and there the same bread, and the same wine, is shared among all by the same priest. If that means anything, it means thisthat rich and poor alike draw life for their souls from the same well, not for themselves only, not apart from each other, but all in common, all together, because they are brothers, members of one family, as the leaves are members of the same tree; that as the same bread and the same wine are needed to nourish the bodies of all, the same spirit of God is needed to nourish the souls of all; and that we cannot have this spirit, except as members of a body, any more than a mans limb can have life when it is cut off and parted from him. This is the reason, and the only reason, why Protestant clergymen are forbidden, thank God! to give the Holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper, to any one person singly. If a clergyman were to administer the Lords Supper, to himself in private, without any congregation to partake with him, it would not be the Lords Supper, it would be nothing, and worse than nothing; it would be a sham and a mockery, and, I believe, a sin. I do not believe that Christ would be present, that Gods Spirit would rest on that man. For our Lord says, that it is where two or three are gathered together in His name, that He is in the midst of them. And it was at a supper, at a feast, where all the Apostles were met together, that our Lord divided the bread amongst them, and told them to share the cup amongst themselves, just as a sign that they were all members of one bodythat the welfare of each of them was bound up in the welfare of all the rest that Gods blessing did not rest upon each singly, but upon all together. And it is just because we have forgotten this, my friendsbecause we have forgotten that we are all brothers and sisters, children of one family, members of one bodybecause in short, we have carried our selfishness into our very religion, and up to the altar of God, that we neglect the Lords Supper as we do. People neglect the Lords Supper because they either do not know or do not like that, of which the Lords Supper is the token and warrant. It is not merely that they feel themselves unfit for the Lords Supper, because they are not in love and charity with all men. Oh! my dear friends, do not some of your hearts tell you, that the reason why you stay away from the Lords Supper is because you do not wish to be fit for the Lords Supperbecause you do not like to be in love and charity with all menbecause you do not wish to be reminded that you are equals in Gods sight, all equally sinful, all equally pardonedand to see people whom you dislike or despise, kneeling by your side, and partaking of the same bread and wine with you, as a token that God sees no difference between you and them; that God looks upon you all as brothers, however little brotherly love or fellow-feeling there may be, alas! between you? Or, again, do not some of you stay away from the Lords Supper, because you see no good in going? because it seems to make those who go no better than they were before? Shall I tell you the reason of that? Shall I tell you why, as is too true, too many do come to the Lords Supper, and so far from being the better for it, seem only the worse? Because they come to it in selfishness. We have fallen into the same false and unscriptural way of looking at the Lords Supper, into which the Papists have. People go to the Lords Supper nowadays too much to get some private good for their own souls, and it would not matter to many of them, I am afraid, if not another person in the parish received it, provided they can get, as they fancy, the same blessing from it. Thus they come to it in an utterly false and wrong temper of mind. Instead of coming as members of Christs body, to get from Him life and strength, to work, in their places, as members of that body, they come to get something for themselves, as if there was nobody elses soul in the world to be saved but their own. Instead of coming to ask for the Spirit of God to deliver them from their selfishness, and make them care less about themselves, and more about all around them, they come to ask for the Spirit of God because they think it will make themselves higher and happier in heaven. And of course they do not get what they come for, because they come for the wrong thing. Thus those who see them, begin to fancy that the Lords Supper is not, after all, so very important for the salvation of their souls; and not finding in the Bible actually written these words, Thou shalt perish everlastingly unless thou take the Lords Supper, they end by staying away from it, and utterly neglecting it, they and their children after them; preferring their own selfishness, to Gods Spirit of love, and saying, like Esau of old, I am hungry, and I must live. I must get on in this selfish world by following its selfish ways; what is the use of a spirit of love and brotherhood to me? If I were to obey the Gospel, and sacrifice my own interest for those around me, I should starve; what good will my birthright do me?