Sermons at Rugby

ent into the synagogue on the

to a solitary place, and ther

the life of our Lord. They stand in the record of it as a typical, essential, inseparable part of His habitual practice. What we have to remember about them is that, whereas all men recognise in the life of Jesus the one unique example in human history of a life which is morally perfect and

f it; but it would have lost its spiritual atmosphere. It would no longer be for us the life of the Divine Son, recognising and ready to sha

o aim upwards, inviting us to set our own practice side by side with it, and see how it l

prayed"-we have only to turn over the pages of this Gospel and note, as we go, the similar allusions, and we feel

departed into a mountain to pray; and then again that He spent the whole night in prayer; and we see all this not

he lesson to be learnt from it,

nal exercise of the soul was

of the spiritual life which constitute at once the beauty, the attraction

ressed upon us that if He needed these exercises, these s

l to cherish under all circumstances some such recurring moments in our round of life and o

ing your life into the secret and separate presence of God, in private prayer and thought, you incur the risk of si

ttendance on public prayer and at the common meeting-"He went, as His custom wa

arlier part of the same chapter tells us of His fasting and temptation in the wilderness, of the commencement of His public mission, and his

subtle voices of manifold temptation; the hardly won victory and the ministering angels; all this we must suppose to be still flashing ac

it was surely Jesus, as we see Him here on this occasion, with the breath of His own heart

n, as on all others, he went as a matter of regular custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, thus putting the seal and stam

ct, how easy it would have seemed to set up a strin

, its shallow and superficial and tedious traditional commentaries, its formalism and vain repetitions; all this, whatever might have been its value

men who consider themselves enlightened sometimes argu

e issue of any such neglect, when we see the mind o

His spirit has taken possession of our spirit or not, He sta

more, then, this fact deserves our notice, and calls us to follow Him, that we find Him, as His custom was, in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He was there Sabbath after Sabbath

ds of the young, so that they may never lose the impression of it, so that it go with them

and unattractive house of God, listening to the rude Galilean accents,

have low notions about our life, a low aim and a low standard-to be unaffected in our practice by this example of the Lord. We c

eacher of new wisdom and new faith, the bringer of new light among men, the voice of a new world, and yet, being all this, at the s

, that you are in danger of drifting away from the great saving tides of the human spirit into some shallow or artificial stream of your own time and generation. But, on the other hand, it is a happy thing for our life if, growing up in the habitual use of time-honoured spiritual