SERMON XXXI. CHRISTMAS PEACE
(Sunday before Christmas.)
Phil. iv. 4. Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.
This is a glorious text, and one fit to be the key-note of
Christmas-day. If we will take it to heart, it will tell us how to
keep Christmas-day. St. Paul has been speaking of two good women,
who seem to have had some difference; and he beseeches them to make
up their difference, and be of the same mind in the Lord. And then
he goes on to tell them, and all Christian people, why they should
make up their differences.
And for that reason, I suppose, the Church has chosen it for the
epistle before Christmas-day, on which all men are to make friends
with each other, and rejoice in the Lord. Let your moderation, he
says, be known to all men. The Greek word signifies forbearance,
reasonable dealing, consideration for one another, readiness to give
way, not standing too severely on one's own rights. Now this is
just the temper in which we ought to meet our friends at Christmas--
forbearance. They may not have always behaved well to us. Be it
so. No more have we to them. Let us, once in the year at least,
forget old grudges. Let us do as we would be done by; give and
forgive; live and let live; bury our past quarrels, and shake hands
over their graves.
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