My text was taken from Heb. 12:22-24, “Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”  I applied these words to the Church of England, and rather reproached the Cornish people for not being more loyal and scriptural!

I think I was more roused by my sermon than any one else; and no one asked me to print it, but I did for all that, with a copy of the king’s letter.  I am sorry to say that the public did not care sufficiently about it to buy copies enough even to pay for printing.

It fell very flat, but I attributed that to the degeneracy of the times, and of Cornish people in particular.  The fact was, they understood that text far better than I did, and knew that “the Church of the first-born” was something more spiritual than I had any conception of.

From the commencement of my ministry I did not, as a general rule, preach my own sermons, but Newman’s, which I abridged and simplified, for in that day I thought them most sound in doctrine, practical and full of good common sense.  Indeed, as far as Church teaching went, they were, to my mind, perfect.  They stated doctrines and drew manifest conclusions; but my people were not satisfied with them then; and I can see now, thank God! that, with all their excellences, they were utterly deficient in spiritual vitality.

Their author was one whom I personally admired very much, but by his own showing, in his “Apologia.” he was a man who was searching not for God, but for a Church.  At length, when he grasped the ideal of what a Church ought to be, he tried by the Oxford Tracts, especially No.  XC, to raise the Church of England to his standard; and failing in that, he became dissatisfied, and went over to the Church of Rome.

Once, when I arrived at a friend’s house in the Lake district, I was told that there was a most beautiful view of distant mountains to be seen from my window.  In the morning I lifted the blind to look, but only saw an ordinary view of green fields, hedges, trees and a lake.  There was nothing else whatever to be seen.  In the course of the day, a heavy mist which had been hanging over the lake was dispersed, and then I saw the beautiful mountains which before had been so completely veiled that it was difficult to believe in their existence.

So it was with me.  I could see ecclesiastical things, but the more glorious view of spiritual realities beyond them, in all their full and vast expanse, was as yet hidden.