Sermons Preached in Country Churches

Contents

The one-line summaries are guides drafted with the help of AI, not Maurice’s words.

1. Preface
2. Contents
3. Sermon I. The Pool of Bethesda

   Christ heals the man unable to walk at Bethesda at once, not through the pool’s old superstition, revealing that he alone truly knows our hidden faults and heals them, even on the Sabbath.

4. Sermon II. The Gift of Hearing

   Deaf and dumb since birth, the man Christ heals becomes a sign that only he can open our ears to receive the new covenant written on the heart rather than on stone.

5. Sermon III. The Spirit of Love

   The good Samaritan, not the priest or Levite who know the law by heart, shows that loving one’s neighbour without limit is what fulfils the law of love written in the heart.

6. Sermon IV. Waiting for Christ

   As surely as people lost in the night long for the sun, Christians wait for Christ to be fully unveiled, and Paul greets the Corinthians as people living in that hope, not in fear.

7. Sermon V. St. Peter’s Conversion

   Peter’s cowardly denial gives way, through grief and the risen Christ, to fearless witness before the rulers of Jerusalem, since he now knows Christ reigns as prince within men’s hearts.

8. Sermon VI. The Sick of the Palsy

   Jesus forgives the palsied man’s sins before healing his limbs, showing that the Son of Man has power on earth to send sin away, not merely to excuse it.

9. Sermon VII. The Marriage Feast of the King’s Son

   The Lord’s Supper is the wedding feast at which God, having united his Son to human flesh, invites every kind of person, and clothes each guest not in their own goodness but in his.

10. Sermon VIII. The Redemption of the Body

    Citizens of heaven look beyond bodily appetite to the coming Saviour, who will raise and glorify these frail, suffering bodies just as he raised and glorified his own.

11. Sermon IX. The Spirit the Help to Prayer

    When we cannot pray, God’s own Spirit stirs and interprets our unspoken longing, since it is he who first seeks fellowship with us rather than we with him.

12. Sermon X. The Law of Inheritance

    Honouring father and mother explains why nations keep or lose their land, since a people that despises its parents and family ties will not long remain rooted in its home.

13. Sermon XI. The Deliverer from Crime

    God, who delivered Israel from bondage, is present to every heart contemplating murder or adultery, and true belief in his watching presence, not fear of the law, is what restrains such crimes.

14. Sermon XII. St. John Baptist’s Day

    John the Baptist preaches a kingdom of heaven near enough to know every hidden sin, and his baptism of repentance is the pledge that this same God still clears the sin choking every heart today.

15. Sermon XIII. The Transfiguration

    On the mountain three fishermen glimpse Christ’s hidden glory among Moses and Elijah, yet it is in the noisy crowd below, healing a tormented boy, that they learn more fully who he is.

16. Sermon XIV. The Publican

    Confessing himself a sinner, the publican goes home justified, while the Pharisee who trusts his own righteousness and despises others does not, since God humbles the proud to exalt them.

17. Sermon XV. The Spirit and the Flesh

    Baptized Christians remain God’s children even while flesh and Spirit war within them, and walking in the Spirit, not the law, is what frees them from the works of the flesh.

18. Sermon XVI. Man’s Dominion

    Psalm eight’s wonder at man’s smallness beneath the heavens turns to confidence that God has crowned humanity with glory and given it dominion, a promise fulfilled and enlarged in the exalted Christ.

19. Sermon XVII. God and Mammon

    No one can worship the true, providing Father on Sundays and the anxious, grasping money-god through the week, so trusting God’s daily care frees a person from serving mammon.

20. Sermon XVIII. The Glory of the Cross

    Unable to boast of his Jewish birth or privilege any longer, Paul glories only in the shameful cross of Christ, which unites him to every sinner rather than setting him above any.

21. Sermon XIX. The Widow of Nain’s Son

    Christ’s compassion for the widow of Nain and his raising of her son are signs to every mourner that he feels each person’s grief and will one day call the dead to rise.

22. Sermon XX. Justification

    Christ’s death and rising justify Jews and Gentiles alike before the Father, so today’s prayer asks not for pardon alone but for a heart cleansed of malice and deceit.

23. Sermon XXI. Truth

    David’s psalm of guilt over murder and adultery becomes every sinner’s prayer, since God demands truth in the heart and secretly teaches the wisdom that purges falsehood.

24. Sermon XXII. Ministers of Christ

    When the disciples quarrel over who is greatest, Christ answers that his kingdom’s rulers are servants, so every father, mother, and neighbour is already one of his ministers.

25. Sermon XXIII. The Light of the World

    Though the world’s evil tempts him to doubt it, John comes to know God as pure light, with no darkness, faithful to forgive and cleanse whoever confesses sin.

26. Sermon XXIV. The Lord of the Winds and Sea

    Healing the sick, calming the storm on Galilee, and freeing men possessed by devils reveal one unchanging Lord who still gives health, guards sailors, and breaks tyrannous habits today.

27. Sermon XXV. The Man of Sorrows

    Because Christ never seeks his own pleasure, the world’s complaints against his Father’s goodness fall on him as grief, making his life one of both sorrow and joy.

28. Sermon XXVI. St. Matthew’s Day

    A single word lifts Matthew the tax-gatherer from his money table, and the same call still sounds in every heart, summoning each of us away from self-pleasing to follow Christ.

29. Sermon XXVII. Michaelmas Day

    Michael’s victory over the devil in heaven is joined to Christ’s warning against despising children, since beneath every child’s bad behaviour their angel still beholds the Father’s face.

30. Sermon XXVIII. God’s Visitations

    Cholera and disaster earn the name of God’s visitation when the fear they cause turns people to amend their lives, as the crowd at Nain recognizes in the raiser of the dead a compassionate deliverer.

31. Sermon XXIX. The Eternal Weight of Glory

    Paul’s sufferings teach him to give up pride in his own nation and sect and trust instead an unseen, eternal glory of God’s love, offered to every believer alike.

32. Sermon XXX. The Grace of God

    Peter’s own failure and denial of Christ teaches him that saving faith rests not on personal merit but on trust in the unchanging righteousness God has shown in his Son.

33. Sermon XXXI. The New Covenant

    Under the new covenant God writes his law into the mind and heart rather than leaving it on stone tablets, a gift claimed at baptism and carried abroad by missionary preaching.

34. Sermon XXXII. The Last Supper

    Bread and wine shared by Christ at the Passover mean little to the apostles until his death and resurrection reveal them as pledges of God’s reconciliation with every nation.

35. Sermon XXXIII. The Law of Liberty

    God’s commandments form a law of liberty rather than bondage, since obeying them means asking him to conquer the murderous, adulterous, or thieving desires that otherwise enslave the heart.

36. Sermon XXXIV. The Sure and Certain Hope

    In a week when the parish has buried a neighbour, Paul’s words that Christ must reign until death is destroyed give firmer comfort than any guesses about where the dead have gone.

37. Sermon XXXV. The Baptism of Repentance

    John the Baptist’s stern call to repent proves good news, since it declares a God who is near and eager to forgive, though Christ ranks even the least in his kingdom above him.

38. Sermon XXXVI. God’s Covenant with the Nations

    Jeremiah’s grief over Israel’s broken covenant and coming ruin warns England that neglecting the same commandments will just as surely leave a nation divided, cowardly, and weak.

39. Sermon XXXVII. Life and Raiment

    Taking no thought for food or clothing is not license for idleness, but Christ’s way of freeing diligent work from anxious, grasping Mammon-worship, trusting the Father who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies.

40. Sermon XXXVIII. The House of God

    Driving the money-changers from the temple and claiming it as his Father’s house, Christ explains why a consecrated church, unlike a house of merchandise, proclaims all people God’s own children.

41. Sermon XXXIX. St. John the Evangelist’s Day

    An aged apostle’s plea to abide in Christ names a home for restless hearts that money and pleasure never supply, so that his followers may face his coming without shame.

42. Sermon XL. Suffering and Glory

    Paul’s confidence that present suffering is nothing beside a coming glory grows out of his own deliverance from cruelty, and extends to the redemption he expects for every suffering body and creature.

43. Sermon XLI. Repentance and Conversion

    Peter tells the people who crucified Jesus that repentance means changing their minds about a God they wrongly feared as an enemy, and conversion means turning back to the Father who seeks them.