Sermons Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel

Contents

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

1. The Faith of Protestants First Sunday after Easter

   The Reformation recovered the truth that deliverance must reach sin itself, not only its penalties, so justification means being made righteous in Christ, and peace with God a daily dying to self-will.

2. The Faith of Catholics Second Sunday after Easter

   Protestants drawn to Rome feel a God-given hunger for unity, but the unity, continuity and communion they crave already belong to their own Catholic Church, so the answer is repentance, not conversion.

3. The Faith of Englishmen Third Sunday after Easter

   The English Church’s mocked middle position reconciles Protestant assurance of personal justification with the Catholic craving for unity, with Christ as the living centre, though sectarian self-assertion remains its great failure.

4. National Holiness Fourth Sunday after Easter

   Israel’s holiness is a status God gives the whole people, not an ideal won by the righteous, so sin is forgetting that given dignity, and every law and office is sacred under God, the nation’s present King.

5. The Sacredness of Common Morality Rogation Sunday

   Dwelling in God’s presence asks for ordinary honesty, truth-telling and refusing bribes and usury, rather than ritual or ascetic heroism, and Christ’s Ascension sharpens these demands rather than relaxing them.

6. The Ascension of Christ Sunday after Ascension Day

   Christ’s Ascension above every power completes what Romans and Galatians begin, and faith in him as humanity’s common Head grounds justification and the unity of nations, dissolving sects and breaking tyranny.

7. Universality of the Whitsuntide Message Whit-Sunday

   Whitsuntide speaks more urgently to a scientific, commercial age than to any before it, for Christ is Head over every power, and the gift of speech at Pentecost breaks down barriers between people and God.

8. Conformity to the Mind of God Trinity Sunday

   No outward authority can compel real obedience to God, since even the effort to submit is self-will, and conformity to his mind comes only as the Spirit renews the will, like spring quickening dormant life.

9. Steps to Faith in the Holy Trinity First Sunday after Trinity

   The Trinity is a resting-place for the humbled soul, not a puzzle for the proud: the scientist, the penitent and the spiritual seeker each find one Person and learn their unity only in fellowship.

10. The Bond of Peace Second Sunday after Trinity

    The unity of the Spirit is already given, to be kept with effort, not forced into being, and true peace rests not on uniformity but on the shared Name of Father, Son and Spirit.

11. Christian Reverence and Subjection Third Sunday after Trinity

    Submitting to one another needs a reverence no custom can supply, flowing from God’s Spirit and from seeing in every person, however degraded, a nature Christ has taken and glorified.

12. The Apostle the Chief of Sinners Fourth Sunday after Trinity

    Paul’s confession that he is chief of sinners is sober present truth, growing keener with age, for it rests not on outward deeds but on a will exposed as hostile to God.

13. God’s Judgment and Our Judgment Fifth Sunday after Trinity

    Judgment means discerning right from wrong, not a vague word for calamity, and when people shirk judging themselves, God does it within them, exposing hidden thoughts that suffering can make fruitful.

14. Christ’s Death and Resurrection the Archetypes of Ours Sixth Sunday after Trinity

    Christ’s death is the pattern of every human death, uniting rather than isolating us, and because death and resurrection are one in him, rising means restored union with ourselves, each other and God.

15. How Sin Pays, and How God Gives Seventh Sunday after Trinity

    Sin and righteousness are two masters, one paying death as wages and the other giving life freely, for eternal life is not a reward but Christ himself dwelling within as a living spring.

16. The Fatherly Character of God the Only Ground of Repentance, Consolation, Hope Day of Humiliation

    Amid the horrors of the Indian Mutiny, true repentance and comfort spring only from faith in God as a Father who is also a righteous Judge, not from abstract providence or fear of an offended power.

17. Christ, Not Christianity, the Deliverance of Mankind Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

    England’s crisis in India is a failure of belief, not of missionary effort, and the real question is what we think of Christ, King of every nation and near to every conscience.

18. Faith and Science United in the Work of the Missionary St. Luke’s Day

    Luke the physician shows that bodily and spiritual healing come from one Spirit of Truth, and that the gospel was always meant to confront superstition with real cures as well as preaching.

19. A Straitened Faith and a Narrow Gospel Not the Strait Gate and the Narrow Way of Christ Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

    Christ’s strait gate is not a narrow creed for the few but his own path of trust in the Father, open to all, while the broad way is distrust of God, dressed as despair or self-righteousness.

20. The Sealed Nation and the Universal Family All Saints’ Day

    The sealed tribes and the countless multitude show that Jerusalem’s fall confirmed God’s promises, the baptized inheriting Israel’s calling, and heaven fulfilling every family’s hopes as a society, not a dissolving of persons.

21. The Sermon on the Mount: Its General Principle Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity

    The Sermon on the Mount is living law spoken by Christ the King, and its call to be perfect summons us not into an elite but into full humanity, as children of a boundlessly merciful Father.

22. The Sermon on the Mount: Its Teaching Respecting Marriage Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity

    Christ’s teaching on divorce recovers marriage’s original order as one flesh, older than the Law, against Pharisees who made Moses’ concession a rule, and true reverence for marriage springs from Christ’s union with humanity.

23. The Sermon on the Mount: Its Teaching Respecting Forgiveness and Punishment Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity

    Christ’s commands not to resist evil and to love enemies do not abolish the law of justice but reveal its divine root, separating retribution from private vengeance and leaving the magistrate’s sword in place.