"Let us not neglect the solemn opportunity": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the beginning of Holy Week

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Sixth Sunday in Lent, Palm Sunday.  Yet again, the sermon is significant testimony to the observance of the liturgical calendar in pre-1833 Anglicanism, and the presence of a lively liturgical spirituality.

... let us learn to make that use of the sacred narrative, which the present season more especially demands. Let us be careful to improve the opportunities for prayer, and to cultivate, as we shall be able, these hours, which are so particularly set apart for forming good resolutions, and for repairing that which may have been neglected. Let us not refuse the call to self-examination, to vigilance, to religious exercises of those kinds more especially, which are best fitted to that portion of our lives, when we are invited to consider the particulars of those sufferings which were undertaken for our sakes, and endured even in our stead. 

We are now upon the verge of that time, which the Church appoints for a peculiar recollection of the Redeemer's sufferings and death. He who said to his Apostles, "Watch and pray", says the same to all of us. Let us not neglect the solemn opportunity according to our means and ability; but so cherish in our hearts a watchful spirit, and so give ourselves to timely preparations, that we fail not in the hour of duty and exertion.

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