"The true importance of the spiritual hope": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

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 Fourth Sunday of Easter.  The sermon opens with a recognition of the continued season of Easter, "these days of religious celebration and memorial in the Christian Church". It then focuses on the reality and significance of the spiritual life ("the one great interest"), a good example of the spiritual vitality of pre-1833 Old High tradition:

Let us, then, as the general lesson to be gathered from our past reflections, bear in mind, at all times, the true dignity and the real value of the soul. Let us learn frequently to put the question which our Lord framed for us, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Upon this ground of just comparison, we may bring all things temporal, all the glories of this world, and all its benefits, to the test, and learn to keep them in due dependence and subordination to the one great interest. 

The clear delights of an approving conscience, the testimonies of good hope for the days to come, the joy and peace of reconciliation with the Father of mercies, the assurance of endless ages of security and happiness, will thus be the solace and the riches of their present state. A right sense of the true importance of the spiritual hope, and prospects of the deathless soul, will induce us to recommend its interests to God, that under the guidance of his saying grace we may cherish its advancement, and promote its welfare by the increase of faith and charity; a faith built upon the two-fold testimonies of the Redeemer's saving death and glorious resurrection; a charity grounded on his precepts and illustrated in its whole extent by his example.