"Succour from the source of light and strength": a Hackney Phalanx Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume II (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity.  His words on faith provide a good introduction to the long season of Trinitytide now before us:

If faith must not presume beyond the path of ordinary duty, yet must it implore the grant of succour from the source of light and strength. Faith must still hold fast what it cannot yet perceive with any eye of sense: it must still retain the property of making even those who are the poorest, rich; and of enabling many to rejoice, who have many a pressing grief to check their joy, if it were not of a kind which is placed above the reach of worldly sorrows. But what then are the triumphs of this faith? We may hail them in the death of inward foes; the overthrow of headstrong passions; the subjection of unruly appetites; the banishment of fear; the dominion over the mind and heart, which is the reign of reason, and the empire of religion, in the human breast. Who that believes sincerely, and exercises his belief in suitable endeavours, does not find the beginning of that peace, which is the fruit of such well-fought encounters? In such conflicts, faith has the truest properties of courage: it is not animated by the shouts of a multitude, nor encouraged by the flat teries of men; it endures hard things without boasting; it can suffer silently; it can toil without shew of any great exertion; and can contend in secrecy and hope.

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