Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks — John Shaqi
Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips BrooksBrooks, Phillips
Religion
Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks
Brooks, Phillips
Episcopal Church -- Sermons; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Sermons; Sermons, American
something like this which I have tried to describe is not very often in
your minds as you hear the magnificent invitations which Christ gives to
the human soul to live its fullest life, to man to be his fullest being.
There are, no doubt, other reasons which present themselves to men, and
of those I do not speak. I will not think that the men who are listening
here to me now, in a base and low way shrink from the evidence of
Christianity and from the life of Christ because they do not want to
enter into that religion because it would make too great demands upon
them in the sacrifices that they would be called upon to make. It is
said sometimes, and I doubt not that it is sometimes true, that men will
not see the power and truth of Christianity because they do not want to
see it. It seems to me that the other is also often true, and it is
that upon which we would much rather dwell. Men sometimes hesitate at
Christianity and tremble, and will not enter into the great region that
is open to them, because they do not want it so intimately. The
critical, the sceptical disposition is very often born just of man's
perception of the glory of the life that is offered to him, and of the
intense desire that is at the bottom of his soul to enter into that
life. Who is the man that criticises the ship most carefully as she lies
at the wharf, that will see what capacity she has for the great voyage
that she has set before her? Is he the man who means to linger
carelessly upon the bank and never sail away, or the man who is obliged,
if she can sail across the ocean, to go with her? Just in proportion to
the depth of interest with which we look upon all Christian truth we
must be deep questioners with regard to the truth of that truth. We must
search into all its evidence. We must try to understand how it commends
itself to all our minds. But first of all we want to know certainly what
Christianity is, if it is able to deal with the thing with which we are
puzzling or never to give an intelligent definition of it.
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