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
Man, in the fulfilment of his nature by Jesus Christ, is
man--not to be something else, our whole humanity is too dear to us. I
will cling to this humanity of man, for I do love it, and I will know
nothing else. But when man is bidden to look back into his humanity and
see what it means to be a man, that humanity means purity, truthfulness,
earnestness, and faithfulness to that God of which humanity is a part,
that God which manifested that humanity was a part of it, when the
incarnation showed how close the divine and human belonged
together--when man hears that voice, I do not know how he can resist,
why he shall not lift himself up and say, "Now I can be a man, and I can
be man only as I share in and give my obedience to and enter into
communion with the life of God," and say to Christ, to Christ the
revealer of all this, "Here I am, fulfil my manhood."
And do not you see how immediately this sweeps aside, as one gush of the
sunlight sweeps aside the darkness, do not you see how it sweeps aside
all the foolish and little things that people are saying? I say to my
friend, "Be a Christian." That means to be a full man. And he says to
me, "I have not time to be a Christian. I have not room. If my life was
not so full. You don't know how hard I work from morning to night. What
time is there for me to be a Christian? What time is there, what room is
there for Christianity in such a life as mine?" But does not it come to
seem to us so strange, so absurd, if it was not so melancholy, that man
should say such a thing as that? It is as if the engine had said it had
no room for the steam. It is as if the tree had said it had no room for
the sap. It is as if the ocean had said it had no room for the tide. It
is as if the man said that he had no room for his soul. It is as if life
said that it had no time to live, when it is life. It is not something
that is added to life. It is life. A man is not living without it. And
for a man to say that "I am so full in life that I have no room for
life," you see immediately to what absurdity it reduces itself. And how
a man knows what he is called upon by God's voice, speaking to him every
hour, speaking to him every moment, speaking to him out of everything,
that which the man is called upon to do because it is the man's only
life! Therefore time, room, that is what time, that is what room is
for--life. Life is the thing we seek, and man finds it in the fulfilment
of his life by Jesus Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account