Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
My dear boys, take this one thought away with you from this chapel
to-day. Believe that the wise and good of every age and clime are
looking down on you, to see what use you will make of the knowledge which
they have won for you. Whether they laboured, like Kepler in his garret,
or like Galileo in his dungeon, hid in God’s tabernacle from the strife
of tongues; or, like Socrates and Plato, in the whirl and noise—far more
wearying and saddening than any loneliness—of the foolish crowd, they all
have laboured for you. Let them rejoice, when they see you enter into
their labours with heart and soul. Let them rejoice, when they see in
each one of you one of the fairest sights on earth, before men and before
God; a docile and innocent boy striving to become a wise and virtuous
man.
And whenever you are tempted to idleness and frivolity; whenever you are
tempted to profligacy and low-mindedness; whenever you are tempted—as you
will be too often in these mean days—to join the scorners and the fools
whom Solomon denounced; tempted to sneering unbelief in what is great and
good, what is laborious and self-sacrificing, and to the fancy that you
were sent into this world merely to get through it agreeably;—then
fortify and ennoble your hearts by Solomon’s vision. Remember who you
are, and where you are—that you stand before the Temple of Wisdom, of the
science of things as God has made them; wherein alone is health and
wealth for body and for soul; that from within the Heavenly Lady calls to
you, sending forth her handmaidens in every art and science which has
ever ministered to the good of man; and that within there await you all
the wise and good who have ever taught on earth, that you may enter in
and partake of the feast which their mistress taught them to prepare.
Remember, I say, who you are—even the sons of God; and remember where you
are—for ever upon sacred ground; and listen with joy and hope to the
voice of the Heavenly Wisdom, as she calls—‘Whoso is simple, let him come
in hither; and him that wanteth understanding, let him come and eat of my
bread, and drink of the wine that I have mingled.’
Listen with joy and hope: and yet with fear and trembling, as of Moses
when he hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. For the voice
of Wisdom is none other than the voice of The Spirit of God, in whom you
live, and move, and have your being.
SERMON III.
PRAYER AND SCIENCE.
(_Preached at St. Olave’s Church_, _Hart Street_, _before the Honourable
Corporation of the Trinity House_, 1866.)
PSALM CVII. 23, 24, 28.
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them
out of their distresses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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