Faith and Duty: Sermons on Free Texts, with Reference to the Church-YearBuchheimer, L. B. (Louis Balthaser)
Religion
Faith and Duty: Sermons on Free Texts, with Reference to the Church-Year
Buchheimer, L. B. (Louis Balthaser)
Church year sermons; Lutheran Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American
But let us come to the final question: By what power or remedy
does Christian Science heal, or, rather, claim to heal? Answer:
By denying the existence of matter, of sickness, of death, and
by seeking to give the mind complete mastery. Just imagine it is
not so! Prayer is employed, but Mrs. Eddy does not attach as much
importance to that as some of her followers, and from what we have
heard, such prayer is not the prayer of faith, for she has far erred
from God and the faith. God certainly does not answer such vain and
profane babbling of lips that speak falsehood and lies. The whole
Christian Science is a blustering, high-strung delusion. St. Paul
gives a true characterization of it 2 Thess. 2, 9: "It is after the
working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders and
with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish."
God grant that we may "avoid profane and vain babblings and
oppositions of science falsely so called." With our hearts firmly
grounded in the simple truth as it is in Jesus, and laid down in the
Volume before us, let us hold fast through God's grace what we have.
It is the power, the only power, unto salvation. Amen.
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
And He spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a
certain rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought
within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room
where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will
pull down my barns and build greater; and there will I bestow
all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul,
thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool!
This night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall
those things be which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth
up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.--_Luke 12,
16-21._
It is a serious matter to call any man a fool. It ought never to
be done except when circumstances make it imperatively necessary.
Christ, you know, employs very strong language in reference to this
in the Sermon on the Mount when He says: "Whosoever shall say to his
brother: Raca, shall be in danger of the council, but whoever shall
say: Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." But we must bear
in mind that our Lord does not condemn the expression "Thou fool"
in itself, but rather the spirit in which it is spoken. He does not
affirm that it is wrong to say that a fool is a fool, even to his
face, but that it is intensely wrong to do so from a feeling of
hatred, from spite; and so when God in the words just quoted says to
the rich man, "Thou fool," He says so, not because He hated him, but
because it was a fact, because He pitied His miserable condition,
and because He wishes to deter others from following his example.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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