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
Addressing ourselves to our text, let us _I. trace some points of
resemblance between Christ and light_; _II. note the conduct which
becomes us toward this Light_.
The purest and most untarnishable thing in this world is light. Snow
is pure, so is ice, water, and air, but each of these will admit of
defilement, may be marred and polluted. It is not so with light.
Man's hand cannot soil it. No corruption can infest or cleave to
it. Nothing can defile its rays or attach pollution to its beams.
And such is Christ. All creatures have shown themselves liable to
sin and moral taint, but Christ passed through the world of sin
as a sunbeam through a house of filth and disease, and came forth
as pure and blessed as He sprang from God Himself. He took on Him
sin's form, that He might endure sin's due, but sin's stain He never
knew. In Bethlehem's manger, He was the holy Child. He lived a human
life, oppressed with all its cares and temptations, grew up among
its corrupt children, suffered its coarseness, its rebuffs, and its
villainies, but with all this He did no sin, neither was guile found
in His mouth. He was the spotless Lamb of God, pure; for He was the
Light.
Again, light is as bright as it is pure. Things are bright in
proportion as they are full of light. The day is bright when no
clouds shut out the sun. The scenery is bright when illumined by
the greatest number of rays. The hope is bright when it is freest
from gloomy forebodings and fullest of the light of promise. And
such is Christ. He is brightness, "the brightness of the Father's
glory," and His office is to dispense brightness. That is the
brightest time in the soul when there is most of Christ in it.
That is the brightest page on which most of Christ is found. That
is the brightest sermon in which most of Christ is heard. That is
the brightest life in which most of Christ is seen. That is the
brightest world in which Christ is most fully received; and that
heart, that home, that church is but confusion and darkness where
Christ is not.
Light, likewise, is free. It comes without cost, and it comes
everywhere. No poverty is so great as to debar from its blessing,
nor is there an open crevice, a nook or corner in all this wide
world into which it is unwilling to enter, or where it fails to
throw its heavenlike smiles. The halls of the great and the huts of
the humble does it gild alike, and that without money and without
price. As related, it is free, and so is Christ. The command is: "Go
ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."
There is no place nor spot where its beams are not to be diffused,
no heart into which it does not struggle for entrance. To the poor
as well as to the rich, to Jews as well as to Gentiles is Christ
offered equally freely, and on the same terms of free grace to
each and all willing to accept Him. He is the true Light, ready to
lighten every man that cometh into the world.
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