Gloria Crucis: addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 — John Shaqi
Gloria Crucis: addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907Beibitz, J. H. (Joseph Hugh)
Religion
Gloria Crucis: addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907
Beibitz, J. H. (Joseph Hugh)
Good Friday sermons; Holy Week sermons
Of old, St. John wrote that "if any man love the world, the love of the
Father is not in him." In its outward aspect, the world has greatly
changed since these words were written. And yet they are as true in the
twentieth century as they were in the first. The world has adopted
Christian language and manners and modes of thought. But always and
everywhere it is to be detected by its antagonism to the Christian
estimate of sin. The spirit which accuses Christianity of gross
exaggeration in this respect, is the very spirit of the world. Now, as
in days of long ago, when torture and death hung on the refusal to
scatter a few grains of incense before the statue of Caesar, the same
eternal choice is presented to a man, Christ or the world? Which
estimate of sin are you going to make your own, the world's, as a
lamentable mistake, or failure, or necessity; or the Christian, "worse
than any conceivable pain"? It is not a matter of academic interest, but
an intensely vital and practical one, affecting a man's whole outlook
upon life. Which is right--there is the clear and definite issue
raised--the Christian estimate, or the world's estimate of sin? Is it
worse than a blunder, a misfortune, a fault? Is it something interwoven
into the very structure of our present stage of existence? Or, is it an
alien and flagrant intruder into a world where it has no business, which
is so constructed that, sooner or later, wilful transgression meets with
the direst penalties? There is no question as to what is the Christian
estimate of sin. Christ or Caesar? is the issue still presented. But,
we wish to ask, is there any reason for believing that the Christian
estimate is true? I bring forward three reasons, based respectively on
experience, on conscience, on the ultimately similar views of the origin
and nature of sin given by science and in the Bible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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