Christian life; Free Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English; Young men
Some one makes a great inventor say: "Anybody might have done it, but
the secret came to me." Do you believe the first part of this
statement? Would you hold me true in saying that anybody might have
anticipated the discovery of wireless telegraphy? There are times when
the world appears to halt for want of some new thing, or for want of
some one to put new meaning into the old. And when the fulness of time
has come, the secret, which has been sleeping through centuries of men,
awakes in a man. He is the chosen of Providence to deliver unto us
that which he also has received.
What is true of a few in the endowment of what we call genius, may be
true of us all in the power of God unto salvation. When we were "made
in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," the
Maker of us all put a part of Himself into the mysterious substance.
"Let each man," says Browning, "think himself a thought, an act, a
breath of God." There is evil in our nature; but evil can mar us only
so far as we allow it to become sin. It is in victory over evil that
we find character and make. There is evil in our nature, but there is
also a germ of God which He can touch into immortality and glorify with
the very splendour of His own image and being. When that germ is
quickened into life, we are, in the language of theology, converted; as
it develops and becomes the more life and the fuller, we are, in the
same language, sanctified and made meet for the Master's use.
Is there anything mysterious in this; anything we may not understand?
Christ did not think so, if we may judge from His conversation with
Nicodemus. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again."
Our Lord, if I understand Him aright, tells this master of Israel that
there is nothing more wonderful about this new birth than there is
about a new affection or a new love. And what cannot love do? No one
enters our life except through love. They may influence it profoundly,
but that of itself gives no admittance to the heart. What, I ask
again, cannot love do? Have we never known lives changed, and indeed
transformed by a new affection? I have seen love work miracles; and so
far from not believing in such miracles within their sphere, I believe
in nothing else. But does that which wakes love put it there? Is some
new thing added to life? Rather let us say that it is life coming to
its own; just finding what was already there. This may be what the
Psalmist means when he speaks of deep calling to deep. The deep in man
answers to the deep of attraction which appeals to it. If man was
conceived in the image of God, then God is immanent in man. This is
not to say that this immanence is equal to, or implies the whole
content of what is known as Christian salvation. It is true that the
"eye and the brain must be there before the light can be perceived or
any object interpreted." But it has been pointed out with equal truth
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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