Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses — John Shaqi
Old Wine and New: Occasional DiscoursesCross, Joseph
Religion
Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses
Cross, Joseph
Sermons, American
That likeness to our Lord must be both corporeal and spiritual. St.
Paul speaks of the whole Church as "waiting for the adoption--to wit,
the redemption of the body;" and elsewhere states that the Saviour for
whom we look "shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like
unto his own glorious body"--spiritualizing the natural, sublimating
the material, endowing the physical organism with powers like his own,
and adorning the long-dishonored dust with the radiant beauty of
immortality. Yet more wonderful must be the change wrought upon the
intellectual and spiritual nature. To be like "God manifest in the
flesh"--what is it but to realize a mental development and maturity far
transcending all that the wisest ever attained to in this mortal state,
perpetual union of our redeemed humanity with the Divinity, and a
blissful process of assimilation going on forever? Christ is light
without darkness; and to be like him implies a clearness of
understanding and a certitude of truth free from all prejudice,
distortion, and blinding error. Christ is divine charity incarnate; and
to be like him is to love as he loved--with the ardor, the intensity,
the self-forgetfulness, which drew him to the manger and led him to the
cross. Christ is immaculate holiness made visible to men; and to be
like him is to be as spotless, as faultless, as free from iniquity,
perversity, hypocrisy, impurity, as He who could challenge the world
with the demand--"Which of you convinceth me of sin?" Christ is every
moral excellence combined and blended in human character; and to be
like him is to be subject to all those high principles and noble
impulses which give him infinite preeminence as a model to mankind, and
make him in angelic estimation "the fairest among ten thousand and
altogether lovely." Christ is the King whom God the Father hath exalted
above all powers and principalities even in heavenly places; and to be
like him is to reign with him, partners of his glory upon an
imperishable throne, when all the dominions of earth shall have passed
away as a forgotten dream. All this, and much beside that no human
imagination can conceive, is manifestly comprehended in the apostolic
statement, that "he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and
admired in all them that believe"--men and angels, the whole universe,
beholding in every disciple a perfect _facsimile_ of the glorified
Master. And thus the declaration is triumphantly verified: "We know
that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him
as he is."
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