Sermons Preached at Brighton: Third SeriesRobertson, Frederick William
Religion
Sermons Preached at Brighton: Third Series
Robertson, Frederick William
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind. We make a
wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by creating sensitive and
selfish feelings; then we project everything stamped with the impress
of our own feelings, and we gather the whole of creation into our own
pained being--"the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now." The world you complain of as impure and wrong is
not God's world, but your world; the blight, the dullness, the blank,
are all your own. The light which is in you has become darkness, and
therefore the light itself is dark.
Again, to the pure, all things not only seem pure, but are really so
because they are made such.
1. As regards persons. It is a marvellous thing to see how a pure and
innocent heart purifies all that it approaches. The most ferocious
natures are soothed and tamed by innocence. And so with human beings,
there is a delicacy so pure, that vicious men in its presence become
almost pure; all of purity which is in them is brought out; like
attaches itself to like. The pure heart becomes a centre of
attraction, round which similar atoms gather, and from which
dissimilar ones are repelled. A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all
that is bad in us; a spiritual one brings out and draws to itself all
that is best and purest. Such was Christ. He stood in the world, the
Light of the world, to which all sparks of light gradually gathered.
He stood in the presence of impurity, and men became pure. Note this
in the history of Zaccheus. In answer to the invitation of the Son of
man, he says, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor,
and if I have done wrong to any man I restore him fourfold." So also
the Scribe, "Well, Master, thou hast well said, there is one God, and
there is none other than He." To the pure Saviour, all was pure. He
was lifted up on high, and drew all men unto Him.
Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure. According to the world,
some professions are reckoned honourable, and some dishonourable. Men
judge according to a standard merely conventional, and not by that of
moral rectitude. Yet it was in truth, the men who were in these
situations which made them such. In the days of the Redeemer, the
publican's occupation was a degraded one, merely because low base men
filled that place. But since He was born into the world a poor,
labouring man, poverty is noble and dignified, and toil is honourable.
To the man who feels that "the king's daughter is all glorious
within," no outward situation can seem inglorious or impure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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