Sermons: Selected from the Papers of the Late Rev. Clement BailhacheBailhache, Clement
Religion
Sermons: Selected from the Papers of the Late Rev. Clement Bailhache
Bailhache, Clement
Sermons
by their names, should also heal the broken in heart, and bind up
their wounds?
The prospect of human destiny as opened up by Christianity is grand;
but not too grand to be ascribed to Him who created the universe, and
so arranged it that it should constitute one vast system of
ministration to us. When we see God thus working for man, we cannot be
surprised that angels should be glad to serve him too. Neither can we
wonder that the Son of God should come to save him. The wonder begins
with man's primary relation to the "all things," for our knowledge of
which we are not dependent upon revelation at all. Science teaches us
that; and revelation only endorses it. That is wonderful enough; but
accepting it as a fact, all that revelation teaches, but which science
could not have discovered, follows naturally enough. The facts of
revelation concerning man may be accepted the more implicitly because
they really have their basis in the facts of science. The whole is in
perfect harmony. The one and the other are both represented--and
consistently so--as concurring in the great cause of human happiness.
Try now from the greatness of the means to estimate the greatness of
the end. Is eternal life too much for a being whom the worlds combine
to sustain, to feed, and to bless? Is a heaven of holiness and of love
too much for a being whom angels are delighted to protect? No! The
wonderful thing would be if, after having combined these vast and
various forces to maintain our earthly existence, an Almighty and
All-good God should for ever quench our life after its brief day upon
the earth!
It may be objected that this is a low and selfish view to take of the
matter. It may be said that it is not the life of the individual, but
the life of the race that has to be considered; and that it is enough
for us to live, after we are gone, in the good remembrances of those
who will survive us, and to hope that what we are doing will advance
the interests of those who will follow us. An immortality such as this
is in reality no immortality at all. An unconscious immortality! A
public recognition of what we have been when we shall be no longer! A
public gratitude, which may at best be but precarious to those to whom
it is due, when they are believed to have dropped into nothingness and
thus to be no longer capable of receiving and enjoying it! A progress
merely confined to material interests! And who are sharing in it
to-day? The few who are strong enough to hold their own in the battle
of life! They, and only they! All this is supreme nonsense. The
aspirations of the heart are against it. If man's life ends here, it
was not worth while for him to be born. Millions, in that case, might
justly look up to God and say, "Remember how short my time is:
wherefore hast Thou made all men in vain?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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