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
Many other sermons equal to these in power and interest might have
been included, if space had served. I ought, perhaps, to say that the
selection has been determined by a wish to place before the reader, in
the order of a series, Mr. Bailhache's thoughts on Christian Doctrine,
Faith, Duty, Privilege, Experience, and Hope. I trust that the
collection, as it stands, will give as comprehensive an idea, as any
posthumous publication _could_ give, of the character and style of a
ministry to which, under God, many souls--some in heaven, and some
still on earth--owe their truest spiritual light and their best
spiritual strength.
It must have been a privilege of no ordinary value to listen Sabbath
after Sabbath to preaching such as this. No one could read, as I have
had to read, the whole mass of sermons entrusted to me, without
perceiving that he who wrote and spoke them was "a workman that needed
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." He was
penetrated to the very centre of his being with a sense of the
grandeur of the Bible as a Divine Revelation, and of the glory of the
Gospel as a Divine remedy for the sin and sorrow of the world. He had
his own way of developing religious truth, and of applying it to the
mind, the conscience, and the heart. He preserved his individuality of
thought and of method in every part of every discourse. But he was no
theological speculatist. With all needful fearlessness in his thinking
and reading, his constant endeavour was to ascertain "the mind of the
Spirit," and to present _that_, in its enlightening and sanctifying
power, to his hearers in all their manifold spiritual conditions. He
was familiar with the forms of scepticism prevalent in our time, and
with the reasonings which give to them more or less of plausibility.
"The riddle of the world" had its saddening aspects for him, as it has
for all earnest souls. But the anxieties which spring from such
sources found in his mind an all-sufficient solace in the beautiful
adaptations and the splendid triumphs of the truth as it is in Jesus.
He could see clearly enough that, by the Gospel, God was filling the
world's darkness with light, and turning its curse into a blessing.
Science might advance, and in its advance might seem to set itself
against Biblical facts, and against the principles founded upon them;
but he was all along calmly and intelligently assured that Science
rightly so called, and Revelation rightly interpreted, so far from
meeting in antagonism, must meet in cordial and comely agreement, and
take their place side by side for the higher instruction of mankind.
He did not preach on these matters controversially, but contented
himself with the quiet announcement, on all appropriate occasions, of
the results of his own studies; and those results were always on the
side of an implicit faith in Evangelical Christianity. One of the
most marked characteristics of his ministry was the uninterrupted and
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