The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses — John Shaqi
The Greatest Thing In the World and Other AddressesDrummond, Henry
ReligionComparative
The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses
Drummond, Henry
Christian life; Christianity; Love -- Religious aspects
Realize it thoroughly; it is a methodical, not an accidental world. If
a housewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a sound
receipt, carefully applied. She cannot mix the assigned ingredients
and fire them for the appropriate time without producing the result.
It is not she who has made the cake; it is nature. She brings related
things together; sets causes at work; these causes bring about the
result. She is not a creator, but an intermediary. She does not expect
random causes to produce specific effects--random ingredients would
only produce random cakes. So it is in the making of Christian
experiences. Certain lines are followed; certain effects are the
result. These effects cannot but be the result. But the result can
never take place without the previous cause. To expect results without
antecedents is to expect cakes without ingredients. That impossibility
is precisely
THE ALMOST UNIVERSAL EXPECTATION.
Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this
simple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world. And
instead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian
experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in some
little detail. The one I shall select is Rest. And I think any one who
follows the application in this single instance will be able to apply
it for himself to all the others.
Take such a sentence as this: African explorers are subject to fevers
which cause restlessness and delirium.
Note the expression, "cause restlessness." _Restlessness has a cause._
Clearly, then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would
proceed at once to deal with the cause. If that were not removed, a
doctor might prescribe a hundred things, and all might be taken in
turn, without producing the least effect. Things are so arranged in
the original planning of the world that certain effects must follow
certain causes, and certain causes must be abolished before certain
effects can be removed. Certain parts of Africa are inseparably linked
with the physical experience called fever; this fever is in turn
infallibly linked with a mental experience called restlessness and
delirium. To abolish the mental experience the radical method would be
to abolish the physical experience, and the way of abolishing the
physical experience would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go
there.
Now this holds good for all other forms of Restlessness. Every other
form and kind of Restlessness in the world has a definite cause, and
the particular kind of Restlessness can only be removed by removing
the allotted cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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