The World's Great Sermons, Volume 04: L. Beecher to Bushnell
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 04: L. Beecher to Bushnell
Sermons
The clear perception, the grateful reception, the cordial
entertainment of these seven divinely constructed and instituted
pillars, are the alone sufficient, and the all-sufficient,
foundation--the indestructible basis--of Christ's kingdom on this
earth, and of man's spiritual and eternal salvation in the full
enjoyment of himself, his Creator, his Redeemer, and the whole
universe of spiritual intelligence through all the circles and
the cycles of an infinite, an everlasting future of being and of
blessedness.
The missionary spirit is, indeed, an emanation of the whole Godhead.
God the Father sent His Son, His only begotten Son, into our world.
The Son sent the Holy Spirit to bear witness through His twelve
missionaries, the consecrated and Heaven-inspired apostles. They
proclaimed the glad tidings of great joy to all people--to the
Jews, to the Samaritans, to the Gentiles, of all nations, kindreds
and tongues. They gave in solemn charge to others to sound out and
proclaim the glad tidings of great joy to all people. And need we
ask, is not the Christian Church itself, in its own institution and
constitution, virtually and essentially a missionary institution?
Does not Paul formally state to the Thessalonians in his first
epistle that from them sounded out the Word of the Lord not only in
Macedonia and in Achaia, but in every place?
No man can really or truthfully enjoy the spiritual, the
soul-stirring, the heart-reviving honors and felicities of the
Christian institution and kingdom, who does not intelligently,
cordially and efficiently espouse the missionary cause.
In other words, he must feel, he must have compassion for his
fellow man; and, still further, he must practically sympathize
with him in communicating to his spiritual necessities as well
as to his physical wants and infirmities. The true ideal of all
perfection--our blest and blissful Redeemer--went about continually
doing good--to both the souls and the bodies of his fellow men;
healing all that were, in body, soul or spirit, opprest by Satan,
the enemy of God and of man.
To follow his example is the grand climax of humanity. It is not
necessary to this end that he should occupy the pulpit. There are,
as we conceive, myriads of Christian men in the private walks
of life, who never aspired to the "sacred desk," that will far
outshine, in eternal glory and blessedness, hosts of the reverend,
the boasted and the boastful right reverend occupants of the sacred
desks of this our day and generation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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