The World's Great Sermons, Volume 05: Guthrie to Mozley
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 05: Guthrie to Mozley
Sermons
I must bear witness that in England there are tokens full of hope.
England never rejected the holy Catholic faith. A tyrannous and
guilty king, a corrupt and covetous court, men full of the conceit
of false learning, schemers and intriguers, men that hungered to
spoil the Church for their own enrichment--these tyrannized over
the people of England. The people of England held to their faith
and died for it. The people of England never rejected it. They were
robbed of it; they were deprived of their inheritance, and their
children were born disinherited of their faith; every century from
that hour to this they have gone farther and farther from the light
of the one truth. Poor English people! Bear with them--I speak as an
Englishman--bear with them; they know not what they do in believing
that we worship images, that we imbrued our hands in the massacre of
St. Bartholomew. Let the men who write these things look at their
own hands; there is blood enough upon them. But the English people
do not believe these things now; they are passed away. And there has
come in the place of these impostures a desire after truth--"Only
let me find it;" a craving after unity--"Can we never make an end
of these divisions?" a thirsting for the presence of Jesus Christ
upon the altar--"Where can I find Him?" And what are all these
aspirations? They are the evidences of the good odor of life unto
life.
And if so, then, dear brethren, you that have the inheritance of
faith are on your probation too. You are called to let the light of
your faith shine like the day. The silent, penetrating, convincing
light of a man who, knowing the faith, speaks it calmly, without
controversy, without bickering, without contention, sheds a grace
around him. As men that possess the greatest gift of God, and who
desire to make everybody else share it to the full, so let your
faith shine. And next, as you have faith, so you ought to have
the warmth of charity. Where there is light, there is warmth; and
where there is greater light there is greater warmth. Where there
is perfect truth, there ought to be perfect charity. You who have
the whole revelation of God ought to have the whole charity of God
in you. Let your neighbors who are round about, even those who are
not of the faith, feel that there is something in you--a warmth,
a kindness, a sympathy and generosity which they find in no other
man. And, lastly, let there be the fragrance of a holy life. This is
the good odor of Christ unto God, and this diffuses life unto life
wherever you go. You are upon this probation. Be worthy of the great
gift which has been given to you. You have it in its fulness. Be
then, worthy of its fulness, in faith and in charity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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