The World's Great Sermons, Volume 05: Guthrie to Mozley — John Shaqi
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 05: Guthrie to Mozley
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 05: Guthrie to Mozley
Sermons
"I am willing to admit," is the reply, "that the pulpit is the
place where the minister should speak of Christ with more uniform
distinctness than in other places; but there are no places, and no
times, in which he should fail to manifest, more or less obviously,
his interest in his Redeemer. Wherever he goes he has a pulpit.
Whether he eat, or drink, or whatever he do, he must do all for
the glory of God, and the highest glory of God is Christ, and the
highest honor of Christ is in Him crucified. A minister must always
respect the proprieties of life; in honoring them he knows that
appropriate model Man who, rising from the tomb, wrapped up the
napkin that was about His head, and laid it in a place by itself.
Now the proprieties of life do require a minister to speak in the
pulpit on themes more plainly and more easily connected with the
atonement, than are various themes on which he must speak in the
market-place or in the schools. But all subjects on which he may
discourse do lead, sooner or later, more or less obviously and
easily, to the great work of Jesus; and he should converse on them
with the intent of seizing every hint they give him, following out
every line to which they point him, in the direction of the cross. I
have been in many synagogues, and in the temple, and on Mars' Hill,
and on a Mediterranean ship-deck; and once I was hurried along in a
night ride from Jerusalem to Cæsarea with four hundred and seventy
soldiers, horsemen and spearmen. I have resided at leisure with my
arm chained to a Roman guard in a prison at the capital of the Roman
Empire; but in all such places I have felt, and everywhere I do
feel, bound to speak out, and to act out, all the interest which
the fitness of the occasion admits, in the atonement of Jesus; and
not to manifest, and not to feel, any interest in any theme which
may lessen my regard for this, the chiefest among ten thousand!"
But there is a third question which some of us would propose to the
apostle, were he to speak in our hearing the words of the text:
"Should every man, as well as every minister, cherish and exhibit no
interest in anything but Christ? Should a sailor at the masthead,
a surgeon in the extirpation of the clavicle, a warrior in the
critical moment of the last charge, look at nothing, and hear of
nothing, but the cross? Must not everyone conduct business, and
sustain cares, which draw his mind away from the atonement?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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