The World's Great Sermons, Volume 06: H. W. Beecher to Punshon
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 06: H. W. Beecher to Punshon
Sermons
death who have never felt His resurrection's power. Let your tears
flow; better, far better a tear for God's sake and the world's sake
than the hard-heartedness and darkness of sin. Lift up your voice in
the midst of them; lift it up, be not afraid. Say unto the cities of
Judah, "Behold your God." Men will call you mad, but you can give
them the apostle's answer, "If we be beside ourselves, it is to God;
if we be sober, it is for your cause."
III. The apostle argues the necessity of zeal in the cause of
Christ, in the third place, from the master motive of the Savior's
constraining love. "The love of Christ constraineth us"--forces
us along, carries us away as with the impetuosity of a torrent,
or rather as when cool heavens and favoring air speed the vessel
steadily to the haven. Love is at once man's most powerful motive
and his highest inspiration, both in the life that now is and that
which is to come. From love to Christ spring the most devoted
obedience, the most untiring efforts in His service. There are
other springs of action, I know, by which men are influenced
to a profession of religion. Interest can occasionally affect
godliness from sordid aims, and behave itself decorously amid the
respectabilities of the temple-going and almsgiving religion; but it
will give its arm to any man that goes down to the house of Rimmon;
and if there is a decree that at the sound of all kinds of music
they are to fall down before another image which has been erected in
the plains of Dura, they will be the most obsequious benders of the
knee. Men sometimes practise obedience under the influence of fear.
A sudden visitation, a prevailing epidemic, an alarming appeal, will
strike into momentary concern; but when the indignation is overpast,
and the craven soul has recovered from its paroxysms of terror,
there will often be a relapse into more than the former atrocities
of evil. Convictions of duty may and sometimes will induce a man,
like an honest Pharisee of the olden time, to observe rigidly the
enactments of the law; but there will be no heart in his obedience,
and no holy passion in his soul; but let the love of God be shed
abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him, let there be
a perception of love in God, let there be sight of the Crucified as
well as of the cross, and there will be disinterested, and cheerful,
and hearty obedience. Zeal for God will become at once a passion and
a principle, intensifying every purpose into ardor, and filling the
whole soul with vehemence of absorbing desire. This is the emotion
from whose natural and inevitable outflow the apostle vindicates
impassioned zeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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