The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Sermons
What do we need, then? To enlarge our desires! Yes, but to consent
to God's desires. To wish for more, but to consent to be blest as
Christ longs to bless us. We must know the methods of God, whose
will to give is greater and more constant than our will to receive.
We must adjust our life to God's desire. Faith is the compact of the
soul with God, rather than with itself. "Open thy mouth wide, and I
will fill it," is a promise ever old and ever new. We must be firm
enough and aspiring enough to hold the cup after it has begun to
overflow, and to let God's hand pour the water of life as long as He
will, for this world and all the worlds that are to be. If we could
desire more, if we could ascend to God's desire for us, life would
be transfigured.
"The balsam, the wine, of predestinate wills
Is a jubilant longing and pining for God."
"God loves to be longed for, He loves to be sought,
For He sought us Himself, with such longing and love."
We wish now to take this method for our own in all our dealing
with God. Our sense of what is right, the voice of conscience, the
commands of Scripture, call us to our duty. Let us do what they
require till conscience is satisfied; but let us add to this more
than a rigid obedience asks for, all that a loving heart, grateful
and generous, wishes to bestow. The little questions of life, small
matters of casuistry, minute affairs of conduct, would be quite
readily determined if we would live by this rule, wherewith God
blesses us. That question which with unusual urgency now presses
upon us, how we shall regard the Sabbath day, would not be difficult
if it were our delight to remember it, and to keep it holy because
it is our delight to please Him who has given to us its sacredness
and blessedness. It is pitiful when we find ourselves questioning
how much of the day should be holy; how much of it should be given
to the thought of God and the divine life; how much of it we should
yield to the holy spirit of truth; how many of the hours we should
keep in the remembrance of Him whose resurrection gives to the
Sabbath its greater meaning. We should keep the Sabbath holy as if
we desired to keep it holy. All its hours should be sacred. They
need not be less joyous, less friendly, for being holy; and we can
not be gratified with the spirit in which we find ourselves trying
to divide the time. Keep twenty-four hours for God, and if by any
means you can make the time overflow add a twenty-fifth hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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