The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar — John Shaqi
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Sermons
Himself, not stilling the raging storm when we would have had Him
still the terrible tempest, not sparing, it may be, the precious
bark that we had rigged, and manned, and launched ourselves with
trembling hopes and loving prayers, and watched with eyes tearless
with agony, as we saw it about to sink before us; and we have
been led to see and believe that the living and the loving Lord
was answering even then our prayer, for the bark has, at length,
entered that haven where we would be, and where the vexed waters of
our voyage never awake a ripple on the calm depths of its eternal
peace. This has been the experience of more than one of this great
multitude that I see. And there is another experience that each one
of you may have: it is when, in the troubles of your own spirit,
when in the agonies of your own grief-stricken heart, when in the
depths of your own repentance, when in the storms of your own fear
and your own doubt, you cry to Christ the Savior--when you bring
your sins as some men bring their sorrows, as anxious to have them
removed as the others--when you cry to Christ your Savior: "Lord,
save me! Save me, a sinner! Save me, an unprayerful man hitherto!
Save me, an unbelieving man hitherto! Save me, not merely from the
hell hereafter, but the present storm and depth of my own sins that
threaten to destroy me! Save me, or I perish!" For, brethren, be
sure of this, sooner or later this will be the experience of every
such vexed and terrified soul--that, after he shall have endured, so
long as his Lord sees good, the terrifying storm and the threatening
deep that drive him in closer and closer search and seeking after
his Lord, then, at last, there will appear the form of the Son of
man, the form of Him who hung upon the cross, that He might for
ever in the world's history work this great and, to Him, dearest
of all miracles; and, at last, He will rebuke the winds and the
waves in that troubled soul, and there will be a great calm--a calm
that may not last for ever, a calm that will not last for ever, for
we have not yet reached the haven of perfect rest, but a calm that
is a foretaste of the eternal rest. And so, praying with all our
hearts to Christ our Lord, setting our will in submission to His
will, pouring out our spirit in prayer to His Spirit, laying bare
our hearts before His pure and loving eyes, through calm and through
storm, praying still that we suffer not death in either, that we
neither rot in the calm nor founder in the storm, praying still for
His presence, praying still for grace to realize that presence,
crying still for that deeper and yet deeper faith which is the
result of more and more constant experience, crying still, "Lord,
save, or we perish," wait in patience and in faith until He shall
send His last messenger in this world, His angel of death, and bid
him for us and in His name rebuke for the last time the winds that
have vexed us, and the waves that have terrified us, and then with
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