The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Sermons
We have to echo the invitation, "Learn of me, for I am lowly in
heart"; and how can such divine words flow from lips into which like
grace has not been poured? Our theme is a Savior who shrunk from no
sinner, who gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid
His hand on pollution, and His heart, full of God and of love, on
hearts reeking with sin; and how can our message correspond with our
theme if, even in delivering it, we are saying to ourselves, "The
temple of the Lord are we: this people which knoweth not the law is
curst"? Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in
this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with those
whom we would gather into Christ, by actual familiarity with their
condition, and by identification of ourselves in feeling with them,
after the example of that greatest of Christian teachers who became
"all things to all men, that by all means he might gain some";
after the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear Lord
who, being highest, descended to the lowest, and in the days of His
humiliation was not content with speaking words of power from afar,
nor abhorred the contact of mortality and disease and loathsome
corruption; but laid His hands upon death, and it lived; upon
sickness, and it was whole; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as
the flesh of a little child.
The same principle might be further applied to our Christian work,
as affecting the form in which we should present the truth. The
sympathetic identification of ourselves with those to whom we try to
carry the gospel will certainly make us wise to know how to shape
our message. Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate
the light. Thinking their thoughts, and having in some measure
succeeded, by force of sheer community of feeling, in having as it
were got inside their minds, we shall unconsciously, and without
effort, be led to such aspects of Christ's all-comprehensive truth
as they most need. There will be no shooting over people's heads,
if we love them well enough to understand them. There will be no
toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their actual
condition and temptations clear before us. There will be no flinging
fossil doctrines at them from a height, as if Christ's blest gospel
were, in another than the literal sense, "a stone of offense," if
we have taken our place on their level. And without such sympathy,
these and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly
vitiate much of our Christian effort.
We have here the true healing power and the consciousness of
wielding it set forth in the Lord's authoritative word.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account