The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Sermons
The Bible is like nature in its immense, its exhaustless variety;
like nature, it reflects all the higher moods of the human soul,
because it does much more; because it brings us face to face with
the infinity of the divine life. In the Bible the wind of heaven
pays scant heed to our anticipations or our prejudices; it "bloweth
where it listeth." It breathes not only in the divine charities of
the gospels, not only in the lyrical sallies of the epistles, not
only in the great announcements scattered here and there in Holy
Scripture of the magnificence, or the compassion, or the benevolence
of God; but also in the stern language of the prophets, in the
warnings and lessons of the historical books, in the revelations of
divine justice and of human responsibility which abound in either
Testament. "Where it listeth." Not only where our sense of literary
beauty is stimulated, as in St. Paul's picture of charity, by lines
which have taken captive the imagination of the world, not only
where feeling and conscience echo the verdict of authority and the
promptings of reverence, but also where this is not the case; where
neither precept nor example stimulates us, and we are left face to
face with historical or ethical material, which appears to us to
inspire no spiritual enthusiasm, or which is highly suggestive of
critical difficulty. Let us be patient; we shall understand, if we
will only wait, how these features of the Bible too are integral
parts of a living whole; here, as elsewhere, the Spirit breathes;
in the genealogies of the Chronicles as in the last discourse in
St. John, though with an admitted difference of manner and degree.
He "bloweth where He listeth." The apostle's words respecting the
Old Testament are true of the New: "All Scripture is given by
inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness." And, "Whatsoever
things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we
through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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