The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 07: Hale to Farrar
Sermons
There is liberty, in the second place, from bad ways. Do I need
to describe these bad ways to you? You can not live in the city,
you can not read the newspapers, you can not hear the gossip, you
can not know what is going on in the circles in which you mingle,
without knowing some of these bad ways. There is the lover of this
world's possessions, so strongly denounced in Isaiah's prophecies:
beginning, perhaps, with necessary saving, but coming slowly but
steadily to a sordid love of the thing that is saved, till the whole
spirit is mercenary, and gold is the deity that is practically
worshiped. There is the drunkard, sipping a little innocently, as he
thinks, at the beginning, then going a little farther, and secretly,
until shame is lost and the victim is under the power of the
drink--degraded, wretched, irresponsible, not ashamed of himself,
for shame is gone, but an object for which all are ashamed that are
connected with him. There is the gambler, beginning perhaps with
what he deemed innocent recreation, and catching the spirit of the
thing till it masters him, until he flings away all that he has, and
all that he hopes to have, in the chance of recovering something
already lost, till life is a burden and fortune is gone, and suicide
is perhaps the tragical termination. These are specimens of the
bad ways--marked specimens, I grant, but still simple specimens.
There is freedom from this when we seek and do God's statutes--real
freedom. We learn to walk circumspectly; we learn to keep the heart
with all diligence; we learn to hate evil and to do good; we learn
to flee from the snares that Satan sets for the feet of men. We walk
securely, for we have been taught of the Spirit to walk with God.
Make sure, dear hearers, that you have this liberty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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