The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke
Sermons
Well, let me go back to the very beginning. I find that there is
in the primitive elemental religion a profound and solemn witness
to this truth; "Without shedding of blood there is no remission,"
no peace with God, no life in Christ. And I look upon these early
and crude and distorted ideas as God's deep preparation of the mind
and heart of man by the grand gospel of the substitution under the
law of Jesus Christ for guilty sinners. And we can not get those
thoughts out, they are embodied in our very language. Do you know
what the word "bless" means, what it was derived from? The word
"bless" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for "blood." And the idea
dimly aimed at is this: that before you can really bless a fellow
creature you must part with your life, or part of your life, for
him; shed blood. We can do a great deal by little things; our Lord
said so--by smiles, by gifts, by kind words, by cups of cold water.
Christ will never forget these things. But at the same time, if you
are to bless a soul in the superlative sense, you can not do it in
that easy way; you have to sprinkle the soul with blood, and with
your own blood. You know what I mean. Oh, some of you know it who
have labored for another soul for weary years; you know it too well.
But part with your life and you will win a soul at last. It will
cover a multitude of sins.
I wish I had time to quote from the primitive religions; but I
would remind you of the old legend of the building of Copenhagen.
The builders could not make progress with their work; the sea came
in and took it away, until at last they took a human life, and by
the sacrifice of that human life they gave to the city stability.
And you know the old idea of primitive religion, that the corn will
not grow in the seed ground unless the body of a dead man is buried
there--life coming out of death. Now, I say all these things point
on to the supreme Author of the universe; Jesus died, the Just for
the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Now do you not think you
can see how it is that the eternal Son shed His blood in Gethsemane,
and offered Himself immaculate to God on Calvary?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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