The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10: Drummond to Jowett, and General Index
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10: Drummond to Jowett, and General Index
Sermons
And this brings us to the second great truth which is outgrowing
increasingly clear in the consciousness of the Church. The death of
Jesus is the revelation of an experience in the heart of God. God is
the sin-bearer of the world. He bears our sins on His mind and heart.
There are three conceptions of God: the savage, the pagan, and the
Christian. God, according to the savage conception, is vengeful, and
capricious, and vindictive. He is a great savage hidden in the sky. We
have all outgrown that. According to the pagan idea, He is indifferent
to the wants and woes of men. He does not care for men. He is not
interested in them. He does not sympathize with them. He does not
suffer over their griefs. He does not feel pain or sorrow. I am afraid
that many of us have never gotten beyond the pagan conception of the
Almighty. But according to the Christian conception, God suffers.
He feels, and because He feels, He sympathizes, and because He
sympathizes, He suffers. He feels both pain and grief. He carries a
wound in His heart. We men and women sometimes feel burdened because
of the sin we see around us; shall not the heavenly Father be as
sensitive and responsive as we men? But somebody says that God can
not be happy then. Of course he can not be happy. Happiness is not an
adjective to apply to God. Happy is a word that belongs to children.
Children are happy, grown people never are. One can be happy when the
birds are singing and the dew is on the grass, and there is no cloud
in all the sky, and the crape has not yet hung at the door. But after
we have passed over the days of childhood, there is happiness no
longer. Some of us have lived too long and borne too much ever to be
happy any more. But it is possible for us to be blest. We may pass
into the very blessedness of God. The highest form of blessedness is
suffering for those we love, and shall not the Father of all men have
in His own eternal heart that experience which we confess to be the
highest form of blessedness? This is the truth which is dawning like a
new revelation on the Church: the humanity of God. It is revealed in
the New Testament, but as yet we have only begun to take it in. God
is like us men. We are like Him. We are made in His image. We are His
children, and He is our Father. If we are His children, then we are
His heirs, and joint heirs with Christ. Not only our joys, but our
sorrows also, are intimations and suggestions of experiences in the
infinite heart of the Eternal.
MORGAN
THE PERFECT IDEAL OF LIFE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
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.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account