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
Before we can see the miracle of nations entering the kingdom of God,
before we can dismiss the black death of apathy which rests on so many
professedly Christian communities, before we can dominate the social
structure in righteousness and justice, the Church must be raised
nearer to the standards of New Testament efficiency. And New Testament
efficiency rested upon the perfect divinity and all-persuasive
mediatorship of "Christ and him crucified." The personality of Christ
involves for many of us the entire relation of God to His universe; He
is "the central figure in all history," and Pie is "the central
figure of our personal experience," creative in us, by His inaugural
experience, of all we are in Him and for our fellows. Thus we make
great claims for the Lord of the harvest, and we make them soberly,
and we know them true for our spiritual consciousness, and we are
prepared to defend them.
Yet I, for one, do not hesitate to admit that the theological
necessities of missionary work are many, and that they must be
recognized and met before it can fully accomplish its infinite
design. Indeed, the rule of Jesus in all these aspects of His mission
clarifies and simplifies the gospel. It is plain that such a gospel,
wherein the living personality of the Christ deals with the living
man to whom we minister, is not to be beset by complications and
abstractions. Its spiritual topography embraces the height of
good, the depth of love, the breadth of sympathy, and the width of
catholicity. It was meant for the race and for the far-reaching
reciprocities and inexpressible necessities of the race. It is attuned
to the cry of the common heart. Its interpretations have the sanctions
of an authoritative human experience which has never failed in its
witness. Sometimes I have challenged these honored servants of the
evangel who have come back to us from quarters where they were busy
on the errands of the cross. Almost pathetically, with the painful
interest of one inquiring for a long absent friend of whom no news has
been received, I have solicited the missionaries. They came from the
south of our own dear land, where they administered to the negro; from
the arctic zone, from the farther East. Their wider vision, their more
imperial instinct, were plain to me, and my usual question was, "What
do you teach the impulsive colored man and the stolid Eskimo and the
pensive Hindu and the inscrutable Asiatic?" And they replied, "We
teach them, that God is a personal spirit and Father, whose character
is holiness and whose heart is love; that Jesus Christ is the designed
and supreme Son of God, who lived in sinlessness and died in perfect
willing sacrifice for the eternal life of all men, that by the will of
God and in the power of His spirit men may have everlasting life and,
better still, everlasting goodness, if they will accept and trust in
Jesus Christ for all."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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