Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
The bond of the universe, the chain that holds it together, the one
active unity, the harmony of things, the negation of difference, the
reconciliation of all forms, all shows, all wandering desires, all
returning loves; the fact at the root of every vision, revealing that
'love is the only good in the world,' and selfishness the one thing
hateful, in the city of the living God unutterable, is the devotion of
the Son to the Father. It is the life of the universe. It is not the
fact that God created all things, that makes the universe a whole; but
that he through whom he created them loves him perfectly, is eternally
content in his father, is satisfied to be because his father is with
him. It is not the fact that God is all in all, that unites the
universe; it is the love of the Son to the Father. For of no onehood
comes unity; there can be no oneness where there is only one. For the
very beginnings of unity there must be two. Without Christ, therefore,
there could be no universe. The reconciliation wrought by Jesus is not
the primary source of unity, of safety to the world; that
reconciliation was the necessary working out of the eternal antecedent
fact, the fact making itself potent upon the rest of the family--that
God and Christ are one, are father and son, the Father loving the Son
as only the Father can love, the Son loving the Father as only the Son
can love. The prayer of the Lord for unity between men and the Father
and himself, springs from the eternal need of love. The more I regard
it, the more I am lost in the wonder and glory of the thing. But for
the Father and the Son, no two would care a jot the one for the other.
It might be the right way for creatures to love because of mere
existence, but what two creatures would ever have originated the
loving? I cannot for a moment believe it would have been I. Even had I
come into being as now with an inclination to love, selfishness would
soon have overborne it. But if the Father loves the Son, if the very
music that makes the harmony of life lies, not in the theory of love in
the heart of the Father, but in the fact of it, in the burning love in
the hearts of Father and Son, then glory be to the Father and to the
Son, and to the spirit of both, the fatherhood of the Father meeting
and blending with the sonhood of the Son, and drawing us up into the
glory of their joy, to share in the thoughts of love that pass between
them, in their thoughts of delight and rest in each other, in their
thoughts of joy in all the little ones. The life of Jesus is the light
of men, revealing to them the Father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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