Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
But light is not enough; light is for the sake of life. We too must
have life in ourselves. We too must, like the Life himself, live. We
can live in no way but that in which Jesus lived, in which life was
made in him. That way is, to give up our life. This is the one supreme
action of life possible to us for the making of life in ourselves.
Christ did it of himself, and so became light to us, that we might be
able to do it in ourselves, after him, and through his originating act.
We must do it ourselves, I say. The help that he has given and gives,
the light and the spirit-working of the Lord, the spirit, in our
hearts, is all in order that we may, as we must, do it ourselves. Till
then we are not alive; life is not made in us. The whole strife and
labour and agony of the Son with every man, is to get him to die as he
died. All preaching that aims not at this, is a building with wood and
hay and stubble. If I say not with whole heart, 'My father, do with me
as thou wilt, only help me against myself and for thee;' if I cannot
say, 'I am thy child, the inheritor of thy spirit, thy being, a part of
thyself, glorious in thee, but grown poor in me: let me be thy dog, thy
horse, thy anything thou willest; let me be thine in any shape the love
that is my Father may please to have me; let me be thine in any way,
and my own or another's in no way but thine;'--if we cannot, fully as
this, give ourselves to the Father, then we have not yet laid hold upon
that for which Christ has laid hold upon us. The faith that a man may,
nay, must put in God, reaches above earth and sky, stretches beyond the
farthest outlying star of the creatable universe. The question is not
at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day
be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now.
When a man truly and perfectly says with Jesus, and as Jesus said it,
'Thy will be done,' he closes the everlasting life-circle; the life of
the Father and the Son flows through him; he is a part of the divine
organism. Then is the prayer of the Lord in him fulfilled: 'I in them
and thou in me, that they made be made perfect in one.' The Christ in
us, is the spirit of the perfect child toward the perfect father. The
Christ in us is our own true nature made blossom in us by the Lord,
whose life is the light of men that it may become the life of men; for
our true nature is childhood to the Father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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