Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
When a man is, with his whole nature, loving and willing the truth, he
is then a live truth. But this he has not originated in himself. He has
seen it and striven for it, but not originated it. The one originating,
living, visible truth, embracing all truths in all relations, is Jesus
Christ. He is true; he is the live Truth. His truth, chosen and willed
by him, the ripeness of his being, the flower of his sonship which is
his nature, the crown of his one topmost perfect relation acknowledged
and gloried in, is his absolute obedience to his father. The obedient
Jesus is Jesus the Truth. He is true and the root of all truth and
development of truth in men. Their very being, however far from the
true human, is the undeveloped Christ in them, and his likeness to
Christ is the truth of a man, even as the perfect meaning of a flower
is the truth of a flower. Every man, according to the divine idea of
him, must come to the truth of that idea; and under every form of
Christ is the Christ. The truth of every man, I say, is the perfected
Christ in him. As Christ is the blossom of humanity, so the blossom of
every man is the Christ perfected in him. The vital force of humanity
working in him is Christ; he is his root--the generator and perfecter
of his individuality. The stronger the pure will of the man to be true;
the freer and more active his choice; the more definite his
individuality, ever the more is the man and all that is his, Christ's.
Without him he could not have been; being, he could not have become
capable of truth; capable of truth, he could never have loved it;
loving and desiring it, he could not have attained to it. Nothing but
the heart-presence, the humanest sympathy, and whatever deeper thing
else may be betwixt the creating Truth and the responding soul, could
make a man go on hoping, until at last he forget himself, and keep open
house for God to come and go. He gives us the will wherewith to will,
and the power to use it, and the help needed to supplement the power,
whatever in any case the need may be; but we ourselves must will the
truth, and for that the Lord is waiting, for the victory of God his
father in the heart of his child. In this alone can he see of the
travail of his soul, in this alone be satisfied. The work is his, but
we must take our willing share. When the blossom breaks forth in us,
the more it is ours the more it is his, for the highest creation of the
Father, and that pre-eminently through the Son, is the being that can,
like the Father and the Son, of his own self will what is right. The
groaning and travailing, the blossom and the joy, are the Father's and
the Son's and ours. The will, the power of willing, may be created, but
the willing is begotten. Because God wills first, man wills also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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