Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
But again I must ask, What if _we_ are in the wrong and do the wrong,
and hate because we have injured? What then? Why, then, let us cry to
God as from the throat of hell; struggle, as under the weight of a
spiritual incubus; cry, as knowing the vile disease that cleaveth fast
unto us; cry, as possessed of an evil spirit; cry, as one buried alive,
from the sepulchre of our evil consciousness, that He would take pity
upon us the chief of sinners, the most wretched and vile of men, and
send some help to lift us from the fearful pit and the miry clay.
Nothing will help but the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the
Son, the spirit of the Father and the Brother casting out and
revealing. It will be with tearing and foaming, with a terrible cry and
a lying as one dead, that such a demon will go out. But what a vision
will then arise in the depths of the purified soul!
"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is
perfect." "Love your enemies, and ye shall be the children of the
highest." It is the divine glory to forgive.
Yet a time will come when the Unchangeable will cease to forgive; when
it will no more belong to his perfection to love his enemies; when he
will look calmly, and have his children look calmly too, upon the
ascending smoke of the everlasting torments of our strong brothers, our
beautiful sisters! Nay, alas! the brothers are weak now; the sisters
are ugly now!
O brother, believe it not. "O Christ!" the redeemed would cry, "where
art thou, our strong Jesus? Come, our grand brother. See the suffering
brothers down below! See the tormented sisters! Come, Lord of Life!
Monarch of Suffering! Redeem them. For us, we will go down into the
burning, and see whether we cannot at least carry through the howling
flames a drop of water to cool their tongues."
Believe it not, my brother, lest it quench forgiveness in thee, and
thou be not forgiven, but go down with those thy brothers to the
torment; whence, if God were not better than that phantom _thou_
callest God, thou shouldst _never_ come out; but whence assuredly thou
shalt come out when thou hast paid the uttermost farthing; when thou
hast learned of God in hell what thou didst refuse to learn of him upon
the gentle-toned earth; what the sunshine and the rain could not teach
thee, nor the sweet compunctions of the seasons, nor the stately
visitings of the morn and the eventide, nor the human face divine, nor
the word that was nigh thee in thy heart and in thy mouth--the story of
Him who was mighty to save, because he was perfect in love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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