Westminster Sermons: with a PrefaceKingsley, Charles
Religion
Westminster Sermons: with a Preface
Kingsley, Charles
Sermons, English -- 19th century
Moreover--and this appears to us a fair experimental proof that our old-
fashioned belief in A Spirit of God, which acts upon the spirit of man,
is a true belief--moreover, I say: It is a patent fact, that wherever and
whenever there has been a revival of the Christian religion; whenever,
that is, amid whatsoever confusions and errors, men have begun to feel
the need of the Holy Spirit of God, and to pray for that Spirit, a moral
revival has accompanied the religious one. Men and women have not only
become better themselves; and that often suddenly and in very truth
miraculously better: but the yearning has awoke in them to make others
better likewise. The grace of God, as they have called it, has made them
gracious to their fellow-creatures; and duty, honour, love,
self-sacrifice, call it by what name we will, has said to them, with a
still small voice more potent than all the thunders of the law: Go, and
seek and save that which is lost.
In no case has this instinctive tendency to practical benevolence been
more striking, than in the case of that great religious revival
throughout England at the beginning of this century, which issued in the
rise of the Evangelical school: a school rightly so called, because its
members did try to obey the precepts of the Gospel, according to their
understanding of them, in spirit and in truth.
The doctrines which they held are a matter not for us, but for God and
their own souls. The deeds which they did are matter for us, and for all
England; for they have left their mark on the length and breadth of the
land. They were inspired--cultivated, highborn, and wealthy folk many of
them--with a strange new instinct that God had bidden them to feed the
hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner and the sick, to bind
up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to preach
good tidings to the meek. A strange new instinct: and from what cause,
save from the same cause as that which Isaiah assigned to his own like
deeds?--Because "The Spirit of the Lord was upon him."
Yes, if those gracious men, those gracious women, did not shew forth the
Spirit and grace of God with power, then there is either no Spirit of
God, no grace of God; or those who deny to them the name of saints forget
the words of Him Who said: By their fruits ye shall know them; of Him Who
said, too: That the unpardonable sin, the sin which shewed complete moral
perversion, the sin against the Holy Spirit of God, was to attribute good
deeds to bad motives, and say: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the
prince of the devils.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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