Westminster Sermons: with a PrefaceKingsley, Charles
Religion
Westminster Sermons: with a Preface
Kingsley, Charles
Sermons, English -- 19th century
This is that law, of which the Prophet says--that God will put it into
men's hearts, and write it in their minds; and they shall be His people,
and He will be their God. This is that law, which the inspired
Philosopher--for a philosopher he was indeed--who wrote the 119th Psalm,
continually prayed and strove to learn, intreating the Lord to teach him
His law, and make him remember His everlasting judgments. This is that
law, which our Lord Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled, because the law was
His Father's law, and therefore His own law, and therefore he perfectly
comprehended the law, and perfectly loved the law; and said with His
whole heart--I delight to do Thy will, O God.
The will of God. For in one word, this Law, which we have to learn, and
by keeping which we shall be blessed, is nothing else than God's Will.
God's Will about us. What God has willed and chosen we should be. What
God has willed and chosen we should do. The greatest philosopher of the
18th century said that every rational being had to answer four
questions--Where am I? What can I know? What must I do? Whither am I
going? And he knew well that--as the Bible tells us throughout--the only
way to get any answer to those four tremendous questions is--To delight
in the law of the Lord; to struggle, think, pray, till we get some
understanding of God's will; of God's will about ourselves and about the
world; and so be blessed indeed.
But to do that, it is plain that we must heed the warning which the first
verse of the Psalm gives us--"Blessed is the man that hath not walked in
the counsel of the ungodly." For it is plain that a man will never learn
God's will if he takes counsel from ungodly men who care nothing for
God's will, and do not believe that God's will governs the world. Neither
must he, as the Psalm says, 'stand in the way of sinners'--of profligate
and dishonest men who break God's law. For if he follows their ways, and
breaks God's law himself, it is plain that he will learn little or
nothing about God's law, save in the way of bitter punishment. For let
him but break God's law a little too long, and then--as the 2nd Psalm
says--'God will rule him with a rod of iron, and break him in pieces like
a potter's vessel.' But there is even more hope for him--for he may
repent and amend--than if he sits in the seat of the scorners. The
scorners; the sneering, the frivolous, the unearnest, the unbelieving,
the envious, who laugh down what they call enthusiasm and romance; who
delight in finding fault, and in blackening those who seem purer or
nobler than themselves. These are the men who cannot by any possibility
learn anything of the law of God; for they will not even look for it.
They have cast away the likeness of rational men, and have taken upon
themselves the likeness of the sneering accusing Satan, who asks in the
book of Job--"Doth Job serve God for nought?" When the greatest poet of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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