The Good News of God. Charles Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ conquer those who are ungrateful, not by punishment, but by fresh kindness, overcoming their evil by his good.—A man, in short, whom no ill-usage without, and no ill-temper within, could shake out of his even path of generosity and benevolence.  Is not that the truly magnanimous man; the great and royal soul?  Is not that the stamp of man whom we should admire, if we met him on earth?  Should we not reverence that man; esteem it an honour and a pleasure to work under that man, to take him for our teacher, our leader, in hopes that, by copying his example, our souls might become great like his?

      Is it so, my friends?  Then know this, that in admiring that man, you admire the likeness of God.  In wishing to be like that man, you wish to be like God.

      For this is God’s true greatness; this is God’s true glory; this is God’s true royalty; the greatness, glory, and royalty of loving, forgiving, generous power, which pours itself out, untiring and undisgusted, in help and mercy to all which he has made; the glory of a Father who is perfect in this, that he causeth his rain to fall on the evil and on the good, and his sun to shine upon the just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil; a Father who has not dealt with us after our sins, or rewarded us after our iniquities: a Father who is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, but whom it is worth while to fear, for with him is mercy and plenteous redemption;—all this, and more—a Father who so loved a world which had forgotten him, a world whose sins must have been disgusting to him, that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for us, and will with him freely give us all things; a Father, in one word, whose name and essence is love, even as it is the name and essence of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

      This, my friends, is the glory of God: but this glory never shone out in its full splendour till it shone upon the cross.

      For—that we may go back again, to that great-souled man, of whom I spoke just now—did we not leave out one thing in his character? or at least, one thing by which his character might be proved and tried?  We said that he should be generous and forgiving; we said that he should bear patiently folly, peevishness, ingratitude: but what if we asked of him, that he should sacrifice himself utterly for the peevish, ungrateful men for whose good he was toiling?  What if we asked him to give up, for them, not only all which made life worth having, but to give up life itself?  To die for them; and, what is bitterest of all, to die by their hands—to receive as their reward for all his goodness to them a shameful death?  If he dare submit to that, then we should call his greatness of soul perfect.  Magnanimity, we should say, could rise no higher; in that would be the perfection of goodness.

      Surely your hearts answer, that this is true.  When you hear of a father sacrificing his own life for his children; when you hear of a soldier dying for his country; when you hear of a clergyman or a physician killing himself by his work, while he is labouring to save the souls or the bodies of his fellow-creatures; then you feel—There is goodness in its highest shape.  To give up our lives for others is one of the most beautiful, and noble, and glorious things on earth.  But to give up our lives, willingly, joyfully for men who misunderstand us, hate us, despise us, is, if possible, a more glorious action still, and the very perfection of perfect virtue.  Then, looking at Christ’s cross, we see that, and even more—ay, far more than that.  The cross was the perfect token of the perfect greatness of God, and of the perfect glory of God.

      So on the cross, the Father justified himself to man; yea, glorified himself in the glory of his crucified Son.  On the cross God proved himself to be perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly generous, perfectly glorious, beyond all that man could ever have dared to conceive or dream.  That God must be good, the wise heathens knew; but that God was so utterly good that he could stoop to suffer, to die, for men, and by men—that they never dreamed.  That was the mystery of God’s love, which was hid in Christ from the foundation of the world, and which was revealed at last upon the cross of Calvary by him who prayed for his murderers—‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’  That truly blessed sight of a Saviour-God, who did not disdain to die the meanest and the most fearful of deaths—that, that came home at once, and has come home ever since, to all hearts which had left in them any love and respect for goodness, and melted them with the fire of divine love; as God grant it may melt yours, this day, and henceforth for ever.

      I can say no more, my friends.  If this good news does not come home to your hearts by its own power, it will never be brought home to you by any words of mine.

      SERMON III.

      THE LIFE OF GOD

1 John i. 2

      For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us!

      What do we mean, when we speak of the Life everlasting?

      Do we mean that men’s souls are immortal, and will live for ever after death, either in happiness or misery?

      We must mean more than that.  At least we ought to mean more than that, if we be Christian men.  For the Bible tells us, that Christ brought life and immortality to light.  Therefore they must have been in darkness before Christ’s coming; and men did not know as much about life and immortality before Christ’s coming as they know—or ought to know—now.

      But if we need only believe that we shall live for ever after death in happiness or misery, then Christ has not brought life and immortality to light.  He has thrown no fresh light upon the matter.

      And why?  For this simple reason, that the old heathen knew as much as that before Christ came.

      The old Greeks and Romans, and Persians, and our own forefathers before they became Christians, believed that men’s souls would live for ever happy or miserable.  The Mussulmans, Mahommedans, Turks as they are called in the Prayer-book, believe as much as that now.  They believe that men’s souls live for ever after death, and go to ‘heaven’ or ‘hell.’

      So those words ‘everlasting Life’ must needs mean something more than that.  What do they mean?

      First.  What does everlasting mean?

      It means exactly the same as eternal.  The two words are the same: only everlasting is English, and eternal Latin.  But they have the same sense.

      Now everlasting and eternal mean something which has neither beginning nor end.  That is certain.  The wisest of the heathen knew that: but we are apt to forget it.  We are apt to think a thing may be everlasting, because it has no end, though it has a beginning.  We are careless thinkers, if we fancy that.  God is eternal because he has neither beginning nor end.

      But here come two puzzles.

      First.  The Athanasian Creed says that there is but one Eternal, that is, God; and never were truer words written.

      But do we not make out two Eternals?  For God is one Eternal; and eternal life is another Eternal.  Now which is right; we, or the Athanasian Creed?  I shall hold by the Athanasian Creed, my friends, and ask you to think again over the matter: thus—If there be but one Eternal, there is but one way of escaping out of our puzzle, which makes two Eternals; and that is, to go back to the old doctrine of St. Paul, and St. John, and the wisest of the Fathers, and say—There is but one Eternal; and therefore eternal life is in the Eternal God.  And it is eternal Life because it is God’s life; the life which God lives; and it is eternal just because, and only because, it is the life of God; and eternal death is nothing but the want of God’s eternal life.

      Certainly, whether you think this true or not, St. John thought it true; for he says so most positively in the text.  He says that the Life was manifested—showed plainly upon earth, and that he had seen it.  And he says that he saw it in a man, whom his eyes had seen, and his hands had handled.  How could СКАЧАТЬ