The Good News of God. Charles Kingsley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that he trusted you now, looked on you now as a brother—did not that double the pleasure?  I ask you, is there any pleasure in the world like that of doing good, and being thanked for it?  Then that is the joy of your Lord.  That is the joy of Christ rising up in you, as often as you do good; the love which is in you rejoicing in itself, because it has found a loving thing to do, and has called out the love of a human being in return.

      Yes, if you will receive it, that is the joy of Christ—the glorious knowledge that he is doing endless good, and calling out endless love to himself and to the Father, till the day when he shall give up to his Father the kingdom which he has won back from sin and death, and God shall be all in all.

      That is the joy of your Lord.  If you wish for any different sort of joy after you die, you must not ask me to tell you of it; for I know nothing about the matter save what I find written in the Holy Scripture.

      SERMON VI

      WORSHIP

Isaiah i. 12, 13

      When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?  Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

      This is a very awful text; one of those which terrify us—or at least ought to terrify us—and set us on asking ourselves seriously and honestly—‘What do I believe after all?  What manner of man am I after all?  What sort of show should I make after all, if the people round me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?  What sort of show, then, do I already make, in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?’

      I say, such texts as this ought to terrify us.  It is good to be terrified now and then; to be startled, and called to account, and set thinking, and sobered, as it were, now and then, that we may look at ourselves honestly anti bravely, and see, if we can, what sort of men we are.

      And therefore, perhaps, it is that this chapter is chosen for the first Advent Lesson; to prepare us for Christmas; to frighten us somewhat; at least to set us thinking seriously, and to make us fit to keep Christmas in spirit and in truth.

      For whom does this text speak of?

      It speaks of religious people, and of a religious nation; and of a fearful mistake which they were making, and a fearful danger into which they had fallen.  Now we are religious people, and England is a religious nation; and therefore we may possibly make the same mistake, and fall into the same danger, as these old Jews.

      I do not say that we have done so; but we may; for human nature is just the same now as it was then; and therefore it is as well for us to look round—at least once now and then, and see whether we too are in danger of falling, while we think that we are standing safe.

      What does Isaiah, then, tell the religious Jews of his day?

      That their worship of God, their church-going, their sabbaths, and their appointed feasts were a weariness and an abomination to him.  That God loathed them, and would not listen to the prayers which were made in them.  That the whole matter was a mockery and a lie in his sight.

      These are awful words enough—that God should hate and loathe what he himself had appointed; that what would be, one would think, one of the most natural and most pleasant sights to a loving Father in heaven—namely, his own children worshipping, blessing, and praising him—should be horrible in his sight.  There is something very shocking in that; at least to Church people like us.  If we were Dissenters, who go to chapel chiefly to hear sermons, it would be easy for us to say—‘Of course, forms and ceremonies and appointed feasts are nothing to begin with; they are man’s invention at best, and may therefore be easily enough an abomination to God.’  But we know that they are not so; that forms and ceremonies and appointed feasts are good things as long as they have spirit and truth in them; that whether or not they be of man’s invention, they spring out of the most simple, wholesome wants of our human nature, which is a good thing and not a bad one, for God made it in his own likeness, and bestowed it on us.  We know, or ought to know, that appointed feast days, like Christmas, are good and comfortable ordinances, which cheer our hearts on our way through this world, and give us something noble and lovely to look forward to month after month; that they are like landmarks along the road of life, reminding us of what God has done, and is doing, for us and all mankind.  And if you do not know, I know, that people who throw away ordinances and festivals end, at least in a generation or two, in throwing away the Gospel truth which that ordinance or festival reminds us of; just as too many who have thrown away Good Friday have thrown away the Good Friday good news, that Christ died for all mankind; and too many who have thrown away Christmas are throwing away—often without meaning to do so—the Christmas good news, that Christ really took on himself the whole of our human nature, and took the manhood into God.

      So it is, my friends, and so it will be.  For these forms and festivals are the old landmarks and beacons of the Gospel; and if a man will not look at the landmarks, then he will lose his way.

      Therefore, to Church people like us, it ought to be a shocking thing even to suspect that God may be saying to us, ‘Your appointed feasts my soul hateth;’ and it ought to set them seriously thinking how such a thing may happen, that they may guard against it.  For if God be not pleased with our coming to his house, what right have we in his house at all?

      But recollect this, my dear friends, that we are not to use this text to search and judge others’ faults, but to search and judge our own.

      For if a man, hearing this sermon, looks at his neighbour across the church, and says in his heart, ‘Ay, such a bad one as he is—what right has he in church?’—then God answers that man, ‘Who art thou who judgest another?  To his own master he standeth or falleth.’  Yes, my friends, recollect what the old tomb-stone outside says—(and right good doctrine it is)—and fit it to this sermon.

      When this you see, pray judge not me

         For sin enough I own.

      Judge yourselves; mend your lives;

         Leave other folks alone.

      But if a man, hearing this sermon, begins to say to himself, Such a man as I am—so full of faults as I am—what right have I in church?  So selfish—so uncharitable—so worldly—so useless—so unfair (or whatever other faults the man may feel guilty of)—in one word, so unlike what I ought to be—so unlike Christ—so unlike God whom I come to worship.  How little I act up to what I believe! how little I really believe what I have learnt! what right have I in church?  What if God were saying the same of me as he said of those old Jews, ‘Thy church-going, thy coming to communion, thy Christmas-day, my soul hateth; I am weary to bear it.  Who hath required this at thy hands, to tread my courts?’  People round me may think me good enough as men go now; but I know myself too well; and I know that instead of saying with the Pharisee to any man here, ‘I thank God that I am not as this man or that,’ I ought rather to stand afar off like the publican, and not lift up so much as my eyes toward heaven, crying only ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’

      If a man should think thus, my friends, his thoughts may make him very serious for awhile; nay, very sad.  But they need not make him miserable: need still less make him despair.

      They ought to set him on thinking—Why do I come to church?

      Because it is the fashion?

      Because I want to hear the preacher?

      No—to worship God.

      But what is worshipping God?

      That must depend entirely my friends, upon СКАЧАТЬ