Sermons for the Times

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Charles Kingsley. Sermons for the Times

SERMON I. ‘FATHERS AND CHILDREN’

SERMON II. SALVATION

SERMON III. A GOOD CONSCIENCE

SERMON IV. NAMES

SERMON V. SPONSORSHIP

SERMON VI. JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH

SERMON VII. DUTY AND SUPERSTITION

SERMON VIII. SONSHIP

SERMON IX. THE LORD’S PRAYER

SERMON X. THE DOXOLOGY

SERMON XI. AHAB AND NABOTH

SERMON XII. THE LIGHT OF GOD

SERMON XIII. PROVIDENCE

SERMON XIV. ENGLAND’S STRENGTH

SERMON XV. THE LIFE OF GOD

SERMON XVI. GOD’S OFFSPRING

SERMON XVII. DEATH IN LIFE

SERMON XVIII. SHAME

SERMON XIX. FORGIVENESS

SERMON XX. THE TRUE GENTLEMAN

SERMON XXI. TOLERATION

SERMON XXII. PUBLIC SPIRIT

Отрывок из книги

John xvii. 3.  This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.

Before I can explain what this text has to do with the Church Catechism, I must say to you a little about what it means.

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To know God; and also to know Jesus Christ whom He has sent.  For St. John, when he tells us that God has already given to us eternal life, says also, that this life is in His Son.  To know the Son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased, because He is His perfect Son; His exact likeness, the likeness of that glory of His, and the express image of that person and character of His, which I described to you just now; One whose life was and is and ever will be eternally all love, and mercy, and self-sacrifice, and labour, for lost and sinful men; all trust and obedience to His Father.  To know Him and His life, and to come to Him, and receive from Him an eternal life, which this world did not give us, and cannot take away from us; which neither man, devil, nor angel, nor the death of our bodies, the ruin of empires, the destruction of the whole universe, and of time, and space, and all things whereof man can conceive or dream, can alter in the slightest, because it is a life of goodness, and righteousness, and love, which are eternal as the God from whom they spring; eternal as Christ, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and nothing but our own sinful wills can rob us of them.

This is eternal life, and therefore this is salvation.  A very different account of it (though it is the Bible account) from that narrow and paltry one which too many have in their minds now-a-days; a narrow and paltry notion that it means only being saved from the punishment of our sins after we die; and a very unbelieving, and godless, and atheistical notion too; which, like all unbelief hurts and spoils men’s lives.

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