Westminster Sermons

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Charles Kingsley. Westminster Sermons

PREFACE

SERMON I. THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS. A GOOD FRIDAY SERMON

SERMON II. THE PERFECT LOVE

SERMON III. THE SPIRIT OF WHITSUNTIDE

SERMON IV. PRAYER

SERMON V. THE DEAF AND DUMB

SERMON VI. THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

SERMON VII. CONFUSION

SERMON VIII. THE SHAKING OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH

SERMON IX. THE KINGDOM OF GOD

SERMON X. THE LAW OF THE LORD

SERMON XI. GOD THE TEACHER

SERMON XII. THE REASONABLE PRAYER

SERMON XIII. THE ONE ESCAPE

SERMON XIV. THE WORD OF GOD

SERMON XV. I

SERMON XVI. THE CEDARS OF LEBANON

SERMON XVII. LIFE

SERMON XVIII. DEATH

SERMON XIX. SIGNS AND WONDERS

SERMON XX. THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD

SERMON XXI. THE WAR IN HEAVEN

SERMON XXII. NOBLE COMPANY

SERMON XXIII. DE PROFUNDIS

SERMON XXIV. THE BLESSING AND THE CURSE

SERMON XXV. THE SILENCE OF FAITH

SERMON XXVI. GOD AND MAMMON

SERMON XXVII. THE BEATIFIC VISION

Отрывок из книги

The second Lesson for this morning’s service, and the chapter which follows it, describe the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, both God and Man.  They give us the facts, in language most awful from its perfect calmness, most pathetic from its perfect simplicity.  But the passage of St Paul which I have chosen for my text gives us an explanation of those facts which is utterly amazing.  That He who stooped to die upon the Cross is Very God of Very God, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, is a thought so overwhelming, whenever we try to comprehend even a part of it in our small imaginations, that it is no wonder if, in all ages, many a pious soul, as it contemplated the Cross of Christ, has been rapt itself into a passion of gratitude, an ecstasy of wonder and of love, which is beautiful, honourable, just, and in the deepest sense most rational, whenever it is spontaneous and natural.

But there have been thousands, as there may be many here to-day, of colder temperament; who would distrust in themselves, even while they respected in others, any violence of religious emotion: yet they too have found, and you too may find, in contemplating the Passion of Christ, a satisfaction deeper than that of any emotion; a satisfaction not to the heart, still less to the brain, but to that far deeper and diviner faculty within us all—our moral sense; that God-given instinct which makes us discern and sympathise with all that is beautiful and true and good.

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And does not our own highest reason tell us that they were right?  Does not our own highest reason, which is our moral sense, tell us that perfect goodness requires, not merely that we should pity our fellow-creatures, not merely that we should help them, not merely that we should right them magisterially and royally, without danger or injury to ourselves: but that we should toil for them, suffer for them, and if need be, as the highest act of goodness, die for them at last?  Is not this the very element of goodness which we all confess to be most noble, beautiful, pure, heroical, divine?  Divine even in sinful and fallen man, who must forgive because he needs to be forgiven; who must help others because he needs help himself; who, if he suffers for others, deserves to suffer, and probably will suffer, in himself.  But how much more heroical, and how much more divine in a Being who needs neither forgiveness nor help, and who is as far from deserving as He is from needing to suffer!  And shall this noblest form of goodness be possible to sinful man, and yet impossible to a perfectly good God?  Shall we say that the martyr at the stake, the patriot dying for his country, the missionary spending his life for the good of heathens; ay more, shall we say that those women, martyrs by the pang without the palm, who in secret chambers, in lowly cottages, have sacrificed and do still sacrifice self and all the joys of life for the sake of simple duties, little charities, kindness unnoticed and unknown by all, save God—shall we say that all who have from the beginning of the world shewn forth the beauty of self-sacrifice have had no divine prototype in heaven?—That they have been exercising a higher grace, a nobler form of holiness, than He who made them, and who, as they believe, and we ought to believe, inspired them with that spirit of unselfishness, which if it be not the Spirit of God, whose spirit can it be?  Shall we say this, and so suppose them holier than their own Maker?  Shall we say this, and suppose that they, when they attributed self-sacrifice to God, made indeed a God in their own image, but a God of greater love, greater pity, greater graciousness because of greater unselfishness, than Him who really exists?

Shall we say this, the very words whereof confute themselves and shock alike our reason and our conscience?  Or shall we say with St John and with St Paul, that if men can be so good, God must be infinitely better; that if man can love so much, God must love more; if man, by shaking off the selfishness which is his bane, can do such deeds, then God, in whom is no selfishness at all, may at least have done a deed as far above theirs as the heavens are above the earth?  Shall we not confess that man’s self-sacrifice is but a poor and dim reflection of the self-sacrifice of God, and say with St John, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins;” and with St Paul, “Scarcely for a righteous man would one die, but God commendeth His love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”?  Shall we not say this: and find, as thousands have found ere now, in the Cross of Calvary the perfect satisfaction of our highest moral instincts, the realization in act and fact of the highest idea which we can form of perfect condescension, namely, self-sacrifice exercised by a Being of whom perfect condescension, love and self-sacrifice were not required by aught in heaven or earth, save by the necessity of His own perfect and inconceivable goodness?

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