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The Good News of God By: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) |
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SERMON I. THE BEATIFIC VISION MATTHEW xxii. 27. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind. These words often puzzle and pain really good people, because they
seem to put the hardest duty first. It seems, at times, so much more
easy to love one's neighbour than to love God. And strange as it may
seem, that is partly true. St. John tells us so 'He that loves not
his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen?' Therefore many good people, who really do love God, are
unhappy at times because they feel that they do not love him enough.
They say in their hearts 'I wish to do right, and I try to do it:
but I am afraid I do not do it from love to God.' I think that they are often too hard upon themselves. I believe that
they are very often loving God with their whole hearts, when they
think that they are not doing so. But still, it is well to be afraid
of oneself, and dissatisfied with oneself. I think, too nay, I am certain that many good people do not love
God as they ought, and as they would wish to do, because they have
not been rightly taught who God is, and what He is like. They have
not been taught that God is loveable; they have been taught that God
feels feelings, and does deeds, which if a man felt, or did, we
should call him arbitrary, proud, revengeful, cruel: and yet they
are told to love him; and they do not know how to love such a being
as that. Nor do I either, my friends. Let us therefore think over to day for ourselves why we ought to love
God; and why both Bible and Catechism bid child as well as man to
love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, before
they bid us love our neighbours. And keep this in mind all through,
that the reason why we are to love God must depend upon what God's
character is. For you cannot love any one because you are told to
love them. You can only love them because they are loveable and
worthy of your love. And that they will not be, unless they are
loving themselves; as it is written, we love God because he first
loved us. Now, friends, look at this one thing first. When we see any man do a
just action, or a kind action, do we not like to see it? Do we not
like the man the better for doing it? A man must be sunk very low in
stupidity and ill feeling dead in tresspasses and sins, as the Bible
calls it if he does not. Indeed, I never saw the man yet, however
bad he was himself, who did not, in his better moments, admire what
was right and good; and say, 'Bad as I may be, that man is a good
man, and I wish I could do as he does.' One sees the same, but far more strongly, in little children. From
their earliest years, as far as I have ever seen, children like and
admire what is good, even though they be naughty themselves; and if
you tell them of any very loving, generous, or brave action, their
hearts leap up in answer to it. They feel at once how beautiful
goodness is. But why? St. John tells us. That feeling comes, he tells us, from Christ, the
light who is the life of men, and lights every man who comes into the
world; and that light in our hearts, which makes us see, and admire,
and love what is good, is none other than Christ himself shining in
our hearts, and showing to us his own likeness, and the beauty
thereof. But if we stop there; if we only admire what is good, without trying
to copy it, we shall lose that light. Our corrupt and diseased
nature (and corrupt and diseased it is, as we shall surely find, as
soon as we begin to try to do right) will quench that heavenly spark
in us more and more, till it dies out as God forbid that it should
die out in any of us. For if it did die out, we should care no more
for what is good. We should see nothing beautiful, and noble, and
glorious, in being just, and loving, and merciful. And then, indeed,
we should see nothing worth loving in God himself: and it were
better for us that we had never been born... Continue reading book >>
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