PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George, 1824-1905 · 174,677 words · 216 reading sections
The God Of The Living.
All this revelation, however, would render only _a_ body necessary, not this body. The fulness of the word _Resurrection_ would be ill met if this were all. We need not only a body to convey revelation to us, but a body to reveal us to others. The thoughts, feelings, imaginations which arise in us, must have their garm…
881 wordsSECTION 62The Way.
Lord, evermore give us this Resurrection, like thine own in the body of thy Transfiguration. Let us see and hear, and know, and be seen, and heard, and known, as thou seest, hearest, and knowest. Give us glorified bodies through which to reveal the glorified thoughts which shall then inhabit us, when not only shalt tho…
1,056 wordsSECTION 63The Way.
For the Lord's greatness consisted in his Father being greater than he: who calls into being is greater than who is called. The Father was always the Father, the Son always the Son; yet the Son is not of himself, but by the Father; he does not live by his own power, like the Father. If there were no Father, there would…
864 wordsSECTION 64The Way.
But I am anxious my reader should not mistake. Observe, the question in the young man's mind is not about the doing or not doing of something he knows to be right; had such been the case, the Lord would have permitted no question at all; the one thing he insists upon is the _doing_ of the thing we know we ought to do. …
664 wordsSECTION 65The Way.
Surely not--else why should they have been given? But is there no meaning in the word _keep_, or _observe_, except it be qualified by _perfectly_? Is there no keeping but a perfect keeping? 'None that God cares for.' There I think you utterly wrong. That no keeping but a perfect one will _satisfy_ God, I hold with al…
717 wordsSECTION 66The Way.
The youth had got on so far, was so pleasing in the eyes of the Master, that he would show him the highest favour he could; he would take him to be with him--to walk with him, and rest with him, and go from him only to do for him what he did for his Father in heaven--to plead with men, he a mediator between God and men…
1,011 wordsSECTION 67The Way.
And how now would he go on with his keeping of the commandments? Would he not begin to see more plainly his shortcomings, the larger scope of their requirements? Might he not feel the keeping of them more imperative than ever, yet impossible without something he had not? The commandments can never be kept while there i…
851 wordsSECTION 68The Way.
To return to the summing up of the matter:-- The youth, climbing the stair of eternal life, had come to a landing-place where not a step more was visible. On the cloud-swathed platform he stands looking in vain for further ascent. What he thought with himself he wanted, I cannot tell: his idea of eternal life I do not…
424 wordsSECTION 69The Hardness Of The Way.
"_Children, how hard is it_!"--St. Mark x. 24. I suspect there is scarcely a young man rich and thoughtful who is not ready to feel our Lord's treatment of this young man hard. He is apt to ask, "Why should it be difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven?" He is ready to look upon the natural fact a…
924 wordsSECTION 70The Hardness Of The Way.
I will suppose myself in immediate communication with such a youth. I should care little to set forth anything called truth, except in siege for surrender to the law of liberty. If I cannot persuade, I would be silent. Nor would I labour to instruct the keenest intellect; I would rather learn for myself. To persuade th…
918 wordsSECTION 71The Hardness Of The Way.
'Does this comfort you? Then alas for you! A thousand times alas! Your relief is to know that the Lord has no need of you--does not require you to part with your money, does not offer you himself instead! You do not indeed sell him for thirty pieces of silver, but you are glad not to buy him with all that you have! Whe…
748 wordsSECTION 72The Hardness Of The Way.
Some, no doubt, comfort themselves with the thought that, if it be so hard, the fact will be taken into account: it is but another shape of the fancy that the rich man must be differently treated from his fellows; that as he has had his good things here, so he must have them there too. Certain as life they will have ab…
703 wordsSECTION 73The Hardness Of The Way.
Demands unknown before are continually being made upon the Christian: it is the ever fresh rousing and calling, asking and sending of the Spirit that worketh in the children of obedience. When he thinks he has attained, then is he in danger; when he finds the mountain he has so long been climbing show suddenly a distan…
754 wordsSECTION 74The Hardness Of The Way.
It is imperative on us to get rid of the tyranny of _things_. See how imperative: let the young man cling with every fibre to his wealth, what God can do he will do; his child shall not be left in the hell of possession! Comes the angel of death!--and where are the things that haunted the poor soul with such manifold h…
717 wordsSECTION 75The Cause Of Spiritual Stupidity.
'_How is it that ye do not understand?_'--ST. MARK viii. 21. After feeding the four thousand with seven loaves and a few small fishes, on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus, having crossed the lake, was met on the other side by certain Pharisees, whose attitude towards him was such that he betook himself again…
726 wordsSECTION 76The Cause Of Spiritual Stupidity.
Having thus questioned them like children, and listened as to the answers of children, he turns the light of their thoughts upon themselves, and, with an argument to the man which overleaps all the links of its own absolute logic, demands, 'How is it that ye do not understand?' Then they did understand, and knew that h…
729 wordsSECTION 77The Cause Of Spiritual Stupidity.
The answer then to the Lord's reproach, 'How is it that ye do not understand?' is plainly this: their minds were so full of care about the day's bread, that they could not think with simplicity about anything else; the mere mention of leaven threw them floundering afresh in the bog of their unbelief. When the Lord remi…
670 wordsSECTION 78The Cause Of Spiritual Stupidity.
In the former case it was the possession of wealth, in the latter the not having more than a loaf, that rendered incapable of receiving the word of the Lord: the evil principle was precisely the same. If it be _Things_ that slay you, what matter whether things you have, or things you have not? The youth, not trusting i…
650 wordsSECTION 79The Cause Of Spiritual Stupidity.
'Do you not, then, know that, when God denies anything a child of his values, it is to give him something _he_ values?' 'But if I do not want it?' 'You are none the less miserable just because you do not have it. Instead of his great possessions the young man was to have the company of Jesus, and treasure in heaven. …
1,042 wordsSECTION 80The Cause Of Spiritual Stupidity.
'These are foolish illustrations--not worth writing!' If such things are not, then the mention of them is foolish. If they are, then he is foolish who would treat them as if they were not. I choose them for their smallness, and appeal especially to all who keep house concerning the size of trouble that suffices to hid…
708 wordsSECTION 81The Word Of Jesus On Prayer.
But who is sufficient to cast them out? If a man take courage and encounter the army of bats and demon-snakes that infests the place of the Holy, it is but to find the task too great for him; that the temple of God will not be cleansed by him; that the very dust he raises in sweeping is full of corruptive forces. Let s…
1,071 wordsSECTION 82The Word Of Jesus On Prayer.
He seems here to refer to his second coming--concerning the time of which, he refused information; concerning the mode of which, he said it would be unexpected; but concerning the duty of which, he insisted it was _to be ready_: we must be faithful, and at our work. Do those who say, lo here or lo there are the signs o…
1,310 wordsSECTION 83The Word Of Jesus On Prayer.
If it be reasonable for me to cry thus, if I cannot but cry, it is reasonable that God should hear, he cannot but hear. A being that could not hear or would not answer prayer, could not be God. 'But, I ask, all this admitted--is what you call a necessary truth an existent fact? You say, "It must be so;" I say, "What i…
845 wordsSECTION 84The Word Of Jesus On Prayer.
'But I want to believe in God. I want to know that there is a God that answers prayer, that I may believe in him. There was a time when I believed in him. I prayed to him in great and sore trouble of heart and mind, and he did not hear me. I have not prayed since.' How do you know that he did not hear you? 'He did no…
730 wordsSECTION 85The Word Of Jesus On Prayer.
'But if God is so good as you represent him, and if he knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask him for anything?' I answer, What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our grea…
723 wordsSECTION 86The Word Of Jesus On Prayer.
Sometimes to one praying will come the feeling rather than question: 'Were it not better to abstain? If this thing be good, will he not give it me? Would he not be better pleased if I left it altogether to him?' It comes, I think, of a lack of faith and childlikeness--taking form, perhaps, in a fear lest, asking for wh…
603 wordsSECTION 87Man'S Difficulty Concerning Prayer.
'--_and not to faint_.'--ST. LUKE xviii. 1. 'How should any design of the All-wise be altered in response to prayer of ours!' How are we to believe such a thing? By reflecting that he is the All-wise, who sees before him, and will not block his path. Such objection springs from poorest idea of God in relation to us. …
1,110 wordsSECTION 88Man'S Difficulty Concerning Prayer.
That God cannot interfere to modify his plans, interfere without the change of a single law of his world, is to me absurd. If we can change, God can change, else is he less free than we--his plans, I say, not principles, not ends: God himself forbid!--change them after divine fashion, above our fashions as the heavens …
1,013 wordsSECTION 89Man'S Difficulty Concerning Prayer.
The argument I know not how to answer. I can only, in the face of it, and feeling all the difficulty, say, and say again, 'Yet I believe I may pray for my friend--for my enemy--for anybody! Yet and yet, there is, there must be some genuine, essential good and power in the prayer of one man for another to the maker of b…
1,017 wordsSECTION 90Man'S Difficulty Concerning Prayer.
'Still, could not God have given the gift without the prayer? And why should the good of any one depend on the prayer of another?' I can only answer with the return question, 'Why should my love be powerless to help another?' But we must not tie God to our measures of time, or think he has forgotten that prayer even w…
715 wordsSECTION 91Man'S Difficulty Concerning Prayer.
I will not contradict their testimony. So needful is prayer to the soul that the mere attitude of it may encourage a good mood. Verily to pray to that which is not, is in logic a folly; yet the good that, they say, comes of it, may rebuke the worse folly of their unbelief, for it indicates that prayer is natural, and h…
650 wordsSECTION 92Man'S Difficulty Concerning Prayer.
Again, not from any straitening in God, but either from our own condition and capacity, or those of the friend for whom we pray, time may be necessary to the working out of the answer. God is limited by regard for our best; our best implies education; in this we must ourselves have a large share; this share, being huma…
822 wordsSECTION 93The Last Farthing.
But from whatever quarter come our troubles, whether from the world outside or the world inside, still let us pray. In his own right way, the only way that could satisfy us, for we are of his kind, will God answer our prayers with help. He will avenge us of our adversaries, and that speedily. Only let us take heed that…
696 wordsSECTION 94The Last Farthing.
This will help to remove the difficulty that the parables are plainly for the teaching of the truth, and yet the Lord speaks of them as for the concealing of it. They are for the understanding of that man only who is practical--who does the thing he knows, who seeks to understand vitally. They reveal to the live consci…
718 wordsSECTION 95The Last Farthing.
There has been much cherishing of the evil fancy, often without its taking formal shape, that there is some way of getting out of the region of strict justice, some mode of managing to escape doing _all_ that is required of us; but there is no such escape. A way to avoid any demand of righteousness would be an infinite…
656 wordsSECTION 96The Last Farthing.
'In this affair, however, I am in the right.' 'If so, very well--for this affair. But I have reason to doubt whether you are capable of judging righteously in your own cause:--do you hate the man?' 'No, I don't hate him.' 'Do you dislike him?' 'I can't say I _like_ him.' 'Do you love him as yourself?' 'Oh, come! …
819 wordsSECTION 97The Last Farthing.
I think I have seen from afar something of the final prison of all, the innermost cell of the debtor of the universe; I will endeavour to convey what I think it may be. It is the vast outside; the ghastly dark beyond the gates of the city of which God is the light--where the evil dogs go ranging, silent as the dark, f…
853 wordsSECTION 98The Last Farthing.
Can there be any way out of the misery? Will the soul that could not believe in God, with all his lovely world around testifying of him, believe when shut in the prison of its own lonely, weary all-and-nothing? It would for a time try to believe that it was indeed nothing, a mere glow of the setting sun on a cloud of d…
867 wordsSECTION 99Abba, Father!
'_--the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father._'-ROMANS viii. 15. The hardest, gladdest thing in the world is, to cry _Father_! from a full heart. I would help whom I may to call thus upon the Father. There are things in all forms of the systematic teaching of Christianity to check this outgoing of the hea…
683 wordsSECTION 100Abba, Father!
'It avails nothing to answer that we lost our birthright by the fall. I do not care to argue that _I_ did not fall when Adam fell; for I have fallen many a time, and there is a shadow on my soul which I or another may call a curse; I cannot get rid of a something that always intrudes between my heart and the blue of ev…
713 wordsSECTION 101Abba, Father!
'But what is the good of all you say, if the child is such that the father cannot take him to his heart?' 'Ah, indeed, I grant you, nothing!--so long as the child does not desire to be taken to the father's heart; but the moment he does, then it is everything to the child's heart that he should be indeed the child of …
692 wordsSECTION 102Abba, Father!
How could the Revisers choose this last reading, 'an heir through God,' and keep the word _adoption_? From the passage it is as plain as St. Paul could make it, that, by the word translated _adoption_, he means the raising of a father's own child from the condition of tutelage and subjection to others, a state which, h…
821 wordsSECTION 103Abba, Father!
This Father would make to himself sons and daughters indeed--that is, such sons and daughters as shall be his sons and daughters not merely by having come from his heart, but by having returned thither--children in virtue of being such as whence they came, such as choose to be what he is. He will have them share in his…
811 wordsSECTION 104Abba, Father!
St. Paul uses the word also in his epistle to the Ephesians, the first chapter, the fifth verse. 'Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself,' says the authorized version; 'Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself,' says the revised--and I see …
750 wordsSECTION 105Abba, Father!
We are the sons of God the moment we lift up our hearts, seeking to be sons--the moment we begin to cry _Father_. But as the world must be redeemed in a few men to begin with, so the soul is redeemed in a few of its thoughts and wants and ways, to begin with: it takes a long time to finish the new creation of this rede…
725 wordsSECTION 106Abba, Father!
This redemption of the body--its deliverance from all that is amiss, awry, unfinished, weak, worn out, all that prevents the revelation of the sons of God, is called by the apostle, not certainly the _adoption_, but the [Greek: niothesia], the sonship in full manifestation. It is the slave yet left in the sons and daug…
783 wordsSECTION 107Life.
'_I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly_.'--St. John x. 10. In a word, He came to supply all our lack--from the root outward; for what is it we need but more life? What does the infant need but more life? What does the bosom of his mother give him but life in abundance? What does the old man need,…
787 wordsSECTION 108Life.
God is life, and the will-source of life. In the outflowing of that life, I know him; and when I am told that he is love, I see that if he were not love he would not, could not create. I know nothing deeper in him than love, nor believe there is in him anything deeper than love-- nay, that there can be anything deeper …
776 wordsSECTION 109Life.
The life the Lord came to give us is a life exceeding that of the highest undivine man, by far more than the life of that man exceeds the life of the animal the least human. More and more of it is for each who will receive it, and to eternity. The Father has given to the Son to have life in himself; that life is our li…
653 wordsSECTION 110Life.
Let us in all the troubles of life remember--that our one lack is life--that what we need is more life--more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely, alive. When most oppressed, when most weary of life, as our unbelief would phrase it, let us bethink ourselves that it is in truth the inroad a…
709 wordsSECTION 111Life.
If we will but let our God and Father work his will with us, there can be no limit to his enlargement of our existence, to the flood of life with which he will overflow our consciousness. We have no conception of what life might be, of how vast the consciousness of which we could be made capable. Many can recall some m…
941 wordsSECTION 112Life.
This life, this eternal life, consists for man in absolute oneness with God and all divine modes of being, oneness with every phase of right and harmony. It consists in a love as deep as it is universal, as conscious as it is unspeakable; a love that can no more be reasoned about than life itself--a love whose presence…
1,055 wordsSECTION 113The Fear Of God.
Reader to whom my words seem those of inflation and foolish excitement, it can be nothing to thee to be told that I seem to myself to speak only the words of truth and soberness; but what if the cause why they seem other to thy mind be--not merely that thou art not whole, but that thy being nowise thirsts after harmony…
861 wordsSECTION 114The Fear Of God.
The false notions of men of low, undeveloped nature both with regard to what is good and what the Power requires of them, are such that they cannot but fear, and devotion is lost in the sacrifices of ingratiation: God takes them where they are, accepts whatever they honestly offer, and so helps them to outgrow themselv…
665 wordsSECTION 115The Fear Of God.
The fire of God, which is his essential being, his love, his creative power, is a fire unlike its earthly symbol in this, that it is only at a distance it burns--that the farther from him, it burns the worse, and that when we turn and begin to approach him, the burning begins to change to comfort, which comfort will gr…
822 wordsSECTION 116The Fear Of God.
There is one point not distinguishable in the Greek: whether is meant, 'one like unto _the_ Son of Man,' or, 'one like unto _a_ son of Man:' the authorized version has the former, the revised prefers the latter. I incline to the former, and think that John saw him like the man he had known so well, and that it was the …
1,078 wordsSECTION 117The Fear Of God.
It is the man of evil, the man of self-seeking design, not he who would fain do right, not he who, even in his worst time, would at once submit to the word of the Master, who is reasonably afraid of power. When God is no longer the ruler of the world, and there is a stronger than he; when there is might inherent in evi…
630 wordsSECTION 118The Voice Of Job.
'_O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt ha…
1,092 wordsSECTION 119The Voice Of Job.
Job's child-like judgment of God had never been vitiated and perverted, to the dishonouring of the great Father, by any taint of such low theories as, alas! we must call the popular: explanations of God's ways by such as did not understand _Him_, they are acceptable to such as do not care to know him, such as are conte…
768 wordsSECTION 120The Voice Of Job.
But let us look a little closer at Job's way of thinking and speaking about God, and his manner of addressing him--so different from the pharisaic in all ages, in none more than in our own. Waxing indignant at the idea that his nature required such treatment-- 'Am I a sea or a whale,' he cries out, 'that thou settest …
847 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.