Sermon 17 (7th May 1837)
“He shall glorify Me.” John 14. 14.
When our Lord was leaving His Apostles, and they were sorrowful, He consoled them by the promise of another Guide and Teacher, on whom they might rely instead of Him, and who should be more to them even than He had been. He promised them the Third Person in the Ever-blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Himself and of His Father, who should come invisibly,
Jesus, Redeemer of mankind, Have mercy on us.
Jesus, Conqueror of sin and Satan,
Jesus, triumphant over Death,
Jesus, the Holy and the Just,
Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life,
Thomas says to Him, “My Lord and my God.”
1. I adore Thee, O my God, with Thomas; and if I have, like him, sinned through unbelief, I adore Thee the more. I adore Thee as the One Adorable, I adore Thee as more glorious in Thy humiliation, when men despised Thee, than when Angels worshipped Thee. Deus meus et omnia-“My God and my all.” To have Thee is to have everything I can have.
O blessed day of the Resurrection, which of old time was called the Queen of Festivals, and raised among Christians an anxious, nay contentious diligence duly to honour it! Blessed day, once only passed in sorrow, when the Lord actually rose,
6th May 1838
“A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father.” John 16:16.
Very opposite lessons are drawn in different parts of Scripture from the doctrine of Christ’s leaving the world and returning to His Father; lessons so opposite the one to the other, that at first sight a reader might even find a difficulty in reconciling them together. In an earlier season of His ministry, our
You are the Supreme Good. And, in saying so, I mean not only supreme goodness and benevolence, but that you are the sovereign and transcendent beautifulness. I believe that, beautiful as is your creation, it is mere dust and ashes, and of no account, compared with you, who are the infinitely more beautiful Creator. I know well
It would be well if we were in the habit of looking at all we have as God’s gift, undeservedly given, and day by day continued to us solely by His mercy. He gave; He may take away. He gave us all we have, life, health, strength, reason, enjoyment, the light of conscience; whatever we have good and holy within us; whatever faith we have; whatever of a renewed will; whatever love towards Him; whatever power over ourselves; whatever prospect of heaven.
“I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast showed unto Thy servant.” Gen. 32:10.
The spirit of humble thankfulness for past mercies which these words imply, is a grace to which we are especially called in the Gospel. Jacob, who spoke them, knew not of those great and wonderful acts of love with which God has since visited the race of man. But though he might not know the depths of God’s counsels, he knew himself so far as to know that he was worthy of no good thing at all, and he knew
“Both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” (Heb. 2:11).
Our Saviour’s birth in the flesh is an earnest, and, as it were, beginning of our birth in the Spirit. It is a figure, promise, or pledge of our new birth, and it effects what it promises. As He was born, so are we born also; and since He was born, therefore we too are born.
We find two especial manifestations of divine grace in the human heart, whether we turn to Scripture for instances of it, or to the history of the Church; whether we trace it in the case of Saints, or in persons of holy and religious life; and the two are even found among our Lord’s Apostles, being
