Five Sermons on the Nature of Christianity; Preached in Advent and Christmas Tide, 1846, Before the University of Cambridge (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III, CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS OBJECTIVE CHARACTER, AND SUBJECTIVE OPERATION, ILLUSTRATED FROM THE EXAMPLE OF S. THOMAS. (Preached on the Eve of S. Thomas, l846.) 1 S. John xx. 27, 28, 29. Then Saith He To Thomas, Reach Hither Thy Finger And Behold My Hands: And Reach Hither Thy Hand And Thrust It Into My Side: And Be Not Faithless BUT BELIEVING. And THOMAS ANSWERED, AND SAID Unto Him, My Lord And My God. Jesus Saith Unto Him, Thomas, Because Thou Hast Seen Me, Thou Hast Believed. Blessed Are They That Have Not Seen And Yet Have Believed. From the general Epistle of the great Apostle and Evangelist to whom we owe this remarkable history, I have endeavoured in my two preceding discourses to illustrate the objective character of the faith he preached to the world: that it was what he and the other Apostles had seen and heard and handled that they were commissioned to declare to the wholeChurch, in order that the Church might have fellowship with them, and thus with the Father and with the Son. It is the real Incarnation of the Eternal Word, ?the actual coming in the flesh of the Son of God, born, dead, and risen for our salvation, ?that is the sole basis of our religion: and this, through the divinely appointed means by which its belief and salutary influence is propagated, becomes the principle of Christian faith and righteousness. This great fact, and not any particular proposition concerning it, however true or useful in its place, which men may consider as containing the whole idea, or all that is essential to its purpose; this great fact, I say, in the totality of its objective character and in the consequent totality of its applicable virtue and influence; this is the real Articulus stantis aut cadentis Ecclesiag. Thus has the Catholic and Apostolic ...