Sermons to Villagers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ...to leave, no home, no riches. He leaves no earthly thing but the poor garment for which the soldiers are casting lots. The world is His. Yet He has nothing to bequeath. Yet one there is for whom He would provide, his poor, pierced, afflicted Mother. Who can describe her intensity of grief. Nothing is more unselfish and devoted than a mother's love. What then must have been the feelings, of such a mother for such a Son. Her natural protector Joseph seems to have been dead, else we can hardly suppose him to have left her at such a time. Scripture is silent, so we may conclude her to have been now widowed, and soon to be deprived of the Son to whom she has looked with devout adoring trust, Him whom she bore in her arms, and nursed as an infant; to whom she has clung with increasing reverence every day as her tljs CroifiJ of 3es-u S." 03 offspring first and then her God. Only thirty-three years ago she was presenting Him in the Temple. She recollects the prophetic warning of the aged Simeon: "A sword shall pierce through thine own soul;" and now that warning is fulfilled. Perfect then in all else--perfect in life, our dear Lord is perfect in His death. A perfect Son to His blessed and holy Mother. A perfect Friend to His faithful and beloved Saint John. There they stand with straining eyes and bruised souls. Many mothers have stood by a child's death pangs with breaking hearts. Many friends have watched a brother, a saint, a martyr, in his last agonies, but no spectacle of martyrdom, no bed of suffering could have pierced so keen and deep. It is one of the rules of holiness that it makes the soul more sensitive to grief. Mary indeed could not have foreseen the amount of trial that must be her lot when she gave birth to the Man of Sorrows. " But...