The Christian Inheritance - Set Forth in Sermons (Paperback)

Let us consider this: "WHICH of the two is the more striking-the thought how far God is away, or the thought how near He is? God's invisibility, or His undeniable and unmistakable presence? His unapproachable hiddenness, or His fatherly Providence and His untiring love? We call only say that under both of these aspects He is worthyof praise, and glorious, and exalted above all for ever and ever. Everyone of His attributes is a great deep; and it is the roar of these mighty abysses, calling to each other and answering to each other in the obscure night of human life, that fills the listening heart with awe, and at last gives the mind to understand how great a universe there is outside of this world and beyond the bounds of time and space. But this much at least is true-that it is this very invisibility, spirituality, hiddenness, and inaccessibility of God that have given occasion to the most astounding triumphf of His power and providence. God cannot, of course, cease to be the Absolute and the Infinite. He cannot cease to dwell in light unapproachable. Man, on his part, cannot, during this period of probation, have any access to God except such as is afforded by inference, by analogy, by effort; we do not yet see Him "as He is," or " face to face." Thus there is a great chasm between the Creator and the faculties of the creature. Yet what has been the history of God's dealings with man except the constant effort on the part of God, Who has created all things, to reach us, to touch us, and to draw us near to Himself 1 It is not merely that He has given to Himself, in this visible universe as seen by the light of man's Godlike reason, a witness and a mighty preacher. What He has done is far beyond this. He has brought into the very frame of nature herself that august and startling element which is called the supernatural. He began-not in the order of time, but in the counsels of His wisdom-by the Incarnation. He" took up" our nature, as the Fathers say, and united it to His own so closely that, without ceasing to be God, He was called, and He really was, and is, .Man. He decreed, next, that He would dwell in every man (unless man rejected Him) by means of gifts and qualities so Divine that when they came into the human soul it could truly be said that He Himself had come. And He so lifted up human destiny that we were to inherit, not any ordinary happiness or union with Him, such as our nature would seem to challenge, but that Vision of Him face to face which no created intelligence could even look upon without being specially strengthened and elevated, and which is the Beatific Vision and Bliss supernatural. It is neither of the Incarnation nor of Life Everlasting that we are now to speak, but of this present life, with its effort and its vicissitude, and of the part which is played therein by the supernatural. For Faith, Hope and Charity are the supernatural element in human life. It should be well understood that the word supernatural is here used in a very adequate, strong, and complete sense. The Supernatural, as understood by those who treat of the dealings of God with man, is that which is above and beyond human nature, or human faculties, if left to themselves. Human nature would not be human nature at all without certain constituents, powers, and endowments. These things human nature has of itself, without any further action on the part of God than is implied in His creation and His general providence. But the being of man, though it cannot demand to be lifted above its sphere, is perfectly capable of opening itself to whatever the beneficence of its heavenly Father may send it. Thus, although it is natural to us to suffer dissolution or temporal death, yet if immortality were conferred upon our bodies, there is nothing to prevent our becoming immortal.