The Incarnation as a Motive Power; Sermons (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. THE NATURE OF FAITH. "We walk by faith, not by sight."?2 Cor. v. 7. St. Paul, in this comprehensive saying, is illustrating the relation which Christians, during this earthly life, sustain towards their unseen Lord. He has been emphasising the contrast between things temporal, which are seen, and things eternal, which are unseen, and the obligation which lies upon us to recognise practically the superior importance of what is unseen, although, as he well knows, it will cost a continuous effort. If the outward man decays, the real life of the soul is not compromised, but enhanced; and when the supreme change itself arrives, and the earthly lodging of the spirit is broken up, the spirit passes to a better home, which is, in the fullest sense, a building of God. Nay, even before that event there must be felt a craving for the habitation that is from heaven; not for death initself, but for the putting-on of immortality, when mortality shall be swallowed up of life. This consciousness of a glorious future is infused into the soul by God Himself, in that He made us capable of " enjoying Him for ever;" and it may serve as a counteracting force against the influence exerted by the visible world, which virtually seems to assert that it is the only world. The Christian knows that it is not; and one thing which, beyond most others, fortifies him against "secularist" assertions is, that while he is in the body he is, in one sense, absent from the Lord. He is quite sure that Jesus Christ, His Person, His works, His love, His holiness, His discriminating interest in the welfare of every one of His servants,1 are realities of the highest type, if anything whatever can be called real. And yet he cannot, at present, see his Saviour; and he will not be able to see Him while he is...