The Lamp of Sacrifice; Sermons Preached on Special Occasions (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: NOT AFRAID OF SACKCLOTH1 None might enter into the king's gate clothed with sackcloth.?Esther iv. 2. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech.?II Cor. iii. 12. In the Book of Esther iv. 2, we read, " None might enter into the king's gate clothed with sackcloth." St. Paul in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians iii. 12 says, " Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech." In the first text we read of a refusal to face the facts of life, the hard and painful facts?" None might enter into the king's gate clothed in sackcloth." In the second we read of an unflinching sincerity of vision, and of a sincerity which does not flinchbecause it is armed by a great hope?" Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech." 1 Sermon preached before the Methodist New Connexion Conference in Salem Chapel, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Tuesday, June 12, 1900. There are three ways in which we may deal with the harder things of life. First of all, we may take the way of the Eastern king and resolve not to see them, to bar the door against them, to act as if they did not exist. There is a second way. We may face them without the Christian hope. There is a third way. We may face them with the Christian hope, and that is the true and only wisdom. Let us dwell for a moment on those three ways or methods. We may close the eyes and the ears, and say that we will not look upon the things that affright and affront us. " None might enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth." We know what that leads to, that life lived in an unreal world, in a world of imagination. We know what it has done in history through all the ages. Our fathers looked upon the French Revolution as a mere outbreak of the spirits of hell. Considering the ...