Five Sermons

Five Sermons

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Five Sermons, by H.B. Whipple
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Title: Five Sermons
Author: H.B. Whipple
Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8731] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 5,
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIVE
SERMONS ***

Produced by Jared Fuller

FIVE SERMONS
BY THE RT. REV. H.B. WHIPPLE, D.D., LL.D. BISHOP OF
MINNESOTA
1890
PREFACE
My only excuse for printing these sermons is the request of friends who
could not secure copies of them. They are printed as delivered, and the
repetition of incidents was a part of the historical statement. The Third
and Fifth Sermons were preached without notes and reported by a
stenographer. H.B.W.

CONTENTS
I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL
CONVENTION, OCTOBER 1889 II. SERMON AT THE
FARIBAULT CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL OF THE
INAUGURATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1789-1889 III.
SERMON AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
MISSIONARY COUNCIL IN WASHINGTON, D.C., NOVEMBER
1888 IV. ADDRESS IN LAMBETH CHAPEL, AT THE FIRST
SESSION OF THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE, JULY 3, 1888 V.
SERMON AT THE FOURTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE
BROTHERHOOD OF ST. ANDREW, IN CLEVELAND, OHIO,
SEPT. 29, 1889

I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL
CONVENTION, OCTOBER 2, 1889.
"We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what
work Thou didst their days, in the times of old."--PSALM xliv. I.

Brethren: I shall take it for granted that there is a visible Church; that it
was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and has His promise that the
gates of hell shall never prevail against it. We believe that ours is a pure
branch of the apostolic Church; that it has a threefold ministry; that its
two sacraments--Baptism and the Supper of the Lord--are of perpetual
obligation, and are divine channels of grace; that the faith once
delivered to the saints is contained in the Catholic creeds, and has the
warrant of Holy Scripture which was written by inspiration of God. On
this centennial day I shall speak of the history and mission of this
branch of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It was a singular providence that this continent, laden with the bounty
of God, was unoccupied by civilization for thousands of years. America
was discovered by a devout son of the Latin Church, whose name--
Christopher, Christ-bearer, and Columbus, the dove--ought to have
been the prophecy that he would bear the Gospel to the New World. It
was at a time when Savonarola, with the zeal of a prophet of God and
the eloquence of a Chrysostom, was laboring to awaken the Church to a
new life. No nation ever had a nobler mission than Spain. That mission
was forfeited by unholy greed and untold cruelty. It was lost forever.
Other nations claimed the continent for their own. In the providence of
God; this last of the nations was founded by the English-speaking race.
I reverently believe that it was because they recognize as no other
people the two truths which underlie the possibility of constitutional
government, i.e., the inalienable rights of the individual citizen, and
loyalty to government as a delegated trust from God, who alone has the
right to govern. These lessons are intertwined with two thousand years
of history. They reach back to the days when the savage Briton came in
contact with Roman civilization and Roman law, and have been
deepened by centuries of Christian influences which have changed our
savage fathers into truth-speaking, liberty-loving Christian men.
More marvellous are the providences intertwined with the history of the
Church. It was planted by apostolic men, and numbered heroes like St.
Patrick and St. Alban before the missionary Augustine came to
Canterbury. Through all of its history it has been the Church of the
English-speaking race. The