The Good News of God

The Good News of God

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Title: The Good News of God
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7051] [This file was first
posted on March 2, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE GOOD
NEWS OF GOD ***

Transcribed from the 1887 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD

SERMON I. THE BEATIFIC VISION

MATTHEW xxii. 27.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind.
These words often puzzle and pain really good people, because they
seem to put the hardest duty first. It seems, at times, so much more easy
to love one's neighbour than to love God. And strange as it may seem,
that is partly true. St. John tells us so--'He that loves not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?'
Therefore many good people, who really do love God, are unhappy at
times because they feel that they do not love him enough. They say in
their hearts--'I wish to do right, and I try to do it: but I am afraid I do
not do it from love to God.'
I think that they are often too hard upon themselves. I believe that they
are very often loving God with their whole hearts, when they think that
they are not doing so. But still, it is well to be afraid of oneself, and
dissatisfied with oneself.
I think, too--nay, I am certain--that many good people do not love God
as they ought, and as they would wish to do, because they have not
been rightly taught who God is, and what He is like. They have not
been taught that God is loveable; they have been taught that God feels
feelings, and does deeds, which if a man felt, or did, we should call him
arbitrary, proud, revengeful, cruel: and yet they are told to love him;
and they do not know how to love such a being as that. Nor do I either,
my friends.

Let us therefore think over to-day for ourselves why we ought to love
God; and why both Bible and Catechism bid child as well as man to
love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, before they
bid us love our neighbours. And keep this in mind all through, that the
reason why we are to love God must depend upon what God's character
is. For you cannot love any one because you are told to love them. You
can only love them because they are loveable and worthy of your love.
And that they will not be, unless they are loving themselves; as it is
written, we love God because he first loved us.
Now, friends, look at this one thing first. When we see any man do a
just action, or a kind action, do we not like to see it? Do we not like the
man the better for doing it? A man must be sunk very low in stupidity
and ill-feeling--dead in tresspasses and sins, as the Bible calls it--if he
does not. Indeed, I never saw the man yet, however bad he was himself,
who did not, in his better moments, admire what was right and good;
and say, 'Bad as I may be, that man is a good man, and I wish I could
do as he does.'
One sees the same, but far more strongly, in little children. From their
earliest years, as far as I have ever seen, children like and admire what
is good, even though they be naughty themselves; and if you tell them
of any very loving, generous, or brave action, their hearts leap