The Good News of God | Page 4

and teach, and wear himself out
in daily drudgery for that God whom he learnt to serve, even when he
could not adore Him in the press of business, and the bustle of a rotten
and dying world.
But see, my dear friends, and consider it well--Before a man can come
to that state of mind, or anything like it, he must have begun by loving
goodness wherever he saw it; and have settled in his heart that to be
good, and therefore to do good, is the most beautiful thing in the world.
So he will begin by loving his brother whom he has seen, and by taking
delight in good people, and in all honest, true, loving, merciful,
generous words and actions, and in those who say and do them. And so
he will be fit to love God, whom he has not seen, when he finds out (as
God grant that you may all find out) that all goodness of which we can
conceive, and far, far more, is gathered together in God, and flows out
from him eternally over his whole creation, by that Holy Spirit who
proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is the Lord and Giver of life,
and therefore of goodness. For goodness is nothing else, if you will
receive it, but the eternal life of God, which he has lived, and lives now,
and will live for evermore, God blessed for ever. Amen.
So, my dear friends, it will not be so difficult for you to love God, if
you will only begin by loving goodness, which is God's likeness, and
the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit. For you will be like a man who has
long admired a beautiful picture of some one whom he does not know,
and at last meets the person for whom the picture was meant-- and
behold the living face is a thousand times more fair and noble than the
painted one. You will be like a child which has been brought up from
its birth in a room into which the sun never shone; and then goes out
for the first time, and sees the sun in all his splendour bathing the earth
with glory. If that child had loved to watch the dim narrow rays of light
which shone into his dark room, what will he not feel at the sight of
that sun from which all those rays had come Just so will they feel who,
having loved goodness for its own sake, and loved their neighbours for
the sake of what little goodness is in them, have their eyes opened at
last to see all goodness, without flaw or failing, bound or end, in the
character of God, which he has shown forth in Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is the likeness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his
person; to whom be glory and honour for ever. Amen.

SERMON II. THE GLORY OF THE CROSS

JOHN xvii. 1.
Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify
thee. I spoke to you lately of the beatific vision of God. I will speak of
it again to-day; and say this.
If any man wishes to see God, truly and fully, with the eyes of his soul:
if any man wishes for that beatific vision of God; that perfect sight of
God's perfect goodness; then must that man go, and sit down at the foot
of Christ's cross, and look steadfastly upon him who hangs thereon.
And there he will see, what the wisest and best among the heathen,
among the Mussulmans, among all who are not Christian men, never
have seen, and cannot see unto this day, however much they may feel
(and some of them, thank God, do feel) that God is the Eternal
Goodness, and must be loved accordingly.
And what shall we see upon the cross?
Many things, friends, and more than I, or all the preachers in the world,
will be able to explain to you, though we preached till the end of the
world. But one thing we shall see, if we will, which we have forgotten
sadly, Christians though we be, in these very days; forgotten it, most of
us, so utterly, that in order to bring you back to it, I must take a
seemingly roundabout road.
Does it seem, or does it not seem, to you, that the finest thing in a man
is magnanimity--what we call in plain English, greatness of soul? And
if it does seem to you to be so, what do you mean by greatness of soul?
When you speak of a great soul, and of a great man, what manner of
man do you mean?
Do you mean a