The Good News of God | Page 6

die for them; and, what is bitterest of all, to die by their
hands--to receive as their reward for all his goodness to them a
shameful death? If he dare submit to that, then we should call his
greatness of soul perfect. Magnanimity, we should say, could rise no
higher; in that would be the perfection of goodness.
Surely your hearts answer, that this is true. When you hear of a father
sacrificing his own life for his children; when you hear of a soldier
dying for his country; when you hear of a clergyman or a physician
killing himself by his work, while he is labouring to save the souls or
the bodies of his fellow-creatures; then you feel--There is goodness in
its highest shape. To give up our lives for others is one of the most
beautiful, and noble, and glorious things on earth. But to give up our
lives, willingly, joyfully for men who misunderstand us, hate us,
despise us, is, if possible, a more glorious action still, and the very
perfection of perfect virtue. Then, looking at Christ's cross, we see that,
and even more--ay, far more than that. The cross was the perfect token
of the perfect greatness of God, and of the perfect glory of God.
So on the cross, the Father justified himself to man; yea, glorified
himself in the glory of his crucified Son. On the cross God proved
himself to be perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly generous,
perfectly glorious, beyond all that man could ever have dared to

conceive or dream. That God must be good, the wise heathens knew;
but that God was so utterly good that he could stoop to suffer, to die,
for men, and by men--that they never dreamed. That was the mystery of
God's love, which was hid in Christ from the foundation of the world,
and which was revealed at last upon the cross of Calvary by him who
prayed for his murderers--'Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.' That truly blessed sight of a Saviour-God, who did not disdain
to die the meanest and the most fearful of deaths--that, that came home
at once, and has come home ever since, to all hearts which had left in
them any love and respect for goodness, and melted them with the fire
of divine love; as God grant it may melt yours, this day, and henceforth
for ever.
I can say no more, my friends. If this good news does not come home
to your hearts by its own power, it will never be brought home to you
by any words of mine.

SERMON III. THE LIFE OF GOD

1 JOHN i. 2.
For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and
shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was
manifested unto us!
What do we mean, when we speak of the Life everlasting?
Do we mean that men's souls are immortal, and will live for ever after
death, either in happiness or misery?
We must mean more than that. At least we ought to mean more than
that, if we be Christian men. For the Bible tells us, that Christ brought
life and immortality to light. Therefore they must have been in darkness
before Christ's coming; and men did not know as much about life and
immortality before Christ's coming as they know--or ought to
know--now.
But if we need only believe that we shall live for ever after death in
happiness or misery, then Christ has not brought life and immortality to
light. He has thrown no fresh light upon the matter.
And why? For this simple reason, that the old heathen knew as much as
that before Christ came.
The old Greeks and Romans, and Persians, and our own forefathers

before they became Christians, believed that men's souls would live for
ever happy or miserable. The Mussulmans, Mahommedans, Turks as
they are called in the Prayer-book, believe as much as that now. They
believe that men's souls live for ever after death, and go to 'heaven' or
'hell.'
So those words 'everlasting Life' must needs mean something more
than that. What do they mean?
First. What does everlasting mean?
It means exactly the same as eternal. The two words are the same: only
everlasting is English, and eternal Latin. But they have the same sense.
Now everlasting and eternal mean something which has neither
beginning nor end. That is certain. The wisest of the heathen knew that:
but we are apt to forget it. We are apt to think a thing may be
everlasting, because it has no end, though it has a beginning. We are
careless thinkers, if we fancy that. God is eternal because he has neither
beginning