Christina Georgina Rossetti
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 62
Get eBook
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ...to Redemption is to penetrate as it were out of the Holy Place into the Holy of Holies. Contemplation takes precedence of discussion, thanksgiving of enquiry: many things continue to be expedient, but the one thing needful is to love (see St. Luke x. 41, 42). First and last all has depended and will ever depend upon Christ " the First, and with the last" (Is. xli. 4). "All things were made by Him.... The world was made by Him" (St. John i. 3, 10). "All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord," sings David (Ps. cxlv. 10); but this prophecy, still indeed unaccomplished, did least of all come to pass in the mortal day of Jesus Christ: "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" (St. John i. 11). As we now for the second time follow the series of inorganic creation or of irrational creatures enumerated in the Benedicite we shall indeed discern our Lord's absolute mastery over them; but we shall sometimes observe that the parable whereby they teach is one of warning rather than of example; their subjection appearing to be of constraint and not willing. Not merely all the inhabitants thereof, but the earth itself is dissolved; and Christ alone bears up the pillars of it (Ps. Ixxv. 3). In judgment upon man, or in sympathy with him, all is disjointed, unstrung, enfeebled; all faints, fails, groans, travails in pain together (Rom. viii. 22): "Cursed is the ground for thy sake" (Gen. iii. 17), gives us the key to much of that mystery of misery which environs us on our right hand and on our left. And Christ, on Whose sinless head our sins were made to converge, willed also that on Himself should centre the shortcoming, failure, disappointment, which balk us at every turn. He Who in life chose to...