Phillips Brooks
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 92
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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. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...the world took Him, as it has taken so many of His choicest treasures, through suffering and death into her life. And then having come to her and fastened His love upon her, He went away from her. He set up impracticable standards. He lived an apparently impossible life. The world was full of war, and He preached peace. The world was full of pride, and He was humble. The world was false, and He by every word and action said, "Be true." The world, looking at Christ, said, "We never can be that;" but more and more the world has become that; Christ first touching it by His love has little by little drawn it on into His character; and peace, humility, and truth are no longer vague dreams, but recognized ambitions, earnest hopes, here and there real attainments, among men. And so I ask an earnest Christian how he began to pray, when it first came to seem possible to him that he should forgive his enemy or live in the realized companionship of God? And his answer must be, "Christ, my Lord, having bound my life to His life, went there first and then drew my life after His. I saw Him pray. I heard Him speak forgiveness from the cross. I watched His feet treading close to God, and because I must be where He was, I left the old life and went with Him into the new. My love to Him was first the revealer of the higher possibility, and then the power of entrance into it. This is what I really understand by being saved by Christ's love. This is what it means, dear friend, when always you are urged to love Christ so that you may be saved. It is not that Christ stands jealously and arbitrarily and will not admit you to His privileges until you have certain feelings about Him. It is that only by loving Him can your life be so bound...