I hope we are not so deluded as men have been sometimes,
as some men are to-day, that we shall try to separate these two lives
from one another, and one man say, "Everything depends upon my action,
and I care not what I think," or, as men have said, at least, in other
times, "If I think right, it matters not how I act." But the right
thought and the right action make one complete and single man.
Now we have been speaking, upon these Monday noons, with regard to the
freedom of that highest life which is lived under the inspiration of
Jesus Christ and which we call the Christian life. We have claimed that
it is the highest of all lives because it is the freest of all lives,
that it is the freest of all lives because it is the highest, and it
may be that we have thought that it was true with regard to the active
life in which men live, it may be that we have somehow persuaded
ourselves, that it has seemed to us as if there were evidence that a man
who lived his life in the following of Jesus Christ was a free man in
regard to his activity. But now there comes to us the other thought, and
it is impossible for us to meet together as we have met together again
and again here without asking with regard to the other region of man's
life and how it is with man there, for there are a great many people, I
believe, who think that while the Christian faith offers to man a noble
sphere of action and sets free powers that would otherwise remain
unchanged, yet when we come to the region of thought or belief, there it
is inevitable that man should know himself, when he accepts the faith of
Jesus Christ, it is inevitable that there the man should become less
free than it has been thought that he was before the blessed Saviour
was accepted as the Master and the ruler of his life.
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