Let us know ourselves children of God,
and claim the liberty which God has given to every one of his children
who will take it. God bless you and give some of you, help some of us,
to claim, as we have never claimed before, that freedom with which the
Son makes free!
V. THE CHRIST IN WHOM CHRISTIANS BELIEVE.
I want to read to you again the words of Jesus in the eighth chapter of
the Gospel of St. John: "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on
Him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered
him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how
sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the
servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If
the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." The
service of God is not self-restraint, but self-indulgence. That is the
first truth of all religion. That is the truth which we found uttered in
those words of Jesus when we were thinking of them the other day. That
is the truth to which we return as we come back again to think of those
words and all that they mean and all that the speaker of them means to
us and to our lives. When we remember that truth, when we recognize that
no man is ever to be saved except by the fulfilment of his own nature,
and not by the restraint of his nature, when we recognize that no man,
no personal, individual man, is ever to be ransomed from his sins except
by having opened to him a larger and fuller life into which he has
entered, we seem to have displayed to us a large region, into which we
are tempted to enter, and which is so rich and inviting to us that we
immediately begin to ask ourselves if it is possible that there should
be such a region.
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