J. B. Lightfoot

“ But traced back to its origin, the miser's love of money is a love of power.
Ambition, emulation, rivalry plays a highly important part in the education of the world. We cannot shut our eyes to its splendid achievements. In politics, in social life, in mechanical inventions, in literature and art, its stimulus has produced invaluable results. If ambition has been the last infirmity, it has also been the initial inspiration of many a noble mind. If by ambition angels fell, by ambition men have risen. It has heightened their ideal and drawn them upwards from lower to higher. ”

“ We have beheld the heinousness of our sin in the mirror of His holiness; we must now behold the grace of our forgiveness in the light of His love, His fatherly love. And have we not full and perfect assurance that His love will never fail us? What else is the meaning of His great, His inestimable gift to man of His only-begotten Son, to take His flesh upon Him and to die for us? By the infinity of His gift He would show us that His love is infinite also—nothing less; and we do Him a wrong, a cruel wrong, if we approach Him as a taskmaster, as a tyrant, as "a hard and austere man;" ”

“ To face untold hardships and possible death in such a cause is a worthy and noble aim, for these are realities. But obviously there are truths of far higher moment to the temporal and eternal well-being of man than the laws of electricity, or the causes of the Aurora, or the fauna of the Polar seas. Whence came I? Whither go I? What is sin? What is conscience? Is there a God in heaven? Is there a providence, a moral government, a judgment? Is there a redemption, a sanctification, a life eternal? These are the momentous, the pressing questions which a man can only shelve at his peril. ”

“ You have felt that there was within you a latent power, a heaven-born capacity, which ought to work miracles, if it were not clogged by self-indulgence, or cowed by timidity, or choked by sloth and indulgence.
Are not you the men? As I have said to such audiences before, so I say to you now. You do not know, you cannot know, with what reverence—a reverence approaching to awe—older men regard the glorious potentiality of youth, in all the freshness of its vigorous life, with all the promise of the coming years. Our habits are formed; our career is defined ”

“ It is here, then, that I bid you seek and find the true aim of your ambition—in realising, appropriating, absorbing into yourselves, identifying yourselves with this power of God. It alone is inexhaustible in its resources and infinite in its potency. There is no fear here lest the conqueror of a world should sigh and fret because nothing remains beyond to conquer. If the craving is infinite, the satisfaction is infinite also. Star beyond star, world beyond world, will start out into view as your vision grows clearer, spangling the moral heavens with their glows. ”

“ But then no veil of the flesh shall dim the vision; no imperfection of the mirror shall blur the image; for we shall see Him face to face—shall see Him as He is—the perfect truth, the perfect righteousness, the perfect purity, the perfect love, the perfect light. And we shall gaze with unblenching eye, and our visage shall be changed. Not now with transient gleams of radiance, as on the lawgiver of old, shall the light be reflected from us; but resting upon us with its own ineffable glory, the awful effluence—
"Shall flood our being round, and take our lives Into itself." ”

“ Do we not rightly claim the Jews as the principal witnesses to Christianity, or shall we set all this down as mere accident, a freak of fortune, a superficial correspondence without any essential connection? Shall it be regarded as mere accident that, within a few years after the appearing of this King who has thus gathered the Gentiles to His standard, Jerusalem is destroyed, and the nation scattered to the four winds of the earth—that the polity of Israel for ever ceased, that the Temple shook, and that revival was rendered thenceforward impossible? ”

“ He projected his own motives into his estimate of mankind at large. He read the characters of others in the distorted mirror of his own consciousness. Human life, as he viewed it, was false from beginning to end. It was, after all, the reflection of his own falsehood which he saw. He was ever looking out for the unrealities of existence. He had no eye for its realities. Men's convictions were their foibles: men's beliefs were his playthings. Untruthfulness, cynicism, distrust, scorn, had withered his soul. They only will find the truth who believe that the truth may be found. ”

“ The Lord appears suddenly in His temple—in the shrine of the human heart and conscience; suddenly—at a time and in a form which we least expect. The truth visits us very frequently under the disguise of some common event, or some insignificant person. It surprises us, perhaps, in the accidental saying of some little child, or in the insidiousness of some mean temptation, or in the emergency of some trivial choice. It stands before us at once as our suppliant and our king. We fail to see its majesty veiled in its humble garb. ”

“ On this festival of All Saints, before all other days in the year, we are invited to enter into the Holy City, to dwell on the glories of the unseen world, to commune with the beatified servants of God of all ages and all countries, and to gather inspiration and truth and refreshment for our daily tasks in life; to pierce through the veil, the dark impenetrable mist which shrouds the unseen world. ”

“ The marvellous bounty of God's grace dazzles and astounds our vision, and, in our perplexity of heart, the despairing, craving, forbidding, yearning cry is wrung from our lips, "Depart from me! Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!"
"Depart from me, O Lord." I know it all now. I see my sin, because I see Thy goodness. Yes, I have beheld Thy holiness, Thy purity, Thy truth, Thy grace, Thy love, and I have been stunned with the contrast to self. The brightness of the light has intensified the blackness of the shade. ”

“ Are there not others even more needy than they of this beneficent movement? Are we not taught on the highest authority that it is more blessed to give than to receive? But, if so, have we not a truer antitype of this damsel whom Christ raised in these befriended girls? Yes, Christ has taken them by the hand, and has revived them, has awakened them from the heavy, death-like slumber of a selfish, self-contained being. Christ has shown them the beauty and the power of sympathy, and it has been to them the throbbing of a new life. ”

“ Yet ever and again this veil is lifted for a moment, ever and again we are made to feel, by some startling occurrence, how narrow is the screen which separates the seen from the unseen, the material from the spiritual, the world of time from the world of eternity. Ever and again the stern monitor death rises up an unbidden guest, an unwelcome spectre in the midst of our worldliness and self-complacency, scaring us with the suddenness of the apparition. Mystery of mysteries, when valuable lives are suddenly cleft asunder, while so much that is worthless, and worse, is spared. ”

“ The wide sweep of moral victory, still open to you, is closed to us for ever. But what triumphs may you not achieve, if you are true to yourselves? What instruments may you not be in God's hands, if only you will yield yourselves to Him—not with a timid, passive, half-hearted acquiescence, but with the active concentration of all your powers of body and soul and spirit?
And again I ask, is not this the time? The first volume of your life's history is closed. A clean page lies open, and with what writing shall it be filled? This is the great crisis of your life. ”

“ If it be true of your body that it is fearfully and wonderfully made, is it not far more true of your soul? Henceforward you will regard yourself with awe and reverence, as a sanctuary of the eternal goodness. You will not, you dare not, profane this sanctuary. Here is the true self-respect—nay, not self-respect, for self is abased, self is overawed, self veils the face and falls prostrate in the presence of Infinite Wisdom, and Purity, and Love thus revealed. ”

“ And others, too, there are whose memories shall perish not, though they have left no name in history, but whose brows, nevertheless, God Himself will crown with a halo of everlasting glory. Poor, despised, unknown artisans and peasants, weak women and feeble children, martyrs in the martyrdom of daily life, saints in the saintliness of homely duty, throngs innumerable of every nation and kindred and people and tongue, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, standing before the Throne of God, and serving Him day and night in His temple. ”

“ We treat it as our prisoner when, in fact, it is our judge, and may become our gaoler. We flatter ourselves that we have power to condemn or to release it. We have no fault to find with it, but still we reject it; we crucify it; and before three days are gone it rises from its grave to bear eternal testimony against us. We could not see the truth, because we ourselves were not of the truth. ”

“ She is now furnished with all the appliances of political and social prestige; yet these, however imposing, and to some extent serviceable, are not her really effective arms. She can afford to be deprived of them for a time, and her career of victory is unchecked. Her substantial triumphs must still be won by the old weapons. The source of her superiority over Paganism is still the same as before—a more enlightened faith in the will of the unseen, a heartier devotion to the cause of humanity, a more reverential awe for the majesty of purity, a greater readiness to do and to suffer. ”

“ And others, true saints of God, though they appear not in the calendar of any Church; men and women from the rigour of whose lives succeeding generations have their inspiration and strength; all whose holiness and purity, whose courage and self-sacrifice, whose gentleness and meekness, whose loving charity have been a never-failing fountain of refreshment to the weary pilgrim in the thirsty wilderness of the world. ”

“ Art and culture are God's own gifts, legitimate embellishments of life, even of worship, which is the highest form of life. But if culture aims at displacing religion, if art seeks to dethrone God,—why, then, in the highest interests of humanity, be it our prayer that the sword of the barbarian and the axe of the iconoclast may descend once more, and sweep them ruthlessly away. There was, at least, this redeeming feature in ancient art, that it gave expression to whatsoever sense of the Divine lay buried in the heathen mind. ”

“ Does the memory of some ugly school-boy sin dog your path, haunting and paralysing you with its importunity? You feel sometimes as if your whole life were poisoned by that one cruel retrospect. Brother, be bold, and dare to look up. I would not have you think your sins one whit less heinous. But if God's righteousness is infinite, so also is His mercy. The Cross is reared before your eyes in this moral wilderness, where you are dying, where all are dying around you. ”

“ And not for the preacher only, but for the hearers also, let the same prayer ascend to the throne of heaven. In all the manifold trials and all the mean vexations of life, this presence will be your strength and your stay. Whatsoever is truthful, whatsoever is real, whatsoever is abiding in your lives, if there be any antidote to sin, and if there be any anodyne for grief, if there be any consolation, and if there be any grace, you will find it here, and here alone—in the ever-present consciousness that you are living face to face with the Eternal God. ”

“ He had witnessed, certainly not without contempt, and yet not altogether without dismay, the rising flood of foreign superstition—Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, Chaldean—which threatened to deluge the city and empire, and destroy all the ancient landmarks. Could he believe all or any of these? In this never-ending conflict of philosophical dogmas and religious creeds, what could he do but resign himself to scepticism, to indifference, to a cold and cynical scorn of all enthusiastic convictions and all definite beliefs? "What is truth?" ”

“ From far and near, the cultivated Greek, the proud Roman, Assyrian and Egyptian, master and slave, are flocking around that standard. From east to west, from the ancient civilisation of India to the barbarous islands of the Pacific, Israel has dictated its sentiments, its belief, its morals, its laws and institutions to the nations. An influence far deeper, far wider, far more tenacious has appeared from that despised, insulted, down-trodden people than was ever achieved by the splendid literature of Greece or the historic empire of Rome. ”

“ It is the recorded saying of a famous Jewish doctor that the words of the law were better burned than committed to woman. It is an opinion ascribed to the most famous Athenian statesman, that woman had then achieved her highest glory when her name was heard amongst men least, either for virtue or for reproach. A moral resurrection was needed for womanhood. It might seem to the looker-on like a social death, from which there was no awakening, but it was only the suspension of her proper faculties and opportunities, a long sleep from which a revival must come sooner or later. ”

“ A genuine child of truth is very much more than a speaker of the truth. He is a doer of the truth, and a thinker of the truth, and a liver of the truth. He is frank, open, and real in all things. Reality is the very soul of his being. He cares for nothing which is hollow, shadowy, superficial. Popularity, wealth, success, worldly ambition, and display are essentially unreal, because they are external, because they are transient. Therefore, he estimates them at their true value. The devotion of scientific men in pursuit of scientific truth wins our highest admiration. ”

“ It was apprehension, it was dread—nothing else; no affectionate yearning, no childlike outpouring of the heart, no seeking after the Father's embrace. "Thou art an austere man"—a hard man; yes, a taskmaster, and a rigorous taskmaster, too. "Lo, there thou hast that is thine"—not a little more, nor a little less—"thou hast that is thine." "Nay, everything is Mine. Heaven and earth are Mine; infinite righteousness and infinite truth, and infinite purity and infinite love, are Mine. ”

“ Young men, the problem of social purity is thrown down for your generation to solve. Will you accept this challenge? The conscience of England is awakening to the terrible curse. To redress the crying social wrong, to raise womanhood from degradation and shame, to hold up to reverence the idea of a pure, chivalrous, manly manhood,—this is the crusade in which you are invited to enlist. Will you, as consecrated soldiers of the Cross, claim your part in the glory of this campaign? ”