Addresses by the right reverend Phillips Brooks eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about Addresses by the right reverend Phillips Brooks.

Addresses by the right reverend Phillips Brooks eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about Addresses by the right reverend Phillips Brooks.
ought not to do—­that is the wonder of his revelation; that is what proclaims him to be the Son of God and the Son of man.  Think, as you sit here, of anything that you are doing that is wrong, of any habit of your life, of your self-indulgence, or of that great, pervasive habit of your life which makes you a creature of the present instead of the eternities, a creature of the material earth instead of the glorious skies.  Ask of yourself of any habit that belongs to your own personal life, and bring it face to face with Jesus Christ and see if it is not judged.  A judgment day that is far away, that is off in the dim distance when this world is done—­it shall come, no doubt.  I know none of us can know much with regard to it, except that it is sure.  But the judgment day that is here now is Christ; the judgment day that is right close to your life and rebukes you, if you will let Him rebuke you every time you sin, the judgment day that is here and praises you and bids you be of good courage, when you do a thing that men disown and despise, is Christ.  Therefore it is no figure of speech, it is no mere ecstasy of the imagination of the preacher, when we say that in the midst of these streets of ours, more real than the men that walk in them, more real than the sidewalks that are under our feet, and the buildings that tower over us, there walks an unseen presence.  An unseen presence?  Yes.  Are you and I going to be such creatures of our senses that we shall not believe that there are powers that touch us that we cannot see?  Am I going to be so bound down to these poor fingers and to these poor eyes that I shall know myself in no larger connection with the great, unseen world?  I will not.  No great man, no manly man, has ever allowed such a limitation of himself.  There is the unseen presence in the midst of our life, and he who will feel it may feel it, and that unseen presence speaks to him continually.  It knows every one of us.  It knows the rich man and knows what his wealth has made of him.  It knows whether it has made him selfish.  Shall I say it?  He, the Christ, the present Christ, knows whether the rich man’s riches have made him selfish and base and mean, covetous and poor and little-souled, or whether he has been glad to rise to the greatness of his privilege, and be the very utterance of the beneficence of God upon the earth.  He knows the poor man and his struggles, he knows the poor man and his self-respect.  He speaks to the poor man’s soul, who has been kept poor because he will not enter into the baser methods and motives of our modern life, and is despised, and says to him, “Be of good courage, for I know what you are.”  He speaks to the poor in distress and poverty.  He speaks to the wretched in their disappointment and their pain.  He is their comforter.  He knows every sin.  He knows every sorrow of our life.  He goes, unseen on earth, into the chambers where the dead lie dead, and where the sick lie dying, and He speaks His words of consolation, He opens up
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Addresses by the right reverend Phillips Brooks from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.