Charles Thomas

Excerpt from Christ's Tenderness Towards the Fallen: A Sermon Preached in S. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, for the Church Penitentiary Association, on Tuesday, May 30, 1865 Holy scripture is a record, from its beginning to its end, of the goodness of God on the one hand, and of His severity on the other. Fruitless attempts have been made, in different ages of the Church, to dissociate those two essential charac teristics of the Godhead, and to represent the view of that severity exhibited to us in the Bible as incompatible with His attribute of mercy; to deduce from His paternal ten derness and affection the conclusion that the vehement de nunciations of wrath therein recorded, and the actual inﬂiction of desolating judgments, are but the outbreaks of human passion, and not the expression of the deliberate will and counsel of the Almighty. This style of criticism has hitherto been confined principally to the manifestation of the Divine attributes as exhibited in the Old Testament history. But if there be any just foundation for such strictures, they will be equally applicable to much of the language familiar to us under that covenant which may be most justly styled the Co venant of Mercy and of Love. How stern and unrelenting would seem to be the threatening anticipations of future woe and destruction to the doomed inhabitants of the Land of Promise from the lips of the meek and merciful Saviour! Famine, pestilence, earthquake, are but the beginning of their sorrows; for upon these scourges was to follow such great tribulation as was not since the beginning of the worldto that time, no, nor ever shall be - such carnage that, except those days were shortened, no ﬂesh could be saved. It is the loving Saviour - it is the merciful High Priest who fore warns those that will not part with their cherished sin, that in another world their worm will never die - their fire never be quenched; that their whole body shall be cast into hell, with its everlasting ﬂames. He it was who, though full of compassion for man's infirmity, could, nevertheless, address to the hypo critical Pharisees the withering question, 'ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' Such is the tone in which He who was meek and lowly of heart could threaten the impenitent sinner; such are the terrors with which He would alarm all who harden themselves against His word, and resist the movements of His Holy Spirit. And yet, from those same lips could proceed assurances of the most tender compassion, promises of comfort and support - the offspring of a loving heart - ever ready to welcome the first tokens of contrition and self - abasement, and to pour the balm of consolation on the wounded spirit. Such, then, is the God, and such the Saviour, whom the Word of' Inspiration has revealed to us l - that God, unknown to the most civilised nations of the old world, who were ever seeking if haply they might find Him, but never could find, by the aid of their unenlightened conscience - that God whom mo dern enlightenment would invite us to picture to ourselves, from our own conscience, no matter what the portrait may be which the Holy Scripture presents to us of Him, thus throwing us back upon natural religion, and bidding us refuse all such illustrations of His own character as Jehovah Himself has given us in His heaven-sent mission to man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

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