The Works of Thomas Chalmers, D D Minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow

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Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012 - 176 pages
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1822. Excerpt: ... SERMON XII. THE EMPTINESS OF NATURAL VIRTUE. JOHN v. 24. "But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you." When it is said, in a former verse of the gospel, that Jesus knew what was in man, we feel, that it is a tribute of acknowledgment, rendered to his superior insight, into the secrecies of our constitution. It was not the mere faculty of perceiving what lay before him, that was ascribed to him by the Evangelist. It was the faculty of perceiving what lay disguised under a semblance, that would have imposed on the understanding of other men. It was the faculty of detecting. It was a discerningof the spirit, and that not through the transparency of such unequivocal symptoms, as brought its character clearly home to the view of the observer. But it was a discerning of the spirit, as it lay wrapt in what, to an ordinary spectator, was a thick and impenetrable hiding place. It was a discovery there of the real posture and habitude of the soul. It was a searching of it out, through all the recesses of duplicity, winding and counterwinding in such a way, as to elude altogether the eye of common acquaintanceship. It was the assigning to it of one attribute, at the time when it wore the guise of another attribute, --of utter antipathy to the nature and design of his mission, at the very time that multitudes were drawn around him, by the fame of his miracles, --of utter indifference about God, at the very time that they zealously asserted the sanctity of his sabbaths, and resented as blasphemous, whatever they felt to be an usurpation of the greatness which belonged to him only. It was in the exercise of this faculty, that Jesus came forward with tbe utterance of our text. The Jews, by whom he was surrounded, had charged him with the guilt of profanation, ...

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