But some may say, 'Why tell us that? Of course we believe it. We
should not be Christians if we did not.'
Be it so. I hope it is so. But I think that it is not so easy to
believe it as we fancy.
We believe it, I think, more firmly than our forefathers did five
hundred years ago, on some points; and therefore we have got rid of
many dark and blasphemous superstitions about witches and devils,
about the evil of the earth and of our own bodies, of marriage, and
of the common duties and bonds of humanity, which tormented them,
because they could not believe fully that Jesus Christ had created,
and still ruled the world and all therein.
But we are all too apt still to think of Jesus Christ merely as some
one who can save our souls when we die, and to forget that he is the
Lord, who is and has been always ruling the world and all mankind.
And from this come two bad consequences. People are apt to speak of
the Lord Jesus--or at least to admire preachers who speak of him--as
if he belonged to them, and not they to him; and, therefore, to
speak of him with an irreverence and a familiarity which they dared
not use, if they really believed that this same Jesus, whose name
they take in vain, is none other than the Living God himself, their
Creator, by whom every blade of grass grows beneath their feet,
every planet and star rolls above their heads.
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