"MacDONALD, George - Faith, the Proof of the Unseen" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

The darkness of life's closing time will come round about you, and find you very
doubtful, very sad, looking, looking into the darkness and wondering "Shall I
wake or shall I sleep?" But if you believe that that man died and rose again,
the whole thing is full of the dawn of an eternal morning. Coming up beyond the
hills of this life, and full of such hope as the highest imagination of the poet
has not a glimmer as of yet.
Do you hope for anything, friends? Thank God, that comes from you faith. No man
that has not faith can hope. But do not think the world is going all to the
devil. There is a better and stronger faith coming. It was a great thing that
this foolish, actionless kind of religion should vanish, and that a simple,
obedient, hoping, trusting life should takes its place. The world is not worse
than it was. Many even of those that do not believe in God have faith towards
their neighbour. Even those who do not believe, on the whole are better in this
century than those that did not believe in the last. Only, we are a set of
foolish men and women who simply talk and nothing else--neither believe nor
disbelieve--who have neither the soul nor the heart to be in earnest about
anything. God has a hold upon them too, and He has but to place His hand upon
them to make them feel it.
But, friends, what we have to do is let our light shine. Do you get any light?
Let it shine. I do not mean be an example to other people. You have no business
to set yourselves up for an example; you have to be and to do, and that is
letting the light shine. It ought not to be possible to mistake a Christian for
a man of the world. His very dealings with every man that comes near him have
something to show, something that Christ would have done that a man of the world
would not do. Tell me how you would like Christ to come in upon you at any
moment in the midst of your business talk. Would you be ready to turn to H m and
say, "Master, this is how I am saying the thing to my friend; this is how I see
it in the light of Thy love!"? Would you be ready for that, or do you think that
a great part of your being and your life can be conducted upon other laws than
Christian? If a man does that, he is altogether wrong-- altogether wrong. Christ
is God, the all-in-all, or nothing at all. If we were as the bush--if every
Christian were as the bush that burned with fire--that would be the shining our
light before men. Atheism would soon vanish; unbelief would draw in its horns;
reproved, judged, condemned by the very presence of faith.
I would have you, then, friends, remember that faith is the trying of the thing
that you do not see, and that you cannot be sure about,a thing that you do not
see and which, not seeing, you have doubt about, you can yet try--that is faith;
and if you are honest, that will be a great opportunity and a great help to you;
it will start a fresh faith which you have not thought of before, and give your
life a new start. Faith is intended to put to the test the unseen world of
truth, love, law, hope, redemption. God grant us all faith enough to carry on
from point to point till the faith shall vanish into light, and we have never to
think about faith more, nor to think about Church more, nor the Bible more, nor
prayer more, but our whole being shall be a delighted consciousness of the
presence of God and His Christ.




Originally published in The Christian World Pulpit, London: James Clarke and