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Sermons for the principal festivals and fasts of the church year
Sermons for the principal festivals and fasts of the church year Author:Phillips Brooks Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son."—Gal. iv. 4. No event ever happens in this world of ours... more » until the fullness of its time has come. This belief must go with any true belief in a real governing and guiding God. No wind blows and no child is born, no old man dies and no bush flowers, no avalanche tumbles and no revolution bursts, no error is exploded and no truth discovered, until the fullness of its time has come. If a great crime make the whole world tremble and grow pale with horror, it came because its time was full. If an angelic deed of piety or mercy lights up the world like sunshine, and makes men's hearts sing for triumph and for very joy in being men, it came because its time was full. If we could open the frozen ground to-day and read the history of every buried grain of wheat, of every sluggish root which is hiding in the warm earth with its next year's blossoms folded ip within it; if we could know the whole nature of their latent forces, and see their possibilities entirely, then we should be able to tell of each of those forces when its time would be full, and we could prophesy just when the ground would break, and just how the color in the flower-leaves woulddeepen, and just at what moment the fruit would stand finally and perfectly ripe; and next spring and summer would bear witness to our prophecies and confirm them all. And so if we could open the surface of the world's moral and spiritual life, and read all that is hidden there, and understand the nature of every impulse and the powers to which it will respond, what should we need more ? Should we not see at once the whole moral and spiritual future of the world revealed to us ? We should see just when each force would reach the fullness of it...« less