Westminster Sermons Author:Charles Kingsley 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: SERMON II. THE PERFECT LOVE. i John iv. 10. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our... more » sins. This is Passion-week ; the week in which, according to ancient and most wholesome rule, we are bidden to think of the Passion of Jesus Christ our Lord. To think of that, however happy and comfortable, however busy and eager, however covetous and ambitious, however giddy and frivolous, however free, or at least desirous to be free, from suffering of any kind, we are ourselves. To think of the sufferings of Christ, and learn how grand it is to suffer for the Right. And why? Passion-week gives but one answer: but that answer is the one best worth listening to. It is grand and good to suffer for the Right, because God, in Christ, has suffered for the Right. Let us consider this awhile. It is a first axiom in sound theology, that there is nothing good in man, which was not first in God. Now we all, I trust, hold God to be supremely good. We ascribe to Him, in perfection, every kind of goodness of which we can conceive in man. We say God is just; God is truthful; God is pure; God is bountiful; God is merciful; and, in one word, God is Love. God is Love. But if we say that, do we not say that God is good with a fresh form of goodness, which is not justice, nor truthfulness, nor purity, bounty, nor mercy, though without them—never forget that—it cannot exist? And is not that fresh goodness, which we have not defined-yet, the very kind of goodness which we prize most in human beings? The very kind of goodness which makes us prize and admire love, because without it there is no true love, no love worth calling by that sacred and heavenly name ? And what is that ? What—save self-sacrifice? For what i...« less