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Updated: May 7, 2025
God does not slam the door of heaven in anybody's face; it stands wide open. But there is a mystic barrier, unseen, but most real, more repellent than cherub and flaming sword, which makes it impossible for any foot to cross that threshold except the foot of the man whose heart and nature have been made Christlike, and fitted for heaven by simple faith in Him.
Too often at present the rural parish is regarded either as a convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, or as an asylum for the decrepit or inefficient. The country parish must be a parish for our ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most Christlike must be to the hill-towns of Galilee as well as to Jerusalem. There is still another truth that the country church cannot afford to ignore.
When I see this Christlike soul standing so patiently bleeding, yet forgiving, I feel a sacred call to be the helper of the helpless, and it is better that my own family do without me for a while longer than that this mother lose all. I must redeem her. "New Haven, June 2. My old woman's case progresses gloriously. I am to see the ladies of this place tomorrow.
'Slimed with hypocrisy? Yes, good friends, 'slimed with hypocrisy. Have you not known men and women, legions of them, who shouted their fire-proof Belief, Belief, Belief, their fire-insurance Belief that was to roof them from rain of fire and act as an umbrella against the results of their own misdeeds; who underscored their Bibles, and prayed long and loud, and proclaimed themselves right, when every day, every act of every day, every leastermost act of very hour, shouted blasphemous denial of what so ever is lovely and pure and unselfish and Christlike; whose influence damned and injured and blighted every life it touched?
It would seem, then, that not the wrath of God, but his love, is most effective in separating men from the evil which would otherwise destroy them. God could best manifest this love by becoming a man "made like unto his brethren"; for the love of God is ever best taught and best understood, not as a doctrine, but when embodied in some large-hearted and Christlike person.
In Rom. viii. 9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ in this passage does not mean a Christlike spirit.
With infinite patience, much tact and burning eloquence he had pleaded for the Christlike virtue of forgiveness. He listened to their harangues, settled disputes and appealed to their higher nature. He sketched their mode of living ten years before, and emphasized the changes which had taken place upon the arrival of the missionary.
II. The question has been answered, and our Lord passes to other thoughts rising out of His answer. Verses 5 and 6 set forth antithetically our duties to His little ones. The subject, then, of these verses is the blessedness of recognising and welcoming Christlike lowly believers, and the fatal effect of the opposite conduct.
So I venture, in closing, just to throw my remarks into three simple exhortations. Be in earnest in cultivating a Christlike character. Half-and-half Christians, like a great many of us, are of no use either to God or to men or to themselves.
From all these there follows the same general thought that Christian men, not so much by specific effort, nor by words, nor by definite proclamation, as by the raying out from them in life and conduct of a Christlike spirit, are set for the illumination of the world.
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