Sermons for the Great Days of the Year

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922. Excerpt: ... Palm Sunday's Sacrifice (john Xii: i3) HOW important and beautiful was the thought of the early fathers of the church when they divided the year into religious seasons and when they provided that Christian minds should be turned at Easter time toward the burial and resurrection of Christ! It was a helpful thought, perhaps given of God, which led them to observe the Christmas season, the Easter Sunday, and this Palm Sunday represented by to-day. The Christian world has fallen into mannerisms and ritualistic formalism, so that the too close observance of these days and seasons has created a spirit of neglect and a lack of appreciation of the great truths that underlie them. If we could only strike a middle, safe ground, not the extremes of formalism nor the extremes of neglect, we should probably get the greatest benefit that can be derived from these seasons of the year. Now, we will strive in a measure to reach that point. To-day being Palm Sunday, it is well for us, without formality, to study what the day suggests and to bring back, if we can, some of the simple, plain history with which this day is so intimately connected. We do not understand the divine side of the Messiahship. I know that it has a much higher meaning, that it has a wider application, than our brains have approached. I know that in the atonement by the Son of God, reconciling God to man, and man to God, is a mystery greater than can be explained by any human mind. We do not expect to fathom it. He is only presumptuous who attempts to explain it. No man can so fully understand God. His thoughts are above our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth, and he is only insane, or a very foolish, or a very wicked man, who endeavors to place himself alongside of God and explain all that God...