WHERE DO WE FIND THE ANSWERS TO THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF LIFE?

H.P. Liddon (1829-1890)

Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)

“My words shall not pass away.” There are loud voices and accomplished writers who say that they shall; that it is only a questions of time, and that the words of Christ are destined to meet the fate of all merely human words: – to contribute an element of whatever value to the sum-total of human thought and to die away and be forgotten. But these speakers and writers do not answer an important and inevitable inquiry, viz., What is to take their place? For, human nature being what it is, Christ’s words answer to demands, they fill a void which most assuredly cannot be neglected or ignored. Whence come we? What are we? What are our relations to the Unseen and Eternal? What is the true rule of our lives here? Whither are we going? What is to follow the last earthly scene of Death?

Jesus our Lord has answered all these questions, and they are the most interesting questions – incomparably the most interesting – that can engage the attention of a thoughtful man. He tells us that we come from God; that we are immortal souls; that through Himself we may have ready access to the Eternal Father; that His precepts are the one and perfect rule by which we ought to live; that after death comes the resurrection and the judgment, and hell and heaven.

But we turn to the masters of the new materialism, and ask them how they answer the great questions which surround us, and to each and all they have but one answer: We cannot tell. Whence we come, why we are here, whither we are tending, how we ought to live, whether there is any Unseen Being with Whom we can have relations, and what relations are possible – of each and all they are professedly ignorant; nay they would fain persuade us, if they could, that these questions, our interest in which is the very certificate of our possessing a higher than a merely animal existence, should never be asked. Is it possible that such systems should take the place of the words of Christ in the hearts and minds of men? No, it is impossible. For a moment their exponents may dazzle a generation – or some part of it – by the brilliance and audacity of their speculations; but in the long run the higher claims of the human soul will make themselves heard above the din and clatter of a thousand laboratories, and the words which have thrilled a willing Christendom with awe and love for two thousand years will assert their empire.

“My words shall not pass away.” Write down these words dear brothers and sisters, on the title-page of your New Testaments, that when you open that blessed book they may remind you of what you are doing; you are approaching the One Teacher Whose authority is not impaired by time….Write them down, I pray you, in your books and in your hearts, gentle and simple, lettered and unlearned, old and young, that they may help you, while the day of trial lasts, to set your feet upon the Rock, and order your goings.

Never in the morning leave your room without asking, What do these blessed words, what does some one of them, say to me for guidance, or support, or instruction, or warning in the work of the day? Never lie down at night without bringing what has been thought and said and done to be judged by the words of the Divine Teacher, that you may ask His pardon where you have gone astray, or thank Him for His grace when you have been enabled to conquer. To make those words the rule of life and thought must needs be the effort of a true Christian. God grant that we may make it while we yet can, and may find at our last hour, from a personal experience, that the words which do not pass away are also the words of Eternal Life.

(Liddon’s Sermons on Some Words of Christ, 15-18)