Men who reject Christianity often do not know what the case for it really is. They have been familiar with Christian language – with the language of the Bible – it may be, for years, and they mistake this familiarity for real knowledge. They do not reflect upon it so as to see its harmonies, its ample moral justification, its depths beyond depths of interconnected truth. Living, as they do, upon the surface, they are impressed by apparent difficulties about it. They ask to put their hands into the print of the nails if they are to receive it. He who stood before Thomas waits to appear, by His grace, in the center of their souls. But whether they will adore Him, if He does, is an anxious question. – H. P. Liddon (1829-1890)
Category Archives: H. P. Liddon
Faith is Always Necessary
God has made the evidence for Christianity less than mathematical because He desires to make faith a test, not only of the soundness of our understandings, but – also and especially – of the condition of our hearts and wills. – H. P. Liddon (1829-1890), Anglican pastor, New Testament scholar, and author
On the Last Judgment
He will teach us all to know ourselves as we have never known ourselves before. In His awful light, we shall see light (Psalm 36.9). We shall see ourselves. All of us – we shall see ourselves, not as we appear to others, not as we appear each to himself, in our self-indulgent thoughts, but as we are. The day for disguises, for false impressions, for half-truths which dare not be more, will have passed – passed beyond recall, passed forever.
Those who have really loved and served Jesus Christ amid misunderstanding and coldness, but with an inward sense of His loving presence which has made them indifferent to outward things, will, then, be seen as they are – saved amid imperfections, saved because robed in a righteousness which is not their own. When Christ, who is their life, shall appear, then will they also appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3.4). It will be their day of triumph over all the criticisms levelled at their presumed folly. It will be their day of recompense for all the humiliations and sufferings they have undergone.
But, not they only will be manifested in the light of Jesus Christ. “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12.14).
All the sins which have been concealed through shame of discovery or through hypocrisy, all that has been forgotten, neglected, ignored, will start up before our eyes into vivid reality, as if memory has not grown weak, as if time had not passed since the moment of commission. Habits as well as acts, intentions as well as completed efforts, words as well as works, will reappear, each with a photographic distinctness, before our eyes, just as each was present to us at the very moment of conception or utterance or action, only illuminated as to its true character by a moral light which nothing can escape.
We shall try to take refuge, perhaps, in the “vain things which charm us most” here and now. But, they will, then, have ceased to charm. They, too, will be judged of by us as they are judged of now by God and His angels. Ambitions, reputations, titles, stations, possessions, which are now so much to us, will be nothing, then. These things were really weighed by Jesus Christ when He hung upon the cross of shame. It was a sentence – the crucifixion – solemnly passed on the whole outward life of man as being, relatively to his inward and eternal life, worthless. This is not understood now, except by a small minority. It will be as clear as the daylight to all at the Day of Judgment (Isaiah 2.12-17).
From: “The Last Judgment,” a sermon on Luke 21.27, from Advent in St. Paul’s: Sermons Bearing Chiefly on the Two Comings of Our Lord by H. P. Liddon; 1 volume edition (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1891), pp. 23-24. Sermon preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England, on December 10, 1871.
H. P. Liddon (1829-1890), was Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, and – with J. C. Ryle – was one of the best conservative Anglican preachers in England during the last half of the 19th century.
The Enemies of Christ are Sometimes Close to Home
Assuredly, my friends, religion does not save us by the mere fact of our being brought into intimate contact with it. Those who have known most about it in early youth, the sons of religious parents, sometimes turn out to be its worst enemies. They appear to speak with authority when they say that they have tried it and found it wanting. They are like soldiers who, after making themselves perfectly acquainted with their general’s resources and position, go over to the enemy and place their knowledge at his disposal. This sad sight, as many of us know, has been repeated in not a few conspicuous instances in this and the last generation, as well as in instances which are not conspicuous. Christ is set in the firmament of the spiritual heavens for the fall of these unhappy souls. He is, to them, “a savor of death unto death” (2 Corinthians 2.16). He is ever, in Himself, loving and merciful, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3.9). But, in all generations, there are souls of whom He says, in sorrow, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin. But now, they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15.22). He is “set,” against the tenor of His own blessed will, for the fall of many.
From: “Results of Christ’s First Coming,” a sermon on Luke 2.34, preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England, on Sunday, December 17, 1876. Published in: Advent in St. Paul’s: Sermons Bearing Chiefly on the Two Comings of Our Lord by H. P. Liddon; 2nd edition (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1889), pp. 252-253.
H. P. Liddon (1829-1890) was Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England. His most important book is The Divinity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: The Bampton Lectures for 1866 (1867).
H. P. Liddon – The Success of His Bampton Lectures
It was not until May 31, 1867 that he sent the last of his Bampton Lectures to the press. They were published in October, and the first edition of 2,500 was, at once, exhausted. He had been at issue with the publisher about the price of the first edition, and now Lord Beauchamp generously offered to guarantee him against any possible loss if he could succeed in making the second edition yet cheaper. After some trouble, he arranged with Messrs. Rivington that, without cutting down the Lectures, the book should be reduced in size and sold at five shillings per volume. Up to the year 1880, 25,000 copies had been sold in this manner. After that year, a ninth edition was issued after a most careful revision of every page. In view of two Unitarian criticisms of the Lectures, he went through each paragraph, sparing no pains to reply to every argument that called for an answer. The volume, in this corrected form, continued to sell at the annual rate of about 800 copies until the year of his death. His very last piece of literary work was the Preface to the fourteenth edition, dated St. Peter’s Day, 1890. In this, he replies to Dr. Martineau’s work on the “Seat of Authority in Religion” so far as it touches upon this subject of the Lectures. The proofs of this Preface were revised during the long days of pain and discomfort of his last illness, and were sent to the publishers only on August 9, just a month before his death.
From: Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D, Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Sometime Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford by John Octavius Johnston (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904), p. 89.
The book in question is The Divinity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: Being the Bampton Lectures for 1866 by H. P. Liddon (London: Rivington, 1867). This work is one of the great 19th-century theological classics.
H. P. Liddon (1829-1890) was an Anglican clergyman, theologian, educator, and author. He represented the conservative, High-Anglican side of the Church of England.
On Reading Scripture Correctly
A man may be a good antiquarian and historian and economist – a linguist, a moralist. He may take the keenest interest in Scripture because it has so much to say of each and all of these subjects. And yet, he may be entirely ignorant of that which, from the apostle’s point of view, is the true teaching of Scripture. He may read the Bible just as some people, it is to be feared, come to church – to admire the architecture or listen to the music, thus missing the very end which these beautiful and useful accessories of worship are intended to promote: the communion of the soul with God. Language, history, poetry, antiquities – these are not the subjects which the Bible is primarily intended to teach us, interesting and valuable as they undoubtedly are, in their way. For these subjects are taught us in other books, ancient and modern, and by human teachers. The Bible must do something more for us than this if it is to claim its true, its unique title as “The Book of God.”
From: “The Things that were Written Aforetime,” a sermon on Romans 15.4, preached by the Rev. H. P. Liddon at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England, on Sunday, December 5, 1875. Published in Forty-Two Sermons on Various Subjects Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London, by the Rev. H. P. Liddon, D.D. (Canon of St. Paul’s), Selected from the Penny Pulpit, Volume 3 (London: Frederick Davis, 1879), pp. 463-464.
H. P. Liddon (1829-1890) was the Anglican Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Aaron’s Death
And, now, the end had come.
Moses and Aaron both knew that Aaron would die. It may have been that some hitherto unsuspected disease had shown itself in the constitution of the old man. It may have been, as has been suggested, that a sand storm in the Arabah had withered up his decaying vitality. That Aaron would die might have been known from observation, as God often speaks to us through the wonted changes of the world of nature.
But, Aaron and Moses also knew why Aaron was about to die, and on Mount Hor. If we knew enough, we should, all of us, know that there is a reason in the divine mind for the hour at which, as for the means by which, every man departs this life. We all are interested in ascertaining, as exactly as we can, the physical reason for the death of those religious relations whom God removes from our sight. But, behind the physical, there is a moral reason, if we could only know it. And we may say with confidence that, in the eyes of God – who is the perfect moral being – the moral reason counts for much more than the physical.
In Aaron’s case, it is the moral reason alone that is noticed in the Bible. Sometimes, a servant of God is taken away from the evil to come. Sometimes, a wilful sinner has filled up the measure of his iniquities, and the hour of judgment sounds. Sometimes, a life is prolonged to do one little piece of work which no other would do and, as soon as this is done, that life is withdrawn. Sometimes, a life is cut short because it has forfeited the particular privilege which an extension of some weeks or months would bring to it. And, this last was the case with Aaron (Numbers 20:23-24).
Aaron’s share in the sin at Meribah was due to the want of firmness which, as has been seen, was a feature of his character…
From: “The Death of Aaron,” a sermon on Numbers 20:27-28 in Sermons on Old Testament Subjects by H. P. Liddon (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891), pp. 57-58.
Henry Parry Liddon (1829-1890) was Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul’s.
