Sermon Preached in the Holy Trinity Cathedral by Dean Trivett on February 13
Man in lits image.". ests, 1.1, 27.
Tomlin the, beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth and en ILLOWING the purposeful guidance of the Church Year we have been led through Advent, Christmas, and the Epiphany, and now come to the threshold of Lent.
In Advent we were led to consider the spirit of expectation that characterized the world before Christ, and to look for his return in glory.
Christmas brought its messages of peace and good will; the birth of the Christ Child, and all that it implied. He came as Jesus, the saviour; and as Emmanuel, God is with us.
And during the last five Sundays we have thought of his Epiphany, his manifestation.
In the wilderness of its scope, Jew and Gentile are included.
We have the story of the Wise Men; the Boy in the Temple; illustrations of his healing power: hi revelation as the one whom the elements obey, and so on.
"The great facts in connection with his incarnation have been brought before us, and now we are called pon to look at man', and to see in the history of the human race, and in our individual lives, that which made His Incarnation—His coming in ihe Flesh—necessary. The reason for it, and the preparation for it, And so the first lessons for Septuagesima: Sunday take us back to the opening chapters of the Old Testament. And there, in the first four words, we find stated the great fundamental fact of our Religious Faith, "In the beginning God."
d in the succeeding verses we hear that God made the world and "Good created man in hi own image."
Let us try, in the few remaining minutes at our disposal this morning, to gather out one or two of the great and eternal truths that this chapter teaches us.
We begin our Apostles Creed the statement of our faith...."I be lieve in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth."
And it takes us back to the first verse of the Bible, our text this morning—the first lesson that these "In the beginning heaven and the placed man.in it. And as we continue, we read of man's fall and continued: sinfulness. And then even so early, comes the foreshadowing of the Incarnation—The promised Redeemer—The seed of the woman that shall bruise the serpent's head, There is a regrettable tendency in the present day to under-estimate the value of the Old Testament Books, while admitting their literary and artistic valüe, to deprecate their teaching. To think of them as containing only glitunerings ofthe truth, type, prophecy, and.forshadowing elementary teaching, now fulfilled ud super ceeded y the New Testament revelation and truth.
Such an attitude brings ils own punishment, We neglect the Old "Testament to our own great loss, Not only is the Old Testament good literature, and the finest story book in the whole world, but it contains as well a wealth of rich and essential of all this vast material un comparison with which man seems so puny and futile, whose laws we may consider, but by which we are bound, and before which we seem so hopeless—at the root and origin of all this, there abides a living, conscious, spirit, who wills, and knows, and fashions, all things. In this belief the whole world is tra iérmed to us. No longer do we live in a blind world of unreasoning forces, but in a world created and controlled by a loving Father. Thank God for this teaching of Genesis one! How cold and comifortless would be life unless it had such a consoling faith.
If we ourselves are but particles of a huge and unconscious universe— it there is no power that understands us, and sympathize: h win that provides the answer to our instincts teaching, It contains the record of God's dealings with a rice of men, who in their aspirations and their weaknesses, truly reflect our own hopes and fears, and aspirations—our own mistakes and shortcomings. As we read them we feel we can indeed say from our hearts, with the writer to the Romans—lose things were written for our learning,"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.