Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/63

 poor man, that He may make us needy ones rich. Rejoice, most dearly beloved, that what the prophets prophesied has been fulfilled, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Rejoice that there is born to us a Child all powerful and that a Son is given to us full of wisdom and grace, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Oh, dearest friends, ought there to be only a moderate rejoicing over these things? Nay,a mighty joy! For indeed the angel saith: “I bring you good tidings of great joy,” for that there is born a Redeemer from all misery, a Saviour from sin, a Governor of His faithful ones; there is born a Comforter for those in sorrow, and there is given to us the Son of God that we may have great joy and that there may be glory to God in the highest and on carth peace to men of good-will. May it please God born this day to grant to us His good-will, His peace, and withal, His joy.

It is no wonder that Bethlehem chapel was thronged. Its pulpit dealt in no theological abstractions. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, was in the preacher’s hand a sharp weapon, wielded dextcrously to lay open the sins and subterfuges of the conscience. It was the Word of Life offering the comforts of saving grace. Huss was a preactics to the age in which he lived, to the congregations which pressed to hear him. His messages burn with zeal for pure religion and with sympathy for men. With his whole heart he was a preacher. Christ’s chief command, as he reminded the archbishop of Prague, was to preach the Gospel to every creature, and when he was forbidden by archbishop and pope to longer occupy his pulpit he solemnly declared, in a letter to the chief civil officials of Bohemia, that he dared not obey the commands, for to do so would be to offend “against God and his own salvation.” Preaching was the priest’s primary duty. Huss followed worthily in the footsteps of his great predecessors and went beyond them in the extent of his influence and in the novelty of his message.

The following judgment is passed by the Bohemian his-