PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 240,917 words · 342 reading sections
Youthful Strength
Bring the greatest truths you can find to bear on the smallest duties, and the small duties will grow great to match the principles by which they are done. Bring the laws of Jesus Christ down to the little things, for, in the name of common sense, if our religion is not meant to regulate trifles, what is it meant to re…
807 wordsSECTION 302Youthful Strength
III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be exercised, and the victory which it secures. 'Ye have overcome the wicked one.' There is a battle for us all, on which I need not dwell, the conflict with evil around and with evil within, and with the prince of the embattled legions of the darkness, wh…
722 wordsSECTION 303River And Rock
Oh, I pray that you may ask yourselves the question, 'What am I going to be?' and may answer it, 'I am going to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might'; and to overcome, as He also hath overcome, the world and the flesh and the devil. 'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the w…
709 wordsSECTION 304River And Rock
'So passeth, in the passing of an hour Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.' But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding transiency within us. 'The world passeth, and the lust thereof.' Of course the word 'lust' is employed by him in a much wider sense than in our use of it. With …
1,021 wordsSECTION 305River And Rock
Then let me say to you, see that you take noble lessons out of these undeniable and all-important facts. There is one kind of lesson that I do not want you to take out of it. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' or, to put it into a more vulgar formula, 'A short life and a merry one.' The mere contemplation of…
703 wordsSECTION 306River And Rock
II. Now let me say a word, and it can only be a word, about the second of the thoughts here, which I designated as the Rock, or the glad truth of Faith. We might have expected that John's antithesis to the world that passeth would have been the God that abides. But he does not so word his sentence, although the though…
678 wordsSECTION 307The Love That Calls Us Sons
Brother, John tells us that obedience to the will of God brings permanence into our fleeting years. But how are we to obey the will of God? John tells us that the only way is by love. But how are we to love God? John tells us that the only way to love--which love is the only way to obedience--is by knowing and believin…
711 wordsSECTION 308The Love That Calls Us Sons
We can no more 'behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us' than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the imagination faints in trying to grasp, and re…
726 wordsSECTION 309The Love That Calls Us Sons
We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put an emphasis--which I dare say the writer did not intend--on one word of this text, and think of the love given to '_us_,' such creatures as we are. Out of the depths we cry to Him. Not only by the voice of our supplications, but even when we raise no c…
666 wordsSECTION 310The Love That Calls Us Sons
All that is blessedly and eternally true; but it is also true that there is a higher relation than that to which the name 'children of God' is more accurately given, and to which in the New Testament that name is confined. If you ask what that relation is, let me quote to you three passages in this Epistle which will a…
698 wordsSECTION 311The Love That Calls Us Sons
Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say 'I know that I am a child of God.' There are many very good people, whose tremulous, timorous lips have never ventured to say 'I know.' They will say, 'Well, I hope,' or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will put in an adverb or two, and say, 'I …
665 wordsSECTION 312The Love That Calls Us Sons
The second remark is that we cannot keep that great sight before the eye of our minds without effort. You will have very resolutely to look away from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in a thunder-storm will light a …
418 wordsSECTION 313The Unrevealed Future Of The Sons Of God
'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.'--1 John iii. 2. I have hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anythin…
753 wordsSECTION 314The Unrevealed Future Of The Sons Of God
We may notice, also, that not only the fact of our sonship avails to assure us of immortal life, but that also the very form which our religious experience takes points in the same direction. As I said, infancy is the prophecy of maturity. 'The child is father of the man'; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way…
684 wordsSECTION 315The Unrevealed Future Of The Sons Of God
II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of much in that future. That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness which lies on that beyond. 'We are the sons of God, _and_,' just because we are, 'it doe…
847 wordsSECTION 316The Unrevealed Future Of The Sons Of God
The white mountains keep their secret well; not until we have passed through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit, shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in ignorance, and thankfully say, 'Now …
698 wordsSECTION 317The Purifying Influence Of Hope
As a bit of glass when the light strikes it flashes into sunny glory, or as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when the sunbeams fall upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so into your poor heart and mine the vision of Christ's glory will come, moulding and transforming us to its own beauty.…
754 wordsSECTION 318The Purifying Influence Of Hope
And so he himself stands before us as an instance of the possibility, even on earth, of this calm, almost passive process, and most blessed and holiest method of getting like the Master, by simple gazing, which is the gaze of love and longing. But, dear brethren, the law of our lives forbids that that should be the on…
692 wordsSECTION 319The Purifying Influence Of Hope
Christ's fellowship is our cleansing, and the first and main thing that we have to do in order to make ourselves pure is to keep ourselves in union with Him, in whom inhere and abide all the energies that cleanse men's souls. Take the unbleached calico and spread it out on the green grass, and let the blessed sunshine …
676 wordsSECTION 320The Purifying Influence Of Hope
Do not you fancy that there is any magic in coffins and graves and shrouds to make men different from their former selves. The continuity runs clean on, the rail goes without a break, though it goes through the Mont Cenis tunnel; and on the one side is the cold of the North, and on the other the sunny South. The man is…
689 wordsSECTION 321The Purifying Influence Of Hope
Again, here is a test for all you Christian people, who say that you look to Heaven with hope as to your home and rest. A great deal of the religious contemplation of a future state is pure sentimentality, and like all pure sentimentality is either immoral or non-moral. But here the two things are brought into clear j…
415 wordsSECTION 322Practical Righteousness
'Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.'--1 John iii. 7. The popular idea of the Apostle John is strangely unlike the real man. He is supposed to be the gentle Apostle of Love, the mystic amongst the Twelve. He _is_ that, but he was the 'son of thu…
767 wordsSECTION 323Practical Righteousness
I freely confess that in very many instances the morality of the moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in t…
966 wordsSECTION 324Practical Righteousness
May I say again, my text suggests conduct, and not verbal worship. You and I, in our adherence to a simpler, less ornate and æsthetic form of devotion than prevails in the great Episcopal churches, are by no means free from the danger which, in a more acute form, besets them, of substituting participation in external a…
661 wordsSECTION 325Practical Righteousness
There is the pledge, there is the prophecy, there is the pattern; and there is the power to redeem the pledge, to fulfil the prophecy, to make the pattern copyable and copied by every one of us. Brethren, this is the very heart of John's teaching, that if we will, not by the mere assent of our intellect, but by the cas…
399 wordsSECTION 326Christ'S Mission The Revelation Of God'S Love
'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'--1 John iv. 10. This is the second of a pair of twin verses which deal with substantially the same subject under two slightly different aspects. The thought common to both is that Christ's mission is t…
888 wordsSECTION 327Christ'S Mission The Revelation Of God'S Love
How do we know what a man is? By seeing what a man does. How do we know what God is? By knowing what God does. So John does not argue with logic, either frosty or fiery, but he simply opens his mouth, and in calm, pellucid utterances sets forth the truths and leaves them to work. He says to us, 'I do not relegate you t…
712 wordsSECTION 328Christ'S Mission The Revelation Of God'S Love
Now there arises from this consideration a thought which I only mention, and it is this. Christian teaching about Christ's work has often, both by its friends and its foes, been so presented as to lead to the conception that it was the work of Christ which made God love men. The enemies of evangelical truth are never t…
729 wordsSECTION 329Christ'S Mission The Revelation Of God'S Love
Christ's mission reveals God's love, because Christ is the Son of God. If it is true, as Jesus said, that 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' then I can say, 'In Thy tenderness, in Thy patience, in Thy attracting of the publican and the harlot, in Thy sympathy with all the erring and the sorrowful, and, most o…
749 wordsSECTION 330The Servant As His Lord
'... As He is, so are we in this world.'--1 John iv. 17. Large truths may be spoken in little words. Profundity is often supposed to be obscurity, but the deepest depth is clear. John, in his gospel and epistles, deals with the deepest realities, and with all things in their eternal aspects, but his vocabulary is the …
758 wordsSECTION 331The Servant As His Lord
Or to put the whole thing into plainer words, it is the religious and the moral aspects of Christ's being, and not any one particular detail thereof; and these, as they live and reign on the Throne, just as truly as these, as they suffered and wept upon earth--it is these to which it is our destiny to be conformed. We …
673 wordsSECTION 332The Servant As His Lord
A very tiny gully on a hillside, made by showers of rain, may fall into the same slopes, and has been created by the very same forces, working according to the same laws, as have scooped out valleys miles broad, bordered by mountains thousands of feet high. And in my little life, poor as it is, limited as it is, enviro…
853 wordsSECTION 333The Servant As His Lord
There is no real antagonism between such truths and the widest preaching of salvation by faith. It is the same man who, in his gospel, says, as from the lips of the Lord Himself, 'He that believeth is not judged,' and in his letter says, 'We may have boldness in that day, because, as He is, so are we in this world.' I…
468 wordsSECTION 334Love And Fear
'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.'--1 John iv. 18. John has been speaking of boldness, and that naturally suggests its opposite--fear. He has been saying that perfect love produces courage in the day of judgment, beca…
753 wordsSECTION 335Love And Fear
Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner, derives all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our discordance with God; and that is 'the shadow feared of man,' that stands shrouded by the path, and waits for each of us. God; God's universe; God's messenger, Death--these are facts w…
663 wordsSECTION 336Love And Fear
There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to destroy a man, than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its own fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paralysed by dread that they cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be afraid--as every one ought to be who is co…
896 wordsSECTION 337The Ray And The Reflection
And my last word to you is, see that you resort only to the sane, sound way of getting rid of the wholesome, rational dread of which I have been speaking. You can ignore it; and buy immunity at the price of leaving in full operation the _causes_ of your dread--and that is stupid. There is only one wise thing to do, and…
655 wordsSECTION 338The Ray And The Reflection
It is no accident that there are but foregleams of this great thought brightening the words and the thoughts of psalmist and prophet, saint and sage, from the beginning onwards, while the articulate utterance of the simple sentence was first heard from the lips of Him who declared the Father, and stands in that part of…
790 wordsSECTION 339The Ray And The Reflection
Our Apostle would concur heartily in the great text which was the theme of a recent sermon. Paul said, 'God establishes His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' John says, 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our si…
774 wordsSECTION 340The Ray And The Reflection
Then let me say, too, that if we love Him, it will be the motive power and spring of all manner of obediences and glad services. Love is the mother-tincture, so to speak, which you can colour, and to which you can add in various ways, and produce variously tinted and tasted and perfumed commixtures. Love lies at the fo…
678 wordsSECTION 341The Ray And The Reflection
One last word, 'We love Him, because He first loved us.' Do you? Or is it rather true of you: 'I do not love God, though He has loved me'? I saw not long since, up on the flank of a mountain, an obstinate patch of snow, that had fronted, in unmelted cold, months of the summer sun. There are some of us who lift a broad …
399 wordsSECTION 342*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook Expositions Of Holy Scripture ***
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Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.