PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 247,864 words · 346 reading sections
Names In The Book Of Life
Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest, best, and noblest life that is possible for him, who is united to Jesus Christ, and drawing from Christ…
851 wordsSECTION 182Names In The Book Of Life
IV. Lastly, there is suggested by this text the idea of future entrance into the land of the living. The metaphor occurs three times in the final book of Scripture, the book which deals with the future and with the last things. And it occurs in all these instances in very remarkable connection. First we read, in the h…
666 wordsSECTION 183Rejoice Evermore
Remember that it depends upon ourselves whether our names are there or not. John Bunyan describes the armed man who came up to the table, where the man with the book and the inkhorn was seated, and said: 'Set down my name.' And you and I may do that. If we cast ourselves on Jesus Christ and yield our wills to be guided…
809 wordsSECTION 184Rejoice Evermore
It is this close union which the Apostle here indicates as being the foundation and the source of all that gladness which he desires to see spreading its light over the Christian life. 'Rejoice in the Lord'--being in Him be glad. Now that great thought has two aspects, one deep and mysterious, one very plain and pract…
776 wordsSECTION 185Rejoice Evermore
II. So, secondly, notice that this joy is capable of being continuous. 'Rejoice in the Lord _always_,' says Paul. That is a hard nut to crack. I can fancy a man saying, 'What is the use of giving me such exhortations as this? My gladness is largely a matter of temperament, and I cannot rule my moods. My gladness is la…
665 wordsSECTION 186Rejoice Evermore
I have not time, at this stage of my sermon, to do more than just glance at these. We find, for instance, that a very large portion of the joy which he declares fills his own heart, and which he commends to these Philippians, arises from the recognition of good in others. He speaks to them of being his 'joy and crown.'…
676 wordsSECTION 187Rejoice Evermore
But the difficulty, as well as the importance, of the obligation, are expressed by the stringent repetition of the commandment, 'And again I say, Rejoice.' When objections arise, when difficulties present themselves, I repeat the commandment again, in the teeth of them all; and I know what I mean when I am saying it. T…
429 wordsSECTION 188How To Obey An Impossible Injunction
'Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'--PHIL. iv. 6. It is easy for prosperous people, who have nothing to trouble them, to give good advices to suffering hearts; and these are generally as futile as they are easy. But who…
1,047 wordsSECTION 189How To Obey An Impossible Injunction
II. So we turn to the only course that makes the apparent impossibility possible. Paul goes on to direct to the mode of feeling and action which will give exemption from the else inevitable gnawing of anxious forethought. He introduces his positive counsel with an eloquent 'But,' which implies that what follows is the…
835 wordsSECTION 190How To Obey An Impossible Injunction
Years ago an ingenious inventor tried to build a vessel in such a fashion as that the saloon for passengers should remain upon one level, howsoever the hull might be tossed by waves. It was a failure, if I remember rightly. But if we are thus joined to God, He will do for our inmost hearts what the inventor tried to do…
695 wordsSECTION 191The Warrior Peace
'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.'--PHIL. iv. 7. The great Mosque of Constantinople was once a Christian church, dedicated to the Holy Wisdom. Over its western portal may still be read, graven on a brazen plate, the words, 'Come unto Me, all ye…
750 wordsSECTION 192The Warrior Peace
Our unrest comes from yet another source. We have not peace, because we have not found and grasped the true objects for any of our faculties. God is the only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers until it feeds upon Him. The mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth it finds a Person who is true. The…
859 wordsSECTION 193The Warrior Peace
It is possible day by day to go out to toil and care and anxiety and change and suffering and conflict, and yet to bear within our hearts the unalterable rest of God. Deep in the bosom of the ocean, beneath the region where winds howl and billows break, there is calm, but the calm is not stagnation. Each drop from thes…
773 wordsSECTION 194The Warrior Peace
Again, submission is peace. What makes our troubles is not outward circumstances, howsoever afflictive they may be, but the resistance of our spirits to the circumstances. And where a man's will bends and says, 'Not mine but Thine be done,' there is calm. Submission is like the lotion that is applied to mosquito bites-…
360 wordsSECTION 195Think On These Things
' . . . Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.'--PHIL. iv. 8. I am half afraid that some of you …
689 wordsSECTION 196Think On These Things
But, further, notice that company of fair guests that you may welcome into the hospitalities of your heart and mind. 'Think on these things'--and what are they? It would be absurd of me to try to exhaust the great catalogue which the Apostle gives here, but let me say a word or two about it. 'Whatsoever things are tru…
814 wordsSECTION 197Think On These Things
There are plenty of occasions round about you to force the opposite upon your notice; and, unless you shut your door fast, and double-lock it, they will be sure to come in:--Popular literature, the scrappy trivialities that are put into some periodicals, what they call 'realistic fiction'; modern Art, which has come to…
852 wordsSECTION 198Think On These Things
Once more; as thought makes deeds, and thought and deeds make character, so character makes destiny, here and hereafter. If you have these blessed thoughts in your hearts and minds, as your continual companions and your habitual guests, then, my friend, you will have a light within that will burn all independent of ext…
753 wordsSECTION 199How To Say 'Thank You'
I beseech you, take Christ and enthrone Him in the very sanctuary of your minds. Then you will have all these venerable, pure, blessed thoughts as the very atmosphere in which you move. 'Think on these things . . . these things do! . . . and the God of Peace shall be with you.' 'But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that…
690 wordsSECTION 200How To Say 'Thank You'
We may just note in passing the tender metaphor by which the Philippians' renewed thought of him is likened to a tree's putting forth its buds in a gracious springtide, and may link with it the pretty fancy of an old commentator whom some people call prosaic and puritanical (Bengel), that the stormy winter had hindered…
655 wordsSECTION 201How To Say 'Thank You'
It is possible for us not only to bear with equal minds both extremes, but to get the good out of both. It is a hard lesson and takes much conning, to learn to bear sorrow or suffering or want. They have great lessons to teach us all, and a character that has not been schooled by one of these dwellers in the dark is im…
737 wordsSECTION 202How To Say 'Thank You'
III. The renewed thanks for the loving sympathy expressed in the gift. We have here again an eager anxiety not to be misunderstood as undervaluing the Philippians' gift. How beautifully the sublimity of the previous words lies side by side with the lowliness and gentleness of these. We note here the combination of th…
557 wordsSECTION 203Gifts Given, Seed Sown
'And ye yourselves also know, ye Philippians, that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me in the matter of giving and receiving, but ye only; for even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my need. Not that I seek for the gift; but I seek for the fru…
690 wordsSECTION 204Gifts Given, Seed Sown
In the present circumstances of our churches, it seems necessary that the right which Paul so strongly asserted should, for the most part, not be waived, but the only true way of giving and receiving as between minister and people is when it is a matter not of payment but a gift. When it is an expression of sympathy an…
667 wordsSECTION 205Gifts Given, Seed Sown
The fruit is here supposed to be growing, that is, of course, in another life. We need not insist that the service and sacrifice and work of earth, if the motive be right, tell in a man's condition after death. It is not all the same how Christian men live; some gain ten talents, some five, and some two, and the differ…
914 wordsSECTION 206Gifts Given, Seed Sown
The channel by which that boundless supply is to reach us is distinctly set forth here. All these riches are stored up 'in Christ Jesus.' A deep lake may be hidden away in the bosom of the hills that would pour blessing and fertility over a barren land if it could find a channel down into the plains, but unless there b…
343 wordsSECTION 207Farewell Words
'Now unto our God and Father be the glory for ever and ever, Amen. Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren which are with me salute you. All the saints salute you, especially they that are of Cæsar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.'--PHIL. iv. 20-23 (R.V.). These closi…
858 wordsSECTION 208Farewell Words
The designation by which Paul describes the recipients of his greeting carries in it a summons as well as a promise. They are saints, and they are so as being 'in Christ.' That name is often used as a clumsy sarcasm, but it goes to the very root of Christian character. The central idea contained in it is that of consec…
828 wordsSECTION 209Farewell Words
And what lessons the saints in Cæsar's household may teach us! Think of the abyss of lust and murder there, of the Emperor by turns a buffoon, a sensualist, and a murderer. A strange place to find saints in that sty of filth! Let no man say that it is impossible for a pure life to be lived in any circumstances, or try …
672 wordsSECTION 210Saints, Believers, Brethren
' . . . The saints and faithful brethren in Christ.'--COL. i. 2. 'The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,' says the Acts of the Apostles. It was a name given by outsiders, and like most of the instances where a sect, or school, or party is labelled with the name of its founder, it was given in scorn. I…
824 wordsSECTION 211Saints, Believers, Brethren
That teaching abides still, and, as I believe, opens out into, and is our source of, all that we know--in distinction and contrast from, 'imagine,' 'hope,' 'fear'--of God, and of ourselves, and of the future. It casts the clearest light on morals for the individual and on politics for the community. Whatever men may sa…
727 wordsSECTION 212Saints, Believers, Brethren
Now turn to the second-- II. The Disciples must be Believers. That name begins to appear almost immediately after Pentecost, and continues throughout. It comes in two forms, one which is in my text, 'the faithful,' meaning thereby not the reliable, but the people that are full of faith; the other, meaning the same th…
677 wordsSECTION 213Saints, Believers, Brethren
But sanctity is not emotion, A man may luxuriate in devout feeling, and sing and praise and pray, and be very far from being a saint; and there is a great deal of the emotional Christianity of this day which has a strange affinity for the opposite of saintship. Sanctity is not aloofness. 'There were saints in Cæsar's h…
681 wordsSECTION 214The Gospel-Hope
That name, too, speaks to us of the source from which Christian brotherhood has come. We are brethren of each other because we have one Father, even God, and the Fatherhood which makes us brethren is not that which communicates the common life of humanity, but that which imparts the new life of sonship through Jesus Ch…
679 wordsSECTION 215The Gospel-Hope
That appearance of God brings with it the fulfilment of our highest hopes in the 'grace that is to be brought to us at His appearing.' All our blessedness of every kind is to be the result of the manifestation of God in His unobscured glory. The mirrors that are set round the fountain of light flash into hitherto undre…
862 wordsSECTION 216The Gospel-Hope
What cruel waste of a divine faculty it is, then, of which we are all guilty when we allow our hopes to be frittered away and dissipated on uncertain and transient goods which they may never secure, and which, even if secured, would be ludicrously or rather tragically insufficient to make us blessed, instead of withdra…
664 wordsSECTION 217The Gospel-Hope
Let us remember the double account which Scripture gives of the discipline by which the hope of the Gospel is won for our very own. On the one hand, we have 'joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in hope.' Our faith breeds hope because it grasps the divine facts concerning Jesus from which hope springs. And fa…
347 wordsSECTION 218'All Power'
'Strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joy.'--COL. i. 11 (R.V.). There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers of Paul. No parts of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned, so full of his soul, as when he rises from speaking of God to men t…
669 wordsSECTION 219'All Power'
And if this ideal of many-sided power stands in contrast with the limitations of human strength, how does it rebuke and condemn the very partial manifestations of a very narrow and one-sided power which we who profess to have received it set forth! We have access to a source which can fill our whole nature, can flower …
689 wordsSECTION 220'All Power'
III. The great purpose of this strength. 'Patience and longsuffering with joyfulness' seems at first but a poor result of such a force, but it comes from a heart that was under no illusions as to the facts of human life, and it finds a response in us all. It may be difficult to discriminate 'patience' from 'longsuffer…
738 wordsSECTION 221Thankful For Inheritance
'Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.'--COL. i. 12 (R.V.) It is interesting to notice how much the thought of inheritance seems to have been filling the Apostle's mind during his writing of Ephesians and Colossians. Its recurrence is one of the po…
986 wordsSECTION 222Thankful For Inheritance
The phrase 'to be partakers' is accurately rendered 'for the portion,' and carries a distinct allusion to the partition of the promised land to Israel by which each man had his lot or share in the common inheritance. So the one word inheritance brings with it blessed thoughts of a common possession of a happy society i…
1,080 wordsSECTION 223Thankful For Inheritance
III. The thankfulness which these thoughts should evoke. Thankfulness ought to be a sweet duty. It is a joy to cherish gratitude. Generous hearts do not need to be told to be thankful, and they who are only thankful to order are not thankful at all. In nothing is the ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian more …
408 wordsSECTION 224Christian Endeavour
'I also labour, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily.'--COL. i. 29. I have chosen this text principally because it brings together the two subjects which are naturally before us to-day. All 'Western Christendom,' as it is called, is to-day commemorating the Pentecostal gift. My text speaks …
710 wordsSECTION 225Christian Endeavour
So then what we come to is just this, dear brethren, if we are Christians at all, we have to make a business of our religion; to go about it as if we meant work. Ah! what a contrast there is between the languid way in which Christian men pursue what the Bible designates their 'calling' and that in which men with far pa…
851 wordsSECTION 226Christian Endeavour
And endeavour next to keep up communion with Jesus Christ, which is the secret of all peaceful and of all noble living. And endeavour next after concentration. And what does that mean? It means that you have to detach yourself from hindrances. It means that you have to prosecute the Christian aim all through the common…
829 wordsSECTION 227Christian Endeavour
It is an inward gift. It is not like the help that men can render us, given from without and apprehended and incorporated with ourselves through the medium of the understanding or of the heart. There is an old story in the history of Israel about a young king that was bid by the prophet to bend his bow against the enem…
761 wordsSECTION 228Christian Progress
'As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and builded up in Him.'--COL. ii. 6, 7 (R.V.). It is characteristic of Paul that he should here use three figures incongruous with each other to express the same idea, the figures of walking, being rooted, and built up. They, however, have in co…
651 wordsSECTION 229Christian Progress
As in wisdom so in character, all progress consists in coming closer to Jesus and receiving more and more of His many-sided grace. He is the pattern of all excellence, the living ideal of whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, virtue incarnate, praise embodied. H…
448 wordsSECTION 230Risen With Christ
'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appe…
671 wordsSECTION 231Risen With Christ
The practical conclusion from this blessed union with Jesus is that we are, as Christians, bound to be true in our conduct to the facts of our spiritual life, and to turn away from the world, which is now not our home, and set our mind (not only our 'affections') on things above. Surely the Christ, 'seated on the right…
767 wordsSECTION 232Risen With Christ
But Paul's fervent spirit blazes up as he thinks of that new nature which union with Jesus has brought, and he turns aside from his exhortations to gaze on that great sight. He condenses volumes into a sentence. That new man is not only new, but is perpetually being renewed with a renovation penetrating more and more d…
667 wordsSECTION 233Risen With Christ
'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.'--COL. iii. 1, 2. There are three aspects in which the New Testament treats the Resurrection, and these three seem to have successively…
733 wordsSECTION 234Risen With Christ
'Made like Him, like Him we rise; Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.' So, then, a risen life is the type of all noble life, and before there can be a risen life there must have been a death. True, we may say that the spiritual facts in a man's experience, which are represented by these two great symbols of a death…
651 wordsSECTION 235Risen With Christ
So the first thought of our text is not only taught us in words, but it stands manifest in the ritual of the Church as it was from the beginning. We die, and we rise again, through faith and by union through faith, with Christ 'that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God.' Let me t…
759 wordsSECTION 236Risen With Christ
Lastly, we have here-- III. The discipline which is needed to secure the right direction of the life. The Apostle does not content himself with pointing out the aims. He adds practical advice as to how these aims can be made dominant in our individual cases, when he says, 'Set your affections on things above.' Now, m…
753 wordsSECTION 237Without And Within
'Them that are without.'--COL. iv. 5. That is, of course, an expression for the non-Christian world; the outsiders who are beyond the pale of the Church. There was a very broad line of distinction between it and the surrounding world in the early Christian days, and the handful of Christians in a heathen country felt …
664 wordsSECTION 238Without And Within
But that is not the meaning of the phrase in the mouths of those who use it most frequently. To them the Church is a visible corporation, and not only so, but as one of the many organisations into which believers are moulded, it is distinguished from the others by certain offices and rites, bishops, priests, and sacram…
777 wordsSECTION 239Without And Within
And then there is one more remark that I must drop in here before I go on, namely, that whilst I thankfully admit, and joyfully preach, that the most imperfect, rudimentary faith knits a man to Jesus Christ, even if in this life it may be found covered over with a great deal that is contradictory and inconsistent; on t…
697 wordsSECTION 240Without And Within
That is the third figure. Take a fourth, another of our Master's. Picture a little rude, stone-built enclosure with the rough walls piled high, and a narrow aperture at one point, big enough for one creature to pass through at a time. Within, huddled together, are the innocent sheep; without, the lion and the bear. Abo…
771 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.