PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Hope of the Gospel
MacDonald, George, 1824-1905 · 52,318 words · 69 reading sections
_Salvation From Sin_.
--and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins.--_Matthew_ i. 21. I would help some to understand what Jesus came from the home of our Father to be to us and do for us. Everything in the world is more or less misunderstood at first: we have to learn what it is, and come at length to…
852 wordsSECTION 2_Salvation From Sin_.
Even if a man's suffering be a far inheritance, for the curing of which by faith and obedience this life would not be sufficiently long, faith and obedience will yet render it endurable to the man, and overflow in help to his fellow-sufferers. The groaning body, wrapt in the garment of hope, will, with outstretched nec…
993 wordsSECTION 3_Salvation From Sin_.
There is another important misapprehension of the words of the messengers of the good tidings--that they threaten us with punishment because of the sins we have committed, whereas their message is of forgiveness, not of vengeance; of deliverance, not of evil to come. Not for anything he has committed do they threaten a…
822 wordsSECTION 4_Salvation From Sin_.
One master-sin is at the root of all the rest. It is no individual action, or anything that comes of mood, or passion; it is the non-recognition by the man, and consequent inactivity in him, of the highest of all relations, that relation which is the root and first essential condition of every other true relation of or…
970 wordsSECTION 5_Salvation From Sin_.
It may be my reader will desire me to say _how_ the Lord will deliver him from his sins. That is like the lawyer's 'Who is my neighbour?' The spirit of such a mode of receiving the offer of the Lord's deliverance, is the root of all the horrors of a corrupt theology, so acceptable to those who love weak and beggarly ho…
691 wordsSECTION 6_Salvation From Sin_.
But the Lord is not unreasonable; he requires no high motives where such could not yet exist. He does not say, 'You must be sorry for your sins, or you need not come to me:' to be sorry for his sins a man must love God and man, and love is the very thing that has to be developed in him. It is but common sense that a ma…
403 wordsSECTION 7_The Remission Of Sins._
John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.--_Mark_ i. 4. God and man must combine for salvation from sin, and the same word, here and elsewhere translated _remission_, seems to be employed in the New Testament for the share of either in the great deliverance. B…
724 wordsSECTION 8_The Remission Of Sins._
Next, in St Matthew's gospel, the Baptist's buttressing argument, or imminent motive for the change he is pressing upon the people is, that the kingdom of heaven is at hand: 'Because the king of heaven is coming, you must give up your sinning.' The same argument for immediate action lies in his quotation from Isaiah,--…
892 wordsSECTION 9_The Remission Of Sins._
For indeed in this region there is no great or small. 'Be content with your wages,' said the Baptist to the soldiers. To many people now, the word would be, 'Rule your temper;' or, 'Be courteous to all;' or, 'Let each hold the other better than himself;' or, 'Be just to your neighbour that you may love him.' To make st…
973 wordsSECTION 10_The Remission Of Sins._
What did Jesus come into the world to do? The will of God in saving his people from their sins--not from the punishment of their sins, that blessed aid to repentance, but from their sins themselves, the paltry as well as the heinous, the venial as well as the loathsome. His whole work was and is to send away sin--to ba…
913 wordsSECTION 11_The Remission Of Sins._
The one true end of all speech concerning holy things is--the persuading of the individual man to cease to do evil, to set himself to do well, to look to the lord of his life to be on his side in the new struggle. Supposing the suggestions I have made correct, I do not care that my reader should understand them, except…
438 wordsSECTION 12_Jesus In The World._
'Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.' And he said unto them, 'How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?' And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.--_Luke_ ii. 48-50. Was that his saying? Why did they no…
760 wordsSECTION 13_Jesus In The World._
What then makes those who give us this translation, prefer it to the phrase in the authorized version, '_about my Father's business_'? One or other of two causes--most likely both together: an ecclesiastical fancy, and the mere fact that he was found in the temple. A mind ecclesiastical will presume the temple the fit…
938 wordsSECTION 14_Jesus In The World._
It seems to me, I say, that the Lord meant to remind them, or rather to make them feel, for they had not yet learned the fact, that he was never away from home, could not be lost, as they had thought him; that he was in his father's house all the time, where no hurt could come to him. 'The things' about him were the fu…
960 wordsSECTION 15_Jesus In The World._
All his life he was among his father's things, either in heaven or in the world--not then only when they found him in the temple at Jerusalem. He is still among his father's things, everywhere about in the world, everywhere throughout the wide universe. Whatever he laid aside to come to us, to whatever limitations, for…
692 wordsSECTION 16_Jesus In The World._
Whoever has thus gazed on flower or cloud; whoever can recall poorest memory of the trail of glory that hung about his childhood, must have some faint idea how his father's house and the things in it always looked, and must still look to the Lord. With him there is no fading into the light of common day. He has never l…
895 wordsSECTION 17_Jesus And His Fellow Townsmen._
His parents found him in the temple; they never really found him until he entered the true temple--their own adoring hearts. The temple that knows not its builder, is no temple; in it dwells no divinity. But at length he comes to his own, and his own receive him;--comes to them in the might of his mission to preach goo…
717 wordsSECTION 18_Jesus And His Fellow Townsmen._
There was a shadow of the hateless vengeance of God in the expulsion of the dishonest dealers from the temple with which the Lord initiated his mission: that was his first parable to Jerusalem; to Nazareth he comes with the sweetest words of the prophet of hope in his mouth--good tidings of great joy--of healing and si…
763 wordsSECTION 19_Jesus And His Fellow Townsmen._
'But to believe in such a man,' he might go on to say, 'with such a message, as I read of in the New Testament, is life from the dead. I have yielded myself, to live no more in the idea of self, but with the life of God. To him I commit the creature he has made, that he may live in it, and work out its life--develop it…
786 wordsSECTION 20_Jesus And His Fellow Townsmen._
But the Lord knew what was in their hearts; he knew the false notion with which they were almost ready to declare for him; he knew also the final proof to which they were in their wisdom and prudence about to subject him. He did not look likely to be a prophet, seeing he had grown up among them, and had never shown any…
848 wordsSECTION 21_Jesus And His Fellow Townsmen._
The Lord saw them on the point of challenging a display of his power, and anticipated the challenge with a refusal. For the better understanding of his words, let me presume to paraphrase them: 'I know you will apply to me the proverb, Physician, heal thyself, requiring me to prove what is said of me in Capernaum, by …
872 wordsSECTION 22_The Heirs Of Heaven And Earth._
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' ...'Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.'--_Matthew_ v. 2, 3, 5. The words of the Lord are the seed sown by the sower. Into our hearts they must fall that they may grow. Meditation…
663 wordsSECTION 23_The Heirs Of Heaven And Earth._
All good news from heaven, is of _truth_--essential truth, involving duty, and giving and promising help to the performance of it. There can be no good news for us men, except of uplifting love, and no one can be lifted up who will not rise. If God himself sought to raise his little ones without their consenting effort…
1,353 wordsSECTION 24_The Heirs Of Heaven And Earth._
The man who does not house self, has room to be his real self--God's eternal idea of him. He lives eternally; in virtue of the creative power present in him with momently, unimpeded creation, he _is_. How should there be in him one thought of ruling or commanding or surpassing! He can imagine no bliss, no good in being…
823 wordsSECTION 25_The Heirs Of Heaven And Earth._
The child of the maker is naturally the inheritor. But if the child try to possess as a house the thing his father made an organ, will he succeed in so possessing it? Or if he do nestle in a corner of its case, will he oust thereby the Lord of its multiplex harmony, sitting regnant on the seat of sway, and drawing with…
757 wordsSECTION 26_The Heirs Of Heaven And Earth._
For what makes the thing a book? Is it not that it has a soul--the mind in it of him who wrote the book? Therefore only can the book be possessed, for life alone can be the possession of life. The dead possess their dead only to bury them. Does not he then, who loves and understands his book, possess it with such poss…
549 wordsSECTION 27_Sorrow The Pledge Of Joy._
'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'--_Matthew_ v. 4. Grief, then, sorrow, pain of heart, mourning, is no partition-wall between man and God. So far is it from opposing any obstacle to the passage of God's light into man's soul, that the Lord congratulates them that mourn. There is no evil in so…
767 wordsSECTION 28_Sorrow The Pledge Of Joy._
Much of what goes by the name of comfort, is merely worthless; and such as could be comforted by it, I should not care to comfort. Let time do what it may to bring the ease of oblivion; let change of scene do what in it lies to lead thought away from the vanished; let new loves bury grief in the grave of the old love: …
1,164 wordsSECTION 29_Sorrow The Pledge Of Joy._
A heaven without human love it were inhuman, and yet more undivine to desire; it ought not to be desired by any being made in the image of God. The lord of life died that his father's children might grow perfect in love--might love their brothers and sisters as he loved them: is it to this end that they must cease to k…
708 wordsSECTION 30_Sorrow The Pledge Of Joy._
Whether or not the Lord was here thinking specially of the mourners for the dead, as I think he was, he surely does not limit the word of comfort to them, or wish us to believe less than that his father has perfect comfort for every human grief. Out upon such miserable theologians as, instead of receiving them into the…
795 wordsSECTION 31_Sorrow The Pledge Of Joy._
Such as mourn the loss of love, such from whom the friend, the brother, the lover, has turned away--what shall I cry to them?--You too shall be comforted--only hearken: Whatever selfishness clouds the love that mourns the loss of love, that selfishness must be taken out of it--burned out of it even by pain extreme, if …
463 wordsSECTION 32_God'S Family._
'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' 'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.' 'Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God.'--_Matthew_ v. 8, 6, 9. The cry of the deepest in man has always been, to see God. It was th…
1,083 wordsSECTION 33_God'S Family._
To see God is to stand on the highest point of created being. Not until we see God--no partial and passing embodiment of him, but the abiding presence--do we stand upon our own mountain-top, the height of the existence God has given us, and up to which he is leading us. That there we should stand, is the end of our cre…
679 wordsSECTION 34_God'S Family._
Long ere the Lord appeared, ever since man was on the earth, nay, surely, from the very beginning, was his spirit at work in it for righteousness; in the fullness of time he came in his own human person, to fulfil all righteousness. He came to his own of the same mind with himself, who hungered and thirsted after right…
652 wordsSECTION 35_God'S Family._
To every soul dissatisfied with itself, comes this word, at once rousing and consoling, from the Power that lives and makes him live--that in his hungering and thirsting he is blessed, for he shall be filled. His hungering and thirsting is the divine pledge of the divine meal. The more he hungers and thirsts the more b…
763 wordsSECTION 36_God'S Family._
Hear another like word of the Lord. He assures us that the Father hears the cries of his elect--of those whom he seeks to worship him because they worship in spirit and in truth. 'Shall not God avenge his own elect,' he says, 'which cry day and night unto him?' Now what can God's elect have to keep on crying for, night…
792 wordsSECTION 37_God'S Family._
On the other hand, those whose influence is to divide and separate, causing the hearts of men to lean away from each other, make themselves the children of the evil one: born of God and not of the devil, they turn from God, and adopt the devil their father. They set their God-born life against God, against the whole cr…
658 wordsSECTION 38_God'S Family._
But it is not for her sake that I write these things: would such a woman recognize her own likeness, were I to set it down as close as words could draw it? I am rather as one groping after some light on the true behaviour toward her kind. Are we to treat persons known for liars and strife-makers as the children of the …
400 wordsSECTION 39_The Reward Of Obedience._
'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' 'Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for …
1,077 wordsSECTION 40_The Reward Of Obedience._
Men cannot be righteous without love; to love a righteous man is the best, the only way to learn righteousness: the Lord gives us himself to love, and promises his closest friendship to them that overcome. God's rewards are always in kind. 'I am your father; be my children, and I will be your father.' Every obedience …
699 wordsSECTION 41_The Reward Of Obedience._
Let us look at the similar words the Lord spoke in a later address to his disciples, in the presence of thousands, on the plain,--supplemented with lamentation over such as have what they desire: St Luke vi. 20--26. _'Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be …
874 wordsSECTION 42_The Yoke Of Jesus._
At that time Jesus answered and said,--according to Luke, In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said,--'I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. 'All thing…
958 wordsSECTION 43_The Yoke Of Jesus._
The babes must beware lest the wise and prudent come between them and the Father. They must yield no claim to authority over their belief, made by man or community, by church any more than by synagogue. That alone is for them to believe which the Lord reveals to their souls as true; that alone is it possible for them t…
680 wordsSECTION 44_The Yoke Of Jesus._
The leader of the great array of little ones, himself, in virtue of his firstborn childhood, the first recipient of the revelations of his father, having thus given thanks, and said why he gave thanks, breaks out afresh, renewing expression of delight that God had willed it thus: 'Even so, father, for so it seemed good…
672 wordsSECTION 45_The Yoke Of Jesus._
No man, when first he comes to himself, can have any true knowledge of God; he can only have a desire after such knowledge. But while he does not know him at all, he cannot become in his heart God's child; so the Father must draw nearer to him. He sends therefore his first born, who does know him, is exactly like him, …
712 wordsSECTION 46_The Yoke Of Jesus._
The best of the good wine remains; I have kept it to the last. A friend pointed out to me that the Master does not mean we must take on us a yoke like his; we must take on us the very yoke he is carrying. Dante, describing how, on the first terrace of Purgatory, he walked stooping, to be on a level with Oderisi, who w…
692 wordsSECTION 47_The Yoke Of Jesus._
When we give ourselves up to the Father as the Son gave himself, we shall not only find our yoke easy and our burden light, but that they communicate ease and lightness; not only will they not make us weary, but they will give us rest from all other weariness. Let us not waste a moment in asking how this can be; the on…
620 wordsSECTION 48_The Salt And The Light Of The World._
'Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill, cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a b…
663 wordsSECTION 49_The Salt And The Light Of The World._
From the general idea of light, however, associated with the city as visible to all the country around, the Lord turns at once, in this probably fragmentary representation of his words, to the homelier, the more individual and personally applicable figure of the lamp: 'Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under a bu…
657 wordsSECTION 50_The Salt And The Light Of The World._
To the man who does not try to order his thoughts and feelings and judgments after the will of the Father, I have nothing to say; he can have no light to let shine. For to let our light shine is to see that in every, even the smallest thing, our lives and actions correspond to what we know of God; that, as the true chi…
765 wordsSECTION 51_The Salt And The Light Of The World._
He who goes about his everyday duty as the work the Father has given him to do, is he who lets his light shine. But such a man will not be content with this: he must yet let his light shine. Whatever makes his heart glad, he will have his neighbour share. The body is a lantern; it must not be a dark lantern; the glowin…
873 wordsSECTION 52_The Salt And The Light Of The World._
'Let your light shine,' says the Lord:--if I have none, the call cannot apply to me; but I must bethink me, lest, in the night I am cherishing about me, the Lord come upon me like a thief. There may be those, however, and I think they are numerous, who, having some, or imagining they have much light, yet have not enoug…
457 wordsSECTION 53_The Right Hand And The Left._
Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your father which is in heaven.... But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret; and thy father which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee.-…
830 wordsSECTION 54_The Right Hand And The Left._
There is one word in the context, as we have it in the authorized version, that used to trouble me, seeming to make its publicity a portion of the reward for doing certain right things in secret: I mean the word _openly_, at the ends of the fourth, the sixth, and the eighteenth verses, making the Lord seem to say, 'Avo…
713 wordsSECTION 55_The Right Hand And The Left._
If you say, 'No one ought to do right for the sake of reward,' I go farther and say, 'No man _can_ do right for the sake of reward. A man may do a thing indifferent, he may do a thing wrong, for the sake of reward; but a thing in itself right, done for reward, would, in the very doing, cease to be right.' At the same t…
732 wordsSECTION 56_The Right Hand And The Left._
It seems to me that the only merit that could live before God, is the merit of Jesus--who of himself, at once, untaught, unimplored, laid himself aside, and turned to the Father, refusing his life save in the Father. Like God, of himself he chose righteousness, and so merited to sit on the throne of God. In the same sp…
685 wordsSECTION 57_The Hope Of The Universe._
Out of the gulf into the glory, Father, my soul cries out to be lifted. Dark is the woof of my dismal story, Thorough thy sun-warp stormily drifted!-- Out of the gulf into the glory, Lift me, and save my story. I have done many things merely shameful; I am a man ashamed, my father! My life is ashamed and broken…
661 wordsSECTION 58_The Hope Of The Universe._
First, I repeat, to exclude the sentient from the term common to both in the word _creation_ or _creature_--and then to attribute the capabilities of the sentient to the insentient, as a mere figure to express the hopes of men with regard to the perfecting of the insentient for the comfort of men, were a violence as un…
673 wordsSECTION 59_The Hope Of The Universe._
There are many, I suspect, who from the eighth chapter of St Paul's epistle to the Romans, gather this much and no more:--that the lower animals alive at the coming of the Lord, whensoever that may be, will thenceforward, with such as thereafter may come into existence, lead a happy life for the time allotted them! Str…
758 wordsSECTION 60_The Hope Of The Universe._
Do you believe in immortality for yourself? I would ask any reader who is not in sympathy with my hope for the animals. If not, I have no argument with you. But if you do, why not believe in it for them? Verily, were immortality no greater a thing for the animals than it seems for men to some who yet profess to expect …
773 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.