PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 12
James Hastings · 169,069 words · 174 reading sections
Section 1
Division -Ej 3 ^ I I Copy \ -0 13^ THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE THE GREAT TE OF THE BIBLE "^ MAf^31 1326 EDITED BY THE REV. JAMES 'HASTINGS, D.D. EDITOR OF "THE EXPOSITORY TIMES" "THE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE* "THE DICTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS" AND "THE ENCYCLOPiKDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS " ST. JOHN …
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^ A. Maelaren. , 3 4 THE LOVE OF JESUS FOR HIS OWN understand nothing. All that Jesis did and was, was the fruit of love. He had loved His own which were in the world, and now He loves them unto the end. A Latin proverb says that the end crowns the work. When the Saviour said on the Cross, " It is finished," His end…
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^ I was once talking with a friend about a man who had achieved great distinction, but who had somehow missed the love of his fellowmen, and my friend said : •' The trouble with that man is that he cannot bow himself." He had achieved integrity, rectitude, self-respect, but he had not attained that final grace of chara…
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» J. H. Jowctt, in The Examiner, April 12, 1906, p. 348. ' T. Crawford, Horee Serena, 18. ST. JOHN XIII. I 9 •' draw all men unto himself." But the love for His own which are in the world is no longer mere desire and endeavour. It is being realized in results intended. It has found response, and is generating a recip…
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ST. JOHN XIII. I II III. Love to the End. " Unto the end " — this is the measure of the Saviour's love, and the word does not mean merely so long as He lived, but also in the highest degree, to the very uttermost. It is not merely a measure of time, but a measure of the quality and passion of love. Not merely to the…
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' A. Maclareu. ST. JOHN XIII. I 13 John did not understand all that was taking place that night in the Upper Eoom, and all that happened so soon after, but his final testimony afterwards was, as the final explanation of it all : " Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end." ^ 2. And He loves His own still. — …
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^ I never understood the full meaning of our Lord's words in St. John xiii. 10, until I beheld the better sort of East Indian natives return home after performing their customary ablutions. As they return to their habitations barefoot, they necessarily contract in their progress some portion of dirt on their feet ; and…
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1 T. G. Selby, The Divine Craftsman, 210. ' A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence, 289, 20 REGENERATION AND RENEWAL to fall from grace ? " " No, it is not possible," said the minister. " Then," said the dying Cromwell, " I am safe, for I know that I was once in grace." ^ ^ The efforts of an unregenerate man to resist e…
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2. We must seek daily release from the incipient defilements which fasten upon the regenerate personality without at first bringing upon it specific marks of guilt and wrong-doing. The neglected stain, however extenuating the circumstances in which it affixed itself, may end in a disfigurement that will be more than sk…
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The time is short, and there is much to be done. The pre- parations for His capture will begin forthwith, and He has many* things to say to His Apostles which cannot be so well said at any other time. What lesson shall He take first ? Upon what doc- 28 THE NEW COMMANDMENT trine shall He chiefly lay stress ? "A new co…
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comprehensiveness this command was new. It was now given in direct phraseology, and it developed the one principle to which all preceding enactments were to be traced. Incidental injunctions had contained some one or other of the features of this brother- love ; but all such commands were absorbed in this novel and eng…
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^ L. Abbott, Signs of Promise, 234. 32 THE NEW COMMANDMENT ^ Truly God has bound Himself by love's sweet constraint to make us capable of a love that is similar to His own ; that is to share the highest of all things with us to the full. The self- sacrificing love that began in God must also go on in us. By every mea…
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^ " It is well," said John Wesley, " that you should be thoroughly sensible of this: the Heaven of Heavens is Love, there is nothing higher in religion, there is in effect nothing else. If you look for anything but more Love, you are looking wide of the mark : you are getting out of the royal way." "Beloved, let us lo…
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^ Almost twenty years ago, while living in America, I went ■ to reside in a little town called Delaware, in Ohio ; and the first Saturday evening of my residence I went as a young man to the Y.M.C.A. prayer-meeting. There were about one hundred young men present, and the meeting was of a most hearty type. The last hymn…
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In this scene we have the beating of Christ's heart and the vision of His soul. Here He is, we may say, in His habitual considerateness and sympathy, in the quick, tender considerate- ness and sympathy that characterized Him all through His course, from the moment when, at the beginning of His ministry. He was filled w…
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44 SECRET OF THE UNTROUBLED HEART Himself, for that would really be setting forth His created mani- festation as more trustworthy than the Divine reality. Neither would He bid them practise a double faith, believing in God and believing in Himself. Such a command would imply the insufficiency of believing in God. We …
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IL Faith m Christ. "Believe also in me." Christ makes for Himself the most majestic claim. " Believe in Me," He says, " as you believe in God, and so you will believe in God in a richer and fuller form." " Ye believe in Ood — as all your Jewish ancestors believed in Him — add to that faith all the things I have show…
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St. Philip and other anxious and sorrowing spirits need no longer go about groping for guidance and crying mournfully, " Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Jesus has already shown us the Father. Those who have really seen Him have seen the Father so far as it is possible or necessary that we should see Him in th…
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Man is of dust: ethereal hopes are his. Which, when they should sustain themselves aloft, Want due consistence; like a pillar of smoke, That with majestic energy from earth llises; but, having reached the thinner air. Melts, and dissolves, and is no longer seen. Who will assure us, in face of " the thinner air " …
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It is the antithesis of that state which Christ described as ^ Bishop Ingham, From Japan to JervMUem, 48. ST. JOHN XIV. I 53 peace, the rocky strength that is not exempt from sorrow, but remains unshaken by it. For we must remember that Jesus Christ Himself, though He spoke of giving His peace to His disciples, was "…
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Blindfold I walk this life's bewildering maze; Up flinty steep, through frozen mountain pass, Through thorn-set barren and through deep morass; But strong in faith I tread the uneven ways, ' Johu S. MaTsr. ST. JOHN XIV. I 55 And bare my head unshrinking to the blast, Because my Father's arm is round me cast; And …
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ST. JOHN XIV. I 57 the Apocalypse is laid, not in some far-off sphere, some fabled Elysium, but here on earth. Heaven is witliin the good man's heart. The sea which is before the throne is smooth and clear as crystal, not because it is remote from earthly storms, but because the Spirit of God moves upon the face of th…
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2. But it is one of the characteristics of our Lord's teaching that, though it is within the reach of every man, it is beyond the reach of every man. The truths which are contained in these words are stated in forms which are intelligible to those who are incapable of speculative thought ; but let a man of the most vig…
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(2) Taking this to be the keynote of this part of our Lord's discourse, we see in it an assurance of speedy and almost immediate consolation. If we must fix some definite note of time for the fulfilment of the promise, everything points to the out- * J. W. Shepard, Light and Life, 3. 64 THE HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS po…
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But one day looking upon the grave she suddenly said to herself : " The thing that lies there is not my husband. His spirit and his love do not belong to the realm of decay. Soul lives : love is one of the eternals," And there in the midst of an acre dedicated to corruption she gathered herself up from the morbid debil…
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ST. JOHN XIV. 2 69 hath seen and heard, that he testifieth." How different is Plato's dimness of perception, his merely hopeful conjecture respecting another life, from the calm and authoritative utterance of Him who said to Nicodemus : " We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen. And no man hath ascende…
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^ Sometimes it is a pain* that we know so little of God and of the things that are unseen and eternal ; sometimes they lose their reality to us, and our vision of God is dimmed and obscured and clouded, our sense of His presence vague and dull, our con- sciousness of His Fatherhood fitful and uncertain. How seldom we t…
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ST. JOHN XIV. 2 73 has such glad awaking ! Happy close of life's day, whether it has been spent in storm or in calm, if it brings us safely within the portals of that house from which we shall go no more out.^ What joys are lost, what hopes are given, As thro' this death-struck world we roam. We think awhile that ho…
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» R. W. Dale, Christ and the Future Life, 41. • J. Ker, Sermons, ii. 258. ST. JOHN XIV. 2 75 minds, and the world of thought and feehng had no perplexities, and all things were our ov/n by the joy they gave us, by the love we bore them. These were the days when we inherited the earth: we had a kingdom fit for any kin…
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ST. JOHN XIV. 2 'j^ T make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out thence no more." This is the crown of comfort, — the promise of an eternal inheritance. ^ The child asks you when you give him anything : " Can I have it to keep?" It is the immortal spirit within him that speaks. Here our Lord satisfies…
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ST. JOHN XIV. 2 79 again, the penitent whose sins were as scarlet, but are now white as snow ; who wandered far from his Father's house, and felt the raighty famine, and almost perished with hunger, but at last — at last came to himself; and arose and came to his Father, and was welcomed with a warmth he had never dar…
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1 E. Whyte. ST. JOHN XIV. 2 8i a morning without clouds ; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain"; and His name shall be written as the " Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." ^ By comparing my experience with that of others, you may perceive …
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S6 RELIABILITY OF THE REDEEMER house. You clung to that faith when the rest went. I knew it all the time, and I never said a word to contradict you, because it was a true and sure hope, truer and surer and sweeter than you knew. If it had not been so, I would have told you ; but it is so. This time you may let your he…
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3. Christ's confirmation of human instincts. — There are some beliefs embedded in the native soil of our hearts ; they grow there of themselves, and we need no proof of their existence or reality. One of these is the hope of immortality. No savage so barbarous, no religion so material, as to be without its hope and its…
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Nicoll (W. R.), The Lamp of Sacrifice, 155. Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, v. 86. Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 214. „ „ The Pattern in the Mount, 227. Smith (D.), The Pilgrim's Hospice, 97. Christian TForld Pulpit, xxix. 10 (Davies). The Preparation and the Reception. I go to prepare a place…
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^ Wherever He would have His disciples go. He goes first Himself, and through the door which He has opened He draws them by His love. That is the whole philosophy of Christian culture. And that is the meaning of the Incarnation. God entered into human life ; made Himself one with it as He only could have done with a na…
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(2) The second remarkable thing about the text is that the Divine being, God the Son, should ever have occasion to " prepare " anything. To prepare may signify to get ready, to put things in order, to look after arrangements, appointments, and the like, so as to have all things in due proportion and relation, that the …
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lOo PREPARATION AND RECEPTION He will come again! Sometime He will surely stand once more On the earth which His own hand hath made- Only never as before, Weary, lonely, and in pain. As the Lamb on whom our sin was laid — Stretching out His hands in vain, All the day, To a people gone astray. He will come again! O,…
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^ Let not thy heart be troubled ; in the vast spaces there is a home for thee. The Son of Man has gone before ; there is a region prepared for humanity. There is a spot in this stupendous uni- verse where human nature dwells. That spot is thy one comfort, thy one glory. No other glory would make up for it. There may be…
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2. Some people find it hard to trace the connexion between way, and truth, and life ; and that difficulty was well expressed by Maldonatus in the pithy saying, "If Christ had been less liberal in explanation, we had less labour in exposition." The three terms, way, truth, and life, are not co-ordinate, as Luther a…
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no THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE Studies in Indian lAfe and Sentiment, in the great loyalty felt by millions of natives towards Queen Victoria, of whom most of them knew nothing more than the name. But she was a Person, and embodied the idea of the British Kaj in a way that appealed strongly to them. They recognized gr…
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^ A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 45. 112 THE WAY, THE TRUTH. THE LIFE utter, in the Divine name, the promise of eternal life. He is the life. ^ In his Jottings from the Pacific (p. 83), Mr. Gill speaks of a native preacher in Earotonga who referred to the custom at a great wedding for the bride to walk…
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114 "THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE moving in diametrically opposite planes. The Father mourns the alienated trust, love, and service of His rebellious child. The child no longer feels the rest, strength, rapturous awe once realized in the manifested presence of the Father. All the restlessness of ambition and all the d…
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^ It is a way that never has been broken up, and never will be. All the floods of all His people's sins have never made a swamp or bog-hole in this blessed way ; all the earthquakes and upheavals of our rebellious natures have never made a gap or chasm in this glorious way. Straight from the very gates of hell, where t…
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1 E. H. Divall, A Believer's Hnl, 14. ' J. E. B. Mayor, Sermons, 9. ST. JOHN XIV. 6 119 was being strained by what He had just been saying to them. Here was a man in most respects hke themselves : a man who became hungry and sleepy, a man who was to be arrested and executed by the rulers, assuring them that He was go…
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« W. J. Knox Little, Sunlight and Shadow, 28. ST. JOHN XIV. 6 121 And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveHness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.^ (2) Christ is t]3£josvelation_of_G.od- — He was God manifest in the flesET It is common to say that Chri…
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^ See the poor woman in the crowd, who has spent all her living on seeking health, and has spent that living in vain. She comes behind the great Teacher, in the crowd secretly, saying, " If I do but touch his garment I shall be made whole." She had tried every other resource, gone to every other professed healer, had b…
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With yours would mingle somewhat of glad song. 1 too have come through wintry terrors — yea Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul Have come, and am deliver'd. Me the Spring, Me also dimly with new life hath touch'd, And with regenerate hope, the salt of life; And I would dedicate these thankful tears To whats…
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I30 THE GIVING OF THE COMFORTER sacrificed fathers and mothers and home and friends and business and every earthly prospect. And now He was going! In response to His call they had embarked upon a ne ?7 life. They had taken up their cross and followed Him. It was not an easy life ; it was a hard life, a toilsome life, …
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^ God cannot, will not, does not, bless those who are living in disoljedience. But only set out in the path of obedience, and at ; once, before one stone is laid upon another, God is eager, as it ; were, to pour out His blessing. " From this day will I bless you." ^ 4. But do we not need the Spirit to make us obedi…
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^ We are not to think of Christ's advocacy in heaven as if it were of the natiu'e of supplication on our behalf. It is much more than that, although it is to be feared that the modern ideas which have usurped the ground which the word " intercession " covers have nearly evacuated the word of its fuller and more gloriou…
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2. The Spirit is the gift of the Father, because the Father is the Fountain of all Godhead. The Manhood of Christ is repre- sented by our Lord as setting before the Father the necessities of the case, the human needs of His brethren, those whom the Father has given to Him. The Father, as the Source of all Divine life, …
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(1) " It beholdeth him not." — This is the real secret of men's laughter at the idea of the existence of the Holy Ghost — they see Him not. Tell the worldling, " I have the Holy Ghost within me." He says, " I cannot see it." He wants it to be something tangible : a thing he can recognize with his senses. *R. M. Benson…
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1. The word " Comforter." — The word translated " Comforter " is found only in the writings of St. John. You look in vain for it in all other portions of Scripture. We have it four times in the Gospel according to St. John, as coming from the lips of Jesus. We find it once in the First Epistle of St. John (ii. 1). In t…
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» T. D. Bernard. ST. JOHN XIV. 15-17 143 you comfortless: I will come to you" (ver. 18); and in the assurance given to those that love Him, He says (ver. 23), " My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." It may be asked. How is such language consistent with those other words of …
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^ Bishop A. F. W. Ingram, A Mission of the Spirit, 192. ST. JOHN XIV. 15-17 145 sympathy which enervates and a sympathy which braces, a love which weakens and a love which inspires. In our Lord's promise of the Comforter it is Divine sympathy and love of the latter kind that are suggested. ^ Did not the Apostle pray…
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^ A. H. Drysdale, Christ Invisible our Gain, 186, ST. JOHN XIV. 15-17 147 3. The Spirit of truth, communicated to the Church, is the living Presence, in wisdom, power, and love, of that Divine energy which formed the worlds. They were formed for the habitation of God purposing to become incarnate. The Spirit of the I…
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ST. JOHN XIV. 15-17 149 I lift my eyes to it, yet the picture is always the same, Floating clouds overhead may modify the light and shadow, but they do not change the permanent features in the least. And yet I know the picture is not out there : it is within me ; it is not the eye but the mind that sees. The effect of…
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ST. JOHN XIV. 15-17 151 by a clearer vision of eternal things, by a more vivid consciousness of sin, by mightier energies of holiness, by a diviner dynamic of spiritual love. In the might of inward spiritual force men and women are to occupy the heavenly places with Christ. To this end they must be endued with new pow…
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(2) Indioelling. — " And shall be in you." It would be esteemed a rare privilege to have a great and truly noble person dwell with us, a Paul, a Chrysostom, an Augustine ; to have such an one as our perpetual monitor, and adviser, and exemplar; to have him show us how to act, how to speak, how to live ; to have the ben…
1,069 wordsSource & rights
Public-domain historical edition (1910); OCR text from Internet Archive. OCR may contain scanning/transcription errors. Verify quotations against page images when precision matters.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.