PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 12
James Hastings · 169,069 words · 174 reading sections
Section 61
Notice how, in His reply, our Lord subtly and significantly alters the form of the statement which He has already made. He had formerly said, " If ye love me, ye will keep my command- ments," but now He casts it into a purely impersonal form, and says, " If a, man" anybody, not you only, but anybody — "if a man love me…
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^ Rainy, Life, i. 131. 2 y^ y^-^ Bobertson, Sermons, ii. 101. i6o WHERE HE DELIGHTS TO DWELL communion with the Most High. The reason is at once apparent. True obedience can spring only from love. " He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Love is the hidden fountain; obedience is the…
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^ M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, 50. ST. JOHN (2) — II i62 WHERE HE DELIGHTS TO DWELL ^ We must begin to love Christ before we can keep His word. Christ is the lawgiver of God's world, and before we can obey His laws we must be on terms of amity with Himself. This implies that we know Him to be at peace …
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2. The manifestation is abiding. — That coming is a permanent residence : " We will make our abode with him." Very beautiful is it to notice that our Lord here employs that same sweet and significant word with which He began this wonderful series of encouragements, when He said, " In my Father's house are many mansions…
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•[j One can give to another only what one has owned oneself, and as soon as Jesus makes His will and leaves peace to the Twelve, it comes to our mind that He has endowed them with the chiefest good, and has given what, beyond all men that ever lived. He Himself enjoyed. He had neither houses nor lands. One other thing …
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^ When we look abroad upon the sea, or the silent hills as they sleep in the tranquil folds of the evening light, and say. How peaceful they are ! we mean not merely that the wind is down or the air is still, but that Nature rests in her inner central depths. It is such an inward reality — quiet within the soul, a rest…
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How shall I quiet my heart ? How shall I keep it still ? How shall I hush its tremulous start at tidings of good or ill ? ^ W. J. Armitage, Tlie Fruit of the Spirit, 32. ' F. E. Ridgeway, Calls to Service, 220. « E. M. Goulburn. ST. JOHN XIV. 27 175 How shall I gather and hold contentment and peace and rest, Wrappi…
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^ No harm can come to the least of the little ones who believe in Christ, and are faithful and true to Him. At the centre of the wild cyclone, which bears devastation and ruin in its awful sweep, there is a spot which is so quiet that a leaf is scarcely stirred, where a little child might sleep undisturbed. So in the h…
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2. What suggested this lovely parable of the vine and the branches is equally unimportant and undiscoverable. The great truth in this chapter, applied in manifold directions, and viewed in many aspects, is that of the living union between Christ and those who believe in Him, and the parable of the vine and the branches…
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\ Christ was the Son of God. But remember in what sense He ever used this name — Son of God because Son of Man. He claims Sonship in virtue of His Humanity. Now, in the whole previous revelation through the Prophets, etc., one thing was implied — only through man can God be known ; only through a perfect man, perfectly…
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^ 77m! Life of Henry Drummond, 472. i88 THE TRUE VINE ^ Thou art the Vine, And I, 0 Jesus, am a branch of Thine; And day by day from Thee New life flows unto me. Nought have I of my own, But all my strength is drawn from Thee alone. As, severed from the tree, the branch must die, So even I Could never live th…
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(2) Yet the Christian life — the Christian life, that is, in its widest sense — is manifold. The loveliness and grandeur and power of the Christian life all spring from the infinite variety of its forms. In some respects the Pauline image of the body and its members presents this lesson to us with more completeness ; b…
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So the character of a husbandman implies the cultivation of existing powers, not a transformation so that one plant should bring forth different kinds of fruit. God watches over Christ so as to develop by His providence the true glory of the Humanity. He does not seek to make the manhood of Christ fruitful in any way c…
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So God makes fruitfulness the test. Not leaf, not colour, not wood, but fruit. In other words, God's great test is not profession, not privilege, not apparent power, but the fruit of the Spirit in the life and character. If there is no fruit there is no life. If there is fruit, it is an evidence that Christ is abiding …
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Thanks to Thy sovereign grace, 0 God, if I Am graffed in that true vine a living shoot. Whose arms embrace the world, and in whose root, Planted by faith, our life must hidden lie. But Thou beholdest how I fade and dry ! Choked with a waste of leaf, and void of fruit, Unless Thy spring perennial shall recruit My sa…
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2. " It is expedient for you that I go away." — Is not the ex- pression used by the Lord something stronger than we should venture to use if we had not His own authority for it ? Literally, " It is profitable for you." There is no ambiguity in the word. It is found several times in the Gospels, and always with the same…
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3. Why, then, was it expedient for them that He should go away ? (1) Absence is better than presence under certain conditions. — The influence of the absent is not only sometimes stronger in its degree, it is always purer in its kind, than the influence exerted by presence. Sometimes, dimly, we have been conscious of …
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Life is one long-drawn anguish of decay. Where Thou wert wont to go we also went: Why not to-day?" Nevertheless a cloud cut off their gaze : They tarry to build up Jerusalem, Watching for Him, while thro' the appointed days Ho watches them. ' J. Kelman, EpJumera EUrnitatis, 140. ST. JOHN XVI. 7 207 They do His Wil…
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^ Many of us must recall the parable of an Alpine sunset. We gaze on the vast bare rocks and snow-slopes transfigured in a flood of burning light. In a moment there falls over them an ashy paleness as of death, cold and chilling. While we strive to measure our loss a deepening flush spreads slowly over the mountain sid…
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212 AN EXPEDIENT DEPARTURE II. The Coming of the Spirit. Christ's going away was a provision for the future life. The absent Lord prepares a place there; the absent Object of faith educates the souls of the faithful to possess and enjoy it. But He provides for the life that now is. And His going away has to do with …
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^ At first the inner life depends largely upon stimulus from without: the soul lies to a great extent inactive unless some external influence rouses it from its sleep ; and, in the early days of our Christian discipleship, it is often the more public, the more outward, channels through which Christ's influence comes do…
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(2) They did not understand His teaching till the Spirit came and interpreted it. When He went away, the blessing that He promised as more than compensation for His presence was that they should enter into the significance of His past companionship with them, that the Spirit should bring to their remembrance whatsoever…
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1. Sin, righteousness, judgment, are three of the greatest terms in the vocabulary of men. And they stand for tremendous spiritual realities by which our state is conditioned and our destiny determined. The words that stand for these realities are to be found in all languages ; and in some languages (and particularly i…
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I. Sin. " He will convict the world in respect of sin." Now the world as such knows nothing of sin ; and yet it is the root of all that from which it suffers. It is the root, it is the explanation of all the numberless forms of damage and deterioration that human character suffers. Sin is the source whence all the il…
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(2) Conviction of sin is necessary. — "He shall convince the world of sin." The first outstanding characteristic of the whole Gospel message is the new gravity which it attaches to the fact of sin, the deeper meaning which it gives to the word, and the larger scope which it shows its blighting influences to have had in…
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^ Men say they understand that cruelty, treachery, and lust bring their punishment sooner or later. But what they cannot understand is that the mere fact of refusing to believe is the sin of sins. A typical writer of the period says : " Science is but a new way of applying the mind to everything. It has affirmed the ri…
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' G. Campbell Morgan. 230 THE SPIRIT AND THE WORLD snow served to bring into view all the dust from the roadside, all the bits of blackthorn from the hedges, all the carbon flakes ejected from the chimneys of the adjoining town that had been caught in their fleeces.^ (2) The Spirit comes with a new atmosphere of sym…
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1. The Spirit convinces the world of the existence of righteousness. — The world as a world has but dim and inadequate conceptions of what righteousness is. A Pharisee is its type, or a man that keeps a clean life in respect of great transgressions — a whited sepulchre of some sort or other. The world apart from Christ…
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Abate — Cardinal — Christ — Maria — God . . . Pompilia ! Will you let them murder me'? Pompilia, the sweet child, saint, martyr, was, in the man's thought, exalted even above God in the power to save. In all the paths of life, even the highest, the same holds true. The background of death is needed to bring out the fu…
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(2) " And ye see me no more." We are often like His disciples among these deep mysteries — we cannot tell what He saith. And yet the Holy Spirit makes the meaning as clear as it can be made to mortals. We are to lose the earthly vision that we 'may gain the heavenly. We are to lose the vision after the flesh that we ma…
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(2) Judgment is now. — It is evident that Christ referred to a judgment that had then and there commenced, for the words have a present meaning. " The prince of this world has been judged." We can most easily understand this by referring to a precisely similar utterance in the 31st verse of the 12th chapter: "Now is th…
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(2) The Spirit will show that by this victory the perpetuity of evil is shattered. The darkest lie of the Evil One is this — that evil is an eternal power. Before the advent of the Gospel, the world was beginning to believe in the omnipotence of wrong. The slavery wrought by sin was so complete that men were los- ing f…
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246 DAY OF KNOWLEDGE AND POWER is not in this verse a contrast drawn between asking the Son, which shall cease, and asking the Father, which shall begin ; but the first half of the verse closes the declaration of one blessing, namely, that hereafter they shall be so taught by the Spirit as to have nothing further to i…
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1. *' In that day" — That day broke at the Eesurrection and attained its settled light at Pentecost. Then " the hour came " from which things would be as they are here described. In the occasional intercourse of the forty days the disciples did ask something and hear something as of old, yet the former day of living an…
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Breezes of spring, all earth to life awaking, — Birds swiftly soaring through the sunny sky, — The butterfly its lonely prison breaking, — The seed upspringing, which had seemed to die, — Types such as these a word of hope have spoken, Have shed a gleam of light around the tomb; But weary hearts longed for a surer …
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* Dean F, Pigou, Faith and Practice, 246. ST. JOHN XVI. 23 253 give it a prominent place in the system of Christianity. He confirms His promise by an oath, that by these two immutable things which cannot be broken, His promise and His oath, we might have the strong consolation that our prayers penetrate through the c…
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1 Marcus Aurelius. ST. JOHN XVI. 23 255 and far beyond the regions of the stars, shall combine in ministry and advantages for the praying man.i 3. The conditions of the promise. — There are no absolute con- ditions laid down in the text, but there are two conditions implied. (1) It is by the next word in His promis…
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ST. JOHN XVI. 23 257 " What wilt thou that I should do unto thee ? Be it unto thee even as thou wilt." *ff We all know with what confidence the clerk of a business house goes to a bank with a draft " in the name " of his firm. If he were to present it in his own name, that would be a very- different affair. The deman…
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L Life Eteknal. 1. What is the meaning of "eternal"? The answer of the ordinary man would be, " Something that lasts for ever," With him eternity would simply mean endless time; it would mean duration, or permanence, or endless succession, or unalterability ; it would mean adding so much time together that you could …
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II. Eternal Life as Knowledge of God in Christ. 1. It is knowledge. — Knowledge is a word of more than one meaning, and that knowledge of God which is eternal life has very 1 A. Scmplo, Scotch Sermons (1880), 333. ST. JOHN XVII. 3 265 little in common with that knowledge of Him which is called theology. For there i…
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' Dante, Inferno, xxvi. (traus. by Shadwell). ST. JOHN XVII. 3 267 a father, or mother, or friend, whom we love and value above every one else ; whose ways and thoughts we are thoroughly acquainted with ; and who, we feel, knows us thoroughly, feels with us, cares for us, and longs for our being happy> 3. It is know…
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^ E. Hatcli, Memoirs, 187. * H. W. Clark, Meanings and Methods of the Sjnriliuil Life, 21, ST. JOHN XVII. 3 269 ^ Knowing Christ makes us live as God lives, so far as that can be for us. Knowing Christ makes us live as God lives — that is the miracle — sets us into worlds where limitations and sorrows and dyings cea…
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^ The path of the intellect is not the path that brings the soul into that Sacred Presence which it seeks. He is reached by another means altogether. What is it? Let the soul take to itself the " wings of love," and the distance between it and Him will be covered in a moment. The mountain will become a plain, J. Jorge…
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Death claims all ages for his own. Many also die from loyalty to duty and to love. Blessings dearer than life may be in danger ; evils worse than death may be threatened to our country and ourselves. Now Christians, like others, may have to fight even 27s 276 ENVIRONMENT AND CHARACTER to fche death for national l…
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278 ENVIRONMENT AND CHARACTER And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls, T, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light, Bow down one thousand and two hundred times, To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the saints ; Or in the night, after a little sleep, I wake : the chill stars sparkle ; I am wet With dre…
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28o ENVIRONMENT AND CHARACTER was possible. An induction coil could not be constructed, and so there could be no dynamo or electric motor. In short, there could be no transmission of electrical energy in any form. Insulation is as much a matter of necessity in things spiritual as in things electrical. This does not me…
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^ J. Hamilton Thoni, Lawi of Life after the Mind of Christ, 311. ^ J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, 57. 282 ENVIRONMENT AND CHARACTER value of this life and assigning to His disciples their place in it as His servants. He taught them their ohligatiou to ornament and develop this world. This earth is the first stage …
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^ Long ago I made a change of habitat from the 'hill country of western Carolina to what was regarded as a malarious district near the eastern coast. I was warned of the probable conse- quences to my health, but I laughed at the fears of my friends. I protested that there was nothing in the world the matter with the ai…
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ST. JOHN XVII. 15 287 overmuch trial, trial under which our weakness may sink. Christ does not mean that we are to pray never to be tempted, but only that we may be shielded from temptations too great for our strength ; and that we may be delivered from the sin of yielding to the temptation.^ 3. We are kept ly the vi…
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I rest on Thy unwearied mind; Thy planning and Thy love go on, Nor dost Thou leave me far behind ; I'm carried to another dawn. The new day breaks. From earth's old mould Fresh flowers grow along my way. New life is flashed on problems old ; On ancient life new forces play. 0 wondrous, wakeful Warden ! When The la…
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in the world worth more than pleasure, more than fortune, more 293 294 THE MASTER'S CONSECRATION Lhau health itself. I mean devotion, self-dedication to a great end." There is a higher end than scientific research, and to that end Jesus Christ dedicated Himself. IT In the instructive and profound book on The Religi…
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Think, again, how it met Him on the Cross. From out the crowd that gathered about the city walls, there rings the fierce derision, " If thou be the Son of God, come down frpm the cross." Others have suffered perhaps as cruel a martyrdom, others have hung in anguish, mocked and derided ; but of all that ever went forth …
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^ The mother consecrates herself for her infant. She devotes herself in self-forgetting love. The motive is strong, the strongest we know — mother-love. This emotion throbbing in the mother- heart finds expression in a thousand acts of loving care ; but the child grows up and needs a mother's care less; still the care …
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2. The next element is purification. — It follows almost without saying that if you set apart a person or a thing to the service of an absolutely holy God, anything that defiles that person or thing renders it unfit for God's use, and hence, though the first meaning of the word is separation, it speedily " acquires," a…
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* H. Clay Trumbull, Our Mimndcrstood Bible, 115. ST. JOHN XVII. 19 303 the time he is cramming a rotten stone into the building just where he has set to work. Let him forget the pinnacles, if he will, or hold only the floating image of them in his imagination for his inspiration; but the thing that he must do is to p…
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^ In the truth, and not simply through the truth. The Truth is, as it were, the atmosphere, the element, in which believers are immersed and by which they are sustained : and we must think of the Truth in the widest sense in which we can conceive of it. Such Truth, which Christ is, and which Christ reveals, is every- w…
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„ „ The Witness of the Passion, 1. Macintosh (W.), Rabbi Jesus, 1. M'Intyre (D. M.), Life in His Name, 49. Macleod (D.), Christ and Society, 95, Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in The College CJutpel, i. 159 ; iii. 185. „ „ Sunday Evenings in The College Chapel, 197. Porter (N.), Yale College Sermons (1871-1886), 34, 76. …
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The answer Christ gave to Pilate suggests the best reply to the question, " What did Christ mean by the Kingdom of God." He was king. He said, in the kingdom of the truth, meaning thereby not a mere dogma, but the truth of God and the truth of man. The kind of power which He here claims is spiritual power, and that is …
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2. It is a conquering kingdom. — " Magna est Veritas et praevalet." Like the magnificent palace of the Incas of Cuzco, the ancient imperial city of Peru, whose ponderous stones were united by seams of melted gold, the whole social fabric is cemented by this pure and durable element, without which the noble * Ruskin, Th…
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3. Jesus lore witness to the truth. — This was the purpose of His mission. " To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." He is now before Pilate and nearing the close of His earthly life. The unity of His life, we see as we study it, is the followi…
1,218 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.