PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 13
James Hastings · 184,906 words · 190 reading sections
Section 61
If The belief in God's Fatherhood is the belief in the immanence of God. It is the faith that His interests are bound up with the interests of the tiny sparrow, maimed by a stone from some 1 64 AN UNKNOWN GOD ruthless hand, and perishing in its pain, as surely as with the spiritual progress of Augustine or St. Paul o…
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Mackenzie (W. L.), Pure Religion, 127. Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 300. Paget (E. C), Silence, 139. Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 228. Reynolds (H. R.), Light and Peace, 55. Westcott (B. F.), Peterborough Sermons, 383. Christian World Pulpit, xx. 156 (M'Cree) ; xxxix. 99 (Jones). 168 The Beatitude of the Giver. …
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^f " I wish the good old times would come again," she said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state " — so she was pleased to ramble on — " in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to s…
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2. It should be noticed that the personal pronoun is emphatic (the Revised Version, by inserting himself, has given the correct rendering of the original Greek): "How he himself said" implies that the fact was beyond all doubt. We may note one distinctive feature in Christian philanthropy, that it is based upon allegia…
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There lives a glory in these sweet June days Such as I found not in the years gone by, A kindlier meaning in the unclouded sky, A tenderer whisper in the woodland ways; And I have understanding of the lays, The birds are singing, forasmuch as I Have learned how love avails to satisfy A man's whole heart, and fills h…
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(2) No one, again, can be insensible to the deep joy which comes from feeling that others love us : that there are those who wait with watchful eagerness to render to us offices of kindly ministry ; to serve the cause which we embrace ; to follow where we lead ; to yield their own wills to our judgment. Such tender and…
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plan."2 IV. The Example of Jesus. We began by studying the example of St. Paul, let us end with a higher example. If you would see this saying exemplified in its perfection, you must go to his Master — to the utterer of the saying. Even St. Paul was behind Him who " was rich, and for our sakes became poor, that we t…
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„ „ Manchester Sermons, 62. M'Fadyen (J. E.), The City with Foundations, 221. Maclaren (A.), A Year's Ministry, i. 165. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, iv. 17. Smith (Gipsy), As Jesus Passed By, 139. Spurgeon (C. H.), The New Park Street Pulpit (1858), No. 171. Trench (R. C), Westminster and other Sermons, 32. Vaughan (C…
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TJ Now we must know that every excellence which is peculiar to a thing is lovable in that thing : as in a man to be well bearded, and in a woman to have her face entirely free from hair ; or in a setter to have a good nose, and in a greyhound to be fast. And the more peculiar to a thing the excellence is, the more lova…
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(1) God has a right to our ambition. Life itself is, or should be, carried out in obedience to vocation. Let us ask ourselves, Are we giving God His due in this respect ? Are we doing what 1 D. Watson, Social Problems and the Church's Duty, 118. 192 THE LASH OF THE LAW we ought for the Great Being who sent us into th…
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Bright shadows of true Eest! Some shoots of blisse; Heaven once a week ; The next world's gladness prepossest in this; A day to seek Eternity in time; the steps by which We climb above all ages ; Lamps that light Man through his heap of dark days ; and the rich, And full redemption of the whole week's flight.2 ii. T…
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ACTS xxiv. 25 197 when it grows white hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality — of real Christianity, for example — is exactly this same thing. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means some- thing flaming like Joan of Arc. In a word, God pai…
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(2) But it may be doubted whether the expectation of a judgment is more a point of natural or of revealed religion. Certainly, if revelation declares, conscience ratifies. The sense of accountability is one of those ultimate facts of human nature, inconceivable upon the modern molecular hypothesis, which any teacher wh…
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We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge, We therefore pray Thee help Thy servants Whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Precious Blood ! 2 When with these eyes, closed now by Thee, But then restored, The great and white throne I shall see Of my dread Lord; And lowly kneeling, for the most Stiff then must kneel…
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204 THE LASH OF THE LAW that wrath of God at which he shuddered ? The sacred historian shall tell us why he sent for Paul, and communed with him often. "He hoped that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him." All that was meanest, all that was basest, all that was most unrighteous in the man …
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1 T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet, 143. 2 L. A. Banks. 206 THE LASH OF THE LAW When I have a convenient season, he bids me say to the Saviour and the Spirit of God, I will send for Thee. And how pitifully often the convenient season never dawns.1 4. " Go thy way." Let us think what reasons influence us to make this reply. …
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2. The scene suggested by the text is worth recalling. It was about the year a.d. 60, and Paul lay a prisoner in the Praetorium of Caesarea. Two years he had been there, suffering on the most vexatious and frivolous of charges. Felix had little doubt of his innocence ; and his conscience had been roused to painful acti…
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214 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE poured upon the persecutor as he reeled from his horse on the way to the great city. 3. Besides "outward and ordinary means," there are also golden moments of inspiration and encouragement; and such moments we all can and ought to watch for. Dull indeed, or very depraved, is the life that ne…
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1 R. "Winterbotham. • Dora Farncomb, The Vision of His Face, 4. 216 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE before the eye of Saul of Tarsus, of this earth, and, in part, of his own creating. It took shape in a great measure out of the circumstances of his birth ; it was such a vision as would naturally be seen by one who was " of the…
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I go down from the hills half in gladness, and half with a pain I depart, Where the Mother with gentlest breathing made music on lip and in heart; For I know that my childhood is over: a call comes out of the vast, And the love that I had in the old time like beauty in twilight is past. I am fired by a Danaan whis…
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ACTS xxvi. 19 221 1. There must be both the vision and the obedience, and they must be in that order. St. Paul had no magic secret that kept labour sweet to him ; he had only vision and obedience. But he had them in that order — vision first, and obedience following from it. It is not mere action that is the secret of…
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* M. W. Stryker. ACTS xxvi. 19 223 Bee the task awaiting them as the legacy of the dream, their heart fails and they are helpless. These are the idealists of the world, who can plan great things for others or for themselves, but who cannot execute. Their lives are almost always barren of results and full of disappoin…
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T{ If we have dreamed a dream which we have reason to think acts & rom. — 15 226 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE is from the Lord, let us spare no effort to realize it, though it may take a lifetime to do it. If we have a thought which is in advance of our times, and at first sight perhaps a little Utopian, let us keep at it, …
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1 H. N. Grimley. 2 Buskin, Architecture and Painting, 89. 228 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE be had known the Divine and human Christ, was near and dear to Paul. There is sometimes a danger in sympathetic characters of some flaw of weakness. Not a touch of weakness in him. Strong, unflinching, unswerving, decided. Probably ne…
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3. If we have been obedient to that heavenly vision, then we have had another vision after a while. We find not only that Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, but that He claims to be our Lord and Master. By His re- demption He has not only delivered us, but purchased us. We are bought with …
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1 A. W. Thorold. Not Ashamed of the Gospel. Literature. Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 218. Aglionby (F. K.), The Better Choice, 86. Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, ii. 176. Arnold (T.), Sermons, ii. 54. Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 237. Broughton (L. G.), Salvation and the Old Theology, 45. Brown (J. B.),…
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ROMANS i. 16 237 gathered several friends who have come down to the harbour to see her off. Among these is one man, little in stature and insignificant in his general appearance, but with a face that bears the marks of deep thought, of hard study, of resolute will. This man, as he bids farewell to the woman I have men…
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Tj Thus, as arising out of the historical facts, the Gospel becomes the presence of Christ in the soul. It is precisely this, and only this, that makes the Gospel to be for us a Gospel. It is the transcendent miracle of the power of the Cross. What is the crowning fact of Church History throughout these nineteen centur…
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2. It was so unpopular. St. Paul was well aware that there were features of the Christian Creed, and those not outlying or accidental, but of its very core and essence, which were in the highest degree unwelcome to the non-Christian world. Less than this he cannot mean by such an expression as "the offence of the Cross…
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1 T. R. Williams. 244 NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL sanctuary of the soul, the door of which is closed to all except a very few, if not indeed to everybody. Eeligion has its outward and visible side ; its public acts of homage ; its recognized obliga- tions. But its real strength and empire is within; it is in regions wh…
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^f We often observe, and are always impressed by, the various forms of power in nature, and in matter, in mind and in man. We see one of its forms in the gentle breeze and in the desolating cyclone. We see another in the noiseless current of the stream and the fury of the mountain torrent. We see yet another in the bri…
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^| In the physical domain itself, what is man's power compared with the awful exhibitions of the power of God, the power that lies behind the hurricane, that rocks the mountains in the earth- quake, that strikes with the lightning and speaks in the roar of the thunder? Napoleon, the last of the aspirants to universal e…
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3. The third reason why the Apostle is not ashamed of the Gospel is because it is the power of God unto Salvation. This power of God is a power to work men's deliverance, and that in the deepest' sense. Eoman emperors shortly after Paul's time are commemorated in public inscriptions as " saviours of the world," in the …
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T[ Often in our own time the Gospel has proved its undimin- ished power to save. It arrested the gentle and erudite Thomas Bilney of Cambridge when in 1517 he read the Greek Testament of Erasmus. So truly did it win the young scholar for Christ that he became one of the most zealous reformers of England, and one of the…
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Man cannot compass it, yet never fear: The leper Naaman Shows what God will and can. God who worked there is working here; Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow. God who worked then is working now.2 1 W". M. Macgregor, Some of God's Ministries, 180. 8 Christina G. Rosaetti. Justification. 253 Litera…
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2. There are two ways of explaining this strange but universal fact in human life ; and there is a third way which more or less combines the two. (1) The first way is that which till recently was universal among Christian thinkers — that man is a being who was created not only innocent, but in a sense perfect, and tha…
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IT The fact that the only perfect being, the only typical man whom the world has ever seen, was made perfect through suffering, yet without sin, shows how essentially different the problems of suffering and sin are, inextricably as they are interwoven in human experience. Suffering is one of the needful conditions of o…
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264 JUSTIFICATION utterly from even the possibility of blessedness. And as for the Romans — On that hard Pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell. (2) Nor was the Jew. So far from feeling himself sinful, he looked on himself alone as being the just, the upr…
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^[ I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at large presents : of organized injustice, cowardly violence, and treacherous crime ; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right. But where the best …
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iii. St. Paul's Definition of Sin. " All have sinned," says St. Paul, " and fall short of the glory of God." That seems to be his conception of sin. That is sin in its essence. And that includes all under sin, leaving no room what- ever for exculpation or escape. For what is it to fall short of the glory of God ? 1. …
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TJ The perfect revelation of that glory is in Jesus Christ, who is " the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person." In Him, the image of God, men were originally created ; in Him they live and move and have their being. That same Divine Word and Son is the life and light of men, " the light…
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ROMANS in. 23, 24 273 without exerting a personal subjective influence on the character of the justified person, making him personally holy. This personal improvement which will inevitably follow justification as one of its effects is due to sanctification ; but it is not a part of justi- fication itself. It is not al…
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^| It is unquestionably true that the real salvation of a breaker of the Divine law involves not merely an escape from the penalty of the law, but a title to its reward. He needs something that will carry not only deliverance from danger, but a security for happiness.2 (2) It is not Sanctification. The different relat…
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1. Redemption. The word redemption or ransom is easily understood ; it means the buying back, the paying something for another. When a man had incurred a debt, and, in accordance with ancient law, had been imprisoned or sold as a slave in consequence of that debt, the payment of the debt by another constituted his rede…
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(4) God declares that He imputes the fulfilment of the law's claims by Christ to those who accept Him as their representative. That is to say, these things which Christ has to spare are handed over to such, and regarded by God as on their behalf? That is the act of Justification by faith, the acceptance of Christ as ou…
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Justified by Faith. "Being therefore justified by faith." i. Therefore. 1. The Apostle Paul has been called "the great ergoist," because the word " therefore " is of such frequent occurrence in his writings. It is one of the keynotes of his Epistles, as "verily" is of the preaching of Christ. The difference is signi…
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There is a day in spring When under all the earth the secret germs Begin to glow and stir before they bud. The wealth and festal pomps of midsummer Lie in the heart of that inglorious day Which no man names with blessing, though its worth Is blest of all the world. That is a symbol of all that lies in the first movem…
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1| In the Isle of Wight massive cliffs rise hundreds of feet above the sea, and seem as if they were as solid as the framework of the earth itself. But they rest upon a sharply inclined plane 1 W. B. Selbie. ROMANS v. i, 2 291 of clay, and the moisture trickles through the rifts in the majestic cliffs above, and get…
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T[ Peace is the special legacy bequeathed by Jesus to His disciples (John xiv. 27, xvi. 33) ; it is also the word used, with deep significance, after miracles of healing, attended with forgive- 1E. Hoare, ROMANS v. i, 2 293 ness (Mark v. 34; Luke vii. 50). Boswell notes a remark of Johnson's upon this word. " He rep…
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2. Access. Jesus Christ gives us " access." Now that expres- sion is but an imperfect rendering of the original. If it were not for its trivial associations, one might read, instead of " access," introduction, — " by whom we have introduction into this grace wherein we stand." The thought is that Jesus Christ secures U…
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Tf The grace wherein we stand is the same as that on which Abraham stood, a righteousness reckoned, or imputed, to him when he had none of his own. The justified believer is made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and that righteousness is the rock on which he stands. He does not stand on his efforts, or his int…
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^| The argument for a future state, as Butler has so well shown, arises from the sense of continuance which there is in our minds. That which is, must be assumed to go on, unless you can bring some decisive proof that it is interrupted. There is no proof, from the reason of the thing or from the analogy of nature, that…
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•[[ Perhaps we do not yet know what the word "to love" means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness ; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, stronges…
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2. It is a self-sacrificing love. It is a love that thought no sacrifice too great. The surest test of love is sacrifice. We measure love as we should measure her twin-brother life, "by loss, and not by gain, not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth." Look at the mother with her child. She sacrifices ease an…
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^f A poor ignorant woman had been ill-used by her husband, a worthless wretch. She had had to work hard for a precarious 1 H. C. Trumbull, Our Misunderstood Bible, 164. ROMANS v. 8 309 livelihood because he refused to work at all. Life was so hard and dark for her that she might have been excused for hating and scor…
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2. There are some attributes of God that need no proof. Some features of the Divine character are so universally conspicuous as to be self-evidencing. Think, for example, of God's power. If we believe in God at all we need no argument to convince us of His power. The mighty forces that engirdle us all cry aloud of that…
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1 A. Maclaren. 2 J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 25. ROMANS v. 8 313 sudden tornado a whole city is swept away; when from your arms your dearest joy is torn away ; when those who would not harm a living creature are bowed for years under intolerable pain, and when the wicked and the coarse seem to get all they wish, wh…
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3. Other possible solutions might be offered. Of all the solutions, however, that might have occurred to us none such as this would ever have suggested itself. Not the boldest amon ej- us, not the most daring speculator, would have been presumptuous enough to suggest that God Himself should divest Himself of His Divine…
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3i8 GOD'S OWN LOVE of the wounded and killed; day by day he scanned the fatal column with hope and fear, lest haply he should see there the name of his faithful friend. Months passed on, and the war became more and more terrible, and tragic incidents were multiplied, hundreds and thousands of brave fellows were being …
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3. The Fulness of it. If, when we were ungodly and un- righteous, helpless subjects and slaves of our sins, God so loved us as, altogether of Himself, for the praise of the glory of His own grace, apart from any merit or answer or anticipation of love on our part — nay, while we were yet enemies to Him — if then and th…
938 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.