PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 16
James Hastings · 185,008 words · 189 reading sections
Section 61
^ A comet — these vagrants of the skies — has liberty to roam, and what does it make of it ? It plunges away out into depths of darkness and infernos of ice and cold. But if it came within the attraction of some great blazing sun, and subsided into a planet, it would have lost nothing of its true liberty, and would mov…
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* B. Gregory, Sermons, Addresses cmd Pastoral Letters, 198. In Christ a New Creation. 2 COR. & GAL. — II Literature. Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 10 ; iv. 274. Dewey (0.), Works, 759. Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 290. Figgis (J. N.), Antichrist and Other Sermons, 16. Gibson (J. M.), The Glory of Life, 35. Gl…
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2 COR. V 17 165 of this kind may show the channels of thought in which the Apostle's mind most often ran. They show the Apostle as the founder of Christianity as a working, worshipping religion, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. If we can follow St. Paul in his use of a phrase which recurs whenever he is dealin…
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2 COR. V. 17 167 I wish a greater Knowledge than to attain The knowledge of my self; a greater Gain Than to augment my self; a greater Treasure Than to enjoy my self ; a greater Pleasure Than to content my self ; how slight and vain Is all Self-knowledge, Pleasure, Treasure, Gain; Unless my better Knowledge could retr…
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(2) "Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus. . . . Salute Urbanus our fellow- worker in Christ " (Eom. xvi. 3, 9). " In Christ " is a sphere of work as well as a sphere of freedom. The nature of the work is tolerably clear from the connexion in which the words occur. Aquila and Priscilla had a "chur…
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II. A New Ckeation Within. 1. It LS the great characteristic of the New Testament that it demands a new creation. This is its specific message. Other systems that seek to change character and society insist on education, amelioration, reformation or revolution. The New Testament has little to say about any of these, …
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Candid reader, what should I say ? In the light of Paul's great saying, " Nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," can it be denied that Patrick Daley was right ? ^ 2. " No such change is possible," men say. " Character is not made in a day. All this talk about being born again — about becoming a new…
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4. This new creation involves certain facts which are worth considering. (1) It means that we have a new standing lefore God. — If I am a new creation in Christ, then I stand before God, not in myself but in Christ. God sees no longer me, but only Him in whom I am — Him who represents me, Christ Jesus, my substitute a…
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(2) In order to have peace of conscience. — Many of our great philosophers tell us that human nature can never attain content with itself. They tell us that our activity contradicts our ideal, that our carnal self is opposed to our rational self, and that our impulse dominates duty. So in the very nature of things a ma…
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Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien.^ ^ It is a new world into which a man is led forth when Christ is formed in him ; when his life is joined, by the bonds of * The Life and Letters of George Jo…
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* Christina G. Roasetti, Verses, 27. i82 IN CHRIST A NEW CREATION That was His revelation, His new, world-changing revelation of God. Himself, His Person, His character. His conduct — you know that ; such is God, The one word which declares God is Christ. Christlikeness is what God is. o. Man is new. — As man is dis…
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^At the great spring Dromenon the tribe and the growing earth were renovated together : the earth arises fresh from her dead seeds, the tribe from its dead ancestors; and the whole process, charged as it. is with the emotion of pressing human desire, projects its anthropomorphic god or daemon. A vegeta- tion-spirit we …
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1. This is a very bold and sweeping statement. We seem almost to be listening to a prophet of revolution. St. Paul, addressing the democratic Corinthians, might be regarded himself as speak- ing the language of democracy. His view of Christianity, it might be said, was that it was an absolute emancipation from the fett…
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^ To those in Christ all things are not only new, but they are growing continually newer. In the old world, and with the old man, it is just the other way. Things are always getting older, until life gets to be an insufferable burden, a dreary round, a wretched repetition, and we see backs bent with nothing but pure so…
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Passing away, saith the World, passing away: Chances, beauty, and youth, sapped day by day: Thy life never continueth in one stay. Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey That hath won neither laurel nor bay ? I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May: Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild t…
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^ Walter Pater, Mwrius (he Epicurean. 196 THE NEW AND THE OLD undo the heavy burdens of all that suffer wrong. The more appalling the world-wide scene of change, decay and ruin, the more certainly a power of life is working upward through it all. ^ The great empires of the East passed away, but not before they had t…
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198 THE NEW AND THE OLD us face to face with the risen Son of Man who hears the prayer of all flesh from His throne on high.* The Master stood upon the mount, and taught. He saw a fire in His disciples' eyes; " The old law," they said, " is wholly come to nought, Behold the new world rise ! " " Was it," the Lord t…
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^ There were some rough diamonds among the converts ; but if they were rough they were diamonds still. One man, a brick- layer's labourer, could not read a chapter of the Bible without a mistake in every line. Yet for fifteen years he attended the Sunday morning prayer-meeting at seven o'clock, often conducting it, and…
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2. The Christian ministry has, in the course of history, ful- filled itself in many ways. The methods of one age have not been the methods of another. The clergy have been variously organized ; the Christian Society has run a parallel course to the State. There has been continuity of government in and through changes o…
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2. The substance of the commission is this : " Be ye reconciled to God." To sue for love, to beg that an enemy will put away his * Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Ca/iiterbv/ry, i. 408. 2o8 AMBASSADORS FOR CHRIST enmity is the part of the inferior rather than of the superior, is the part of the offender rather than o…
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^ R. F. Horton, Row the Cross Saves, 102. 2 COR. & GAL. — 14 210 AMBASSADORS FOR CHRIST But it so happened that General Wakasa picked it up out of the sea, and he was curious to know what this book was. He got an interpreter to tell him what it was. He became interested in it. He procured a Chinese New Testament and …
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^ The clergyman is not simply an of&cer or servant of God or workman of God, but His ambassador and herald to tell men about God Himself. He must bring distinctly before men the reality of the heaven of which the earth and all that it contains is but the symbol and vesture. And, since all human teaching is but the purg…
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It may happen that I shall myself often be bad, that I shall be false to my mission ; all this cannot for a moment destroy the meaning of my life : " To shine with that light which is in me, so long as I am able, so long as there is light in me." The conviction of the ambassadorship has the following practical effect …
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^ Bishop Paget writes from Priest Leys, to the Eev. G. S. Barrett, of Norwich, thanking him for his book, Beligion in Daily Life : — ..." A friend of mine said to me once about my father-in- law [Dean Church] after an University sermon at Oxford: ' Well, at all events he has one great quality as a preacher — he makes …
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222 THE SINLESS MADE SIN again by a bold and direct identification, " Now art ye light." Perhaps such a parallel case throws light upon St. Paul's method of expression here, where by an awfully daring identification, he speaks about Christ being made sin and ourselves being made righteousness. With these introductory…
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3. If we look at the verses that precede we shall see that St. Paul's thoughts, as always when he treats of these great themes, were dwelling on the identification of Christ with sinful man. " One died for all, therefore all died," he says (verse 14) ; and those who are " in him " are new creatures, reconciled to God a…
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^ There is a fine Welsh poem in which the poet imagines that the Sun, and all the attendant planets and satellites in his sphere, passed before the Great White Throne of the Creator ; and as each passed. He smiled ; but when Earth came to her turn. He blushed. We may couple with that a true story which was recently tol…
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5. Here, however, it is necessary to meet two common mis- apprehensions. On the one hand, it is often maintained that for any sin, however great, the word of forgiveness and recon- ciliation is enough — a man needs no more; while on the other hand it is averred that the deed once done can never be undone, that the sinn…
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(2) But there is the feeling already hinted at, namely, that every sinner feels himself to be permanently associated with his own evil deeds. Suppose that a man has committed a great sin, such, for instance, as the betrayal of a trust. If that sin becomes ^ Life and Letters of Dean Church, 248. 2 COR. V. 2i ^31 know…
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» R. J. Campbell, A Faith for To-day, 277. 2 COR. V. 21 233 1. As Christ has identified Himself with us in our sinfulness, so we are identified with Him in His righteousness. Not, again, by any legal fiction ; but as, by the purity and love and sorrow of a true mother, a wandering son may be rescued, broken down in p…
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' D. 0. A. Agnew, Tfis Theology of Consolation, 234. 2 COR. V. 21 235 and who, having sinned, have been redeemed ; in such a society all that is good and beautiful in our present human life is secured and made permanent, all that is base and vile is excluded ; death has lost its meaning, because it is understood that…
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^ When you speak to me of the love of God, I always feel sure that you mean a love which includes and implies righteous- ness, and I had hoped that you would interpret me in the same way. In fact I would say that, in contrasting the fatherhood of God with His judgeship, I meant the first to represent a right- eousness …
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There are two kinds of sorrow, then. There is godly sorrow and there is the sorrow of the world. Look first at the latter. L The Sorkow of the World. 1. There are various kinds of sorrow in the world, some of which work death, suoh as the bitter vexation, the utter despond- ency, the fierce disappointment which are …
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^ A man who had stolen the pyx, and got frightened when justice was at his heels, might feel the sort of penitence which ^ F. Paget, The Spirit of Discipline, 51. • John Kelman, The Faith of Robert Louis Stevenson, 236, 246 SORROW would induce him to run back in the dark and lay the pyx where the sexton might find …
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' Carlyle, Reminiscences, ii, 168, 248 SORROW that. She never did know it, never." If he could but see her again ! His heart seemed breaking as he said it.^ 1. This sorrow is awakened by considerations that have respect to God as good and gracious. Its burden is not, " I have incurred the wrath of an angry God," but…
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250 SORROW of one thing behind you, and faith is the entering into something else before you. It is a change of mind or purpose, a complete turning about with reference to God and sin. ^ In Adam Bede, George Eliot represents the heroine Dinah Morris as thus pointing out to the unhappy Hetty Sorrel the conditions of t…
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* Tbomas Adam^. 252 SORROW of old : " 0 Lord, I will praise thee : though thou wast angry with me thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me." ^ Who may tell how often sorrow Cometh at the close of day; Sorrow for the sinful record Borne by passing time away; Sorrow for good resolutions Broken in the toi…
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1. The conventional idea of riches is pecuniary abundance, superfluity of goods personal and heritable. The typical rich man is Dives, " clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day." His riches are pre-eminently calculable, can be written down and reckoned up in black and white. Kiches of this or…
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IL What He Became. "He became poor." In what did this poverty consist ? His Divine perfections do not admit of decrease or limitation. The infinite riches of His own nature must be ever infinite. He is the Maker of all things and the Upholder of all things which He has made. He may destroy, but He cannot alienate; fo…
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^ P. Thuieau-Dangin, St. Bernardine of Sieiw, 152. 2 COR. viii. 9 261 2. The poverty of our Lord was a genuine renunciation. " I love," says A. C. Benson in The Altar Fire, " to think of Words- worth an obscure, poor, perverse, and absurd man, living on milk and eggs, utterly unaccountable and puerile to the sensible…
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2 COR. VIII. 9 263 and an express bowing of His own to Another's will. Painful acts of endurance, which went against nature and were very hard for flesh and blood, these, too, even when the goodness or the need of them could not be discerned for darkness of vision, He tutored His submissive heart to accept, and His ob…
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4. The poverty of Jesus was the manifestation of His grace ? What is grace ? Grace is a free, undeserved benefit — a benefit 1 Johannes Eckhart. * Literary CJmrckman, xxxii. (1886), 532. 2 COR. VIII. 9 265 conferred without any merit, claim, or title on the part of the recipient. Grace is opposed to debt, to hire, o…
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The alchemy of grace converts all events and circumstances into means and resources which belong to the believer. Men have searched in vain throughout the material world for the often-dreamed-of philosopher's stone, the touch of which should transmute the baser metals into gold. But in the spiritual world that stone ha…
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^ The character, the Divine grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, has so affected our eyes that they cannot at first sight catch the condescension, ay, the humiliation, ay, the even forbidding aspect of this office which He fills. His poverty hath made all things about it so rich that, looked at in His presence, they shine w…
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The Power of Thought. 1. Thought is the distinctive mark of man. " On earth there's nothing great but man ; in man there's nothing great but mind " ; and the great function of mind is to think. The ability to think is man's great distinction. If other creatures think, it is not for their thought that they are distingu…
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^ The soul is dyed the colour of its thoughts.^ ^ Nothing is lost ; even unwritten thoughts do their work. Good thoughts, like breezes from the mountains, purify the moral atmosphere, and the resulting actions. Evil thoughts shape the character, and spread disastrous consequences, for they are positively infectious. W…
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(3) The thinking part of us is closely connected with the will. — The prime minister of individual conduct and character is the 2 COR. X. 5 279 will. We never do anything without first of all willing to do it. But before the will determines upon any action it consults its advisers, the soul's cabinet, which is compos…
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(2) A reverential mind is necessary for the reception of truth. The mind that has no effective sense of the mysterious never enters into the full and fruitful possession of truth. We are fitted and qualified to receive revelations only when we are solemnly sensible of the great secret which shrouds itself behind the ve…
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(1) Christ captures our thought by the subduing charm of His own personality. No sooner is He " lifted up " than our whole nature submits to Him. Our affections are won by His charms, our will gladly submits to His will, and our thoughts become free in His captivation. With His reign set up in the heart, submis- sion b…
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^ What is a true musician ? Surely one who in that depart- ment is obedient to the thought of God. He is simply an interpreter of God's laws of harmony. No man created those laws which hold in music ; no man can alter them by one hair's breadth. All he can do is to discover, interpret, and obey. Some of the great music…
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290 POWER IN WEAKNESS incident to human nature, fulfils all these conditions, it is not possible with perfect certainty to say. The Apostle himself is not interested in it as a physical affection. He speaks of it because of its spiritual significance, and because of the wonderful spiritual experiences he has had in c…
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» J. Dennay. ' Phillips Brooks. 292 POWER IN WEAKNESS I feel so happy in the many blessings of being able to do His work, so strong now that for a time the self-mist has rolled off my soul, so ready for war, as if a great war was coming which God by His revelation of Himself to me, and of myself to myself, has been p…
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Christ stand I * (1) " My grace." — What grace is this ? Note who it is that promises. It is Jesus who speaks; therefore it is mediatorial grace, the grace given to Jesus Christ as the covenant Head of His people, that is here intended. It is the Head, Christ, in whom all fulness dwells, speaking to one of the members…
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bare adequacy, just covering the extent of the need, with no overlapping margin ; it is large beyond expectation, desire, or necessity; so leading onwards to high hopes, and a wider opening of the open mouths of our need that the blessing may pour in.'^ (4) " For thee.'' — Not merely a general sufficiency is spoken of…
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»E. 0. 2 COR. xii. 9 299 suffering. Sooner or later, stealing from the shadow, it lays its piercing hand upon our hearts. Had it been otherwise, man would never have required a man of sorrows to suffer as He Buffered ^ho is our ideal. Now when we are called to suffer there is nothing more beautiful than quiet fortitu…
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^ The Book of the Spiritual Tabernacle is the longest work of the hermit, and contains a strange, naive, and arbitrary inter- pretation of the symbols of the ark of the covenant, and of the sacrifices of the ancient law. Here is what he says with regard to the offering of the poor as commanded in the Jewish law: — " A…
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^ Now the sun is strong, and I get my strength for arm and limb from him : but for its strength my heart travels to God and to home ; for he who is near Christ is near the hearth-fire.^ ^ You will allow if weakness was ever pardonable, it has been so in my case ; not that I apologize for it — I love it, and I glory in…
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4. Christ's strength loves to work in weakness, only the weakness must be conscious, and the conscious weakness must have passed into conscious dependence. There, then, you get the law for the Church, for the works of Christianity on the widest scale and in individual lives. Strength that counts itself strength is weak…
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310 THE APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION 2. St. Paul sets before us in these words the substance of God's salvation, as it may be enjoyed upon the earth by saved men. All salvation, as it is progressively experienced on this earth, is comprehended in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of t…
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312 THE APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION man who had actually lived on earth, a son of Adam, a member of that Jewish race which had always emphasized the immeasur- able nature of the distance which separates the creature from the Creator. Beside the great Jehovah whom Judaism had feared to name, and beside that Divine Spirit who…
940 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.