PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 17
James Hastings · 205,313 words · 212 reading sections
Section 181
(2) The character is uplifted to a throne. — If He dwells in me, my nature becomes His palace, and He, my King, reigns there with unchallenged rule. He does His own sweet will therein. It is mine to obey Him. My King commands within me, and I delight to do His will. " Christ in you." ^ Obedience in its highest form is…
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(4) We have a neio sense of self-reverence. — If my body be His shrine can I desecrate that shrine ? All wrong done to the body or to any part of human personality is sacrilege. One in whom Christ dwells must reverence himself. Such cannot be merely self-respecting, they will be self -reverential — not self -conceited,…
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^ The later Jewish theologians had laid much stress upon the delivery of the Sinaitic Law through the agency of angels acting as delegates for the Most High God. The Author of Christianity might be superior to Moses and the prophets, but could He challenge comparison with those pure and mighty spirits 461 462 COM…
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464 COMPLETE IN CHRIST the ladder, and between Him and the highest there was an infinitely remote scale of beings more Divine than He. But it not only destroys the lordship of Jesus, it destroys the supreme mediatorship of Christ. If between us and God there is a long chain of intermediate beings, then His mediatorshi…
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^ J. Oswald Dykes. EPH.-COL. — 30 466 COMPLETE IN CHRIST which sets a limit to the infinite by proclaiming its inability to enter fully a finite being. Does not the infinity of God involve, not the distribution of innumerable parts through all space, but His presence wholly in every region of the universe ? "Why, the…
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^ Man feels capacities within him that ask an eternity for bloom and fruitage. There is in nature something that sends him in yearning search beyond and above nature. That type of perfect in his mind In nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself on every wind. In the entire universe, as revealed to man by his senses…
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^ Just as a river that runs in a full clear current through the heart of a city yields an unfailing supply of water to each of its dwellings, and fills a vessel which a child may dip into its stream, because it gushes from its rocky cleft high up near the mountain peak where the rain-clouds gather and drip, or the perp…
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(3) We are made full in Him as regards our Christian character. Christianity is not the perfect religion in the sense of being revealed as a finished, rounded, symmetrical whole. It is not perfect in the sense of a closed circle, or a plastic form, which can be altered in nothing without being spoiled. It is not a perf…
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Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices Call to the saints and to the deaf are dumb; Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices Glad in His coming who hath sworn, I come. This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him? This shall He do, and can we still despair ? Come, let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, Cast…
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Every clod hath a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers. L A Possession. 1. The possession is life through Christ's resurrection. — When Christ rose from the dead. He raised His people with Him into a new life. …
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COLOSSIANS III. 1 483 beautifying and ennobling of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come. For resurrection living There is resurrection power, And the praise and prayer of trusting May glorify each hour. For common days are holy, And years an Eastertide, To those who with the living Lord In liv…
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(2) But there was another sense in which men were said to be " risen with Christ." When He came forth from the tomb, it was not as a single instance of Divine power over life and death ; it was to show the purpose of God in respect to all mankind. He came forth from the grave to prove that there was immortality for all…
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To raise Thy children from the strife With self and sin, with death and dark distress, That they may live to Thee in holiness? Earth knows Thee not, but evermore Thou liv'st in Paradise, in peace; Oh fain my soul would thither soar. Oh let me from the creatures cease: Dead to the world, but to Thy Spirit known, 1 l…
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1 John Smith, in The Keswick Week, 1899, p. 156. 2 f, ^^ Cuylcr. 490 RISEN WITH CHRIST 4 The vision of the ideal influences and controls our daily life. In morals every man is subject to the highest he knows. The standard is that which is absolute and ideal, according to the measure of a man's knowledge and feeling. …
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^ " Eisen with him." Seated with Him ! Then our outlook in life is not an upward, but a downward one ! Here is the demand for Christian imagination. How does life look from Heaven ? Think of our discontent in lowly places, our feverish longing for great work, our love of tinsel, our chafing under discipline, our hard j…
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^ In the best pictures of great masters, tone is almost every- thing. Form goes for much. Form, indeed, and the steadiness of the drawing, go for very much in the " composition " of the ^ Walter C. Smith, Thoiights and Fancies for Sunday Evenings, 104. 2 H. van Dyke, The Open Door, 39. ^ A. C. Benson, Leaves of the Tr…
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2. The fact that St. Paul should have felt justified in writing thus to inhabitants of Colossas is a remarkable evidence of the power of Christianity to touch hearts and change lives. Colossce, although no worse than the average contemporary city, can scarcely have been much better ; and a few years before, it is toler…
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L The Old Life Left BEfflND. 1. "Ye died." That represents a distinct element in Chris- tian experience. It means that the soul passes through a death to earthly things — to sin and the allurements of the flesh, just as the Lord died upon the tree. The crucifixion has its counterpart within us. We die to the attracti…
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^ Edward Dowden. COLOSSIANS III. 2-4 505 each other never find expression in words. There is more in one look that the eye gives than in all that the tongue utters in a lifetime. When the Apostle, therefore, speaks of the Christian life as a hidden one, it is neither a paradox nor a mystery, though at first it may s…
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^ T. A. Gumey, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 96. COLOSSIANS III. 2-4 507 may be muddied with rain, but it will be limpid as ever. The things seen do not go deep enough to touch our real life. They are but as the winds that fret and the currents that sway the surface and shallower levels of the ocean, while th…
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Union with Christ by faith is the condition of a real communi- cation of life. " In him was life," says St. John, meaning thereby to assert, in the language of our Epistle, that " in him were all things created, and in him all things consist." Life in all its forms is dependent on union in varying manner with the Divin…
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3. This is the enduring life. — Such a life has nothing in it of the ephemeral and passing. It has no relation to the body, or the death of the body. Physical death is not its end, or its begin- ning, or its opposite. The life in God partakes of the Divine — uuchangeableness and infinity and eternity. All on earth pass…
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A shadow there; But if, with eyes uplifted, we are wont To scan^the heavenward stair the angels trod, Behind us is the shadow, and in front The light of God.i ^ E. T. Fowler, Verses Wise and Otherwise, 137. EPH.-COL. — 33 514 THE HIDDEN LIFE 2. If the affections are habitually set on things above, this is the sures…
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^ Christian prayer is earnest and believing, but it asks for blessings in accordance with the will of the Father. It means good, not harm, for our neighbours as for ourselves ; it means bringing ourselves into harmony with the laws of health and right living ; it means using to the utmost all the strength and energy th…
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COLOSSIANS III. i6 521 from daily discipline and exercise in the use as well as in the acquisition of knowledge. ^ It is ideas that rule. It is ideas that influence and change the conduct both of the individual and of society. History is full of proofs of this. And " the word of the Christ " embodies the ideas of the…
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^ Mrs. Watts, in George Frederic Watts, ii. 244. COLOSSIANS III. i6 523 world lasts. But that general influence is not what, in the ordinary and intelligible sense, we can call " the word of Christ." This is, manifestly, something which is to be apprehended by our intelligence, to be kept in our memory; which is to o…
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Straight from the wonderful pages that burn Still with the light that sometime on the Mystery fell, When He revealed His Son, Chosen to manifest God, in unspeakable love Linking our lives with His own life above, Making them one, as Himself and the Father are One — Spirit and flesh in Him — God, the Creator, and…
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^ I have been greatly cheered by assurances which have recently reached me again and again of the blessing which God has caused to rest on my ministry in past years, and of the light and strength which, through God's grace, some are finding in my books ; but I seem to have a great deal to say that I have never said yet…
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^ J. Hamilton, Works, vi. 40. 2 Jonathan Edwards. EPH.-COL. — 34 530 THE INDWELLING WORD spiritual life ; and indeed give it its principal tone and character. Without tenderness we cnn never have that spirit of generosity in which we must serve God.^ II. Our Appropriation of the Word. " Let the word of Christ dwe…
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I have a room whereinto no one enters Save I myself alone: There sits a blessed memory on a throne, There my life centres. While winter comes and goes — oh tedious comer ! — And while its nip- wind blows ; While bloom the bloodless lily and warm rose Of lavish summer. If any should force entrance he might see the…
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*\ The Great Teacher has said " If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." It is Christ's will that every power God has given to man shall find its full employ. It is His will that we shall have life and that we shall have it more abundantly. It is the Spirit of Power within, energizing with our spiri…
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' Phillips Brooks, Addresses, 109. Printed by Morrison & Giub Limited, Edinburgh y. Date Due JAS-'BS MR 1 y -53; ■*■ >v :-U'…
23 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.