PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 2
James Hastings · 195,735 words · 204 reading sections
Section 1
BS4n ,H35 'v THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE 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 ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS" DEUTERONOMY— ESTHER NEW YORK CHARLES SGRIBNER'S SONS EDINBURGH : T. & T. C…
948 wordsSECTION 2Section 2
1[ Tell me what things you can remember easily, and I will tell you what manner of man you are ; whether you are cultured or coarse, scholarly or vulgar, healthy-minded or morbid. The humorist has a mind stored with jokes and anecdotes, the philosopher can recall a complicated train of reasoning without an effort, the …
1,024 wordsSECTION 3Section 3
But it is never possible for the Church to remain a Church if it forgets the time when God brought it out of the house of bondage. The day in the life of the Church that answers to this is that mighty act of God to which we look back, just as Israel looked back to the Eed Sea; that mighty act of God which includes the …
1,079 wordsSECTION 4Section 4
We ought to recall our life and to recall it in this way — as the demonstration of God's omnipresent, fatherly, providential care. We should have an autobiography in our minds, if not on paper, of the influences, and especially the personal influences, whicli DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 9 Lave entered into our lives. We shou…
1,014 wordsSECTION 5Section 5
^ A greater than Moses spake, to no multitude of hearers, but to a mere handful of disciples, and said to them, " This do in remembrance of me." For did He not know that all things were possible to be endured and achieved, suffered and accomplished, to those who brooded over His life and death and love, until they read…
902 wordsSECTION 6Section 6
And ranges far beyond, where absolute And everlasting compensations are!^ (1) Eemember the Sins of the way. There are times when it is profitable to revive the memories of forgotten sins ; to exhume the carcases, or, rather, read out the fading inscriptions on the headstones of the graves, of self-will, folly, or lus…
903 wordsSECTION 7Section 7
The immortal moods that faded, the god who died, Hastening away to the King on a distant call. There were ruby dews shed when the heart was riven. And passionate pleading and prayers to the dead we had wronged ; And we passed away, unremembering and unforgiven, Hastening away to the King for the peace we longed. Lo…
931 wordsSECTION 8Section 8
III. Eemember the Leading of God. The Israelites had been led through the wilderness. This was the great fact of their journey. And it is this fact beyond all others that they are now commanded to remember. Thou shalt remember all the way because it is the way by which the I^rd thy God has led thee. ^^.*%^ J ^ •hvIv…
918 wordsSECTION 9Section 9
God leads me ! Through all the old unquiet years, Shadowed by failure and by sin, When selfish grief and selfish fears Made all the way I stumbled in A mystery of darkness — still I think He led me. Looking back It seems to me His Blessed Will Fashioned my life, and any lack Of presence or of riches or of powe…
976 wordsSECTION 10Section 10
^W. L. Watkinson. 22 REMEMBER ALL THE WAY angiy seas upon which we have been tossed and the dark entries through which we have groped our uncertain way ? IT I was sailing down the St. John Eiver, Canada, which is the Rhine and the Hudson commingled in one scene of beauty and grandeur, and while I was on the deck of …
903 wordsSECTION 11Section 11
IF The grand feature of the Old Testament is that it recognizes the moral idea in the government of the race. An Egyptian historian, a Greek historian, or a Eoman historian simply gives a number of pictures, pictures of kings, camps, marches, cities, battles won and lost ; and when he has done that, he comes to the end…
901 wordsSECTION 12Section 12
(2) "To prove thee." God's guidance is a guidance for discipline ; it means testing. The whole history of the Hebrew people was a testing process, to see whether they would be fit for their great work in the history of the world ; and the whole of God's dealing with us is a testing, to make us fit for the particular wo…
1,178 wordsSECTION 13Section 13
' J. Sparhawk Jones, DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 29 leads His children along rough ways to repentance that He may at last have the joy of giving them the kiss of forgiveness.^ 5. God finds out what is in men's hearts, whether they will keep His commandments or not. The history of the past, the discipline of the past, the wa…
1,004 wordsSECTION 14Section 14
4. Eemember, and let the memory lead to Contrition. Perhaps some man or woman holds the memory of some great lapse from goodness; some young man who for the first time has been tempted to sensuous sin ; some man who may have been led into slippery places in regard to business integrity. Perhaps some one would give a go…
943 wordsSECTION 15Section 15
35 36 THE GOOD WILL OF A LIFETIME 2. There seems a peculiar appropriateness in this reference being put into the mouth of the ancient Lawgiver, for to him even Sinai, with all its glories, cannot have been so impressive and so formative of his character as was the vision granted to him when solitary in the wilderness…
1,138 wordsSECTION 16Section 16
3. A great writer has said that the last act of a man's life is the test of it. " Show me thy fruits," says Browning — Show me thy fruits, this latest act of thine; For in the last is summed the first and all. And no doubt there is truth in the words. The last intelligent act in a man's life is in a sense the summing…
900 wordsSECTION 17Section 17
Shrill crying, she knocked with a hope ill-sped. For grim and stark that portal wide At her hand's touch mocked, and her prayer denied. Then sick at heart, that found not grace. She turned her again the night to face, As terror turns on swift-foot foes — And lo ! the clear east all climbing rose.^ (2) Next see t…
985 wordsSECTION 18Section 18
^ The fire that did not burn out is the emblem of the Divine nature which does not tend to death because it lives, nor to exhaustion because it energizes, nor to emptiness because it bestows, but after all times is the same ; lives by its own energy and is independent. " I am that I have become " — that is what men hav…
900 wordsSECTION 19Section 19
God in the bush that made it still visible to Moses across the eventful interval. He saw that bush when all the other bushes of Egypt had faded out of sight, because that bush was on fire with God. And as Christianity is the most vivid of all religions, with its personally manifested God, there is a more perfect unity…
1,000 wordsSECTION 20Section 20
3. And as individuality is developed with the deepening spiritual life, so the wiUingness to recognize and welcome in- dividual differences of thought and feeling and action increases too as Christians grow riper. Seeing ourselves made more our- selves as our faith grows richer, we are glad to see other men made more t…
900 wordsSECTION 21Section 21
5. Another sign of the growth of Christian character is to be found in what may be called the growing transfiguration of duty. To every young Christian the new service of Christ comes largely with the look of a multitude of commandments. They throng around his life, each one demanding to be obeyed. He welcomes them joy…
947 wordsSECTION 22Section 22
(2) And, if we get this, then something else must come, namely, more hopefulness. St. Paul has a noble verse which says that experience worketh hope. It must, if it is full of Christ. The soul that is getting deeper and deeper into the certain know- ledge of Him must be learning that it has no right to fear ; that, how…
1,018 wordsSECTION 23Section 23
54 THE GOOD WILL OF A LIFETIME disappeared ; and, instead of the " Draw not nigh," we may hear the " Come unto me " ; for in Him " we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him." 1. The old man refers to the days of his youth. He is no longer old ; he is young. With his shepherd's staff, tending his…
910 wordsSECTION 24Section 24
(Fairbairn). us God Who is our Home. The eternal God is thy dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. — Deut. xxxiii. 27. These words, while almost the last, are also among the most memorable, in the psalm so fitly described as " the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Is…
985 wordsSECTION 25Section 25
3. When we speak of' God we speak of Him as a personal Being, a free and conscious Will. If God be impersonal, He can have no heart tender with love, no will moved by swift- footed mercy, regulated by the large righteousness that loves order and deals with the individual through his relations to the whole, no gracious …
930 wordsSECTION 26Section 26
^ The two sublimest affirmations concerning the Deity in the inspired Word are these — " God is Light," " God is Love." It is the latter of these two which, apparently, had so taken hold of the mind and the heart of Browning that he never wearies of reiterating the statement of the fact in numerous connexions and in va…
904 wordsSECTION 27Section 27
The child, that to its mother clings, Lies not all safely on her breast, Till she her arm around it flings, Sweetly caressing and caressed: Ev'n so, my God, Thy mighty arms. Not my poor Faith, shield me from harms. I bless Thy Name for every grace, Wherewith Thou dost enrich Thine own; Yea, I would seek each day to…
946 wordsSECTION 28Section 28
(2) But if the national reference of these words is their primary reference, yet we are justified in giving them a further and more personal reference in the light of the Christian revelation. Sooner or later every son of man is taught the lesson of his own insufficiency, of his need of a strength he does not find in …
991 wordsSECTION 29Section 29
^ Trederick Lucian llosiner. DEUTERONOMY xxxiii. 27 71 uttermost." Here is another : " All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Have you plunged into nearly every kind of sin ; have you gone into " all manner of blasphemy " ? Even if you have, it may be forgiven, so that this promise goes undernea…
901 wordsSECTION 30Section 30
In the balm and the blossoming. Sing loud, O bird in the tree; 0 bird, sing loud in. the sky, And honey-bees blacken the clover seas ; There are none of you glad as I. The leaves laugh low in the wind, Laugh low with the wind at play; And the odorous call of the flowers all Entices my soul away ! For O but the w…
983 wordsSECTION 31Section 31
Dark and sad the hours have been In the valley and shade of Death, Where co light mine eyes have seen But the far, cold stars of faith. And my heart with haunting fears Almost sank into despair; Yet the harvest of my years Mostly has been gathered there. (3) When sorrow has come in upon us like a flood. — By a str…
924 wordsSECTION 32Section 32
Teach me to live that I may diead The grave as little as my bed had seemed terrible in their irony to one who dreaded nothing so much as his bed. Eelief had not come to him until he was well on in manhood. Strolling one evening in a country churchyard, his eyes were arrested by the words on a gravestone " Underneath …
913 wordsSECTION 33Section 33
i. The Common Destiny. We live to die. When or where, it is vain to inquire ; but that we must pass through the gates of death, no room is left for us to doubt. It is the common lot. Death is life's shadow. It is not coeval with life, but it is coexistent with it. Wherever you find the one in this world of ours, you f…
914 wordsSECTION 34Section 34
From out what Silent Land I came, on Earth to stand And learn life's little art, Is not in me to say: I know I did not stray, — Was sent; to come, my part. And down what Silent Shore Beyond yon little door I pass, I cannot tell; I know I shall not stray, Nor ever lose the way, — Am sent\ and ail is well.^ ^ There…
902 wordsSECTION 35Section 35
Death comes to set thee free; Oh, meet him cheerily As thy true friend. And all thy fears shall cease, And in eternal peace Thy penance end.^ ^ De la Motte FonquiJ. DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 b; iv. Death less than Life. 1. Scripture speaks much of life and little of the manner of dying. Men imagine that the hour of…
1,122 wordsSECTION 36Section 36
^ To labour and not to see the end of our labours ; to sow and not to reap; to be removed from this earthly scene before our work has been appreciated, and when it will be carried on not by ourselves, but by others — is a law so common in the highest characters of history, that none can be said to be altogether exempt …
917 wordsSECTION 37Section 37
■^ To Moses, so far as we know, the charm of that view — pro- nounced by the few modern travellers who have seen it to be unequalled of its kind — lay in the assurance that this was the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and to their seed, the inheritance — with all its varied features of rock and pastur…
997 wordsSECTION 38Section 38
What was the meaning of his death at that time ? The question might have but a feeble interest for us if it were ^ Browniutj, A Grammar ian^s Funeral, 94 THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES not that the facts of life force it upon us daily. Is it not a mystery by which we all are baffled — a mystery which in some hours we…
907 wordsSECTION 39Section 39
96 THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES alone to the mountain-top to receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion (with many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to address, and forgot therein, and in his angry …
906 wordsSECTION 40Section 40
^ A. Maclaren. DEUT.-ESTH. — 7 98 THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES written." In every way he was of the people, bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh ; Israel was hidden in his heart ; and out of that master-passion of sympathy with the people came the weak- ness which at last made him speak unadvisedly with his …
900 wordsSECTION 41Section 41
loo THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES centred kind; his genius had showed itself in his incredible laboriousness, and in a vitality of immense elasticity and tough- ness. But not by these things is the world changed ! And now he was to be given a new heart. He was to see and to feel ; he was to be mocked and derided ; he …
900 wordsSECTION 42Section 42
dwelt in it ? The outward shape and fashioning of clay, made of the dust and returning to it, was this then Moses, and not rather the living soul, breathed into it by God, as Moses himself records ? And can the Maker put so disproportionate an estimate upon His own handiwork, as carefully to store up the casket and thr…
921 wordsSECTION 43Section 43
104 THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MOSES atmosphere, it is clearly visible. But the vision is most often reserved for those who are waiting on the confines of the Land, ready for the signal to enter. They tell us that on that border- land they hear voices, and discern visions of beauty and splendour of which heart had not co…
1,288 wordsSECTION 44Section 44
^ How constantly the heroes of other nations have become their gods; how naturally the tomb becomes an altar, and the DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 107 shrine a temple. Never was there hero that might more readily receive the idolatrous regard of a nation than he whose memory was so immediately associated with their religi…
920 wordsSECTION 45Section 45
* John Ker. DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 109 ii. 23), so Moses bears the title of "the Servant of the Lord" (Ex. xiv. 31 ; Num. xii. 7 ; Deut, xxxiv. 5 ; Josh. i. 1 ; Heb. iii. 5). The special quality which this epithet marks is his unswerving faith- fulness— that absolutely unshaken fidelity to God which character- ized …
905 wordsSECTION 46Section 46
^ Is not this the manner in which all saints die? Their death is precious to the Lord, and after the troubled day of life — agitated in its early morning by the trumpet calling to battle; fretted through an overcast noon by the pressure of its responsibilities » A. Scott. 'Bishop Woodford. DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 5, 6 …
990 wordsSECTION 47Section 47
I God's Peovision is always suitable to our Ciecumstances. The manna was the best possible preparation to answer the nomadic life of the wilderness, where there was no land to sow or reap ; but when the land of promise was reached, where there was plenty of ground, and that needing to be tilled, to send down ^ Hugh …
921 wordsSECTION 48Section 48
^ Mackay of Uganda, 385. JOSHUA V. 12 119 amid golden cornfields and rich pastures and luxuriant vineyards they would have to practise in even higher degree the virtues which the wilderness life called forth. The tenure of the Holy Land was a moral one, and only on stern moral conditions could it be owned. They had t…
1,025 wordsSECTION 49Section 49
2. It seems a backward step as we read the story; and perhaps we, who no longer have anything like the miraculous intervention and manifestations of Divine power, may look back with a lingering and longing desire that our life had been cast in the days when the more visible and tangible tokens of the Divine glory were …
1,030 wordsSECTION 50Section 50
^ This commonplace world of ours was the beautiful world of Christ. The world in which we are now living was the one in which He lived and worked on through the days of His appointed time. The duties laid upon our hearts are like to those that were measured out to Him. And so the Word had breath, and wrought With huma…
1,047 wordsSECTION 51Section 51
^ Place the tourist who hurries across the Atlantic and through the towns of Europe in order to see or " to do " the Continent — place him with his erratic mind untrained before the greatest masterpieces of art ; plant him in the chapel at Florence ; let him stand face to face with Michael Angelo's creations of Night a…
907 wordsSECTION 52Section 52
And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone: Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.^ ^ As we advance in Christian exp…
1,141 wordsSECTION 53Section 53
3. There is one other lesson to link with the ceasing of the manna. It is that God, as we advance in life, brings us back to *G. H. Morrison. 132 EXCELLENCE OF THINGS ORDINARY the food of long ago. Had there been any manna down in Egypt ? Had manna been Israel's food before the Exodus ? There were few now who could …
900 wordsSECTION 54Section 54
It was fitting that this cradle of the nation should witness their vow, as it witnessed the fulfilment of God's promise. What Plymouth Eock is to one side of the Atlantic, or Hastings Field to the other, Shechem was to Israel. Vows sworn there had a sanctity added by the place. Nor did these remembrances exhaust the ap…
968 wordsSECTION 55Section 55
^ It is at once strange and true that there is no state so dear to the highest type of man as that of independence. One of its greatest poetic prophets was Eobert Burns, and you will call to mind his words — To catch dame Fortune's golden smile, Assiduous wait upon her; And gather gear by ev'ry wile That's justified…
1,012 wordsSECTION 56Section 56
JOSHUA XXIV. 15 141 child. The theologian in his study reads Jonathan Edwards on the Will, and convinces himself that the Infinite Sovereignty- leaves no room for human freedom in the scheme of things ; but he takes up his newspaper and his heart goes with every sentence meted out to a crime. / ^ The soul in its cons…
1,052 wordsSECTION 57Section 57
Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary, And the heart faint beneath His chastening rod, Though rough and steep our pathway, worn and weary, Still will we trust in God ! Our eyes see dimly till by faith anointed. And our blind choosing brings us grief and pain; Through Him alone, who hath our way appo…
939 wordsSECTION 58Section 58
Of course there are problems the elements of which have not been formulated, and to which, for the present, a simple Aye or No is impossible. But these are not questions that touch the heart of salvation. We live, it is true, in perplexing times, but much of our unsettlement is due, not to the conflict between religion…
963 wordsSECTION 59Section 59
^ IT. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 368. * Emerson. 148 THE CHOICE OF A MASTER .y Gentlemen, if I become your representative, it must be because your opinions coincide with mine, and not because I have pared mine down into similarity with yours ; I must obey the dictates of my conscience ; for obedience to its v…
1,121 wordsSECTION 60Section 60
Heard are the voices, Heard are the sage's, The world's, and the age's. Choose well: your choice is Brief and yet endless.^ * A. L. Waring. ' Goethe, translated by Carlyle, As FOR Me and My House. fSt Literature. Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, iii. 423. Hare (J. C), Sermons Preacht in Herstmonceux Church, i.…
1,010 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.