PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 2
James Hastings · 195,735 words · 204 reading sections
Section 121
^ None of us would, I suppose, venture in plain words to stand up and say : " I am an exception to your general confessions of sin," and most of us would be ready to unite in the acknowledg- ment : we have all " come short of the glory of God," though in our consciences there has never stirred the faintest movements of…
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III. Self-Discoveky. 1. The story of Nathan's interview with David moves us with the pain and the pity of it. There is incomparable drama in the sudden turning of the tables, not the artificial drama of the stage, but the terrible drama of life, unmasking the feelings and motives of the heart, and touching the simple…
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Until we make Christ our conscience, bringing everything to be judged by the Light, we shall keep confusing the issues, and disguising our sins, and finding all manner of self-escape, excuses, and counter-charges. But if we will have the same mind in us that was in Christ, looking at the world and Kfe and self with His…
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330 REPENTANCE AND RETRIBUTION 3. And yet, at this very moment, when the greatness of the crisis is revealed to him, his thoughts do not turn to any of these things. Not the gathering storm-cloud, not the fatal ascendancy of Joab, not the existence of a perilous secret, not the loss of respect and of power — not any o…
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^ In one of his delightfully satirical (apparently superficial but really searching) essays, M. Anatole France speaks of what is popularly called " confession." " I do not speak," he says, " of St. Augustine's Confessions; the great doctor does not confess enough in them. His is a spiritual book, which satisfies Divine…
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"My sin!" the low despairing sigh; " My sin ! " the exceeding bitter cry. Out of those depths is heard on high: Glad angels hear it where they stand. And wait — a ministering band — Their Lord's permission and command ; It comes — and swiftly, down from heaven A light whereby the gloom is riven ! A voice of power a…
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^ The feeling which is here concentrated in one despairing sentence is amplified in the 51st Psalm. "Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." "Wash me throughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin." " Lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts." " Turn thy face from my sins, and p…
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^ The most intricate moral processes take but a moment to result. The volcano that the chemistry of years has been pre- paring breaks into eruption in an hour. The blossom that the patient plant has been designing for a century bursts into flower in a single night. And so the reconciliation of a soul to God, which it h…
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2 SAMUEL XII. 13, 14 341 years afterwards when he played the " hypocrite " at Antioch and St. Paul had to withstand him to his face.^ ^ A recent renewed study of those later years of David's reign has left on my own soul an impression of peculiar sadness. There is nothing quite like it in the Bible. Look at this man …
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(3) And there are moral reasons. The penalty which follows transgression deepens our sense of sin, it strengthens our reliance on God, and it tests the reality of the repentance itself. As the old wounds reopen, and new sorrows spring from our old sins, we acknowledge our transgression, our sin is ever before us; we re…
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British Weekly Pulpit, ii. 319. Churchman's Pulpit : Sixth Sunday after Trinity, x. 370 (Clark). Homiletic Review, xxxi. 479. An Exceeding Bitter Cry. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept : and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom I would God …
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Somewhere at every hour The watchman on the tower Looks forth, and sees the fleet Approach of the hurrying feet Of messengers, that bear The tidings of despair. 0 Absalom, my son! He goes forth from the door. Who shall return no more. With him our joy departs; The light goes out in our hearts; In the Chamber over the …
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^ Sensuality is a prolific cause of suicide. Impurity leads to melancholy, melancholy to despair, and despair to suicide. It is not only the woman who grows weary of breath and plunges into the swift flowing river. When young men from home fall into the ways of sin, they become callous and indifferent to the claims of …
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^ Such a one is dead, gone (as we say) to his last account : it is a bad record which closes, a life vicious, reckless, false : the world sighs with relief to be well rid of him: the Joabs have struck their spears into him as he hung in calamity's grip, and 2 SAMUEL XVIII. 33 357 the multitude have cast each man his …
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1 J. H. Ecob. ' Marcus Dods, in Early Letters of Marcus JJods, 111. 2 SAMUEL XVIII. 33 359 By Thy long-drawn anguish to atone, Jesus Christ, show mercy on Thine own: Jesus Christ, show mercy and atone Not for other sake except Thine own. Thou who thirsting on the Cross didst see All mankind and all I love and me, S…
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2 SAMUEL XXIII. 15 365 alike in the city and in the wilderness. Then, it seems, in an hour when the heart of David was probably burdened with the sense of life's disillusionments, when "days were dark and friends were few," when experience had brought to him a feeling of the mystery that covers the ways of God, and of…
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2. What David really desired was not mere water, or even water from the well of Bethlehem, but to drink its water as he had done in other days — to drink it with the feelings of childhood. He wished to be again the shepherd boy passing in and out at the gate of Bethlehem, free from care as in the days of other years. I…
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How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses, for ever in joy!^ (2) David was thinking of his lost ideals. In life, with its failures and disappointments, its cruel blows, its dread sufferings, we are all too apt to become flat and weary, stale, unprofitable, que…
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Knowing that we can nevermore return. Yet now and then a sunset or a flower, Or some old haunt revisited once more, Or the sea's story whispered to the shore, Or the wind's music in a listening bower, ^ Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 305. 372 THE WELL BY THE GATE Will bring again the unalloyed delight We knew before our li…
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^ The regret we have for our childhood is not wholly justifiable : so much a man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry ; for although we shake our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse we more than gain in the habit of generous…
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5. There is something better than looking back with longing to the days of youth. It is this — to realize that true life, the life of the soul, never grows old, although it grows up. Our true home never is, never was, amid the symbols and shadows of time, but in the grand reality of eternity. The well of Bethlehem in t…
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Now in the text two facts are mentioned about the building of the Temple : the stones were prepared beforehand in the quarry, and so the actual building was accomplished with no noise. Thus we have — I. The House of God is Built of Prepared Stones. XL The House of God is Built Silently. I. The House of God is Built …
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3. Yet how much spiritual trimming and dressing, how much hewing and squaring does he need to fashion him aright for the position which the Divine Architect intends he shall occupy here- after ! There are sharp angles of character to be rounded off; unsightly protuberances of conduct to be chipped away; many roughnesse…
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'Tis the Master who holds the chisel; He knows just where Its edge should be driven sharpest To fashion there The semblance that He is carving; Nor will He let One delicate stroke too many Or few be set On forehead, or cheek, where only He sees how all Is tending — and where the hardest The blow should fall ^ G. …
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^ There is more to be said about the nature of trial than that it is a test. The strain is not put merely to see who will stand and who will fail. We see this further use in it, that it is not merely to try good but to increase good. Strength comes through the strain. " The bruising flails of God's corrections " are me…
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i. The Silent Building of Character. We know that in our midst are lives and characters im- mature and unshaped, but every day and every week they are adding something to themselves which will determine the quality and power of their maturity. Every father and mother, every Sunday-school and day-school teacher, has bee…
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(1) So there is first the quarry we call Heredity. The child does not start clear. It finds, like Solomon, materials left by its father. It is handicapped with poor stuff or enriched with capital piled up by the effort of many generations. The " heir of all the ages," as he lies on his mother's knee, has in every eddy …
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The Church of God is spoken of sometimes as on earth, sometimes as in heaven. Let us take it in its entirety. The real end for which God hath chosen us in Christ Jesus before the world began, and fitted us on earth by His providential dispensations, is, " that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gathe…
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The hands that do God's work are patient hands, And quick for toil, though folded oft in prayer; They do the unseen work they understand And find — no matter where. The feet that follow His must be swift feet, For time is all too short, the way too long; Perchance they will be bruised, but falter not, For love shall m…
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^ S, D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 214. » F. "W. Robertson, Life cmd Letters, 209. I KINGS VI. 7 401 there are in similar undertakings to-day. The reason why " there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building," was because for days and weeks and months beforehand…
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And if our hearts well rooted be, Their love, like sap within the tree, With silent quickening moves ; Enlarged and liberated powers. More light and balmier warmth are ours, And God His presence proves. O Saviour, who, that silence keeps, But sometimes at the story weeps Of all that he has known ? That we are what …
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4o6 HEWING AND BUILDING hour, but through the flight of days : what was to be said of it ? This hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.i (3) In Grace. The beginning of the Christian life is com- monly without observation. It is true that Saul of Tarsus was felled to the earth, blinded by a sun-b…
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2. From the challenge of Elijah to the falling of the fire from heaven, the interest grows and the excitement deepens. It was one of the most memorable .national convocations ever held in Israel. Old men were there, and they could not remember such a bitter time in the nation's history. For years no rain had fallen at …
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414 HALTING BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS of the certainty which made him mock his foes, and call on all the folk of Israel to watch the falling of the fire before it fell. This, too, was the root of his calm ; all the day long, he waited, " like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved " ; silent till the end ; wrapt in his mantle, wrap…
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1. The God of this world. The God of this world takes various forms. (1) Here is one form. We do not cast him into the form of a graven, or a molten image ; we may not set him up in the "plains of Dura, in the province of Babylon," but we set "him up in London, at the Stock Exchange. We have little images of him in ou…
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2. Our choice is between the God of this world and Him who is called "the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Why should we choose the latter ? (1) He is one. — Suppose that we worshipped a plurality of gods, as the heathen nations do and ever have done ; then we have at once a divided duty : one man…
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» William Blake. I KINGS XVIII. 21 421 pray ; and how difficult it is to pray then I know full well, for I have had to do it. In a few weeks the work is done ; the boy's pure imagination is polluted, the boy's blood begins to riot with unholy impulses, and on the inward ear there falls more clearly and resistlessly e…
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3. But there is a dark side to all this : for just those wider views of things which produce tolerance are apt to produce also a sceptical spirit, which weakens the springs of manly energy. We are not able to split life in two with a hatchet as our fathers did, or to see all white on one side, and all black on the othe…
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5. But there is also the last and most potent reason of all-T-moral_indecision. There are those who plead honest doubt. But^^is is rarely sincere. An honest doubter is not contented until he has moved heaven and earth to resolve his doubt. It is related of Zaid, the sage of Mecca, who had broken with the national relig…
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^ Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction — where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth ; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought…
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432 A STILL SMALL VOICE reaction producing despondency in his heart, with a sense of loneliness which made life seem a burden, and death a happy door of release, he plunged still farther into the desert, and came even to Horeb, the Mount of God. 2. Perhaps no spot on earth is more associated with the mani- fested pre…
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If things are so with us we are just in Elijah's position, and God's message to His prophet these hundreds of years ago is just as really His message to us to-day. Like Elijah we look too much to externals, dwell too much upon the circumference and too little at the centre of things. In proportion to our eagerness and …
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yields ; Let Nature take thee to her heart ! she hath a bounteous breast That yearns o'er all her sorrowing sons, and she will give thee rest." But Nature on the spirit-sick as on the spirit-free Smiled, like a fair unloving face too bright for sympathy; Sweet, ever sweet, are whispering leaves, are waters in their …
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How often in the midst of the sublimities of nature, a spectator, gazing upon some high mountain-range, has been fain to cry out, " What an aid to devotion ! what a ladder up to Heaven ! " Who has not exclaimed, when the thunder-cloud has » F. B. Macnutt. I KINGS XIX. II, 12 439 rolled its awful peal, " Surely this …
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I KINGS XIX. II, 12 441 earthquake and the fire have been only like a pageant when it is past. Hi. Nature is often a Preparation for the Voice of God. The Lord was not in the hurricane; the Lord was not in the earthquake, the Lord was not in the fire : but the wind, the earthquake, the fire went before the Lord. And…
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'Tis not the whirlwind, o'er our fair fields sweeping That speaks God's present wrath: This is but nature's course, for all men keeping One indiscriminate path. Nor yet the earthquake, firm foundations shaking Of houses long since built: This is but fortune's chance, its havoc making Without affixing guilt. Nor y…
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446 A STILL SMALL VOICE do not find Him in the stillness, and so He is compelled to come in the storm. But He would rather take the gentle way. Are there not, then, two musics unto men ? — One loud and bold and coarse, And overpowering still perforce All tone and tune beside ; Yet in despite its pride Only of fum…
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2. In the quietest force — love — there is most power. — You have heard of the old fable which tells how the sun and the wind strove with each other, which of them should first make the traveller divest himself of his cloak. The more fiercely the wind blew, the more firmly the wayfaring man gathered his outer garment a…
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^ There is in many minds something which makes them crave for proofs of the presence and power of God in remarkable inter- ruptions of nature and providence rather than in their orderly course. It is a perversion of the truth. If a miracle is sublime, how much more sublime is the unity and greatness of the order which …
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1 J. H. Jowett I KINGS XIX. II, 12 453 ^ If we ask what gives us assurance of the truth and justice of God, the answer is, the life and death of Christ, who is the Son of God, and the Kevelation of God. We know what He Himself has told us of God, and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from perfect truth; na…
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2 * E. E. Jenkins. ^ T. Hodgkin, Human Progress and the Inward Light, 28. I KINGS XIX. II, 12 455 I hear it often in the dark, I hear it in the light, — Where is the voice that comes to me With such a quiet might ? It seems but echo to my thought, And yet beyond the stars ! It seems a heart-beat in a hush, And …
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2. But Naaman was a leper. We can scarcely imagine the greatness of this calamity, — the anguish that overwhelmed his proud spirit, the sorrow that pervaded his house. "The basest slave in Syria," says Bishop 1 M. G. Pearse. 459 46o NAAMAN Hall, " would not change skins with him, if he might have his honour to boot…
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The directions as to salvation are clear as day. He that runs may read them. " Believe and live." " Eepent, and your sins shall be blotted out." The blessing is assured the moment the condition is fulfilled; yet many hesitate. They say: "That is too easy a way ; there is surely something more to do." But that is God's …
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We all want to do some great thing — to do what prophets, saints, heroes, and martyrs have done. But the small thing, the commonplace thing, the little trivial duty, the thing that has to be done out of everybody's sight — in the routine of business, home, or school — that seems poor work to do for God. But it is what …
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/ 2. It was when the will of Naaman was surrendered and the act of obedience completed that the change was wrought. It is » in the act of obedience that the Divine blessing always comes. When Jesus bade the ten lepers who came to Him for healing go and show themselves to the priests, it is said that " it came to pass,…
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\ When once thou art well grounded in this Inward Worship thou wilt have learnt to live in God above Time and Place. For ' F. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 208. 2 KINGS V. 13 469 every day will be a Sunday to thee, and wherever thou goest thou wilt have a Priest, a Church, and an Altar along with thee. For when …
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474 THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE use against a man who had Heaven to back him. " His servant said unto him, Alas, my master ! how shall we do ? And hi answered. Fear not : for they that be with us are more than the} that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I praj thee, open his eyes, that he may see." I…
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Anoint my eyes that I may see Through all this sad obscurity, This worldly mist that dims my sight, These crowding clouds that hide the light Full vision, as perhaps have they Who walk beyond the boundary way, I do not seek, I do not ask, But only this, — that through the mask, Which centuries of soil and sin Have fa…
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■[j I go to some respectable pew-holder in my church and I say to him, " My friend, do you believe in God ? " Affrighted and indignant he turns round on me and asks, " What do you take me for ? A pagan ? An atheist ? Of course I believe in God." And then my doubt as to his belief in God deepens, for when a man answerin…
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(1) The first is being in the right ;place. Elisha was in a great difficulty, in a very strait place, but he was where it was right for him to be. When St. Paul was in his dark prison at Eome the Lord stood by him and strengthened him ; when our Saviour bore His cruel agony in Gethsemane, an angel from heaven came to s…
1,000 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.