PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 4
James Hastings · 160,549 words · 166 reading sections
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Divifiioii £>S n"M ..H35 V. 4 cofY ) THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE MA' 3 1 loop THE GREAT T 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" PSALMS XXIV…
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^ When the ancient Jew approached his sanctuary, he found an outer court of the Temple full of activity with the coming and going of those who touched the whole natural life and the daily sacrifice on the altar. But behind lay the still silent room where the golden lamp burned and the bread of life was resting on the g…
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^ He always lived with his Uinds up, and you saw all the workings of his mind. Had he not been steeped in the spirit of love he could never have survived the self-exposure which was a habit with him. But his very caprices were always unselfisli, and he could afford to let his friends look him through and through.^ As …
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PSALM XXV. 14 9 ^ I have known more than one Highland saint who never had any intellectual training. They had had little schooling, they never were at college, and their libraries were of the scantiest kind. Yet in every true sense of the word they were men of culture ; their language was choice and their thoughts lar…
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Are these the tracks of some unearthly Friend, His foot-prints, and his vesture-skirts of light, Who, as I talk with men, conforms aright Their sympathetic words, or deeds that blend With my hid thought; — or stoops him to attend My doubtful-pleading grief; — or blunts the might Of ill I see not ; — or in dreams of nig…
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^ We have listened to some sweet melody, and we cannot escape from its gracious thraldom. It pervades the entire day. It interweaves itself with all our changing affairs. We hear it in our work and in our leisure ; when we retire to rest and when we awake. It haunts us. The analogy may help us to some appre- hension of…
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^ To Florence Nightingale, communion with the Unseen meant something deeper, richer, fuller, more positive than the fear of God. The fear of God is the beginning, but not the end, of wisdom, for perfect love casteth out fear. It was for the love of God as an active principle in her mind, constraining all her deeds, tha…
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Love touch'd my eyes — these eyes which once were blind, And, lo ! a glorious world reveal'd to view, A world I ne'er had dream'd so fair to find. I sang for gladness — all things were made new. 1 W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 10. /' » T. G. Selby, The Divine Craftsman, 175. PS. XXV.-CXIX. — 2 i8 THE SECRET OF…
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When He appoints to meet thee, go thou forth. It matters not If south or north. Bleak waste or sunny plot. Nor think, if haply He thou seek'st be late. He does thee wrong; To stile or gate Lean thou thy head, and long! It may be that to spy thee He is mounting Upon a tower, Or in tliy counting Thou hast mista'en …
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2. Let us wait with patience. Patience is just the other side and the practical side of faith. Faith is the breath of life to the religious man. Without faith he cannot live. But there may be, and there often is, a faith which is extremely lacking in patience, a faith whicli is even impatient, a faith which, in the nam…
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» J. E. Miller, PSALM XXVII. 14 27 upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God. Let us remember that God has always loved intervals. Intervals there are generally, if not always, in His best dealings with His children — int…
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^ It is related of Schwabe the German astronomer that, wishing to determine the relation between sun-spots and earth- magnetism, he gave himself to the recording of the varying appearances of the sun's surface. For forty-two years the sun never rose a single morning free of clouds above the flat horizon of the plain at…
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When they had finished the hymn, the Mar^chale thanked her audience, adding that they could hear her again at Rne Auber Hall ; and that she knew a Eriend, of whom she wished to tell them. As she and her comrades turned to walk out, the man in the white apron bowed, as if they had done him a service. " May I come anoth…
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^ Sometimes in the country on a night in early summer you may shut the cottage door to step out into an immense darkness which palls heaven and earth. Going forward into the embrace of the great gloom, you are as a babe swaddled by the hands of night into helpless acquiescence. Your feet tread an unseen path, your hand…
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And when at eve they homeward go Sometimes with weary steps and slow, But laden with the sweet new wine. And purple clusters of the vine. And precious sheaves of golden grain To recompense their toil and pain ; But that the Lord doth choose for me, I fain within their ranks would be. Yet though I can but hope and wait…
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2. Sorrow becomes our guest in the night of broken health. The powers once were vigorous. We ran to our tasR. Caution was scorned. Life seemed made to combat. We had the strength of Hercules. But something broke. We came against a stone wall. We reached a limit. Our wings were clii)ped. Suddenly we discovered that tlie…
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' Bishop W. C. Bonipas, Northern Lights on the Bible, 55. PSALM XXX. 5 43 no more. 0 Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake, comfort our desolate hearts. May we be a united family still in heart through the communion of saints — through Jesus Christ our Lord." ^ 4. Sorrow comes in the night of the consciousness of sin. In th…
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The dark brown mould's upturned By the sharp-pointed plow, And I've a lesson learned. My life is but a field Stretched out beneath God's sky Some harvest rich to yield. Where grows the golden gi'ain, Where faith, — where sympathy? In a furrow cut by pain.^ 2. Sorrow tarries only for the night. It takes its depart…
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III. The Supplanter of Sorrow. 1. "Joy Cometh in the morning." There are two figures presented~"before us, the dark-robed and the bright-garmented. The one is the guest of the night, the other is the guest of the morning. The verb which occurs in the first clause of the second half of the text is not repeated in the …
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And grief may hide an evening guest. But joy shall come with early light.^ * F. Smitli, in Homiletic Review, xlix. 224. 2 W. C. Bryant, Poems, 39. PS. XXV.-CXIX. — 4 Room to Live. Literature. Adams (J.), Sermons in Syntax, 51. Ainsworth (P. C), The Pilgrim Church, 201. Clow (W. M.), The Secret of the Lord, 333. …
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^ From physical weakness, mental distress, or it may be from the faults of others, some lives remain weak and feel it, and, with lessening resources, find increasing pain. To such the following incident will appeal : " I was strongly touched one day," says Dr. Gregory, "by the bedside of an energetic and elastic man of…
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^ If our faith is to be true, we need the simple, direct sense ^ E, B, Browning, A Sea-side Meditaiion. 58 ROOM TO LIVE of God the Father that we had as children — we need that ex- panded into a sense of the great, living God. What was dear to us in our childhood's religion is purified and preserved and strengthened…
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" Lord, take away pain — The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made, The close-coiling chain * W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 333. 6o ROOM TO LIVE That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs Oil the wings that would soar; Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast made, That it love Thee the mo…
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\j/ ^ The Booth children were left in no mist of doubt as to their future. There was an end, a point, a purpose, in their life. They grew up in an atmosphere of decision. Many children are made timid, diffident, ineffective by their training. They are constantly told how naughty they are, till they begin to believe tha…
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^ J. B. Maclean, The Secret of the Stream, 145. 2 H. W. Mabie, The Life of the SpirU, 282. 64 ROOM TO LIVE God and Man are free. Where Freedom is, no other cause is sure. Is Purpose then Foreknowledge? — Human will May yield and fail to win the victory : And God Himself, it may be, turns and bends His purposes to…
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^ This psalm has been selected by the Church for one of the " seven penitential psalms." It forms a part of the service of the synagogue on the great Day of Atonement. Yet it is almost as much jubilant as penitent. The writer, while very sensible of his sin, is still more sensible of the fact that his sin is pardoned. …
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72 THE BEATITUDE OF FORGIVENESS directed. All sin, big or little, is a blunder. It is a blunder even if it hits what it aims at, for it aims at the wrong thing. So doubly, all transgression is folly, and the true name for the doer is " Thou fool ! " For every evil misses the mark which, regard being had to the man's o…
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^ The most persistent symbol of Conscience in this first stage is the " burden " — a simple but picturesque emblem of a sense of * T. T. Hunger, Horace Bushnell, 218. 74 THE BEATITUDE OF FORGIVENESS guilt. It is on him, though behind him ; it is oppressive, though it leaves his limbs all free for action or advance ; …
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^ Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlatlien, i. 879. ^e THE BEATITUDE OF FORGIVENESS The great question before the mind of the Psahnist is how the burden of sin may be removed not from the Divine side, but from the human, and so he states one necessary condition to that removal — confession : " I said, I will confess m…
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^ When Saul Kane, the ill-living prodigal whose " rake's progress" John Masefield has so vividly set forth in his poem The Everlasting Mercy, suffered his instant conversion, an im- mediate and wonderful glory filled his soul. I did not think, I did not strive, The deep peace burnt my me alive; The bolted door had b…
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Here are we dark and weak, yet are we not Excluded from Thy glorious family; Pain to Thy children is a transient lot; We suifer, that from sin we may be free. » A. C. Price, PSALM XXXII. I, 2 81 Angels and men, the prophet and the child, These all are what they are by gift of Thine ; No break or gulf is there ; th…
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' A. Striiidberg, Zones of the, Spirit, 111. PSALM XXXII. 8 87 pleasures, their possessions, which fill as large a space as the higher things in the horizon round which they sweep their sight. They are not ungodly, they are not indifferent to the benediction of Heaven. But there is a great dead weight to be lifted, a…
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PSALM XXXII. 8 89 that in ihat great piece of machinery, one little wheel, as small, it may be, as a shilling, should drop out of its place and fall into the midst of the machinery, that colossal mechanism moving round and round and round would grind this little wheel among its larger wheels into fragments, if not int…
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PSALM XXXII. 8 91 unkindness of other people, and they are very hard to bear because I know they are not God's will. Unkmdness cannot be His will." Her complaint well-nigh covers all the dreary cata- logue of human suffering. Nearly always it is " somebody's fault." The cotton corner which spreads want over an English…
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' G. JIatheson, Words by the Wayside, 17. "J. Reudul Harris, Life of F. W. Crosslcy, 165. PSALM XXXII. 8 93 experience more and more the warm, cherishing, quickening sunlight, the light of God's countenance, shining on, gladdening, and glorifying the life. We escape, too, all that is bitter in the school of discipli…
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^ There is a tender awe in knowing that there is some One at your side guiding at every step, restraining here, leading on there. He knows the way better than the oldest Swiss guide knows the mountain trail. He has love's concern that all shall go well with you. There is a great peace for us in that, and with it a tend…
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^ The following letter was written by Canon Liddon to Dr. King, Bishop of Lincoln, one of his oldest friends, in the second week of his illness, which was destined to proved fatal : " God has laid His hand very heavily upon me ; and I have been through the fire — I greatly needed it. Nothing [is] more wonderful in Him …
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PSALM XXXIV. 8 103 From the beginning it has been undergoing this ordeal. Millions have tried it, and have set to their seal that God's Word is true. From age to age the testimony has rolled on, swelling in its pro- gress into one mighty and majestic volume. And thus, borne on the echoes of successive generations, the…
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» R. F. Horton, PSALM XXXIV. 8 105 at peace with Him ? That is what God's goodness leads to. If you have not seen the sunshine streaming down that lane, the sun has never shone for you. If you have never heard that in the patter of the rain, it has yet to fall a new way for you. If the sweetest voice you ever heard o…
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Yet through all this wild riot the spirit thrust its way, like a tender blade through the grass and stony soil. Up it came. It showed itself a new and strange force amid the mob of tyrannous impulses that tugged and strained to beat it down. Still it persevered ; still it insisted ; still it drew itself upward, beyond …
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' A. Moody Stuart, Rrcollections of John Duncan, 17. " T. E. I}ro\vn, Old John and Othtr Poems, 181. PSALM XXXIV. 8 109 a God who was good could have done the bad things I had imagined.^ ^ The Lord's goodness surrounds ns at every moment. I walk through it almost with difficulty, as through thick grass and flowers.^…
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PSALM XXXIV. 8 III of Christ's Presence manifesfc in goodness, and Christ's Name dis- honoured in hypocrisy, or blindness, or indifference.^ (2) Goodness is attainable through faith in Christ. For men and for nations alike, life is largely if not wholly made up of habits. The blessed life, whether on the large or the…
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' James Vaughan. PSALM XXXIV. 8 113 of evil tidings, his heart' is fixed, trusting in the Lord. To be religious is to keep God's commandments, and the path of rectitude cannot but be the path of happiness. Of course we must not disguise the fact that to be truly religious is to deny one's self and to take up the cros…
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The second boy said, " Yes, father, I will tell you what I did with mine ; I picked up the stone my little brother threw away, ^ B. Jowett, in Life and Letters, ii. 402. PSALM XXXIV. 8 1 15 broke it, and ate the kernel ; I enjoyed that exceedingly ; but T did not eat my peach, I sold it. I could buy a dozen peaches …
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PSALM XXXVI. 5, 6 121 as the heavens are higher thau the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts, and He " is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think." Great God ! I stood beneath the skies one night, "When all Thy stars were out, serene and clear, And tried t…
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^ The Doctor must keep his temper : this is often worse to manage than even his time, there is so much unreason, and ingratitude, and peevishness, and impertinence, and impatience, that it is very hard to keep one's tongue and eye from being angry; and sometimes the Doctor does not only well, but the best when he is do…
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1. The faithfulness of God reaches to the clouds of sin and remorse. — Think of David after his terrible fall. The clouds gathered round him then as they never gathered before. As he had sowed, so he was reaping ; and no sufferings are so terrible or so testing as the sufferings that are the obvious outcome and natural…
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^ Stand at the mountain's foot and look up at its high head, and remember how it has braved many a storm which hissed itself out of breath over it, and it still remains to-day scarred like a veteran, it is true, but yet proud and firm on the victorious field. His proud head the airy mountain hides Among the clouds ; h…
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2. The righteousness of God is like the great mountains in its power to inspire awe, wonder, and reverence. The great 1 J. W. Horsley, in The Church Times, July 28, 1911. ' W. Garrett Horder. PS. xxv.-cxix. — 9 I30 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE height of mountains, the vastness of their bulk, and their far- reaching e…
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^ W. Garrett Border. 132 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE I stand upon the mount of God, With sunlight in my soul ; I hear the storms in vales beneath, I hear the thunders roll. But I am calm with Thee, my God, Beneath these glorious skies ; And to the height on which I stand Nor storms nor clouds can rise. Oh, this …
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1. The deep means mystery. We cannot escape the mystery in life, it is true, just as we cannot explore all ocean's secrets. But it is not wisdom to think we have touched bottom because the plummet ceases to descend. The plumb line slackens in our hands. But that may mean only that life is too deep for our pessimists' s…
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Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), viii. (1871), No. 742 ; xxii. (1883), No. 1232 ; xxiii. (1883), No. 1259. Cambridge Review, ix. Supplement No. 232 (R. Machray). Christian Commonwealth, xxxii. (1912) 437 (R. J. Campbell). Christian World Pulp%t, xxi. 106 (J. B. Heard) ; xx. 392 (J. B. Tinling). Church of Engla…
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3. And this life is conveyed to man through Christ. He secures it for us by the surrender of His own life, His sacrifice on Calvary, thus making it possible for the Father to bestow it righteously on us who are unworthy of it. And He, Christ crucified and alive again, is the medium of its communication. Again and again…
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(4) The water of the fountain is always seeking to rise to the level from which it came. This makes the very life and beauty of the fountain. So will it be with " the fountain of life." It will ^ James Vaughan. * J. Robertson, in Sunday Magazine, 1881, p. 704. 144 LIFE AND LIGHT always be mounting to the height, th…
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146 LIFE AND LIGHT of earth he wants the heavenly light. He says you cannot interpret your own skies without it. "We often say that in the light of eternity earthly objects will fade from our sight. But the Psalmist says that, until we get the light of eternity, earthly objects will never be in our sight. It is by the…
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148 LIFE AND LIGHT No natural light can clear up this. There must be a li^ht from outside, a liglit from above. " In thy light," the soul will have to say at last out of all its searchings — " in thy light shall I see light." Down in those hidden crevices of my own innermost, blackest being, Lord, give me light to see…
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150 LIFE AND LIGHT Now the light comes just as we are ready to obey the will of the Most High. Abraham had to leave his home and go out, not knowing whither he went. Moses had to return from the home he had in Midian to the country where they had sought his life. The people of Israel had to journey into the great and …
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2. The text might be correctly paraphrased, " Delight in the Lord, and then thou mayest trust thy desires ; they will be the forerunners of blessings, the beginning of their own realization." " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." Delight thyself in the Lord, and thou …
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As Brother Lawrence had found such comfort and blessing in walking in the Presence of God, it was natural for him to recom- mend it earnestly to others ; but his example was a stronger 158 DELIGHTING IN THE LORD inducement than any arguments he could propose. His very countenance was edifying; such a sweet and calm d…
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1 W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, ISl. i6o DELIGHTING IN THE LORD because it enabled them more intelligently, more practically, more literally to converse with Him. I observe that all their sorrow arose from the loss of God's presence, all their joy from the possession of it, all their pleasure in expecting heave…
1,041 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.