PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 4
James Hastings · 160,549 words · 166 reading sections
Section 121
^ In Millet's " Angelus " we see the toil-worn peasants, who have been bending over the ground through the long afternoon, standing up from their work to think reverently and prayerfully of God, as the notes of the evening bell come floating over the fields from the dim church tower. The pious men of Israel con- tinual…
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^ John Hunter, De Profundis Claviavi, 238. ' J. Denney, The Epistles to the Thessaloniaiis, 29. 330 THE DAY'S WORK Ah! brothers, let us work our work, for love Of what the God in us prevails to do ! And if, when all is done, the unanswering void And silence weigh upon our souls, remember The music of a lonely he…
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^ After a very hard day's work, — during which he had con- firmed candidates, preached at the re-opening of a church, spoken two or three times, and done much beside in a manner which perhaps no person but himself could have accomplished, — Bishop Wilberforce returned in the evening to Turvey, where he was staying. A s…
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" And is the twilight closing fast ? (I hear the night-breeze wild) ; And is the long week's work all done ? " "Thy work is done, my child." " Must I not rise at dawn of day ? (The night-breeze swells so wild); And must I not resume my toil ? " " No ! nevermore, my child." ^ George Adam Sraitli, The Forgiveness o…
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2. It is certain that God does not always interfere to keep us from sin, for that would frustrate His purpose in wishing us to grow good by experience, to grow good by first hating evil and then loving the good so that we may follow and do the good from a free choice. He will help us if we earnestly desire it, but not …
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4. Mark where the judgment of God falls. It falls on the highest nature — it falls on the soul ! The man on whom God's disapprobation rests, withers at his very root. His mental power declines, his moral nature shrivels ; he goes down in the volume and quality of his being. Think of a lean soul ! Ko compass, no grandeu…
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2. We must guard against the mistake — into which we may so easily fall — of applying the text and the lessons to be drawn ' F. W. Farrar, Social and Present Day Questions, 174. ' C. H. Spurgeou. PSALM cvi. 15 345 from it only to the rich and prosperous, whereas it applies to them in exactly the same sense as it ap…
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PSALM cvi. 15 347 sympathy, without self-respect, without generosity, letting others minister to us without giving aught in return ? If so, it may be well to look on to the end. A day and hour will come when desire will be manifested ; when the true, deep-seated desire of each soul will be seen. Now there are restrain…
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Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, iii. 321. Meyer (F. B.), Christian Living, 62. Morrison (G. H.), Flood^Tide, 282. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, vii. 129. Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. No, 74. „ „ Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xlvii. (1901), No. 2724. Tipple (S. A.), Days of Old, 20…
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2. The soldiers are not only volunteers ; they are animated by a spirit of self-surrender and sacrifice. The word here rendered " willing " is employed throughout the Levitical law for " freewill offerings." It is a striking word in the Hebrew. We have a similar idea in Ps. Ixviii. 9, where we are told that God has pou…
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The conquering King whom the psalm hymns is a Priest for ever ; and He is followed by an army of priests. The soldiers are gathered in the day of the muster, with high courage and willing devotion, ready to fling away their lives ; but they are clad not in mail, but in priestly robes, like those who wait before the alt…
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1 W. M. Macgregor. ^ Bishop Boyd Carpenter. 36o A VOLUNTEER ARMY powers that accrue to those who choose the Christian life ; and it is strange if the way along which they are acquired is a way of self-seeking ; strange if, in striving towards a paradise of selfish pleasure, there is formed a character which would be …
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^ As I witness the energies of nature, I feel that the heart that fashioned it was young. There is no sign of age about crea- tion. There is no trace of the weariness of years. It is inspired with an abounding energy that tells me of a fresh and youthful mind. Christ may have lived from everlasting ages before the mome…
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A man is not old, however hoary and bent, who is conversing, as Emerson says, with what is above him, with the religious eye looking upward, and abandoned the while with delight to the inspirations flowing in from all sides. A man is not old in whom the faculty of imagination is undecayed, who throbs with sympathy as e…
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» A. C. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 225. = N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Influence, 274. The Brook in the Way. 367 Literature. Chadwick (G. A.), Pilcdds Gift, 266. Hanks (W. P.), The Eternal Witness, 81. Hunter (J.), The Angels of God, 27. Jerdan (C), Gospel Milk and Honey, 245. , Jones (J. D.), The Unfettere…
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3. " What is to hinder this man from governing ? " says Carlyle of the Abbot Samson. " There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships ; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by. He has the living ideal of a governor in him." In like fashion the poet sweeps aside the whole mo…
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% Nothing can have a more tranquillizing effect upon us in this world than the frequent consideration of the afflictions, necessities, contempt, calumnies, insults, and humiliations which our Lord suffered from His birth to His most painful death. When we contemplate such a weight of bitterness as this, are we not wron…
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^ Eastern people have a very skilful way of drinking from a flowing stream without stopping in their running. They throw the water up into the mouth. An Eastern traveller writes : " In an excursion across an Arabian desert, some of the Arabs, on coming to water, rushed to it, and, stooping sufficiently to allow the rig…
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Bright affluent spirits, breathing but to bless, Whose presence cheers men's eyes and warms their hearts, Whose lavish goodness this old world renews, Like the free sunshine and the liberal air.^ ^ There is a mysterious power in sympathy, and I thank God that the stream of sympathy is ever " in the way " of sorrowi…
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^ Augustine tried the broken cisterns and he was thirsty still. " Turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. I wandered into fruitless seed-beds of sorrow, with a proud dejecteduess and a restlesa weariness. I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me, y…
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» N. D. Hillis, The Contagion of Character, 228. " W. G. Berry, Bishop Hcmnington, 180. What shall I Render? 383 Literature. Burrows (H. W.), Parochial Sermons^ iii. 154. Ketcham (W. E.), Thanksgiving Sermons, 245, Kirkpatrick (A. F.), The Book of Psalms (Cambridge Bible), 690. Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Psalm…
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11. A Grateful Eecipient. 1. As his grateful heart thinks of all God's benefits to him, the Psalmist feels at once the impulse to requite and the impossibility of doing so. With a kind of glad despair he asks the question that ever springs to thankful lips, and, having nothing to give, recognizes the only possible re…
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1 gave My life for thee. My precious blood I shed, That thou might'st ransora'd be, And quicken'd from the dead. I gave My life for thee; What hast thou given for Me? Miss Havergal was staying with a German divine, in whose study was a picture of our crucified Saviour, beneath which was placed the motto : " I did thi…
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^ There is an old legend of an enchanted cup filled with poison, and put treacherously into a king's hand. He made the sign of the Cross and named the name of God over it, and it shivered in his grasp. Do you take that name of the Lord as a test ? Name Him over many a cup of which you are eager to drink, and the 1 glit…
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S9> The Day which the Lord made. This is the day which the Lord hath made ; We will rejoice and be glad in it.— Ps. czviii. 24. This is unmistakably a psalm for use in the Temple worship, and was probably meant to be sung antiphonally, on some day of national rejoicing indicated in the text. A general concurrence o…
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^ The song of the angels, the voice at the baptism, the agony in the garden, the sublime anguish of Calvary, would have been inexplicable without the light which was reflected back upon them by the angels at the open tomb on the morning of the resurrec- tion. Such a nature aud such a life were not formed and fashioned …
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» R. D. B. Rawnsley. 404 THE DAY WHICH THE LORD MADE II. A Day of Rejoicing. 1. The joy of Easter is the joy of a great certainty. The resurrection of our Saviour is the fact which makes an intelligent Christian certain of the truth of his creed. The Apostles entered on their work with one conviction, prominent bey…
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4 The joy of Easter is the holy joy of quiet triumph, of hymns of victory and exulting faith. The Lord is risen ! What more can the glad Church of the redeemed say ? She can only repeat it again and again with multiplied Alleluias. Words seem out of place, for the joy of the Church is too deep to express itself in the …
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\5i It is the one inspiring element of Christianity that it throws us in boundless hope upon the future, and forbids us to dwell in the poisonous shadows of the past. A new and better growth is before us, a fresher, a diviner, a more enthusiastic life awaits us. We are to wake up satisfied in the likeness of Christ, th…
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PSALM cxviii. 24 411 May we grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, season after season, year after year, till He takes to Himself, first one, then another, in the order He thinks fit, to be separated from each other for a little while, to be united together for ever, in the Kingdom of His Father…
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1. The question of the Psalmist broadly stated is this, Can a man live, in all respects and in all his paths, a pure and beautiful life ? and can all his ways be clean ? We know well how much the question involves ; we know also what the answer means ; but we can answer without hesitation — as an ideal, Yes. A man can …
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' I'lte Life of Charlis Loring Brace, 302 PSALM cxix. 9 419 simple-hearted devotion, ever growing in intelligence, to those grand objects which are dear to Christ and the angels, and the over-shadowing grandeur of which makes obtruding self-conscious- ness impossible. The Apostles advanced by forsaking the tradition …
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2. If we examine our self-consciousness, we shall find that it is never as to the qualities of actions that we feel doubt or hesita- tion. The questions which perplex us, and which it is unspeak- ably dangerous for a young person to begin to ask, are such as these : How far may I go in a wrong direction, and yet be sur…
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4. In Christ, who is the Incarnate Word, we have an all- sufficient Guide on our way through life. A guide of conduct must be plain — and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of Christianity there is none about its morality, A guide of conduct must be decisive — and there is no faltering in…
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(1903), No. 22. Whincup (D. W.), The Training of Life, 21. British Weekly Pulpit, iii. 401 (W. Sanday). Treasury (New York), xx. 722. «a8 The Wondrous Law. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold Wondrous things out of thy law. — Ps. cxix. i8. This is a very uncommon idea — that wonder should be the result of intell…
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2. Wonder rises into admiration as we contemplate things that are grand and beautiful. There is a chord in the human heart to which the beautiful and sublime respond, whether these appear in the material or in the spiritual world. If we could only take men away for a little out of the dull, dead round, and from the cor…
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2. It is the law of God that keeps the stars in their courses, regulates the movements of the seas and the revolutions of the earth, develops the plant and organizes the animal, works in our instincts and guides our reason, marks out the path of humanity and determines the rise and fall, the weal and woe, of nations, a…
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^ I am not quite sure that the sole, or even chief, end of punishment is the reformation of the offender. I think a great deal of law. Law rules Deity ; and its awful majesty is above individual happiness. That is what Kant calls " the categorical imperative," that is, a sense of duty which commands categorically or ab…
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^ 1 remember very well when Sir Eedvers Buller came home from South Africa, in almost the first speech he made after landing at Southampton, he drew attention to the immense superiority of the Boer over the Briton in the matter of vision. Accustomed to the clear atmosphere and vast distances of South Africa, the Boer h…
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^ J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, 134. * W. C. Piggott, The Imperishable Word, 68. 440 THE WONDROUS LAW hearts to God. They avoid all thoughts of religion unless only to sneer at it, or to look down upon it with supercilious curiosity. They never attend public worship or put themselves in the way of hearing what they ne…
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2. We must bring our hearts into harmony with the law. At South Kensington there is a clock made above 500 years ago under the hammer of a Glastonbury monk. It has measured out the moments of fifteen generations of men. That piece of mechanism has done and is still doing its maker's will. It has served its maker's purp…
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Stanley (A. P.), Sermons in the East, 123. Thomas (J.), Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 19. Christian World Pulpit, xxxvii. 355 (M. Bryce) ; 1. 121 (E. King). Preacher's Magazine, ii. 220 (W. Hawkins). Sunday Magazine, 1891, p. 171 (S. A. Tipple). Treasury (New York), xxi. 675 (H. C. Swentzel). 446 Liberty in God's L…
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^ The longer we live the less we are inclined to be hero- worshippers, seeing more failings in the men and things we revered in the enthusiasm of youth. " I have seen an end of all perfection " ; but it is well if we can add, " thy commandment is exceeding broad." The more, however, we get to know the temptations and t…
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^ P. Bayne, Lessons from My Masters, 284. 452 LIBERTY IN GOD'S LAW law cannot possibly be the same for an Israelite who stands before the flame-girt Horeb and the believer who bows wondering before the Cross where the Man of Sorrows bears the burdens of man- kind. The commandment is broad before the vision of the man…
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Here is the beautiful Divine secret of our troubled dissatisfac- tion with things ; that we bear within us a commandment greater than ourselves, and are more than we are or can be. Our ever- lasting sense of limitation means that our illimitableness, our unappeasable hunger is due to our self-transcending capacity; not…
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Prini'd fcj/ Morhison & Oibb I.imitrd, Edinhunk The Great Texts of the Bible Edited by Dr. James Ha^ngs THE name of Dr. Hastings stands pre-eminent in the literature of Biblical exposition. In his famous Diction- ary of the Bible he attained a standard of homiletical inter- pretation and Scriptural scholarship neve…
516 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.