PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 6
James Hastings · 192,063 words · 198 reading sections
Section 61
^ L. A. Banks, in ffomUetio Review, xxxix. p. 337. 2 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 189. 5 L. March Phillips, In the Desert, p. 137. 154 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE like a worm. We look for the interest of life, he says, not from them but from their opposites, from the man who owns no rigid service to duty an…
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H" Among the many offices that have Lj';*.ome obsolete, during the advance of modern civilisation, may be counted that of the watchman. In ancient times, however, the office was considered absolutely necessary for the maintenance of order and safety in towns and cities. It was the watchman's duty to patrol the streets …
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II. Its Modern Use. i. The Heart's Cry to God. It is the cry of the human heart to God. How often do the heavens seem pitiless, and send no answer to our impassioned ISAIAH i6i appeal, but " Morning cometh, and also night." However sad we are, however racked with suspense, though we have lost the friends we most l…
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IT Mr, C. T. Studd once told me a cry of anguisli which he heard in China, and which has haunted him ever since. He was negoti- ating in a Chinese dwelling for the tenancy of a building for an opium refuge. While the negotiations were in progress, he and Mrs. Studd were horrified at a series of piercing shrieks which f…
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The Church has an answer, but it is not always ready to give it. The Church is sometimes taken aback by the world's moral or religious questions, because it does not appreciate the world's moral or religious difficulties. Sad, were the question to go up from Edom, " Watchman, what of the night?" and the answer to come…
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(3) And we see it in the coming of the Kingdom. It v/as i68 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE but a hundred years ago that William Carey sat in his cobbler shop in Northamptonshire, his attention divided between the lapstone on his knee and a map of the world hanging on the wall. He said, " There is gold to be mined in In…
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The subject is a simile. The life of man is likened to a wilderness journey, with its distresses and its alleviatior s. The title might be — "Relief from the Distresses of the* Desert Journey " The Desert. The Nearer East is dominated by the desert, just as Britain is by the sea. Behind all the thoughts of the Easter…
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^ Easter Day, xix. ISAIAH 175 dragged out at once, and I had to dig holes and bury them a foot under the sand-heaps. By sunset the gale went down, and we had a peaceful evening.^ IT A tourist was being conducted through the railway tunnel under the Severn. A bell tinkled — that was a train from the Welsh side. Anoth…
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^ H. Rix, Tent and Testament, p. 184. ISAIAH 177 An unnoticed crack in a waterskin, or the jar spilt by a stumbling beast, is all that is needed to bring some poor mortal to his end. We passed one band of pilgrims returning, many of them on foot, from Mecca, and one of them, an old man, reached the Well of Ain el Bed…
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^ W. F. Lynch, Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Jordan, p. 315. ' A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, iii. p. 141. * A. Aitken, in The Churchman's Fidpit, pt. 77, p. 32. ISAIAH 179 tinual state of drift from the wind, and it is this drift which is the real cause of the barrenness of such portions of the de…
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IT It is easy to treat lightly the power of individual influence, but even in the affairs of the world the interest of history centres chiefly in individuals. A philosophic historian would probably tell us that this element has been allowed too much prominence, and that instead of interesting ourselves so deeply in the…
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It may be that when the tribes of Israel feel the throb of nationality they will demand a king. Will Samuel refuse to give them a king ? Will he plead that they have no king but Jehovah ? He may have to give them a king. For God's ways are not as our ways. Through the gift of a king, a King may come. Moreover, the war…
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The shadow of a great rock ? Samson will do in the days of youth ; Samuel in manhood, when patriotism is the divinity ; Isaiah as the years pass, and the patriot finds that there is a God of the Gentile as well as of the Jew. But there is no refuge for a whole wide world of weariness except in the love of Him who loved…
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^ R. J. Campbell, Sermons to Young Men p. 200. i88 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE IF Of William, Prince of Orange, Motley says, as he closes his history of the Rise of the Dutch EepuUic : ' He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word u…
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3. He is ever living and interceding. Our earthly friends may die, but we shall never lose our best Friend. All merely human comforters will fail us sooner or later, but He will ever abide true and steadfast to all who rely upon Him. He lives, the great Eedeemer lives, — so His cause is always safe, and our safety is…
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H The bold aeronaut who ascends through the invisible air not only looks up and beholds the ever-nearing blue heavens, but he also looks down, and lo ! because of his ascent, all he is leaving below him changes and becomes transfigured. Not only has the horizon of his outlook vastly extended, but the inequalities of le…
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4. Dare we advance higher ? Nature is beautiful because it reveals thought; the human face is more beautiful because ISAIAH 197 it reveals that moral goodness of which thought is only a condition ; the soul is more beautiful, for in it dwells the goodness that lights the countenance ; but all these, and the highest o…
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H The land of far distances ! The image could only have originated in an Eastern country, where the atmosphere is so crystal clear that the remotest distances are visible. Our cloudy northern skies limit the horizon and circumscribe the view, and bring the heavens like a roof close to the earth. But in Eastern lands th…
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3. The true enlargement comes only when the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death. Then are we brought out from the confining bars of the prison-house of the soul ; then have we the vision and the faculty Divine, and become far-sighted indeed. We feel like one who has been…
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(2) I would like the power to see homesick prodigals when they are still away in the far country. This was the characteristic sight of the Father: "When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him ! " It is the pathos and tragedy of the Church, and of so many of the Lord's disciples, that we see the prodigal only wh…
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H Among all the artists who represented Christ's life, one stands alone for his unique, unconventional, and manifold treatment of it ^ H. E. Manning, Scrmom, iii. p. 439. 2o6 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE and its subject. Others have represented Him in the common humanities of life, but they have lacked the power to …
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Till we clasp His hands at last. ii. The Far-stretching Kingdom. The text is to be considered as the great prophet's vision of a Divine King who reigns over the earth from the heaven of heavens. It is the great foreshadowing of a universal empire, a kingdom bounded only to human view by the far- distant horizon of ma…
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IF Dr. Matthews in his book about Madagascar, where he was for thirty years a missionary, describes this native custom : " The prisoners were kept in chains, but they had to earn their own living, and were confined to prison only during the night. On the days, however, on which the Sovereign appeared they were not allo…
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^ Christina G. RossettL The Forerunner. Literature. Austin (Q. B.), The Beauty of Goodriess, 190. Cook (F. C), Lincoln's Inn Sermons, 279. Davies (J. P.), The Same Things, 10. Gould (S. Baring), Village Preaching, 2nd Ser., i. 25. Hare (J. C), The Mission of the Comforter, i. 325. Hutton (R. E.), The Crown of C…
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1 A. L, Moore. ISAIAH 217 be deaf to the Voice that declared it. The cynic may burst into ironic laughter, and the coarse interpret its holy prophecy in terms of madness. But goodness ever has its own vision. The prophet has ever been the man with eyes in his soul. He can sing with Abt Vogler — But God has a few of …
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You will not understand me to be saying that here we have a strict and absolute analogy to the sacred matter immediately before us ; because it is plain that the correspondence fails in a most vital particular. We all know that the euactment of a new law in a free country is, in reality, the act not of the legislature …
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(4) Once more, God's servants are called to make the world's rough places plain. How many places there are, and how cruelly rough they often are also. We have to contend against this just as much in the Church as without, for alas. Christians so seldom seem to illustrate the Christ-spirit in their lives, in their daily…
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IL The Deliverer. The discovery of man's deep need was accompanied by another discovery, the revelation of a Deliverance. The hopes of man are as ancient as his despondency. At the gates of Eden was given the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. We interpret that promise, and rightly e…
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2. There are many advents of the Son of God, and for every one of them there is some forerunner, some voice crying in the wilderness : " Prepare ye His way ; make straight in the desert a highway for our God." His comings mark the great upward strides of humanity towards a nobler, freer, purer life ; they are the occas…
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^ M. G. Glazebrook, in The Church Family Newspaper, March 24, 1910, p. 248. - J. P. Gledstone, in Christian World PvZpit, xxxiv, p. 183, 228 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE 1 It is wonderful to see how sensitive the Church of to-day has become to her condition, to her reputation, and to her efficiency. If there is backs…
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He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, Scenting the world, looking it full in the face. ^ A. Rowland. 230 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE He turned up, now, the alley by the church, That leads nowhither ; now, he breathed himself On the main promenade just at the wrong time : You'd come upon his scrutinising …
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The prophet was not only consoling prostrate and decrepit souls ; there were some among them who not only had awakened, but had received a new-born strength, and were eager to attempt the heroic task of national restoration. His one desire was to save them from the disastrous, but not uncommon, mistake of supposing tha…
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The praying spirit can be granted to a man as his soul is in the attitude of prayer. Then we are like a bird with out- stretched pinions, poised betwixt earth and heaven, waiting in the atmosphere of God for the knowledge of the work we have to do. And as the bird descends to the nest on the earth which it can see from…
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^ G, H. Morgan, Modem Knights-Errant, p. 104. ISAIAH 239 with the faith that binds my poor, sinful heart to the Christ that died and that lives for my redemption and salvation. ^ H Waiting upon the Lord is not merely a passing call, but an abiding in Him. Waiting is not so much a transient action as a permanent atti…
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ISAIAH 241 serving the Lord Christ. I am waiting upon my own dear Master." And you like always to have some special work in hand which is immediately done for Christ. It is your privilege, your joy, to do something for anybody's comfort— something for any- body's soul — all for Jesus. That is "waiting upon the Lord." …
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2. It is only by waiting on the Lord that His ways can be discovered and understood. Our hasty glances an3~~hurried' inferences are sure to err. You notice Israel in this chapter — captive, broken-hearted, and complaining — says, " My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God." How often have…
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I may go back across the years long vanished, I may resume my childhood, Lord, in Thee, When in the shadow of Thy cross are banished All other shadows that encompass me : And o'er the road that now is dark and dreary. This soul, made buoyant by the strength of rest, Shall walk imtii'ed, shall run and not be weary, …
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248 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE Ah, but what then when all this enthusiasm, this first novelty, has passed away, what must they do then ? Then they must begin the march of a long history, on, on, on, as the days go by, with each rising sun setting forward on the great national march again, bearing the heat and the bu…
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The heart which boldly faces death Upon the battlefield, and dares Cannon and bayonet, faints beneath The needle-point of frets and cares. The stoutest hearts they do dismay — The tiny stings of every day. ISAIAH 251 And even saints of holy fame Whose souls by faith have overcome, Who wore amid the cruel flame The mo…
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What are the characteristics of life with wings ? 1. Buoyancy. — "We become endowed with power to rise above things ' How often we give the counsel one to another, " You should rise above it !" But too often it is idle counsel, because it implies that the friend to whom we give it has the gift of wings ; too frequentl…
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There is power waiting for you for all the great crises of your lives which call for special, though it may be brief, exertion. Such crises will come to each of you, in sorrow, work, difficulty, hard conflicts. Moments will be sprung upon you without warning, in which you will feel that years hang on the issue of an in…
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Let me give you four rules for this " walk." (1) Start from Christ. Believe, and do not doubt your forgiveness, — that you have an interest in Christ. The only setting-out point must be the foot of the cross. (2) Walk with Christ. Feel Him at your side. Eealise your union then. " How can two walk together except they b…
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And here the missionary hope reaches its highest expres- sion in the picture of a Servant of Jehovah, who, with gentle persistence and unostentatious zeal, shall carry to the nations the precious gifts of revelation which have been coming to clearness and power through all the toil and travail of the past. It would be …
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* The Invisible Qlory, p. 60. 264 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE 2. The quiet ways of Christ. — Pretenders vaunt insolently of their claims, and are elated by a momentary triumph. He is "meek and lowly in spirit." His heart beats with even pulse, whether the palm branches are strewed in His path or the thorns are twist…
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But now, when we pass from them into the province of man, we meet at once with a law which breaks in upon this, and controls it. The struggle for existence goes on there too, but it is no longer supreme and all in all. Everywhere it is modified by ideas that are confessedly of greater moment and higher authority. Somet…
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H As Prebendary Carlile was going into the Church Army Head- quarters he saw six strong, rough-looking men gazing at tho building. He said, " What department are you going into ? " It was evident that the men did not like to say. So he said, " Where do you come from ? " They hesitated still more. Then one of them said,…
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3. And it is, further, a picture of the timid, unsatisfactory Christian — unsatisfactory to God, unsatisfactory to man. What is the use of a lamp that does not give light, a knife that will not cut, a pen that splutters when you attempt to write with it ? How many professing Christians there are who are not burning and…
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ISAIAH ^^2> No offering of my own I have, ^ Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave, And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar ; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only…
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What this verse and this chapter prophetically anticipate the Gospel record of His life shows to have been historically fulfilled. He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. 277 278 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE No other impression admits of being left upon us by the perusal of the New Testament story. It is…
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28o THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE going about as an itinerant teacher and preacher, having no ecclesiastical authority from the chief priests and scribes. Thus, instead of being a " plant of renown," He appeared as a " root out of a dry ground," never likely to come to anything. 2. And as they were disappointed in reg…
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2. We reject Christ when we refuse to suffer. We hide our faces from " the Man of Sorrows " when we wish to make this world a paradise of rest, when we neglect the duty of knowing and acquainting ourselves with the burdens which are borne by men, and begin to plan for this world as if it were a place for happiness and…
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If ever you feel disposed in this manner to turn away from the afflicted, you will do well to check yourself with the question, " Am I not, in fact, behaving as the Jews did when they turned away from our Saviour ?" " He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," and, therefore, " they hid as it were their faces…
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If There is a remarkable Talmudic legend (Sanhediin 98 a) which tells how a certain Eabbi one day meets Elijah the Prophet, and asks him when Messiah will come. " Go," replies Elijah, " and ask Messiah himself. You will find him at the city gate ; and by this token you will know him, that he sits among the poor and the…
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» F. W. RobertBon. ISAIAH 289 her " ; and when He had bidden the young man to arise, it was " to his mother " that He " delivered him." And so it was in the more detailed narrative of the raising of Lazarus. Although He thought it needful for God's glory- that the death should not be prevented but suffered, and allo…
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ISAIAH 291 . lead to fashion and to sentiment. They are the men spoken of here. The prophet, therefore, in these words describes our Lord's relationship to the polite society of His day. So far it is not His relationship with humanity — we have that later on — but with men who occupied the seats of Moses and of the pr…
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2. He was man — a man, therefore " a man of sorrows." In this time-world those two things shall not be severed. Bodily and mentally, the constitution of a son of man is such that escape is iinpossible. Look at that surface of the human frame which is exposed to outward injury. There runs beneath it, crossed and recross…
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IF " When I feel myself in my heart of hearts a sinner," I once heard Dr, Parker say, " a trespasser against God's law and God's love ; when I feel that a thought may overwhelm me in destruc- tion, that a secret, unexpressed desire may shut me out of heaven and make me glad to go to hell to be away from the face of Pli…
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4. As sorrow abounded so prayer abounded. St. Luke tells us, " And being in an agony. He prayed more earnestly." It was an agony of sorrow to which these words allude. We learn from them what we learn from other parts of the Gospels, that our Lord prayed when He sorrowed. But we learn something more. He not only prayed…
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300 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE which I can conceive nothing more powerful to still all rebellious and repining thoughts, nothing that could elevate more, and yet make more lowly. There is a fable of the ancient heathen (perhaps another of their beautiful allegories) that the nightingale rested its breast upon a tho…
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2. Now here we have the great truth of a suffering Messiah, a suffering Eedeemer, brought out in all its fulness as we have it nowhere else in the Old Testament. The details are so striking that we cannot wonder that again and again this passage is quoted in the New Testament, as having its fulfil- ment in Christ. Our …
915 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.