PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Texts of the Bible — Volume 6
James Hastings · 192,063 words · 198 reading sections
Section 121
2. Sin is like a disease because it puts all the faculties out of gear, and breaks the equilibrium of the life forces, just as disease disturbs all our bodily functions. When a man is sick and ill, nothing about him works as it ought to do. There are some particular symptoms which, first of all, betray the existence of…
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ISAIAH 309 you till, " when it is finished, it bringeth forth death." God grant that, before that awful ending is reached, the Lord Jesus Christ may come and cure you, so that you may be able to say, " With His stripes we are healed." ^ II. Sin as an Incurable Disease. If some part of the human body is bruised or c…
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III. Vicarious Healing. 1. What is Vicariousness? When we speak of " vicarious atonement," what do we mean ? " Vicarious " means something that is done by one on behalf of another because he is unable to do it himself. You have an obligation to fulfil, and you are unable to fulfil it, and another fulfils it on your b…
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IT Look at the life of Moses, sent as a national redeemer from the curse and yoke of Egypt. He identifies himself with his slave-brethren, and the wrath of the oppressor falls on him as well as on them. This was the first secret of the confidence he won from them. " Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorr…
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IF " In a large family of evil-doers, where the father and mother are drunkards, the sons jail-birds, and the daughters steeped in * B. J. Gibbou, Visionaries, p. 114, 3i6 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE shame, there may be one — a daughter — pure, sensible, sensitive, living in the home of sin like a lily among thorns…
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You will often hear it said that God was angry with man, and that Christ turned away His wrath. Holy Scripture tells us that " God so loved the world." He is angry with sin, but " God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." And again we sometimes hear it said that the wrath of God was poured out upon Hi…
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320 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE Punishment, strictly speaking, is inflicted for personal guilt. Chastisement may be inflicted for the improvement of him who suffers it, or for the benefit of those who witness it, but the latter does not imply guilt.^ 1[ Dr. Lowson of Hull, who died in a London nursing home on 14th M…
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Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 317. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xii. No. 694; xvi. No. 925. Swan (F. R.), The Death of Jesus Christ, 12. Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts, 2nd series, ii. 63. Church Pulpit Year Book, vii. 9. Church/man's Pulpit (Good Friday), 16 (Pinder). Clergyman's…
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There are differences immensely important in other respects between men, differences of culture, of talent, of opportunity; differences of outward life : some living respectable, decent, cleanly lives, full of many virtues and many graces ; some, perhaps, having done many a thing that, if it did not bring them within t…
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IF When I was a boy in my own country, I used to notice that when the clouds were gathering and a storm threatened, the ^ C. Jerdan, Messages to the Children, p. 73. • D. Davies, Talks with Men, Women, and Children, v. p. 446. 330 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE shepherd would go round the shoulder of the hill and fet…
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IT In the little schooling that fell to my lot, I was fortunate for a few months to come under the influence of a thoroughly high type of a man who recognised his obligations as a teacher to all sides of our nature. Hardly a lesson passed which he did not use as an opportunity to rub in some phase of our duty to God an…
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* Thomas Parnell. ISAIAH 335 Now it needs nothing more than the strength and the wisdom and the patience of the earthly shepherd to restore the straying sheep. But although my Shepherd is God over all, He cannot lead me back by His patience and His wisdom and His strength alone. Something more is required : something…
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(1) Preachers have often spoken unwisely, of the offices of Christ, as if the office were the great matter, and not the person who holds it ; but the teaching of experience is that offices of the higher sort cannot be discharged at all unless a man have some native bent towards the business. A king will never be made s…
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3. Laid on Him the iniquity. — "The Lord hath made to light on Him the iniquity of us all." In the compass of three verses of this chapter, there are seven distinct, emphatic, and harmonious utterances, all bearing on the one thought of the vicarious suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1) "He hath borne our griefs"; (…
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(2) Next consider the effects which in Holy Scripture are attributed to the vicarious offering of Christ. The Levitical sacrifices connect the shedding of blood with atonement. " The life of the flesh is in the blood ; and I have given it to you upon 342 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE the altar, to make an atonement fo…
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344 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE this pleading cost her nothing. The shadow of it hangs over her all day. , (3) But no sooner do you carry the process to this point than you become aware that more is wanted, that the principle on which you have been acting must have other and larger applications, or else it exists in…
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I lay my sins on Jesus, The spotless Lamb of God; He bears them all, and frees us From the accursed load. 2. " He hath made to meet upon him the iniquity of us all." Yes ! and yet it is possible for a man included in the " all " to have to stagger along through life under his burden, and to carry it with him when he…
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352 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE indeed, when you think of it, you have here the strangest kind of market that you can conceive, in which every maxim of the merchantman is set at naught ; in which the only payment is made by the seller, and all the gain is to the buyers, and in which goods the most precious, the most …
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The invitation is as universal as if it had stopped with its third word. " Ho, every one " would have been no broader than is the offer as it stands. For the characteristics named are those which belong, necessarily and universally, to human experience. If the text had said, " Ho, every one that breathes human breath,"…
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My days are in the yellow leaf, , The flowers and fruit of love are gone, The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone.^ 2. Work. — It was to a busy people that the words of our text were first addressed. Most probably this prophecy was uttered on the eve of the return of the Jews from captivity in Babylon. Lon…
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IT A Chinese traveller, describing the Japanese of the early centuries of our era, mentions this interesting custom : " They appoint a man whom they call an ' abstainer.' He is not allowed to comb his hair, to wash, to eat flesh, or to approach women. 1 W. E. H. Lecky, Poevis, p. 99. * A. S. Geden, in the JSncyclopce…
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ISAIAH 361 IF A story is told of a shipwrecked crew who had been drifting for days in a small boat, suffering the horrors of thirst. In the extremity of their suffering, when all hope had been abandoned, a vessel was seen bearing towards them. When sufficiently near, they called out as well as their parched throats pe…
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' W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, iii. p. 388. ISAIAH 363 life, Jesus Christ Himself is the all-sufficient supply, " my life in death, my all in all." Our blessed Lord appears to have always the feeling that He has come down into a realm of hungry, famishing souls. You see this in the parable of the Prodigal S…
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ISAIAH 365 Cheap things are seldom valued. Ask a high price and people think that the commodity is precious. A man goes into a fair, for a wager, and he carries with him a tray full of gold watches and offers to sell them for a farthing apiece, and nobody will buy them. It does not, I hope, degrade the subject, if I s…
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* "W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, iii, p, 388. ' James Russell Lowell. ISAIAH %67 Hitherto life has been a thin existence, a mere surface glitter, a superficial movement. Now, vitality shall awaken in undreamed- of depths. " Your soul shall live." Life shall no longer be con- fined to the channels of the appet…
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cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again;" — the very best thing he could do. But the angel awoke him, the second time, and preached the same sermon to him, " Arise and eat " ; and I pass on that little sermon to some of you who feel faint in heart just now. You do not know how it i…
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But sinful men, especially when they are suffering the bitter punishment of their sins, are apt to be hopeless men. When you speak to them of the Mercy that is more than all their sins, they are apt to think that Mercy incredible, or at least to doubt whether it is about to be shown to them. As nothing is possible to d…
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376 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE perfectly straight one, you may go ahead without fear, and sing on the road.^ 2. But the wicked man is not merely to forsake his way, he is to forsake his thoughts. You see, one may, from prudential motives, give up outwardly an evil way, without any change within. From mere self-inte…
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» D. L. Moody. 378 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE true turning from sinful ways and thoughts; without that it would be no true turning from them. Yet it conveys a distinct thought ; it brings before us another and spiritual aspect of the truth. And sometimes you may seem to have a large fulJ&lment to the call to forsak…
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1 D. L. Moody. 38o THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE feeling or remorse. Judas had that, plenty of it, so that he put an end to his existence ; and a man may be filled with remorse and not repent. r H The confession " I have sinned " is made by hardened / Pharaoh (Ex. ix. 27), double-minded Balaam (Num. xxii. 34), I …
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The Mercy of God, viewed as saving men from evil thoughts and ways — which is the only true mercy — is simply incredible : so the prophet affirms, so we profess to think and to believe. But do we really believe it ? Do we act as if we did ? Millions . will say to-day : " I believe in the forgiveness of sins " ; but how…
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(3) And especially to His greater knowledge. God is more forgiving than man ; where the justice which only half knows the magnitude of the offence is often merciless, the justice which sees it in all its heinousness is ready to pardon ; even where all hope of clemency from a mortal weak and erring as himself, is gone …
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In this chapter we have a great evangelical discourse on the Eeturn from Exile, which is very grandly conceived. Israel was not going back to be as before, but to become the mistress and mother of nations. " Nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God." And along with that enlarged p…
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H The word " thought " would have no more meaning for me than the words " red " or " green " to a man born blind, if it were not that I have the key to it in the principle of thought or intelligence within me, and that when anything is asserted or denied of the thoughts of God, the proposition is intelHgible only becau…
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1 D. Smith in Religion and the Modem World, p. 188. 2 7j^_ p jgg^ 394 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE postulate here and everywhere in our Lord's teaching is the kinship between God and man and the consequent reasonableness of interpreting the Divine by the human. As Browning has it : Take all in a word: the truth in G…
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2. They are unlike in their comprehensiveness. It is a wonderful and beautiful turn which the prophet here gives to the thought of the transcendent elevation of God, The heavens are the very type of the unattainable ; and to say that they are " higher than the earth " seems, at first sight, to be but to say, " No man h…
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4. More particularly God's thoughts and ways are unlike ours in their estimate of sin. 1. God knows us more thoroughly than any human being can. The estimate which a human censor forms of us is not based on any immediate knowledge, but is an inference from our outward conduct and bearing. But this estimate may easily …
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2. God is more angry than we are. In God there is an immitigable abhorrence and hatred of evil, to which, in our keenest moments of aggrieved sensibility, we only faintly approxi- mate. The easy, good-natured divinity who makes everything comfortable is not the God of the Bible. There He has a frown- ing as well as a s…
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Thy mercy greater is than any sin, Thy greatness none can comprehend: Wherefore, 0 Lord, let me Thy mercy win, Whose glorious name no time can ever end : Wherefore I say all praise belongs to Thee, Whom I beseech be merciful to me.^ And if, thus, human goodness is the more merciful in pro- portion as it approaches …
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1. Now let us look at some of the ways in which we may * John Caird. ISAIAH 405 see that God's pardon outreaches the thoughts and the ways of men. And, first of all, let us consider the character of the sin which had to he forgiven. Man does not forgive where he has been insulted as God was in his rebellion. Nations …
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3. The measure of the forgiveness. — Nothing of which we have any experience in ourselves or in others is more than as a drop to the ocean compared with the absolute fulness and perfect freeness and unwearied frequency of His forgiveness. " He will abundantly pardon." He will multiply pardon. "With him there is plenteo…
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"We cannot believe God gave His only begotten Son for the spiritual healing and salvation of His enemies, since such an act would be impossible to us. No hero of whom we have read or heard is equal to a like sacrifice. It defies probabilities. Is not this a sign that the Gospel, and the message within it, was thought o…
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Now all through the ministry of Isaiah the prophet is con- fronted with a mean and impoverished conception of God. And to this impoverishment he traces the national degradation. The popular conception was weak and effeminate, and that in two ^ R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 200. 413 414 THE GREAT TEXTS OF TH…
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*[j There are but few stars more interesting and beautiful than Vega (a first-magnitude star in the constellation Hydra). To its own intrinsic interest must now be added that arising from the fact that each successive night we look upon it we have swept more than 1,000,000 miles nearer to its brilliant globe, and that …
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IT It is not from the insignificance of man that God's dwelling within him is so strange. It is as much the glory of God to bend His attention on an atom as to uphold the universe. But the marvel is that the habitation which He has chosen for Himself is an impure one. And when He came down from His magnificence to make…
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3. The third manifestation of the humility of God is His patience amid the obstinate ingratitude and unfriendliness of men. We are sometimes impatient enough with one another. A slight, an unguarded word, an ungenerous act, is taken as a mortal offence, not to be endured. Pride rises up and stiffens its back, and is ha…
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ISAIAH 423 ing sense of sin ; by feeling it as a personal pain and grief, a crushing burden that lays the spirit low, an overpowering oppression that grinds it to dust — it is by this and this only that God's company is to be secured ; it is where this temper is found that He finds His home. IF The word " contrition …
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Not simply to sympathise, but to save, to revive the heart of the contrite one, our Jesus comes. This is the great message of Christianity to the world. It is a message of hope to every heart. To revive — then they are dead ! He whose spirit knows his own low estate, whose heart is crushed by the sense of his own sins…
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Do not let us forget that it is Christ who links into unity the low house and the high. He knows them both. He left the dignities and delights of the one for the humiliations of the other ; and, having served and suffered within its doors, He has returned again to the palace of the King. Why was it that He went out and…
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Huntington (G.), Sermons for the Church's Seasons, 27. Ingram (A. F. W.), Banners of the Christian Faith, 197. Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year, Christmas — Epiphany, 69. M'Cheyne (R. M.), Additional Remains, 45. Maclaren (A.), Expositions, Isaiah xlix.-lxvi. 176. Newman (J. H.), Parochial Sermons, ii. 7…
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«^^h/l l/» '''^"^^?^*'°" °' "^^ ^'S^^" TwicS the phrase thy light is employed; once to mean the light which is thine because it shmes on thee ; once to mean the light which is thine because it shmes from thee. The other word, three times repeated for rismg is the techmcal word which expresses the sunrise and IS applied…
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IT The saints, while they have been the most invincible, have been also the most dependent of mankind. For of moral as of material light there are two kinds, one inherent and independent, the other derived and borrowed. The lamp on the table burns ; the mirror opposite shines. Our sun, and the multitude of stars, all b…
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There are three stages in the history of the soul's enlighten- ment. 1. Spiritual penitence. — I say spiritual penitence, because there is a repentance which is by no means a rising of God's light in the soul, but merely a transient emotion, which passes into indifference and may deepen into despair. True repentance i…
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These great words, " the glory of the Lord," ought not to be merely a vague phrase to us. You remember what power upon our spiritual life St. Paul associates with that glory. " We all with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from t…
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444 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE remember the glory of the future is the result of your struggle to-day. Struggle on, then, the morning is breaking, the day is at hand when " the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended ! " IF There is a certain picture in the National Galler…
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When 'dndw is translated " the poor " or " the afflicted, oppressed," or " the helpless, the meek," its exact significance will be best understood if we bear in mind the traits in the character of the toil-worn man, his poverty of spirit, his slow- ness to insist upon his rights, his patient forbearance, his long endur…
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3. The captives. — The description grows denser. These are more needy than even the broken-hearted. They are the victims of habit, evil habit, ill-regulated deeds settling or settled down into an ill-regulated life. If women, they are such as St. Paul describes (2 Tim. iii. 6), " silly women laden with sins, led captiv…
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But how can Earth with Spirit agree? Or Death with Immortality ? There moved a Form in the shadows dim, And a tender radiance flowed from Him; But the light disclosed in the prison cell Ignorance, Pride, and Hate as well. His voice was sweet, and soft, and low, And the poor dumb Spirit loved it so; But Ignorance, Pri…
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II I do not know whether you generally read the daily news- paper. I think we might get up a " Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge." A great deal that appears in the news- papers amounts only to that, and much time is wasted thereon ; but sometimes we get a gem amongst the news, and to my mind there was a …
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To enrich the humble poor. The majority of people do not think of Christ as a great preacher. They look at Him as a man of supreme love, gentleness of spirit, kindness of manner, and as thoroughly good and unselfish in all He did; but they do not think of Him as possessing the qualities which we think necessary to mak…
906 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.