not exactly tally with our own, or to set them down as not in the narrow way at all, because they cannot run as fast as ourselves. "We must beware of hasty judgments. It is not always the fastest runner that wins the race. It is not always those who begin suddenly in religion, and profess themselves rejoicing Christians, who continue stead- fast to the end. Slow work is sometimes the surest and most enduring. Nicodemus stood firm, when Judas Iscar- iot fell away and went to his own place. No doubt it would be a pleasant thing, if everybody who was con- verted came out boldly, took up the cross, and confessed Christ in the clay of his conversion. But it is not always given to God's children to do so.
Have we any grace in our hearts at all? This, after all, is the grand question that concerns us. It may be small, — but have we any? It may grow slowly, as in the case of Nicodemus, — but does it grow at all? Better a little grace than none ! Better move slowly than stand still in sin and the world !
Notes. John VII. 40—53.
40. — [Many ... people... this saying, said.] The " people " here evi- dently mean the general multitude of common people, who had come together to attend the feast, and not the chief priests and Pharisees. The " saying" which called forth their remarks ap- pears to be the public proclamation that our Lord had just made, inviting all thirsty souls to come to Him as the fountain of life. That any one person should so boldly announce himself as the reliever of spiritual thirst seems to have arrested attention, and, taken in connection with the fact of our Lord's public teaching during the latter half of the feast, which many of the people must have heard, it induced them to say what immedi- ately follows.
Brentius, Museums, and others, hold strongly that our Lord's words in the preceding three verses must have been greatly amplified, at the time He spoke, and are in fact a sort of text or keynote to His discourse; and that this is referred to in the expression, " this saying. " Yet the supposition seems hardly necessary. The words were a conclusion to three days' teach- ing and preaching.
[0/ a truth this man.. .Prophet.] This would be more literally