Four Gospels tell their story St. Luke Four Gospels tell their story to mankind, And none so full of soft, caressing words That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned In the meek service of his gracious art The tones which like the medicinal balms That calm the sufferer's anguish, soothe our souls. O. W. Holmes. References. I. 1. H. Hensley Henson, The Value of the Bible, p. 69. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 106. John Smith, The Integrity of Scripture, p. 1. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 548. I. 1, 2. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 339. I. 1-4. Robert J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, p. 61. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 243. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 373. I. 2. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 67; (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 84; (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 215; (7th Series), vol. v. p. 316. St. Luke's Gospel Luke 1:3-4 Our information concerning St. Luke is scanty. It is conjectured by some that he was one of the seventy disciples sent forth by our Lord, in addition to the twelve Apostles (Luke 10:1 ). There seems no reason to doubt that he was the companion of St. Paul in his travels, and that he was a 'physician' (Colossians 4:14 ). Some have thought that his profession as a physician may be traced in his manner of describing our Lord's miraculous cures of diseases, and his companionship of St. Paul in his manner of speaking on such subjects as God's glory and Christ's love to sinners. It is generally agreed that his Gospel was written with a special reference to Gentile converts rather than Jews. Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and others suppose that St. Paul refers to St. Luke and his Gospel in the words, 'the brother whose praise is in the Gospel' (2 Corinthians 8:18 ). The short preface is a peculiar feature of St. Luke's Gospel. But we shall find, on examination, that it is full of most useful instruction. I. St. Luke Gives us a Short but Valuable Sketch of the Nature of a Gospel. He calls it, 'a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us'. It is a narrative of facts about Jesus Christ. Christianity is a religion built upon facts. Let us never lose sight of this. It came before mankind at first in this shape. The first preachers did not go up and down the world proclaiming an elaborate, artificial system of abstruse doctrines and deep principles. They proclaimed facts. II. He Draws a Beautiful Picture of the True Position of the Apostles in the Early Church. He calls them 'eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word'. There is an instructive humility in this expression. They were servants of the word of the Gospel. They were men who counted it their highest privilege to carry about, as messengers, the tidings of God's love to a sinful world, and to tell the story of the Cross. III. He Describes his own Qualifications for the Work of Writing a Gospel. He says that he 'had perfect understanding of all things from the very first'. It would be mere waste of time to inquire from what source St. Luke obtained the information which he has given us in his Gospel. We have no good reason for supposing that he saw our Lord work miracles or heard Him teach. To say that he obtained his information from the Virgin Mary or any of the Apostles is mere conjecture and speculation. Enough for us to know that St. Luke wrote by inspiration of God. Unquestionably he did not neglect the ordinary means of getting knowledge. But the Holy Ghost guided him, no less than all other writers of the Bible, in his choice of matter. St. Luke does not wish his friend to remain in doubt on any matter of his faith. He tells him that he wants him to 'know the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed'. Let us bless God daily that we have a written volume which is 'able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus' (2 Timothy 3:15 ). Luke 1:3-4 What are the legitimate uses of the imagination, that is to say, of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which cannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this... but, above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer. Ruskin, Frondes Agrestes, sec. 9. References. I. 3. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 452. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 144. I. 3, 4. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 236 and 243. I. 5. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 284. I. 5-17. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Luke, p. 1. I. 9. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 393. 1.13. A.G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pi i. p. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i.p. 19. I. 15. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 257. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Luke, p. 8. Luke 1:16 It is because we have so few high saints among us, that we have so many low sinners. Richard Baxter. It would have been but a poor occupation for God to compose this heavy world out of simple elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, if He had not had the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher natures to attract the lower ones. Goethe. Preparation for the Best (First Sunday in Lent) Luke 1:17 When we speak of preparing ourselves for the future, we commonly think of some coming evil. Life is, in our familiar and apposite metaphor, a campaign; and 'it is usual in war for the guns and the sentinels always to face towards the enemy however far off he may be'. There is an instinctive sense of enemies in this mortal life of ours, and every day looks forward more or less anxiously to its tomorrow. Men have so generally acknowledged this state of matters that there are few vaunts which have a more honourable sound to our ears than the old Latin one in utrumque paratus . Yet the phrase is sad. Its readiness for either fate suggests alertness, but has a certain desolate suggestion also: it acknowledges the possibility of the better chance, but it somehow seems to expect the worse. So it comes to pass that we are far more seldom ready for the better than for the worse event. Preparedness for the best things is rare, because we do not realize that they need preparation, and concentrate our attention in steeling ourselves against possible adversity. Many a Parsifal is able to combat and unhorse his enemy, and yet is stupefied and blunders irretrievably when he sees the vision of the Holy Grail. Many an adventurer like Jacob looks back ruefully upon an hour of far-reaching promise and spiritual opportunity, saying 'Surely God was in this place and I knew it not'. The world, in the beginning of the first century, was adjusting itself to Augustus as best it might; but when Christ came, the world knew Him not. We are often prepared to meet the devil: to meet our God we are not prepared. In the Church Year the great events of the Christian story group themselves into a cluster from Palm Sunday to Whitsunday, breaking the routine of the daily life with the splendid memories of Christ's passion and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is fitting that before this season the Church should have set apart a prior season of special preparation. I. First, there is the preparation of the purification of the heart. All meditation leads that way at once. There is much to be forgiven before we can hope to understand and triumph, and there is much also to be changed. It is only the pure in heart who can by any means see God, and the evil habits of thought, imagination, and desire must be searched out and put away. II. There is also necessary the boldness of Divine affections. We all admit that the world is, one way or another, too much with us. Preparation, therefore, must include the practice of looking beyond the world, and carrying up our thoughts and feelings to God Himself. But it requires daring to train our eyes on the Divine, and none but the courageous in heart will succeed in doing it. For the affections that are to find God in Christ must travel along the two lines of our worst and of our best. Let us face and fully recognise both our weakness and our strength, our worst and our best. Let us bring them both, a strange offering of contrasts, to His feet; that, in our communion with Him, His power and His love may go out upon them both, and recreate us after His image. John Kelman, Ephemera Etemitatis, p. 49. References. I. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2404. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. pp. 53, 545. 1. 18. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1405. Luke 1:19 Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, Spread his wings and sank to earth; Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, Lived there, and played the craftsman well; And morning, evening, noon and night, Praised God in place of Theocrite; (He did God's will; to him, all one, If on the earth or in the sun.) R. Browning, * The Boy and the Angel. * Reference. I. 20. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 281. Luke 1:25 Dr. Richard Hooker, at one period of his life, was exposed to a cruel slander against his moral character, which, says Izaak Walton, 'he kept secret to himself for many months; and being a helpless man, had lain longer under this heavy burthen, but that the Protector of the innocent gave such an accidental occasion as forced him to make it known to his two dearest friends, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, who were so sensible of their tutor's sufferings, that they gave themselves no rest, till by their disquisitions and diligence they had found out the fraud, and brought him the welcome news.... To which the good man's reply was to this purpose: "To my God I say, as did the mother of St. John Baptist, Thus hath the Lord dealt with me, in the day wherein He looked upon me, to take away my reproach among men. And, O my God! neither my life nor my reputation are safe in my own keeping, but in Thine, who didst take care of me when I yet hanged upon my mother's breast."' The Angel's Greeting to the Virgin Mary Luke 1:26-28 The festival of the Annunciation has been variously yet appropriately designated thus: 'The Day of Salutation'; 'the Day of the Gospel'; and 'the Festival of the Incarnation'. In many parts it was for some time the first day of the ecclesiastical year, as it is now, under its vernacular name Lady Day, the first quarterly division of the ordinary year. How the ancient Church observed the day can scarcely be ascertained now. And this is not a little remarkable, as the Christian Fathers have written numerous homilies on the day itself, and the Christian Muse has for centuries been actively engaged in illustrating it To the Christian artist, the holy mysteries of the day have ever had a special fascination, as shown by the pictures and paintings some very grotesque, others very beautiful which were produced during the first ages succeeding the Annunciation itself. Christians of the present day regard it as the first stage of the Incarnation. Hence we gladly keep the day as a holy festival, and fix our mind upon its marvels. I. In Old Testament times names were reckoned of paramount consequence, as they were identified with some unusual fact in personal and family life, and were also prophetical. The name Mary so familiar to us is the same as Miriam. Its first and best signification is 'exalted'; and this applies with peculiar emphasis to Mary of Nazareth. Yet it must not be forgotten that she had lineally descended from David; therefore the blood of Israel's ancient kings flowed in her veins. She was also a virgin pure and spotless. Had it been otherwise she had never been the mother of Jesus, because, from first to last, He was to be holy and undefiled; and this could not possibly have been if the least fleck of impurity had been found in her nature. The place of her residence corresponded with her true condition. Nazareth means 'separated' or 'sanctified'. Yet it was no grand metropolis, no flourishing sea-side town, but a small inland, upland city, in the heart of Galilee, called 'Galilee of the Gentiles'. In other words, it was a little city of carpenters; hence Joseph lived here, and though 'of the house of David, 'yet, being poor, he worked hard at the toilsome craft of the place. It had no reputation for learning or piety. To this little city a great angel was Divinely sent. He is called Gabriel 'the strength of God'. In the celestial hierarchy he ranked next to Michael the archangel, and when in heaven, he says, 'I stand in the presence of God'; that is, right before His throne. II. Whether Mary was in her house, or what her engagement when Gabriel visited her, we know not; but he instantly saluted her 'Hail!' After this brief salutation, Gabriel bids Mary rejoice, because being 'highly favoured' she is to be the mother of the Messiah. This, in truth, was the honour for which every Hebrew female intensely longed from the beginning; but Mary was Divinely chosen for this signal pre-eminency. What joy she felt when Gabriel assured her of this! When he left, she hastened to her cousin, Elisabeth, in the upland country, to communicate the information and the joy to her. 'Only the meeting of saints in heaven can parallel the meeting of these two cousins: the two wonders of the world under one roof, declaring their mutual happiness!' (S. Luke 1:46-47 ). High dignity, beside deep joy, was now conferred upon Mary. 'Thou art highly favoured,' said Gabriel to her. But this dignity was not of an earthly, fleeting nature; for Mary was left by the angel in the same humble condition in which he found her; and, in truth, her humble condition was the same at the birth of Christ, and to the day of her own death. The dignity, therefore, was heavenly and lasting. So it has proved itself. No woman, from Eve downward, has been so honoured as the Blessed Virgin of Nazareth. Her very memory is fragrant as Eden. Nor is this all: 'The Lord is with thee'. This constituted her real blessedness, and was the climax of the annunciation of the angel. The Lord was with Mary in two sublime senses to sustain and further deepen the joy of her soul, and to perform the covenant which Gabriel had made with her at His bidding. One other brief sentence fell from those angel lips, forming the noblest utterance ever made: 'Blessed art thou among women!' After the battle of the river Kishon, and after Jael had slain, in her tent, the captain of the host of the King of Canaan, Deborah, the prophetess, pronounced the heroine 'blessed above all women'; but Gabriel, the angel, pronounces a better and richer blessing on Mary; and Mary, in her glorious Magnificat, says of herself, 'All generations shall call me blessed'. This they have done since the birth of Christ, and this they will continue to do as long as Christ Himself shall reign, even for ever (Luke 1:32-33 ). References. I. 28. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 191. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 111. C. A. Berry, Vision and Duty, p. 157. J. H. Barrows, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 330. J. Denney, ibid. vol. xlix. p. 337. Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Luke 1:32-33 March 25 is a memorable day in our calendar. It is important in our business life and in our domestic life. To Churchmen Lady Day has a high significance because that on it we commemorate the announcement of the angel to the Blessed Virgin that she should bring forth a Son who was to be the Incarnate Son of God. We can never forget that she was 'highly favoured amongst women' in that she was chosen to be the channel by which and the thought is a most stupendous one the Incarnation of the Son of God was to be effected. We reverence her purity and we admire the beauty of her character. When we think of the greatness conferred upon womanhood in the Incarnation it should lead all men should it not? to cultivate habits of chivalry and grace in all their dealings with women. But we shall mistake the significance of this festival unless we observe that the Church centres our attention not upon Mary but upon her promised Son. The Collect, the Epistle, the Gospel, the Lessons all point to Him. I. The Promised Son. The message of the angel revealed to Mary that her Son should be Jesus, the Saviour. He was coming to redeem Israel, 'to save His people from their sins' and not Israel only but all the world. This was He, of Whose coming Isaiah prophesied (as we read in the portion of Scripture appointed for today's Epistle) when he said that, 'a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel' . Nor was this all. The angel who appeared to Mary said that her Son should be a King, 'and of His kingdom there shall be no end'. II. The Work He Came to do. As our Saviour He came to save us from our sins. He was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. Has His coming made any difference to your life? Is He in our workshop? Is He in our office? Is He in our home? Is He in our amusements? 'God with us' will sanctify every relationship of life. He claims to have control over our life, for is He not the King? 'Of His kingdom there shall be no end.' Has it begun in you? The religion of Jesus Christ is not for one time or for one land, for 'He hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth,' and you and I have to spread the kingdom of our Lord if He really is our King. III. The Future Glory. It is astonishing that although nineteen hundred years have passed away there should still be so many who do not recognise His claims over them. May it be ours to know Jesus to be our Saviour! May we realise His presence in our lives as our Immanuel! May we recognise His claims as our King! Then and then only shall we pass through this world with an assurance of the future glory. References. I. 30, 31, 34, and 35. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 209. I. 31-35. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 93. I. 33. Ibid. vol. i. pp. 36, 209; ibid. (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 470. I. 34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1405. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 182. Luke 1:35-40 In her volume on The Makers of Florence, Mrs. Oliphant describes Mariotto's picture of the 'Visitation 'which hangs in the Pitti Palace; Elisabeth and Mary stand in the foreground of the canvas, against the blue sky, the elder woman stepping out eagerly to meet and welcome the shrinking mother of our Lord. 'I have heard,' she adds, 'of a woman, sadly lonely in a strange country, and little aware of the merits of the picture, poor soul! who would go and linger in the room "for company," wistfully wishing that the kind, penetrating, sympathetic tale of that old, tender Elisabeth could but fall on herself.' The passage has an autobiographic note, for the woman was no other than Mrs. Oliphant herself. References. I. 35. W. Alexander, Primary Convictions, p. 67. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 201. W. Archer Butler, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical (1st Series), p. 16. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 165; ibid. vol. ix. p. 86.5 The Handmaid of the Lord (The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary) Luke 1:38 The story of the Annunciation is one of the most impressive to be found in the Gospels. In the Gospel for today we have a striking illustration of the singular beauty, purity, and steadiness of character which are manifested by the Blessed Virgin. I. Her Faith. The remarkable faith with which she received the annunciation from the angel of the wonderful event which was to take place is a lesson to us all. Her words are very simple and very full of submissive faith 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word'. II. Her Piety. The manner in which, as we read later, she pondered in her heart the various events of the Lord's childhood, which seemed to point out her Son as being greater than even she herself had suspected, is worthy of notice. It befits religious character of the highest order, and shows her to have been possessed of the deepest piety. III. Her Submission. The same religious discretion marked her conduct on the occasion of her losing sight of Jesus on their return from Jerusalem when He was twelve years old. His answer might well add to His parents' perplexity, and His mother does not seem to have understood it; but she did not forget the saying because she could not understand it; on the other hand, she kept it in her heart. She was wholly submissive to what she believed to be the Divine will. IV. The Reverence Due to Her. We need not flinch from according to the Blessed Virgin the honour which belongs to her. 'All generations shall call me blessed,' and we must have dull hearts if we do not so account her. We honour the Apostles because they were very near to, and much honoured by, the Lord, and we rightly honour the Virgin Mother of our Lord. But one word of caution is necessary. While we reverence the Blessed Virgin as one of the first of saints, while we call her blessed, and think her the most highly honoured of the human race, we must not harbour any temptation in our hearts to worship her. The best antidote to Mariolatry is to have our whole souls filled with the contemplation of the Virgin's Son, even our Saviour and hers, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Eternal Son of God. References. I. 38. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 171. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 200. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Holy Tide Teaching, p. 77. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 22. Bishop Jacob, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 21. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for Saints' Days, p. 90. C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond, p. 285. R. W. Church, Human Life and its Conditions, p. 172. I. 39. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 93. I. 42. J. H. Barrows, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 330. I. 43. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iv. p. 40. I. 43. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 244. I. 44. Ibid. vol. v. p. 448. Luke 1:46-47 'After this,' writes George Fox in his Journal for 1646, 'I met with a sort of people that held women have no souls (adding, in a light manner) no more than a goose. But I reproved them, and told them that was not right; for Mary said, * My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.' * References. I. 46. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. 1514. W. P. Paterson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 22. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 269. I. 46-55. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 17. I. 46, 47. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 606; vol. xxxvii. No. 2219, and vol. li. No. 2941. J. 46-48. H. P. Liddon, The Magnificat, p. 1. I. 47. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 495. Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary Luke 1:48 Many truths are, like the 'things which the seven thunders uttered,' 'sealed up' from us. In particular, it is in mercy to us that so little is revealed about the Blessed Virgin, in mercy to our weakness, though of her there are 'many things to say,' yet they are 'hard to be uttered, seeing we are dull of hearing'. But, further, the more we consider who St. Mary was, the more dangerous will such knowledge of her appear to be. Other saints are but influenced or inspired by Christ, and made partakers of Him mystically. But, as to St. Mary, Christ derived His manhood from her and so had an especial unity of nature with her; and this wondrous relationship between God and man it is perhaps impossible for us to dwell much upon without some perversion of feeling. For, truly, she is raised above the condition of sinful beings, though by nature a sinner; she is brought near to God, yet is but a creature, and seems to lack her fitting place in our limited understandings, neither too high nor too low. We cannot combine, in our thought of her, all we should ascribe with all we should withhold. Hence, following the example of Scripture, we had better only think of her with and for her Son, never separating her from Him, but using her name as a memorial of His great condescension in stooping from heaven, and not 'abhorring the Virgin's womb'. And this is the rule of our own Church, which has set apart only such festivals in honour of the Blessed Mary as may also be festivals in honour of our Lord; the Purification commemorating His presentation in the Temple, and the Annunciation commemorating His Incarnation. And, with this caution, the thought of her may be made most profitable to our faith; for nothing is so calculated to impress on our minds that Christ is really partaker of our nature, and in all respects man, save sin only, as to associate Him with the thought of her by whose ministration He became our brother. J. H. Newman. References. I. 48. C. A. Berry, Vision and Duty, p. 157. I. 48-50. H. P. Liddon, The Magnificat, p. 30. I. 49. F. de W. Lushington, Sermons to Young Boys, p. 106. I. 51-53. H. P. Liddon, University Sermons (2nd Series), p. 203. Ibid. The Magnificat, p. 57. I. 53. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliv. No. 2582, and vol. lii. No. 3019. I. 54, 55. H. P. Liddon, The Magnificat, p. 84. I. 65, 66. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 247. I. 66. R. F. Horton, This Do, p. 61. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for Saints' Days, p. 131. I. 67. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 39. I. 67-80. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 24. Visitation Luke 1:68 About one hundred and eighty years ago (that was in the time of King Charles II.) six persons died in this college in less than a week. That was what we call an awful visitation of God. When we speak of a visitation of God we generally mean His visitation to punish. Then why is it said here, 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited'. Why, because you see how it goes on, He hath visited and redeemed His people. I. Old age is His very true and real visitation and being so, how ought you to receive it? If a king, an earthly king, were to give you notice that he was coming to see you, what preparation should you make for his visit? The very first time God begins to visit you in old age, the very first time you can say, 'I am quite well, and yet I am not so strong as I was,' then that means, 'Now this corruptible body is beginning to show me that it cannot always, no, nor yet for very much longer, hold together'. And that means that it will in time be laid to sleep in the churchyard, waiting for that blessed hope and the Resurrection brought to pass by our Lord Jesus Christ So still you ought to be able to say ought you not? 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel'. II. Israel means He that sees God. And why that name? Because it is only to them who, so David says, have set God always before them that these promises are made. See how God visited Zacharias himself. In the first place, in judgment, because he disbelieved the miraculous birth of St. John Baptist. 'Behold, thou shalt be dumb and not able to speak.' And then in love, when immediately the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And so He visits all of us. Think of every affliction that you have had from your youth up till now; they were God's visitations. And every deliverance you ever had; that was God's visitation too. One's whole life is full of such visitations, such deliverances, and we may all say with good King Hezekiah, 'The Lord was ready to save me'. J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College, vol. i. p. 65. Luke 1:71-79 We talk very much, and very badly; in pulpit, and Parliament, and press. We want the man who has something new to say, and knows how to say it. For my own part, I don't think, when he comes, that he will glorify explosives. I want to hear some one talk about Peace and not from the commercial point of view. The slaughterers shan't have it all their own way: civilization will be too strong for them, and if old England doesn't lead in that direction it will be her shame to the end of history. George Gissing. References. 1. 74, 76. E. J. Boyce, Parochial Sermons, p. 216. E. H. Hopkins, The Record, vol. xxvii. p. 799. I. 76. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 96. I. 77-79. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1907. The Dayspring Luke 1:78 The Eternal God is never in a hurry, for a thousand centuries are unto Him but as a moment. In all His great kingdoms the Divine Actor works gradually the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear; the daydawn, the ascending sun, and the full meridian; the promise, the type, and the antitype; the law, the prophets, and the Gospel; the crude altar, the superb temple, and God manifest in the flesh. Gradual progression runs through the ages like a line of light. We invite your attention to the gradual unfolding of Redemption. I. Gradualness of Development is a prominent feature in all the works of God. (1) In the physical sphere we meet on every hand with this striking feature. A great story demands a long prologue hence the slowly ascending scale from the protoplasmic beginning to man! In the words of Emerson: 'The gases gather to the solid firmament, the chemic lump arrives at the plant and grows, arrives at the quadruped and walks, arrives at the man and thinks'. The wheels of His stupendous machinery revolve slowly, and the majestic gradualness of their revolutions bears the stamp of eternity. (2) In the intellectual sphere we meet with this feature of gradualness. Even our consciousness, the so-called foundation of our being, develops. How very gradually our education proceeds. Again, most of our great discoveries have been gradually lured out of their hiding-places. All our great discoveries have come about gradually, 'like the deities, their feet have been shod with wool'. (3) In the moral and spiritual sphere we meet with this principle of gradualness. No man can leap at a bound into sainthood. The soul can no more be fully sanctified at once than the dawn can become the meridian in an hour, than the blossom can become a ripe apple in a day, than the babe can become a giant in a week! II. Analogy suggests that the gradualness which we find in the physical, mental, and moral spheres may also be expected in the Progress of Redemption. (1) The world was not ready for an earlier Revelation. The lesson must always be suited to the mental and moral capacity of the learner. Carlyle's essay on 'Bacon' was one of his finest; but it took twenty-five years to become popular, because the age was not educated up to it! A schoolboy cannot understand Milton's poems without first learning the alphabet, and for ages humanity was God's child in God's school learning the moral and spiritual A, B, C. (2) God was anxious to convince humanity of the utter impossibility of self-education. Intellect, and the arts, and physical force, and order, and government strained every nerve to save the world; but it was a colossal failure, and the world, like a tired child, sat weeping away its heart. For our own part we rejoice in this gradualness. And why? Simply because a full-orbed revelation flashed upon us in one instant would have overwhelmed us! We mortals are too feeble and frail to bear the full outflashing of the Divine! 'Ye cannot bear it now.' As one divine well puts it: 'God could have said more to us; but He has not because He would not, and He would not because He loved us too well to overwhelm us with this revelation'. J. Ossian Davies, The Dayspring from on High, p. 9. Luke 1:78 Thus, from our point of view, does Goethe rise on us as the Uniter, and victorious Reconciler, of the distracted, clashing elements of the most distracted and divided age that the world has witnessed since the introduction of the Christian Religion; to which old chaotic Era, of world-confusion and world-refusion, of blackest darkness succeeded by a dawn of light and nobler 'dayspring from on high,' this wondrous Era of ours is, indeed, oftenest likened. To the faithful heart let no Era be a desperate one! It is ever the nature of darkness to be followed by a new, nobler light; nay, to produce such.... Woe to the land where, in these seasons, no prophet arises; but only censors, satirists, and embittered desperadoes, to make the evil worse; at best but to accelerate a consummation, which in accelerating they have aggravated! Old Europe had its Tacitus and Juvenal; but these availed not. New Europe too has had its Mirabeaus and Byrons and Napoleons and innumerable red-flaming meteors, shaking pestilence from their hair; and earthquakes and deluges and Chaos come again; but the clear Star, day's harbinger ( Phosphoros, the bringer of light), had not yet been recognised. Carlyle. References. I. 78. Basil Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 30. W. M. Bunting, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 234. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. liii. No. 3029. G. H. Curteis, Christian World Pulpit, v ol. xlv. p. 4. J. Ossian Davies, The Dayspring from on High, p. 22. The Dayspring Luke 1:78-79 'Them that sit in darkness.' The figure is not suggestive of the twilight of a summer's eve, or the trembling expectant twilight of a summer's morn; it is the midnight of the winter season. We all know the power of the darkness. How intense and feverish becomes the imagination in the still dark hours of the night! How erratic and untrustful our judgments! I. 'Them that sit in darkness.' That was the condition of the race before the Saviour was born. The world was dark, and clammy, and cold. What did death mean to these tenants of the night? It meant the dissolver of the body. It meant the pilot of the soul. If you want to know the explanation of much of the darkness, you must turn to the first and second chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. II. 'They sit in darkness and in the shadow of death....' Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem... what? The morning dawned upon that night-burdened, shadow-haunted, fear-filled world. 'The dayspring from on high hath visited us.' 'The dayspring?' not the full day, but the spring of the day, the light-fountain, Heaven's East. We should only have been 'blinded with excess of light'. So He dawned upon us; the light fell upon the sore and wearied hearts of men with the soft warmth of an infant's kiss. 'Soft and quiet as the breast feather of a motherly bird.' 'Hath visited.' Another word which helps to heap up and multiply the comforting suggestion. It is a visit of sympathy, of healing, of relief, of release. Such is the infinitely gentle and delicate coming of the omnipotent God. III. What was the purpose of the dawning? 'To give light to them that sit in darkness.' (1) To illumine the world. The mission of the dayspring was the ministry of illumination. The Dayspring was not first of all a redeemer. He must first reveal before He can redeem. (2) As redeemer also did this Dayspring visit us. 'To guide our feet into the way of peace.' It is the guidance of a pioneer. Pioneers are 'living ways'. David Livingstone laid down his life in Africa, and became a 'living way 'to guide our feet into the heart of that dark continent. The pioneer is the living way into undiscovered realms. J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, p. 186. References. I. 78, 79- R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 223. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 1. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, St. Luke, p. 30. I. 79. F. de W. Lushington, Sermons to Young Boys, p. 73. Luke 1:80 'Every week,' said Goethe of Schiller in his early life, 'he became different and more finished; each time that I saw him he seemed to me to have advanced in learning and judgment.' References. II. 1. Expositor (7th Series), vol. i. p. 89; (6th Series), vol. v. p. 433; (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 137. II. 1, 2. Ibid. vol. v. p. 274. II. 1-7. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 193. II. 1-3. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 19. II. 4. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 280. II. 6. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 11. The Love of the Cradle (For Christmas Day) Luke 2:7 The Church has ever held that in all the estate of His Humiliation in the whole sad three and thirty years of His earthly life, our Lord offered up an atoning sacrifice. He suffered life as well as death for us. But a great saint and doctor has well reminded us that we are ready to be so dazzled by the love of the Cross that we often forget the love of the Cradle. We forget that our Lord endured the weakness of death and the weakness of infancy no less. He Whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain did not abhor the Virgin's womb. In this He descended to the farthest depths of humility. He spared Himself no ignoble circumstance. He came to us in the winter death of nature. He was laid in a manger because there was no room for Him in the inn He who died to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Of a verity the ox knew his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel did not know, His people did not consider. Christ from the beginning emptied Himself. He devised liberal things for His people. He was liberal of the co-eternal and coequal glory which He had with the Father before all the worlds. He was liberal of His own humility and wearinesses and sufferings. What more could He have done for His vineyard that He has not done? I. It is well for us as the Christmas season comes round to bend our thoughts to the love of the Cradle, if it were only for the reason that we are called to follow Christ rather in His progress towards the Cross than in His endurance thereon. The love of the Cradle rather than the love of the Cross finds its reflection in Christian lives just now, and is the chief means by which His earthly kingdom stands and is spread. Once it was otherwise, and it may be otherwise again. There was the glorious age of the martyrs, and the blood of the martyrs may again be the seed of the Church. Indeed, it is but yesterday since men and women died for Him in a strong agony like His own. But for most of us now the lesson is spoken from the Cradle. What did Christ do for us in His first advent? (1) First of all He came to dwell among us. He did not merely visit His people. At Nazareth He took up His abode among them. It is coming home to the heart of His Church that in this our Lord must be followed. It is good to visit the outcast and the poor, but they will never be brought back by visits. It is only as Christian men and women who might live in the peace and comfort of congenial surroundings deliberately make up their minds to forsake these and share the lot of those whom they go forth to seek by day and by night, month after month, and year after year, that the world may be won. (2) Again, He teaches us that to be great in His service we must take the road of humility, and of a peculiar humility. We have to empty ourselves in measure, not merely of our sins, but of things which, were the state of the world different, might lawfully be our pride. (3) Once more, we must follow Him in consenting to be despised. All His experience in this life, from the Manger to the Tree, was an experience of scorn. We can put our fingers on one incident after another, and say, 'That was scorn'. The fashion of His Cross, the purple He wore, the sceptre in His hand all these were meant in scorn. But the closer we read the history, the more we shall see that He bore reproach all the way, and still His faithful servants in proportion to their fidelity will encounter the cold disdain of the world. II. With all this the temper of Christmas is peculiarly the temper of hope. And why? Because Christmas reminds us that He has intervened. He said in the days of His flesh, 'Which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it?' On Christmas Day He began visibly to build the tower. He has ever since laid stone upon stone, and His purpose is to finish it. This is the Christmas hope, and it is peculiarly needed in these days as a cordial for drooping spirits. In Worcester Cathedral there is a grave with one word inscribed, Miserrimus. Who was it that died brokenhearted? The question was long unanswered. It turned out that the word was on the tomb of Thomas Maurice, a kindly, gentle old man, whose heart was broken by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which extinguished the last hope of the exiled family to which he most faithfully adhered. He cherished his dream of allegiance as the one secret of his blameless life, and was eager to rest in a nameless grave if only the stone should witness by a single word to his undying loyalty. But no Christian need ever go to his grave in despair of the kingdom of Christ. W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, p. 401. Christmas Day Luke 2:7 I. No room for Whom? For Him Who was 'the Desire of all nations,' of Whom prophets have foretold, poets sung, and for Whom holy men of old had been waiting in devout expectation. No room for One Who had come to open the eyes of the blind, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set the bondslaves free; Who had brought with Him healing for the sick, pardon for the guilty, life for the dying, salvation for the lost. No room for Whom? For the King of glory, Who hath a Name above every name (see Isaiah 9:6 ; Isaiah 45:23 ; Romans 14:11 ; Phi 2:10 ). Room might be found for the rich trafficker, for the powerful sheik; for such the highest room in the inn had not been too good. But He, the Lord of glory, must be left to begin His earthly life as He was to continue it, 'without a place where to lay His Head'. This suggests to us a picture of what may be seen going on in the world even now. Who are the Christ-in-the-manger Christians? II. (a) Those who, without intending it, are prone to put something else in His stead. There is something comes between their souls and Him. They do not live a life of faith in Him; they do not feel their soul's strength and safety to consist in spiritual union with Him. He is not their wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. If it is Christ with them, it is not all Christ. If they have allowed Him a room, it is not the highest, the chiefest, or the best. II. (b) Those who are prone to be desponding, and fearful, and sad at heart We know such mean no dishonour to Christ; but they do dishonour Him for all that. They prize His comforts more than Himself; they even put them instead of Himself. Christian in the Slough of Despond thought of nothing but how he might make his way out of the quagmire the soonest, not how he might get to Christ the soonest. And greatly did he suffer for this, as shall we all if we make more of getting relief under our spiritual distresses than of laying hold of Christ. We may seek joy, and hope, and peace in believing, and the tokens and witnesses of our acceptance with God are privileges much to be desired; but these are not Christ, and many have found Christ who all their life long could not lay claim to such blessings. We are not to make a Saviour of our spiritual experiences, a righteousness of our feelings; not to welcome to the inn, and its best place, the gifts of His grace and mercy, whilst He, the Almighty Giver, is left outside. 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My Voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.' D. Moore, * Thoughts for Church Seasons. Luke 2:7 * Church, do you say? Look eighteen hundred years ago, in the stable at Bethlehem: an infant laid in a manger! Look, thou ass, and behold it; it is a fact the most indubitable of facts: thou wilt thereby learn innumerable things. Jesus of Nazareth and the life he led, and the death he died, does it teach thee nothing? Through this, as through a miraculous window, the heaven of Martyr Heroism, the 'divine depths of sorrow,' of noble Labour, and the unspeakable silent expanses of Eternity, first in man's history disclose themselves. The admiration of all nobleness, divine worship of godlike nobleness, how universal it is in the history of man! But mankind, that singular entity mankind, is like the fertilest, fluidest, most wondrous element, an element in which the strangest things crystallise themselves and spread out in the most astounding growths. The event at Bethlehem was of the Year One; but all years since that, eighteen hundred of them now, have been contributing new growth to it, and see, there it stands: the Church! Touching the earth with one small point; springing out of one small seed-grain, rising out therefrom, ever higher, ever broader, high as the Heaven itself, broad till it overshadow the whole visible Heaven and Earth, and no star can be seen but through it. From such a seed-grain so has it grown; planted in the reverences and sacred opulences of the soul of mankind; fed continually by all the noblenesses of some forty generations of men. The world-tree of the Nations for so long! Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, via References. II. 7. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 37. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 7. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 360. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 14. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 173. H. D. Rawnsley, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiii. p. 1018. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 97. Spurgeon, vol. viii. No. 485. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p. 30. H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation, p. 1. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 27. II. 8. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 64. The Shepherds of Bethlehem Luke 2:8-9 1. When the shepherds had their vision, they were out on the hills tending their sheep. The vision was given to them at their posts; they would have missed it all had they been elsewhere. It is as true today as it was nineteen hundred years ago that the vision and the glory come that way. 2. Again, it is well worth observing from our story that the very event which interested all heaven was an event which the village disregarded. In minimis Deus maximus says the old Latin proverb it is in the least things that God is greatest. A crying babe in a rude village may be more to God than all the Roman emperors. 3. This exquisite story also teaches me that the angels may go, but Jesus Christ remains. We may go to the lowliest tasks in His companionship. For the kingdom of God is not in the clouds of heaven, nor are its voices those of untempted hierarchies. The kingdom of God is in your heart and mine, and its King will never leave us nor forsake us. G. H. Morrison, The Scottish Review, vol. i. No. 25, p. 617. Christmas Day Luke 2:8-11 Why this great event which we commemorate today should have been first announced to shepherds we cannot say. May we, clergy, hope that, as we are so frequently in the Bible especially by the prophets called 'shepherds,' it was to signify to us for our great encouragement that the Gospel is first delivered to us, that we may deliver it to you? I. A Fearless Joy. Is it not a very humbling fact that the first feeling of anything sudden, however bright and however happy it may be, awakens in the mind fear? Would it be so if the conscience were perfectly clear? The angel's first work was to remove the fear. And what we want is a fearless joy. What is that joy to us, behind which there is always lurking a gloom? How can we have a fearless joy? There is only one answer. You must feel safe. How safety is to come let us learn from the angel's Christmas message. II. Which the Saviour Brought. See how the angel put it 'Fear not, for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.' The joy was to take the place of, and so to banish, the fear. This joy was the sense of safety. 'For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.' I often wish that in the place of 'save' we used more frequently the Saxon word 'safety'; and instead of Saviour, ' One who saves us'. A Saviour is one who makes us quite safe. This is exactly what Jesus did. He made us safe. Safe from ourselves. Safe from our past. Safe from an upbraiding conscience. Safe from Satan. Safe from death. Safe from the judgment to come. III. Unto You. And what have you to do? Simply to appropriate it. You have it in the angel's opening words, 'Unto you is born this day a Saviour which is Christ the Lord'. Only echo that. Say, 'Yes, Lord, unto me a poor miserable sinner unto me wast Thou born this day a Saviour'. And by that act, simple as it is, you make Him, and His work, all your own. The Shepherds and the Angels Luke 2:8-14 When we think of how great a place the birth of Jesus holds in Christianity and how awful a fact it is believed to represent, the language of the record becomes quite curious in its simplicity. I. The circumstances of the announcement. (1) The persons to whom the announcement was made: Shepherds: men about their daily work. (2) The time: by night. (3) The heralds: the angel of the Lord and then a multitude of the heavenly host. II. The angel's proclamation. (1) Saviour. (2) Born. (3) To you. (a) That He might reveal God. (b) That He might be our example. (c) That He might die. III. The angel chorus. (1) Glory to God in the Highest. (2) On earth peace. A. Maclaren. Reference. II. 8-20. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 40. The Manger Unveiling Luke 2:8-39 (with Matthew 2 * ) * The world did not prepare for Christ's coming. There was no royal triumph to welcome the advent of this King; but throughout the whole spiritual realm there were tokens and evidences of the vastness and the importance and the marvel of the thing that was taking place just in the stable of a wayside inn in Judæa. The supreme splendour is not that of these things; the supreme glory is not that of singing angels, and prophesying, and singing, men and women; the supreme splendour is the thing itself that the God of angels and of men, high enthroned over all, is coming into human history in the form of a servant; in the likeness of men. The supreme glory is the hiding of the glory; the most transcendent splendour is the veiling of the splendour. And the thing that has held captive the minds of spiritual, thoughtful men through the centuries is not the song of the angels, not even the spiritual movement amongst men at the moment, not even the underworld of evil manifesting itself in the murder of the innocents, but the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. I. The history of the angels is itself full of fascination. Clouded in mystery, so far as revelation is concerned, but we find them in our Bible as intelligent beings, unfallen and without sin, interested in man's history. In one brief touch Job tells us that these angels, the sons of God, sang for joy at creation. And we see them in the Garden of Eden, and we find them all through the Bible ministering to men through the long years. They seem to link earth with heaven. Bringing messages, rebuking prophets, comforting saints; ever and anon we find them. II. But come to the next level and watch in connexion with the birth of Jesus the activity of man; and I am speaking of that activity on its highest plane. There are three things I would have you notice. I merely group them, leaving them for your further consideration. The voice of prophecy, long silent, was heard again. Great songs and anthems none had been composed for long years broke spontaneously from the hearts of men and women. And finally, seers who knew not the oracles, and were without the covenants of Jehovah, were led by the shining of a star to the hour and to the attitude of worship. III. I said by way of introduction that the supreme splendour of that birth was the lowliness of it, the humiliation of it. By that lowliness and humiliation God did reveal to all ages the essential dignity of human nature. I know it is revolutionary; I know two millenniums have gone and the world does not yet believe it But there it is, God's lesson for all ages. When God stooped; when He brought the First-Begotten into the inhabited earth; when He laid hold upon our human nature; when He was made flesh I am trying to group some of the actual expressions used concerning this birth in Holy Scripture then mark this fact: He proved that surroundings neither ennoble nor degrade humanity. A court and a crown would not have ennobled the Babe; the stable and the manger did not degrade Him. Behold the Babe lying in a manger and as though to emphasise the weakness and the humility and the simplicity of it wrapped in swaddling clothes. This, said the angel, shall be the sign unto you, not songs at midnight, not the star moving through the heavens, not the wrath of man, but the Babe, that is the sign. Humanity needs no court, no crown, no garments to make it full of dignity. Humanity cannot be degraded in itself by the circumstances in the midst of which it comes. There is the supreme splendour of it. Manhood in its perfection is closely allied to Divinity and Glory. And humanity, closely allied to Divinity and Glory in its perfection, lies with a wonderful perfection and dignity, even in babyhood, in a manger. And this morning all the spiritual intelligence of the Christian Church gathered about the manger, forgets the manger for looking at the Child, and where it is necessary to reconstruct the manger in the middle of the church, and to make a procession around it, it is because they have forgotten the dignity of the Child. The circumstances of absolute lowliness: that man might know that man cannot be ennobled by the accidentals of a passing hour and by the flimsy trappings of an earthly dignity, cannot be degraded by the limitations and the poverty of a passing hour that is the supreme splendour. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXVII. p. 9. References. II. 9. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 19. Scottish Review, vol. vi. p. 52. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 366. Great Joy Luke 2:10 It may seem strange to us that the angel's Christmas song should come in the ordinary course of our Sunday lessons at this season of the year; yet it is not without a significance of its own. It seems to emphasise the fact that Christian joy should occupy a large share in our lives. Not at Christmas only, but all the year through the Christian should be 'always rejoicing'. I. What is Joy? There are many kinds of joy, from the indulgence of the lowest carnal appetite up to the purest, saintliest rapture of the spirits in glory. Most joys are, in their very nature and necessity, short and capricious. They exhaust themselves; they evaporate by their own intensity. So that as respects the pleasures of this world, there is almost as great and imperious a necessity for its joys to turn to sorrow as there is for the Christian that his 'sorrow shall be turned into joy'. And therefore we are, perhaps, too much accustomed to think and speak of all 'joy' as a fugitive thing, and to draw a contrast between joy and peace, and to say peace lasts and increases; joy lessens and goes away. This is unjust to joy, else Isaiah would not have said, 'The meek shall increase their joy'; he would not have twice called joy 'everlasting'; and our Lord would not have said, 'These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full'; and again, 'Ask and receive, that your joy may be full,' where all ascribe permanence and growth to joy. True joy always connects itself with love. Thus 'the Fruits of the Spirit' are ranged: 'Love, Joy, Peace'. Joy stands next to love its first shoot. Joy is love triumphant; peace is love quiescent; both are essentially united with love; both are developments of love. II. Joy in Christ's Presence. (a) What a different world this would have been if the Lord had never come to it. But He came, and His coming brought salvation. And all that beautiful life He lived, it is all mine, for I am in Him; God sees me in Him. He sees His righteousness my righteousness; and I can stand before God poor, wretched sinner as 1 am I can stand before God perfect. Is not this 'great joy'? There is no greater joy upon earth than when a man first awakes to the simple sense and consciousness of the fact 'I am pardoned; I am saved; I am a child of God'. That joy is love. (b) Think again of His coming to us now; of His presence with us always; of His presence at this moment in my heart. There is free communion between God and man everywhere. Christ is at my side. I lean on Him. I hear His whispers. I tell Him everything. He supports me; He guides me; He keeps me; He is my very life. I am united with Him. We can never be divided. Is not that 'great joy'? (c) But beyond this He is coming again! I shall see Him. I shall be 'caught up with Him in the clouds.' I shall reign with Him. I shall be like Him. III. 'Great Joy 'it is to Know these Things! 'Great joy' to feel these things! 'Great joy' to tell these things! And if you do not feel the 'great joy,' may not one reason be that you do not talk about them. But true joy doubles itself by imparting. The angels minister because they are happy, but no less they are happy because they minister. We do not put sufficient joyousness into our religion. Why is religion always so solemnly grave? Why are religious people almost always looking so sad? Cultivate joy. Pray for joy. Encourage joy in your own heart. What cannot joy do? Do we not all do things best when we are happy? Do we not work best, pray best, live best, when we are happy? And if holiness makes heaven, heaven makes holiness. Glad Tidings (Christmas Day) Luke 2:10 Subject: The Good News of Christmas. I. The Gospel Tidings. The good old word gospel means good tidings, good news. We open the volume of the New Testament, and the whisper of the good news swells into the angels' song, and we see the winter stars shining over the Bethlehem hills, and the lowly cattle shed, and the consecrated manger, and the good news is fulfilled. II. What the Good Tidings Mean. What does" Christmas mean to us? To get the right answer we must go even unto Bethlehem, we must go yonder and worship in the church, the true House of Bread, or we cannot understand. The outside world knows it is Christmas; but not why. It talks of a festive season, of merry-making, of joy, but it forgets the source of all this. The Son of God is as much neglected by the world as ever, He is left in the House of Bread, the Church, and the careless world makes merry outside. The inn of the world is so crowded that there is no room there for Jesus. But it is not so with the faithful of Christ's Church. They rejoice because unto them a Child is born, unto them a Son is given. They rejoice because all the long line of prophecies is fulfilled, because the faint, far-off whispers of the old-world gospel have grown into the triumph song, 'Jesus Christ is born today'. They bring their offerings of praise and worship to the Altar, as the faithful brought their offerings to the manger. III. God with us. There is the central point of the good tidings, God is our God, God with us. We feel that He is our God to be reverenced and worshipped; but He is also our Brother, our Friend, to whom we can open the secrets of our heart. IV. The Good Tidings Teach us the True Nature of Man. Before the Incarnation man was regarded as fallen from his high estate, as an exile from Paradise, as a defaced image Jesus, by taking our nature upon Him, raised it up, as a king might lift a fallen traveller by the wayside and clothe him in purple and fine linen. Jesus, by becoming man, gave him back his lost beauty, his lost dignity. Human nature is no more poor, but glorious human nature, capable of the highest, noblest, purest things. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Notes of Sermons for the Year, p. 26. Luke 2:10 Samuel Marsden, 'the Apostle of New Zealand,' preached from this text to the Maoris of New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1814. Dr. Stock describes this service as 'one of the great historic scenes in the history of missions indeed, one of the really great scenes in the history of the British Colonial Empire, for the very existence of the now flourishing colony of New Zealand is due to the courage and faith of Samuel Marsden in flinging himself among the Maoris. The Mission he instituted on Christmas Day, 1814, tamed the race, and then, in poured the colonists.' References. II. 10. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 32. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 29. B. J. Snell, The Virtue of Gladness, p. 73. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 727, and vol. xxii. No. 1330. F. W. Farrar, Everyday Christian Life, p. 248. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 237. Christmas Day Luke 2:10-11 With no thought of fulfilling a prophecy did Joseph and Mary undertake that long journey of eighty miles to Bethlehem. Like other citizens, they obeyed the Imperial edict, that every one should go to be taxed 'into his own city'. It is a marked characteristic of the Scripture prophecies that there is no trace of human intention, no seeking on the part of the friends of Revelation to put themselves in accord with the Divine purposes. The immediate agents knew no more of the ends they were furthering than does the clay while being fashioned by the potter. 'She brought forth her first-born son and laid Him in a manger.' I. Observe (1) The poor accommodation provided for the Blessed Saviour at His first appearing on this earth. It was as an outcast from the abodes of men. It was a type of His deep abasement, and prophetic of men's unwillingness to make room for Him in their hearts and homes. (2) In making the great announcement one angel does not suffice. The soothing words of the herald angel being uttered 'Fear not' the assurance being given that he was a bearer to the shepherds of good tidings; the joy of the heavenly choirs can be no longer restrained, and the firmament rings with the glad announcement: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men'. Of this supplementary announcement by the collective body of angels, we see the design. It was that they might do homage to their liege-Lord in the first stage of His wonderful abasement For the next thirty years no nobler employment could they have than to wait upon Him until His Ascension. Oh, yes, this our glad Christmas Festival is a high day among the angels of God! It is the inauguration of Redemption's triumphs, of many sons brought unto glory; it was the world's second birthday. (3) The conduct of the shepherds on hearing this announcement. They said one to another, 'Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us'. They required no other reason A message from heaven had told them what they must do, and which if they would do, they should of a certainty find the Lord's Christ. II. Consider: (1) How many such messages have been sent to each one of us! By voices loud and clear as the strains of angels, by the voices of Prophets, of Evangelists, of Apostles, of ministers, by the teachings of conscience, more than all by the arresting voice of the Spirit of God, speaking to us through affliction, through sickness, through bereavement, we have been told where we shall find a Saviour, mighty and merciful 'a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord'. Have we found Christ as truly as these shepherds found Him? (2) The shepherds obeyed the vision, and 'they made known abroad the saying which had been told them concerning this child'. Far be it from them to keep back such an inestimable discovery. Every friend, every neighbour shall be told of it. In the same spirit as Philip (John i. 45), of the woman of Samaria (John iv. 29), these shepherds sought out those dear to them. To one bowed with fear, to one oppressed grievously with a sense of sin, to some feeling after Christ, 'if haply they might find Him,' to some afraid to die, they would say: 'Come with us to Bethlehem!' 'Unto us is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, Who is Christ the Lord.' D. Moore, * Thoughts for Church Seasons. * Christmas Lessons Luke 2:10-11 I. The Lesson of Reverence. It seems to me that, if we come down to our ordinary lives, what we ought to feel when we approach the subject of the Incarnation in our inmost being, is reverence for the power of God. When we come to commemorate the great events of today, it seems to me that we are in danger on two sides. (a) This day may have become a day which is a name, accepted just conventionally a day which conveys to us no living meaning. (b) Another danger is this, that those who have realised, or are trying to realise, the meaning of today, are overwhelmed by the fulness of the thoughts which burst upon them. How time and business and the world blot out and wear out the impression of what is really meant by such mighty words as God, Jesus Christ, Redemption, Everlasting Life! In our everyday life, even when we are on our knees at our prayers, we forget the significance of those mighty terms. As we approach the subject of the Incarnation of the Son of God, let us learn in our inmost being the lesson of reverence. II. The Lesson of Purity. We all know, when the Lord and Saviour came among us, amid what innocence, with what purity and innocence He came. All the sanctities of Heaven were embodied in human flesh. Is not this, I ask you, a spectacle to make you and me thoughtful, and consider our own experience of life and society? Let us turn to the Holy Child and His mother. Let us learn there the lesson of strength and manliness, for purity means manliness. III. The Lesson of Humility. Can there be any such thing amongst you and me that can compare for a moment with the abandonment of glory which Jesus abandoned? Think of any humbling thought which may have come to our minds; can any humbleness compare with the circumstances of the birth of Jesus Christ the Son of God? IV. The Lesson of Gladness and Joy. Rejoice! the Prince of Peace is come, whatever war may rage, whatever troubles may oppress the mind. He is God, and He says today, 'Rejoice, because I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people'. References. II. 10,11. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 494. J. O. Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 161. D. L. Moody, The Fulness of the Gospel, p. 21. II. 10-12. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1026. The Child Jesus (For Christmas Day) Luke 2:11 I. We see in that manger our Saviour, nothing else. 'Unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour.' Are we sure that that is what we want? The Jewish patriot will be disappointed. There will be no lead against Roman usurpation. The human disputant will be disappointed. 'He shall not starve nor cry, neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets.' The intellectual Rabbi will be disappointed. He will be a teacher who will make strange demands on the intellect, advance paradoxes and proclaim a gospel which will be an offence to those who hear, a shame and a burden to those who preach. He will not be a militant reformer of abuses, while at the same time His teaching will make abuses cease to be possible. His mission is to save. This is His name, 'Saviour'; this is His mission, 'Salvation'. This is to be the burden of His life, His cry of victory, His achievement and crown salvation. It has become a word so easy to say, so commonplace, so trite, that we hardly realise what it means. II. 'Unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour.' As we gaze in adoration into the manger-cradle, our thoughts as to salvation take a new shape. Here is no royal visit to earth of a king disguised, who visits his subjects without the usual insignia of royalty. Heathen mythology knew of such visits conceived too often in the interests of man's lowest degradation and inspired thereby. Here is God entering into humanity by the usual entrance into life as One Who has determined to pass through its every stage, from helpless infancy to mature manhood. Stop to see the completeness of the Incarnation. Jesus Christ pauses at the threshold. He will not hurry by, He has to save child life as such, to dignify child life, to show its importance and to secure its protection 'as the new wine is found in the cluster and one saith Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it,' so Christ in the fulness of His Redemptive Salvation lingers in childhood. The Child Jesus! It is one of the most beautiful conceptions of Christmas, which for ever forbids us to hurry over and destroy that most blessed time in life's development. Happy the man whom God has led on by easy stages through innocent childhood, through spotless youth, to vigorous age along the graduated path of Christian progress. Innocence is a power of which we know too little, but irresistible in its fearless strength. At this Christmas-time, full of the joy and laughter of happy children, let us pray with all our hearts that God may preserve the simplicity of our homes in all purity and holiness. For Jesus the Christmas-child still says to us, Whosoever shall receive one such little child in My Name receiveth Me, and, whosoever receive Me, receiveth Him that sent Me. III. But as we ponder and pray at Bethlehem we read for ourselves the note of sacrifice. Here is no royal cradle, no cradle fitted even for a human being, but the feeding-place of animals in the stable of an inn. It is the beginning of a life of which afterwards it was said that 'the Son of man hath not where to lay His head'. The homeless Saviour is a note which we must not neglect at a festival of the home like Christmas. Here is an Infant born in discomfort, Who will live in much obloquy and die in pain. It is a sad spectacle of the position which a perfect life will hold in a fallen world. Men saw perfect goodness and they hated it; a life which reflected Heaven, and they would have none of it; a life of love and absolute benevolence, and they killed it. The late Bishop King, writing to a friend as to one who had opposed him with doubts, says: 'Your friend says that he has studied and thought over the Bible and does not believe it. Now, giving him credit for having done this, I am not the least surprised that he does not believe it, unless he can add that he has done it i.e. put into practice all that he has read.' 'If any man do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' The little Infant of Bethlehem asks us to grow with Him and into Him, and bids us learn that at every stage we shall find that which corresponds with the manger, 'In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world'. IV. These are stern lessons, too stern for Christmas with its tenderness and joy. The little Infant in the manger means completeness in our Redemption, means a life of sacrifice, and yet, perhaps above all, an intense sympathy. It is for our sakes that He became poor. He took not on him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Beyond the conception of Jesus the Saviour, far beyond the conception of Jesus the teacher, there stands out the conception of Jesus the friend. Jesus our friend keeps open house on Christmas Day. He calls all to Him the sad, the sorrowful, the suffering; above all, the sinner. There will be many happy gatherings today; there will be much real gladness, much forced mirth; but no Christmas Day will be happier than his who has found Christ, who has learned where to lay his sins and his sorrows, who has come to Christ as his judge and has left Him his friend a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, Who has known his soul in adversities. W. C. E. Newbolt, Church Times, Dec. 30, 1910. The Purpose of the Birth Luke 2:11 1. Christ was born to declare God. He declares God to us in His human life. 2. Christ was born to die. The death of Christ stands in quite a peculiar relation to His life. It is the purpose of it all 3. Christ was born to be our Brother. 4. Christ was born that He may lift man to the Throne. A. Maclaren. References. II. 11. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 572. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Beading, p. 32. The Sign: A Babe Luke 2:12 It is to be frankly acknowledged that the first impression made on our minds is a sense of incongruity; as if the humiliation the cynic would say degradation were too great to be credible. But on calmer and deeper thought it will become more and more apparent that if the Word were to be made flesh so as to dwell among us, it must be through the gate of helpless infancy that He enter; and that if He is to be the Friend of man, reaching down to the poorest and lowliest, it must be through the strait and narrow gate of poverty that He came into the world to bless it. On this great subject for it is a great subject a few thoughts, briefly and rapidly presented, are all we can hope to reach. I. Child-life is nearest heaven. According to outward appearance baby-life is at the bottom of the scale. But the measures of heaven, remember, are not measures of bigness; and according to measures of heaven, child-life is not at the bottom of the scale of humanity, but close at the top. II. The sign is most appropriate, because it makes it-evident that the Saviour of the world meets us at the extremity of our weakness and helplessness. Had the anointed Saviour entered the world miraculously as a full-grown man, suddenly springing into being like the fabled Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, or that other from the foam of the sea at Cythera had this been the manner of His entrance, where would have been the Gospel for the children? And where would have been the Gospel for the poor? How could we ever have believed Him to be 'bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh'. III. The swaddling clothes and the manger were the sign of our Lord's humiliation. They stood for the whole course of self-denial which marked that holy life throughout, until the cruel cross finished what the lowly manger had begun. Now this self-denegation was the special signature of heaven in the life of Jesus. Not His miracles. These are not to be undervalued. But even in His mighty deeds it is not the marvel of them, but the love and mercy which find expression in them, to which the sacred historians specially turn their readers' thoughts. The great revealing was the revealing of the Father's love. Now that love could not be really revealed to man apart from the humble, lowly life of which the manger birth was the fitting portal. J. Monro Gibson, A Strong City, p. 87. References. II. 12. H. P. Liddon, University Sermons, p. 183. J. Adderley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 46. II. 13. W. F. Shaw, Sermon-Sketches for the Christian Year, p. 13. II. 13, 14. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 24. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading (2nd Series), p. 99. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 37. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 164. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 86. The Angel's Song Luke 2:14 I. Listen to the angel song. The song consists of three parts: (1) The object of our Redemption 'glory to God in the highest'. (2) And they sang also of the result of Redemption 'on earth peace'. This was a new note in the song. (3) They gave the source of our Redemption 'goodwill toward men'. II. Has this song, then, ever been repeated, or was it just one solitary note in this world's darkness and gloom? No, the angels always sing this song on Christmas Day. What, say you, do they keep Christmas Day in heaven? Aye, the angels always sing this song on Christmas Day, for every day is Christmas Day when Christ is born, not in a broken manger, but in a broken heart, and whensoever Jesus Christ is born again in any poor sinner's soul, there is always joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. And they sing this very song. You may bring glory to God, and the angel choir will sing once more, 'Glory to God in the highest'. III. And so you, too, will catch something of the Father's will; and you, too, will seek to throw goodwill upon this weary world; and so you, too, will reecho the song; you, too, as you go out into the world will seek to bring glory to God, you will answer your own prayers. E. A. Stuart, The City Pulpit, vol. x. p. 137. The Chimes of Christmas Luke 2:14 The song of the angels is an epitome of the Gospel. Let us hearken to the three notes struck by the heavenly host. 1. Glory to God in the highest. The power, the wisdom, and the love of God are manifested in nature and in His Word, but the gift of His Son is the supreme revelation of the glory of His attributes. 2. Peace on earth. Observe in detail: (1) Christ is driving slavery from the earth not by the sword or penal enactments, but by teaching the brotherhood of men. (2) Christ has elevated woman to her true dignity by proclaiming the equality of the sexes. (3) Christ has softened the horrors of war. Non-combatants women and children are not now massacred by the conquerors in 'civilized 'countries. 3. Goodwill toward men. The Gospel is democratic from beginning to end. All minor distinctions of age, and sex, and wealth, and race are lost in Christianity, or regarded as mere accidents. Celsus, one of the earliest antagonists of the Gospel, repudiated it because it made no social or political distinctions among men. Thank God, His love encircles us all, for He 'will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth'! W. Wakinshaw, The Preacher's Magazine, vol. vi. p. 558. The Message of the Angel Luke 2:14 I. The birth of Christ is the entrance and abiding of the Divine love among men. II. The birth of Christ is the beginning of peace on earth. How? By giving a new power to humanity which (1) subdues self; (2) is hostile to all violence; (3) makes all men brethren by reason of His manhood. III. The birth of Christ is the cause of the angels' praise. A. Maclaren. Luke 2:14 Becket, says Froude, towards the end 'was probably weary of the strife, and may have felt that he would serve his cause more effectually by death than by life. On Christmas Day he preached in the cathedral on the text, Peace to men of goodwill. There was no peace, he said, except to men of goodwill.' Surely, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men are words which as yet belong more to prophecy than to history. M'Leod Campbell. Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's poem, Religious Musings, and Longfellow's poem on this text entitled * Christmas Bells. * Darwin, in one of his letters, observes, 'I always think the most perfect description of happiness that words can give, is Peace on earth, goodwill to men '. Hee professed alwayes to love and seeke Peace: and it was his usuall Preface in his Treaties, that when Christ came into the world, Peace was sung, and when Hee went out of the world, Peace was bequeathed. Bacon's * Henry VII. Luke 2:14 * On a house near Durham there is a Latin inscription to the effect that it was built 'in the year 1697 of the peace of the Gospel, and in the first year of the Peace of Ryswick'. The latter is almost forgotten now, but, as Macaulay points out, it was considered most vital and permanent at the time; trade revived, the army was to be disbanded, and a happier age inaugurated. All in vain. The treaty proved ere long an idle basis of peace. For only the peace of the Gospel abides. References. II. 14. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 1. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 87. R. Brewin, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 556. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 168. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. i. p. 273. G. B. F. Hollock, Christian World, Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 396. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 113. Luke 2:15 I. Let us; then that tells us that there are others who will not. A merry Christmas is not of necessity a happy Christmas. II. What is going to Bethlehem? Ah me, what a joy it would be would it not? if we could tomorrow be carried away to that real Bethlehem, see the church that stands over what was once the manger, see where the angel appeared, see where the shepherds worshipped! But remember what He, who cannot lie, Himself said, 'Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed'. III. We can go in thought We can see that poor little Baby, the very and eternal God, laid in a manger, while yet sitting on the Throne of the Father. We can see what kind of courtiers He had, the ox and the ass, as it is written: 'The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib'. IV. Let us now go (good advice of the shepherds to you not to put it off) even unto Bethlehem, the 'even' showing that it is not an easy thing. Easy! it is the hardest thing, the one thing of your lives; it is the thing in which that better life begins. J. M. Neale, Sermons to Children, p. 45. Luke 2:15 This is a world of changes and chances. Very well; but He that was born in Bethlehem came into that world; came to be subject to them, came to overcome them. This is a world of sorrow. Very well; but He that was born in Bethlehem came into that world to bear it, to be the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, to raise us up to the pleasures that are at His right hand for evermore. This is a world of poverty; but Bethlehem is by interpretation the House of Bread, and He was born there who not only gives Himself as the living Bread to us, but who has promised that if we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, He will answer all other questions for us what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or wherewithal we shall be clothed better than we could answer them for ourselves. This is a world of unsatisfied desires, but in Bethlehem was the spring for which David thirsted, saying, 'O that one would give me to drink of the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate'; that spring to reach which the three mighty men burst through the host of the Philistines at the jeopardy of their lives. And so in Bethlehem, the Fountain, as the prophet says, is opened for sin and for uncleanness, the Fountain of whose waters, if a man drinketh, he shall never thirst again. J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol 1. p. 55. Go Unto Bethlehem Luke 2:15 The shepherds give us an example of Christian decision. They went at once. Faith outruns calculation. The path might be dark and steep and rugged, the way might be long, but the shepherds thought only of the Divine impulse and of the Divine end. And for us, all this is a living parable. The words of the shepherds will come, if we give heed to them, as a trial for ourselves. I. 'Let us now go even unto Bethlehem 'that we may find Christ. The words are still as they were of old time a profession of faith. Christ does not show Himself in the place where we should have been inclined to look for Him; He does not show Himself in the guise in which we should have been most ready to acknowledge Him. II. So 'Let us now go even unto Bethlehem,' that we may serve Christ. The words are not only a profession of faith, they are also a profession of devotion. He who has found Christ will not rest till he has done something for Him. III. 'Let us now go even unto Bethlehem' that we may carry thence the thought of Christ to our pleasure and to our work. The words, which are, as we have seen, first a profession of faith, and then a profession of devotion, are also a profession of hope. If we have found Christ in His lowly resting-place, if we have served Him in the person of one whom He came to raise and cheer and save, we shall have learnt the secret of a noble and a happy life. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 40. The Pilgrimage to Bethlehem Luke 2:15 Bethlehem, or 'The House of Bread,' was a small village six miles south of Jerusalem, on the way to Hebron. It never was a place of much importance. Micah calls it 'the least among the thousands of Judah'. It is not mentioned in any of the catalogues of Judah's cities. Yet to the student of the Bible its interest is surpassingly great. In the district of Bethlehem lay the fields of Boaz in which Ruth gleaned. Here the son of Obed was born. David was anointed in Bethlehem. Best of all, in Bethlehem was Christ revealed. It was not without significance that Bethlehem, 'The House of Bread,' should be the birthplace of Him who had come down from heaven to be the Bread of Life for men. On this the second Sunday after Christmas, while the angel's message is still ringing in our ears, let us imitate the pious shepherds and 'Now go even unto Bethlehem,' in thought, 'And see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us'. And Whom there shall we see? I. A Virgin's Child. We are not to suppose that this was discovered to the shepherds, although it clearly was one of those things which Mary herself pondered in her heart. In this respect we occupy a vantage-ground above the shepherds. The Gospel records enable us to see that in the thing which had come to pass in Bethlehem, was fulfilled the ancient prophecy of Isa 7:14 , 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son'. II. The Messiah of Israel. From the commencement of her history Israel had been taught to link her destiny with the future. Her true position and power as a nation were to be realised when Abraham's seed should be born, when the prophet like unto Moses should be revealed, when the Greater High Priest of whom Aaron was a type should stand and minister in her midst at God's altar, when David's Son should sit upon His father's throne. III. The Saviour of the World. It is unmistakable that Christ is represented in the Word of God as holding peculiar relations towards believers as their Saviour; but it is just as palpable that all through the Gospel He is held up and set forth as a Saviour for mankind, sinners as such 'able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God through Him'. It is possible to preach either of these doctrines in such a way as to exclude the other. He best succeeds in exhibiting the truth as it is in Jesus who preaches both with equal clearness and fulness. IV. The Son of God. Bethlehem's wonder culminated in this, that Mary's Child, and Israel's Messiah, and the world's Saviour, was also God's son. The Son of God became incarnate, that He might reveal the Father, that He might exemplify human virtue, that He might take away our sins, and that He might be able thereby to make us partakers of His own Divine nature. Luke 2:15 When Paula, the friend of Jerome, came on her pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, she said to the saintly companions who were kneeling beside her: 'I swear to you, that with the eye of faith I see the Divine Infant, wrapped in His swaddling clothes. I hear my Lord crying in His cradle. I see the Magi adoring the star shining from above; the Virgin Mother; the careful nursing father; the shepherds coming by night to see the Word which was made Flesh; the slaughtered children; raging Herod; Joseph and Mary fleeing into Egypt.' And with mingled tears and joy, she said: 'Hail Bethlehem, House of Bread, where was born the true Bread, which came down from Heaven. Hail, Ephrata the fertile whose fruit is God.' All the prophetic passages of Scripture came into her memory, she quoted them in Latin, in Greek, in Hebrew, as they occurred to her, and her pious companions taxed their memories with her. 'And have I, a miserable sinner,' she cried at last, 'been accounted worthy to kiss the cradle where my Saviour uttered His first cry? Have I been accounted worthy to offer my prayers in this cave where the Virgin Mother brought forth my Lord? Here be my rest, for it is the country of my Lord! Here will I dwell, since my Saviour chose it,' and turning to Eustochium [her daughter], she added, 'and my seed shall serve Him'. E. L. Cutts, Saint Jerome, p. 125. References. II. 15. E. C. Chorley, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 554. R. G. Soans, Sermons for the Young, p. 187. C. Gutch, Sermons, p. 137. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 108. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st Series), p. 37. Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 65. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. 1. No. 2915. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 391. II. 16. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 55. A. M. Mackay, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 323. W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 130. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 47. II. 17-20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 666. II. 18-19. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 268. II. 19. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 6. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 118. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 405. II. 20. H. Elvet Lewis, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 193. Suffering with Christ (Feast of the Circumcision) Luke 2:21 Subject: New Year's Day and the Circumcision. I. History of the Festival. In the primitive Church the Feast of the Circumcision, though ranking as a festival, was observed rather as a fast, and for this reason. The heathen festival of the Saturnalia, which began in the middle of December, was continued till the beginning of January, and accompanied by every kind of riot, disorder, and debauchery. There was a great danger of the newly baptized Christians going back to their old habits at this season, and so the Fathers of the Church were never tired of denouncing the evils of the Saturnalia, and the Church directed that the first of January should be observed as a day of fasting and humiliation for the sins of the heathen. S. Chrysostom, in one of his sermons, denounces the season as the devil's festival. At first the festival of the Circumcision was known as the Octave of the Nativity: later it was observed under its present name, or in some places as the Festival of the Name of Jesus. The actual date when the Feast of the Circumcision became universally observed throughout the Church is doubtful, but in England it was settled by the Synod of Oxford in the year 1222 under the presidency of Stephen Langton. II. The Church and the World. Jesus was sinless, yet He fulfilled the obligations of the two Covenants: He was circumcised as a Jew, because He came to save the Jews; He was baptised into the wider brotherhood of the Christian Church, because He came to save all men, Jew and Gentile. At the very season when the heathen world was observing its impure rites, Jesus, Who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil, consecrates the season by His blood-shedding which the world had stained with its wickedness. III. Our Sacrifice. For us there is a sacrifice, a circumcision, inward and spiritual. We must begin a new lease of life with an offering. We must present ourselves, our souls and bodies, a sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. Many people's Christianity is merely a masquerade, because they are unwilling to give up anything for Christ's sake, to crucify the flesh with its sinful lusts and affections. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Notes of Sermons for the Year, p. 51. References. II. 21. H. R. Gamble, The Ten Virgins, p. 36. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 8. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 240. II. 22. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Notes of Sermons for the Year, p. 107. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 76. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 146. W. M. Sinclair, Christ and our Times, p. 219. J. Ewan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 92. II. 25. A. M. Fairbairn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii, p. 40. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 669. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 426. II. 27. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for Saints' Days, p. 69. II. 28. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 16. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 20. II. 28-30. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Holy-tide Teaching, p. 63. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1417. Luke 2:29 In Mr. Carus' account of the death of Charles Simeon, which J. M. Neale quotes in one of his letters, the following passage occurs: 'He employed himself in giving away sundry little presents, such as his gold-headed cane, and so forth; and then he said, "There's one bottle of wine, a very precious wine, the Lachryma Christi, in my bin; bring that to me and raise me up. Now may God's mercy continue to me the same firm trust as I now have in the tears Christ shed for me (referring to the Lachryma Christi), I want nothing more I can only use the language of my namesake, Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart according to Thy Word."' Luke 2:29 In one of his letters F. W. Robertson of Brighton observes that 'it would shed a kind of setting light and glory, upon the death-beds of those whose aspirations have been high, and whose work is done in this world, if, as they go out of it, they could see some such hope for the race coming in as at the dawn of a former salvation, hearts old and worn with hopeless expectation cried, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace".' What limits to the glory and happiness of our native land, if the Creator should in His mercy have placed in the heart of this royal woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy; and if, giving them time to expand, and to bless our children's children with her goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken in years? What glory! what happiness! what joy! what bounty of God! I of course can only expect to see the beginning of such a splendid period; but when I do see it, I shall exclaim with the pious Simeon, * Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. * Sydney Smith's Sermon at St Paul's on the accession of Queen Victoria. Describing their last talk at Ostia, Augustine relates how 'on that day, as we spoke of such matters, in converse which made the world with all its joys grow cheap to us, my mother said, "My son, I have no further joy in life. What I do here, and why I remain here, I know not, now that the hope of this world has gone. One thing alone made me long to abide here for a little while, the desire to see thee a Catholic Christian ere I died. God hath granted me this more abundantly, in that I now see thee a servant of His, despising earthly bliss. What do I here?"' References. II. 29. P. M'Adam Muir, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 92. II. 29, 30. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 26. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1014, and vol. xxxix. No. 2293. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 66. II. 29-32. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 16. II. 32. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 113. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 65. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 826. II. 33. A. M. Fairbairn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 40. The Destiny of the Holy Child Luke 2:34 Simeon's words were not suggested by anything in the Child. The old man's eyes were dim with age, but God gave him to see what the keenest human scrutiny could not have discovered the destiny of the Child. We look upon the Child lying in His mother's arms, presented before God in the Temple, and we ask, What shall be His work, His place amongst men? And we get for answer, He shall rule the destinies of men, prosperously or adversely, according as they act towards Himself; he shall stir to the fiercest the passions of men against Himself; He shall test and declare the real characters of men. I. To Rule the Destinies of Men. 'The Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.' The expression is somewhat figurative. It suggests to our minds a stone or step in a man's pathway, which becomes to him, according as he treats it, either a stumbling-block over which he falls, or a means of elevation by which he rises to a higher plane; and so placed before him that the man cannot avoid it. We see this destiny fulfilled 1. During our Lord's earthly lifetime. 2. In the history of nations. 3. In the souls and lives of men today. We cannot separate ourselves from Christ. II. To Stir the Passions of Men against Himself. 'A sign that shall be spoken against.' Given the fact beforehand that the Son of God was to appear in the world, and under the conditions of human nature and human life manifest Divine truth, and purity, and love, and our conclusion would be that He would speedily win for Himself the affection and service of all. Instead of this He excited the utmost malice and fury. 1. He exposed the moral hideousness of human nature. 2. He demolished the false hopes and deceptions in which men were living. 3. He offered Himself as a Saviour under an aspect incredible and offensive. He demanded an utter renunciation of human righteousness; He asked them to give their whole confidence to One who should die in weakness and agony upon the shameful tree. III. To Test and Declare the True Characters of Men. 'That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.' 1. It is His destiny often to force into activity the evil that is in men's hearts. His influence is like that of the sun's rays upon the soul, by which the seeds ripen and reveal themselves according to their own nature. We should never have known that the Pharisees and Scribes were so bad had not Christ appeared to them. 2. He supplies the only sure and sufficient test of human character. 'Faith in Christ is a test of the moral drift of our whole being.' To know what is in a man, put Christ before him. We know ourselves by ascertaining our real disposition towards Christ. References. II. 34. A. Connell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 5. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for Saints' Days, p. 16. G. W. Kitchin, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 102. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 907. What Is Christ to Us? Luke 2:34-35 I. Christ compels men to a decision. II. Christ discovers men. Men may be in ignorance of themselves until He comes to them. III. Christ is the occasion of a fall. Christ must be one of two things. Neutrality is impossible. He is something to us all. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ Luke 3:2 Prophets have passed for something as well as priests in making God's will known; and Established Church priesthoods have not been generally on particularly good terms with prophets. The only occasion on which the two orders are said to have been in harmony was when the prophets prophesied lies, and the priests bore rule in their name. Froude. Luke 3:2 The young who are of healthy, lively blood and clean conscience have either emotion or imagination to fold them defensively from an enemy world; whose power to drive them forth into the wilderness they acknowledge. But in the wilderness their souls are not beaten down by breath of mortals; they burn straight flame there up to the parent Spirit. George Meredith. Luke 3:3 Friend Arthur was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the wilderness shouting to the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the preacher's awful accents and denunciation of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so as to speak the more shameful, because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene. Thackeray, in the sixty-first chapter of * Pendennis. * References. III. 3. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 63. III. 4. J. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 10. H. Windross, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 508. III. 4, 6. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 458. III. 5, 6. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 28. III. 7. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 379. III. 7-9. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 310. III. 7-14. Ibid, (6th Series), vol. i. p. 371. III. 8. Ibid. vol. ix. p. 215. Luke 3:9 'The fourth captain' of Shaddai' was Captain Execution. His ensign was one Mr. Justice; he also bare the red colours, and his scutcheon was a fruitless tree with an axe lying at the root thereof.' Bunyan, * Holy War. * References. III. 9-17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 207. III. 11. Ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 487. Suggestions Towards a New Kind of Economy Luke 3:14 This is a time when it is quite certain we have not reached the summit of our striving, but when it seems to almost every one that we are very near it. Hence an unhealthy, feverish impatience. In slower days men took duties for theirs and left results to God. It is not easy to do so now. Duties have been done long enough; causes have been pleaded; mountains have been scaled; and it is for us now to enter into fruition. I. But the times and the seasons are still in the power of the Father, and with Him it is better we should leave them. Many causes have been sharply retarded because their leaders committed themselves to chronological prophecies. Three years and then cometh harvest said the man of the golden mouth; and, because of that, fifty years have come and gone, and the harvest is still unreaped. The mountain climber achieves one height to find another far above him. On the very verge of attainment some undreamt-of foe rises out of the earth, and our hopes are thrown back for years. Work is done poorly, hastily, nervously, and with grudging under these conditions. Let us return to the ways of the wiser workman into whose labours we have entered. They toiled on for long and far results. They thankfully accepted every sign and token, however faint, of progress. But they lived on little of such fare, and were stronger and calmer than we, to whom it often seems that summer is at the doors. Instead of always anticipating the end, let as toil on and feel no pang, though it is delayed till we are no more in these streets and beneath these skies. II. It is hard to pay the price of honesty. It is not so much that a true man cares for himself as for his influence and for the cause dear to him. The party has probably given him at least as much as he has given the party. Outside he is accepted as its representative, and its adherents are ready with their 'loud huzzas' for everything he says. His comrades, whom he has acted with till they have become a kind of second conscience to him, are estranged perhaps embittered. Life is hardly long enough for such wrenches as these. But for conscience' sake they must be borne, though influence, reputation, friends, and career should all go. Whenever conscience is dead the grave is dug for all the faculties, however loud and busy they may be. We need this for our life as a nation men who will not sell the truth, and with it their own souls, to any party, ecclesiastical, theological, or political. III. How is the practice of this economy to be learned? It is a sovereign remedy to remember that we can do with very little happiness of any kind of this kind among the rest. Arthur Helps has reminded us in one of his finest passages of what men have lived through, and not ignobly or complainingly 'in noisome dungeons, in studied tortures, in abject and shifting poverty, after consummate shame, upon tremendous change of fortune, in the profoundest desolation of mind and soul, in forced companionship with all that is unlovely and uncongenial'. Who are we that we should claim a better fate? In Metastasio's beautiful image the mind, like water, passes through all states till it is united to what it is ever seeking. Then, have we made the most of the happiness we have? Consider Christ and His chosen vessel St. Paul. Both most dearly prized recognition; both thanked God and took courage at every token of cheer; both experienced the bitterest secrets of solitude. Through long tracts the life of Christ flowed on like the Nile, uncheered by the refreshment of tributary streams, to the lonely and awful end. St. Paul had no one to stand by him in an experience after which a man is never the same. Both deliberately provoked the violence of the forces by which their lives ended. Yet how much they made of the smallest token of affection; with what a wealth of promise and benediction our Lord welcomed kindness to Himself and others like Him when He said, * He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward. * If duty is to be done steadily, calmly, and faithfully in our days, these are the examples that must guide us. The appointed end is sure; though the time and track of progress may be and will be at variance with our hopes and dreams. Jesus has yet many things to say to us; we could not bear them now. W. Robertson Nicoll, Ten-Minute Sermons, p. 185. Reference. III. 15-22. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 73. Luke 3:16 'I begin to think,' says Glory Quayle in Mr. Hall Caine's novel, The Christian, 'that the real difference between preachers is the difference of the fire below the crust.' References. III. 16. J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii. No. 1044. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 180; (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 7. III. 21. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt i. p. 120. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 28. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 451. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 98. III. 21, 22. J. Keble, Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday, p. 176. III. 22. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 73. III. 23. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 286. III. 24. T. Sadler, Sermons for Children, p. 63. III. 38. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 27. H. Rix, Sermons, Addresses, and Essays, p. 1. III. 46. Joseph Parker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 17. IV. 1. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 189. IV. 1, 2. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 190. IV. 1-3. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1669, p. 391. IV. 1-13. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. pp. 303, 439. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 78. IV. 2. W. Y. Fullerton, Christ and Men, p. 56. Luke 4:4 The Greeks... knew that man does not live by bread alone, that livelihood is not life, that mere wealth is not well-being. The satisfaction of material wants is not the end of human endeavour. The wealth of nations, like the happiness of individuals, has its source deeper than in the accumulation of riches or the expansion of commerce. The true value of the goods of life is determined by the sense of life as a whole, and by their relation to the higher and distinctively human ends of existence. Butcher's Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects, pp. 79, 80. Religion is the sense that you are, as far as you are anything, the child of the Larger Life. R, L. Nettleship. References. IV. 4. T. Arnold, Christian Life, Its Hopes, p. 90. IV. 5. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 340. IV. 5- 8. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 95. IV. 7. W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 262. IV. 9. Ibid. Sermons, p. 275. Luke 4:6-7 A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers; a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement; large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the Church strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. 'Eat, drink, and live!' she says. 'Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure guide their course: I guarantee their final fate.' A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the same terms: 'All this power will I give thee and the glory of it; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.' Villette, xiv. References. IV. 9-13. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 188. IV. 10. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 260; vol. x. p. 361. Luke 4:13 Let not a man trust his victory over his nature too far: for nature will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the temptation. Bacon. References. IV. 13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2326. IV. 14. J. Wallace, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 381. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 339. IV. 15. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 25. IV. 16. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 91. J. Farquhar, The Schools and Schoolmasters of Christ, pp. 45 and 89. J. Alford Davies, Seven Words of Love, p. 88. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 69. Ibid. vol. iv. p. 376; (7th Series), vol. vi. pp. 30, 465. The Beginning of the Ministry Luke 4:16-19 We are the witnesses in this incident of the opening of a ministry which has changed the world. We picture Him as He stands up upon that memorable morn, full of a mysterious power. What was the secret of that power? Jesus teaches us the secret when He says, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me'. But, again, we may ask, What was it that had supplied the last element in the education of Jesus to His life work? It was temptation a temptation victoriously resisted. That is just the element of education which so many ministries conspicuously lack. Note, again, how the universal begins with the local. 'He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.' How difficult to begin just there; yet that is just where all true ministries ought to begin. And now let us ask what is the meaning of this great proclamation in which Christ describes the fourfold programme of Christianity? I. First of all, He proclaims a social Gospel, a Gospel that deals with circumstances, a Gospel that deals with the outside conditions of a man's life. He says that He preaches the Gospel to the poor, and that Christianity is hope to poverty; this is the first note that Christ sounds. Now, there can be no mistake whatever as to what poverty means in the common judgment of the world. Poverty is degradation and dependence; to be poor is to be at the mercy of the world. What has Christ to say to that? In what way does He preach the Gospel to the poor? (1) In this way, that Christianity utterly rejects this human view of poverty. (2) It is a Gospel to the poor, again, because it arches over every poor man the illimitable firmament, and opens to him the doors of an everlasting life. (3) Christianity is a Gospel to the poor, because Christianity alone has taught us to have some respect for the rights of labour, some sympathy with the sorrows of poverty, some regard for the natural claims of human brotherhood. II. The second element of this programme of Christianity is the healing Gospel. Broken-hearted-ness may stand for the sorrows of love, for the poignant anguish of love unrequited or shattered, the love that seeks but never finds, the love which finds but soon loses, the love which wins an imperfect or no earthly consummation. III. The third element in the programme that Christ announced is an emancipating Gospel. Christ brings intellectual emancipation. The true liberty is within Christianity, not without, for Christianity replaces doubt by certitude, the guesses of hope with the never-failing light of faith. IV. Christ announced an enlightening Gospel. Christianity is the recovery of spiritual faculty sight to the blind, for men were not created blind, but seeing; and Christ gives back the lost power of seeing. It is an enlightening Gospel; the soul recovers its vision, and we see the will of God upon the scroll of destiny, and are at peace. And who can close the book without feeling, too, how there throbs through this passage a Divine hospitality and compassion! This is the keynote surely of Christianity, and must be the keynote of every successful ministry. W. J. Dawson, The Comrade Christ, p. 33. References. IV. 16, 17, 21. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 36. IV. 16-21. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 25. IV. 16-30. A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, p. 20. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 21. IV. 17, 18. Lyman Abbott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 68. IV. 17-19. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 102. IV. 17-20. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 55. The Broken-hearted (For Advent) Luke 4:18 I. A Broken Heart. A broken heart is a very common thing at the present day, perhaps commoner now than it ever was in the world's history. Science has to a great extent conquered physical pain, but science has done nothing to diminish mental pain. So there are many reasons why hearts are broken. (a) Broken by Grief. There is grief, natural grief, perhaps we may call it grief which comes upon us, which we all expect must come upon us when the parent dies, and we are left without those we love in this cold world. (b) There is Failure. The world of youth is a glorious world of sunshine and of bright visions, and those visions fade as youth fades, and then the world is grey, like some December day. (c) Sin. And there are some whose hearts are broken by sin, sin of themselves or of some other. Yes, their shame is rightly suffered, but the thought that this shame could have been avoided adds poignancy to the pain. II. Christ came to Heal the Broken in Heart. To the simple this truth appears in all its simplicity. Christ healed the broken heart by taking sorrow on Him. He trod the road first, and the simple with grateful hearts tread it after Him. They ask no reason why He created sorrow, they ask no reason why Christ had to suffer, they merely feel that they are planting their footsteps where Christ trod, and that His Divine sympathy enfolds them, and their hearts ache no longer as their mind dwells on His sorrow and His love. The Christ coming on earth assured us that our God was One of infinite pity. Before His coming the world knew God as a Being of infinite power, but not of infinite beauty. His all-embracing love was yet unknown to man. Till he heard of God taking upon Himself the form of man, and by the sacrifice of the cross, showing that infinite love in infinite selfsacrifice, the mystery of His love was hid from man; but when He entered in triumph into heaven He threw open wide the gates of heaven and showed the wondrous beauty of the Godhead. Poverty, shame, sorrow, disappointment, failure, have henceforth another meaning to the Christian. Luke 4:18 In Wesley's Journal for Monday, 2nd April, 1739, this entry occurs: 'At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to almost three thousand people. The Scripture on which I spoke was this (is it possible any one should be ignorant that it is fulfilled in every true minister of Christ?), "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor," etc. Luke 4:18 In confusion there is ever bondage; and it is to this confusion, the want of rhythm and cadence in life, the absence of a clear purpose and intention, that it owes so much of its weariness and sadness. Have you not felt how much there is in the ordinary inevitable cause of life which renders to bondage? 'The strong hours conquer us.' We are straitened in ourselves and in each other, fettered to a routine which makes us often say with John Bunyan, * And so I went home to prison'. * Dora Greenwell. References. IV. 18. H. P. Liddon, University Sermons (2nd Series), p. 281. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 372. IV. 18, 19. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1483, p. 1. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 74. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p. 38. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 343. IV. 19. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 15. IV. 21. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 116. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Luke, p. 85. IV. 22. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. i. p. 171. H. G. Woods, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiii. p. 786. IV. 23. L. D. Bevan, Sermons to Students, p. 93. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. pp. 232, 319; ibid. vol. vi. p. 445. Luke 4:24 A correspondent of the Daily News, some years ago narrated a circumstance regarding the burial of Carlyle at Ecclefechan, to illustrate the small honour in which the great author was held by his native villagers. Hardly any interest was excited by the arrival of the funeral party. Mr. Froude, however, rushed fussily up to the stationmaster and said: 'I hope every precaution is being taken to prevent unseemly crowding; that the police have taken proper measures to ensure the road being kept clear between the station and the churchyard.' 'Eh, man,' was the reply, 'ye needna fash yersel'. There's na an auld wife in Ecclefechan that wud pit her heed oot o' the winda tae look at Tam Carlyle when he was leevin,' let alane when he's deed.' References. IV. 24. H. S. Holland, Vital Values, p. 131. IV. 25. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 178. IV. 28-30. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 753. IV. 29. H. Woodcock, Sermon Outlines (1st Series), p. 266. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 195; ibid. vol. viii. p. 382. IV. 30. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 366. Luke 4:32 The first condition of effective oratory is given in the words 'this man speaketh with authority'. English preachers, ever since the seventeenth century, have never possessed this secret, and have therefore never commanded their hearers. Leslie Stephen, English Thought in Eighteenth Century, ii. p. 355. Reference. IV. 32. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine , vol. xvii. p. 431. Luke 4:32 Say what you will, the Christian religion, it must be allowed, has something astonishing about it. Pascal. References. IV. 32, 36. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 366. IV. 33, 34. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 95. IV. 34. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 407. IV. 38. C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 186. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 355. IV. 38, 39. M. Eastwood, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 60. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2174. IV. 39. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 205. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii. No. 1071. Setting Suns Luke 4:40 What happened when the sun was setting? 'He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them.' It was the brightest sunrise they ever saw; they forgot that the sun was setting in the heavens, for a greater, healthier, happier Sun had risen elsewhere. It will always be so in human history. When your heart's sun is setting another sun will take its place and fill the sky with a brighter light. There is no despair in love, no sunset hour in the higher passions. God will be merciful to you, and He will comfort you at the latter end. He has great stores of grace, great stretches of ability that have not yet been touched, and He will come to you in some sunset hour, and tell you that presently the Sun will rise with healing in His wings. I. 'He laid His hands on every one of them,' and the laying-on of His hands was resurrection, rehabilitation, ordination, life. O Thou living Christ, why not lay Thine hands upon us, and make men of us, and heroes, and triumphant souls? Why not? There is a great deal of masonry in contact. They say that when a certain man shakes hands with you, he can by the handshake let you know whether he belongs to the Freemasons or not. What is it? Only himself knows, and his kith and kindred in that secret; but by a grand grasp you know that you are hand-locked with a brother. Has the Christian hand lost its touch? It is a hand in form, in pressure of a certain kind, but is there that electric, magnetic touch which is the secret and the seal of a high and noble personality? II. 'And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ, the Son of God;' and He said, Silence! But why silence? They told the truth. Yes, they did. Why hush them in an ignominious silence? Simply because they were bad spirits. Christ never called in the aid of any one devil or man, that was bad. The devils also believe and tremble, their faith does not bring them to peace; they believe and are afraid; they believe, and they are burned with judgment Christ will not have any bad man as a preacher. He does not call for men who have no infirmities and no weaknesses, but He knows the difference between a man who is infirm on purposes and weak that he may serve an end, and the sincere man who is only a man. 'The best of men are but men at the best,' and Christ knows this, and therefore it hath pleased Him to call out men who are very imperfect and infirm, but sincere at heart, to tell what they know of His kingdom. III. 'And when it was day, He departed and went into a desert place: and the people sought Him, and came unto Him, and stayed Him, that He should not depart from them.' They said, No, abide with us always, we are happy and healthy whilst Thou art here. Christ said, No, 'I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also'. What is the lesson? Christ must not be localised. If we want to localise Him, we are selfish; we must send the royalist love and gift to other cities also, saying, Let them hear by all means. Oh that all the cities of the world could hear this music! That is the true secret of missions. If we cannot send the living Christ Himself, we must send the living Christ in the living missionary to preach good tidings of great joy. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vi. p. 242. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. VI. p. 242 References. IV. 41. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 460. IV. 42. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 103. IV. 43. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 72. IV. 44 J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 235. Hearing the Word Luke 5:1 There was a period in our Saviour's Galilean ministry when He was the object of popular interest and enthusiasm. It cannot be said that He enjoyed popularity, for He was persecuted by popularity. This eagerness of the people to hear Christ, the Great Teacher, is full of instruction, and both of encouragement and caution to all in every age who preach and who hear the Word of Grace. I. Motives which Induced Men to Hear the Word of God: 1. Some desired to hear Christ from mixed and even unworthy motives; some came from curiosity, impelled by the desire of knowing something new; some came for bread, or for healing, or for some other form of temporal aid; some came to cavil, to catch Him in His words, to betray Him. 2. Some came to hear Christ because their hearts felt the charm of His words and the Divine power of His message. Men were captivated, not only by the simplicity of His language, the beauty of His illustrations, the human sympathy of His discourse, but also by the appeal He made to their better judgment, to their purest feelings, to their inmost conscience. Still does the Divine Word prove its power by drawing the hearts of men unto itself. II. The Right Method of Hearing the Word of God. To hear it profitably men must listen to it: 1. With reverence, as to a word higher than that of man. 2. With attention, as to what is of vital interest and concern. 3. With candour, as prepared to weigh all that is said, although it may be opposed to their prejudices. 4. With prayer, that the spirit may accompany the message to the heart. 5. With frequency, as remembering that not one lesson, not many lessons, can exhaust the riches of heavenly truth. III. The Purpose for which the Word of God should be Heard: 1. To appropriate it in faith. It is well to inquire and well to consider and deliberate; but all this is means to an end, and that end is a conviction of either the truth or falsehood, the importance or the worthlessness of what is heard. They truly hear who truly believe. 2. To obey it with cheerfulness and diligence. The Word is not merely speculative, it is practical and authoritative; it comes as an imperative to our spiritual nature: 'Blessed are they who hear the Word of God, and do it!' References. V. 1. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 48. V. 1-11. G. H. Morrison, Scottish Review, vol. i. p. 34. G. Davidson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 344. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 40; (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 409. V. 2-11. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 18. V. 3. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 172. The Two Miraculous Draughts of Fishes Luke 5:4 You know that Christ was twice pleased to work a miracle in this matter. He twice came to His Apostles when they had been toiling for many hours, and had taken nothing, and gave them by a miracle abundance of fish. Once was before His Resurrection, once after it. The first miracle was a type of the calling of men into Christ's Church, as it is now, here on earth; the second miracle was a type of their being called into that same church as it will be hereafter in heaven. I. In our Lord's first miracle there were two ships. This sets forth to us that when His Apostles began to preach there were two Churches, the Church of the Jews and the Church of the Gentiles. He came to make both one. But in His second miracle there was only one ship, because hereafter in heaven there will be only one Church, one family, one fold with one Shepherd. II. In our Lord's first miracle the fish were gathered in from both sides of the ship, the left as well as the right. For bad men as well as good men are brought into His Church on earth. But it will not be so hereafter. The Church in heaven will be altogether holy. This is represented to us in the second miracle, by our Lord's commanding the Apostles to cast the net on the right side of the ship only. The right side is a type of the good, and it is the good only that will be gathered into heaven. III. In the first miracle, the net break. It could not keep all it caught. And so it is with the Church on earth. But in the other miracle the net did not break. For none of those that are counted worthy to enter heaven will ever fall away again. They being once safe, will be safe to all eternity. Nothing can take them away from God. That net will never break at all. IV. In the first miracle we know not how many fishes were taken. This teaches us that on earth the number of the true servants of God will never be known. But in the second miracle the number is told us. And so the number of those that are redeemed will be known in heaven. All that we see there will be written in the Book of Life. Every one will be known; every one will be counted. 'I heard the number of them,' St. John says in the Book of Revelation. V. In the first miracle nothing is told us as to the sort of fishes; some might be bad and some good; in the second they were all good, 'Full of great fishes,' says St. John. VI. In the first miracle the ships began to sink. But in the other miracle the ship did not begin to sink. The Church, as it will be in heaven, can neither be in trouble nor in danger any more. J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol. 2. p. 51. References. V. 4. J. Wright, The Guarded Gate, p. 79. J. C. M. Bellew, Five Occasional Sermons, p. 1. A. H. Walker, Preacher's Magazine, vol. iv. p. 80. E. G. Jones, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 201. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 56. Basil Wilberforce, Sanctification by the Truth, p. 74. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 443. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 102. Faith Triumphant in Failure Luke 5:4-6 A beautiful gospel: a glorious message, surely, for those of us who are sometimes attacked with despondency. I. The Wreckage of Human Life. More than half the wreckage of human life which we see scattered about the beach of mortal existence is due to a very great extent to want of success after labour faithfully undertaken and toiled at with energy. Failure in our work is responsible for almost all the suicides we hear and read of today, and by suicide I do not mean the taking of our own life, but the robbing ourselves of our own character which God has given us with which to do something in this world. If you come to think of it, success and failure are two words which find a very permanent place in the vocabulary of human experience. We are told by some people that one man is born to succeed and another is born to fail. To maintain such a statement as that is not only to be un-Christian, but to be absolutely ungodly. The issue of your efforts, if you will only take the trouble to see, is always finally due to yourself. II. Want of Enterprise. If the issue is failure, more often than not the reason lies in our own want of enterprise. 'Launch out into the deep,' said our Lord to His disciples, who had toiled all the night and caught nothing. Look at this twentieth-century Christendom, what it ought to be and what it is. We have been toiling in the shallows; we must launch out into the deep of human nature and let down our nets for a draught. III. Faith Triumphant in Failure. The motto of the Church and of its individual members must ever be faith triumphant in failure. Where faith is absolute, failure is absolutely impossible. What we want is a faith grown stronger through the errors and failures and follies of the past. IV. The Moral Teaching of the Parable. If we are Christ's, all our sins when repented of make us holier, because the very best experience is that most dearly bought By the grace of repentance we can make even wrong help on the side of right and righteousness. By confession of our sins to Almighty God we can transform error into wisdom. We are not alone: our Master, Jesus the Son of God, is with us in the boat; therefore, we can afford to be enterprising and launch out into the deep. Aye, the strength of our Churchmanship lies not in the power of our resolutions or in our determination to achieve spiritual success, but in the word He spoke: 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,' and 'Without Me ye can do nothing'. Reference. V. 4-9. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 239. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes Luke 5:5 I purpose to treat this incident of the miraculous draught of fishes in a more or less parabolic way. We shall be standing by the Sea of Galilee, but we shall be thinking and speaking of the sea of life. We shall be watching a few fishermen coming ashore, first with empty boats at dawn of day, and then with boats laden almost beyond the point of safety with a great catch of fish; but behind the picture I want us to find some of the inner meaning of success and failure upon wider and more perplexing waters. I. 'We have toiled all night, and have taken nothing.' That was not the first vain night by a good many that they had spent on the Sea of Galilee. Mind you, these men were no novices. They knew their business. They had known the Galilean Sea from their boyhood all its moods and tempers, its dangers and its possibilities. The story of their bread-winning life had been told upon its waters. They were experts, and their boat was empty. They had worked hard and worked wisely, and the sea had beaten them. In spite of the instincts and love of a lifetime on its waters, it can send a man ashore with an empty boat. And on the greater sea where you and I do our work the same story is ever being told. It is a difficult story to understand. It is beyond us all. The failure of the foolish, the incompetent and the lazy is a foregone conclusion. But how often do we see the wise, strong, earnest, capable souls coming from their toils with nothing to show! II. Success and failure are deep and inward things. No surface judgment ever truly appraises them. The world reads failure in an empty boat. God reads failure in an empty heart. 'We have toiled all night, and have taken nothing'. Well, what of that? That is no tragedy if you can say, 'We have toiled all night, and have lost nothing'. This is where you begin to see right into the heart of the worker's failure not the thing he did not win, but the thing he did lose. Hopelessness, indifference, weak despondency, foolish desperation, cynical unbelief, these are the things that go to make real failure. It is not our ignorance and clumsiness that baffle the Almighty it is our despair. III. 'We have toiled all night' The night was the right time for fishing. If they had had no success then, what chance was there in the glare of the sun? Oh how we are snared in the traditions of our toil! How we are limited by the little that we have had time to justify! How conventional and unenterprising are these hearts of ours in the wide world of the spirit! Fancy putting to sea in the middle of the morning! Everything was against it, except the word of the Master; but Simon came to know ere his lifework was done that that is the most tremendous and significant exception in all the world. IV. Again, these men succeeded where they had failed. The old sphere of their labours was the sphere of their reward. We all need to know that the one vital necessity of our lives is to be sought, not in the setting, but in the spirit of them. Any boat will do if Christ bids you launch it. Any hour is a harvest hour if Christ bids you let down the net. V. The men who succeeded were the men who had failed. Failure is not a standing disability in the service of the kingdom. In the world it is sometimes a final disqualification, an unpardonable sin. The world says to the failures, 'Stand aside and let some one else try. You have had your chance. Now make room for a better man.' He is always a better man, this man who has not tried. The world is quite agreeable that the boat should be launched again, but it stipulates for a different crew. And some are too ready to accept the stipulation and drop out. I wonder how many ministers last year received at least one note from a steward, a leader, a Guild secretary, containing the phrase, 'Let some one else try'. Note the way of Jesus. 'Launch out,' you men who but lately came ashore with empty nets. P. C. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, p. 62. Luke 5:5 Simple obedience to the word of God is sublime. By the word of God was set in force the whole creation. At God's word Peter is to fish. Fishing is a very ordinary occupation for those who live by the seashore, but if a man fishes according to God's word, he puts himself into accord with the universe, and will catch a multitude. I. As the father expects the child to listen and be obedient to his word, so are we God's children if our life is lived in obedience to the will of God. Before all of us there is the great sea of life, and we are all fishers in it. It is not a matter of success or failure, but the question is: Am I living my life according to the word of God? The fishers on the lake were disappointed men. They had fished the whole night and the catch was nothing. Anybody who tries to do good in this world will, sooner or later, lie under the sense of being complete failures. Sometimes it has seemed like night with hardly a gleam of light when everything has been against us. 'Master, master, we have toiled all night, and have taken nothing, nevertheless, at Thy word.' If you know you are doing God's will, you look not to the catch, but you look to catch His eye. II. The Disciples were tired out, when the Lord said to them, 'Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught,' and if the thought comes to you, Why should not I have rest at last? remember their reply, 'Nevertheless, at Thy word, again I will let down the net'. III. The Word of God to the Disciples seemed a little unreasonable. If they did not catch the fish by night, it is not likely they would catch them by day. Let your life be obedient to His word, and if His word seems to you to be unreasonable, who are you to stand up before the Eternal Wisdom of God? Yes, fish by day, if He tells you to. IV. Another point is, ' I will lay down the net at Thy word'. If our Lord has spoken to you, you do it. God has created all of us lor a purpose, and He will reveal that purpose to us in our life. If He says, 'Go out into the deep,' no more hugging the shores of conventionalities. Go out and be the Christian whatever it costs you, and the Nevertheless becomes always the more. A. H. Stanton. References. V. 5. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol.. ii. p. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1654, and vol. xlviii. No. 2810. C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 149. V. 7. Archbishop Magee, The Gospel and the Age, p. 181. The Mirror and the Vision Luke 5:8 The presence of Jesus in the world brings all men to their proper measurements. In other words, He is the mirror in which men see themselves as they really are. Peter had such a vision of him elf in the face of Jesus Christ, and as he beheld his real self in the depths of that pure and perfect mirror, he was constrained to cry: 'Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord'. Here, then, we have got three things that command attention. There is (1) the Mirror; (2) the Vision; (3) Christ's interpretation of the Vision. I. The Mirror. Jesus Christ is God's thought of a man expressed in a human life. It is true that He was the revelation of God's character, the manifestation of the Divine will, the focussed splendour of God's nature, the Word made flesh, the Son of God: but He is also the revelation of God's idea of humanity, and what man is to be when God's perfect work with Him is done. In the vision of what we ought to be, and what God intends to make us, we see how blighted and sin-ruined our nature is. II. The Vision. Peter saw himself as a sinful man. Most of us see sin most clearly in other people, and then our judgment of it is swift, and our condemnation of it stern. Or we cry out about sin and its enormity in the general, and fail to see it as it is, lodged and entertained in our individual hearts. And so Jesus, knowing man, warned against the folly and the hypocrisy of seeking to take the mote out of our brother's eye when there was a beam in our own eye. The awful fact of sin is written on us, and the first step toward deliverance and holiness is to see the vision of Peter. III. The Interpretation. There is Christ's interpretation of the vision and the cry. How does Jesus look upon this cry of Peter, 'Depart from me?' He hears in it the confession of Peter's unworthiness: but He also sees in his humility and helplessness a desire for goodness, and understands that this 'Depart from me' is at bottom the first step of the ladder of holy aspiration. Confession is the way to holiness, humility is the beginning of virtue, our sense of utter helplessness is our greatest recommendation to the Saviour. D. L. Ritchie, Peace the Umpire, and other Sermons, p. 91. References. V. 8. J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 70. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 222. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 111. J. Mowat, Preacher's Magazine, vol. x. p. 37. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 133; (5th Series), vol. x. p. 334. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 110. V. 9. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 479. V. 10. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 236. C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 173. V. 12. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 443. V. 12, 13. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 252. Prayer and Its Response Luke 5:13 To see the power and the beauty of these words we must pause and consider the surroundings in which our Lord found Himself when He performed this miracle. For this brief story is a perfect illustration of what the Gospels set themselves to achieve. The writers of the Gospels never thought of a complete and ordered account of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here in this story, for instance, is the cure of a leper. The time and the date are not given. It somehow seems to read like we might begin an ordinary story it happened one day. For St. Matthew says that He came down from the mountain, that is after He had given the Sermon on the Mount. St. Luke says, 'it came to pass in a certain city,' St. Mark says, 'there came a leper'. No time or place is mentioned, and there has been great controversy as to whereabouts in the Gospels this story of the healing of the leper should come. How different it is when we come to the heart of the story! You will find that all the Gospels tell us in the same words. The same thing happened. They tell us what the leper did and what he said, and what Jesus Christ did and said. They give the same essential details; so beautiful was the picture that they could not forget it. Now look at the kernel of this story which the Gospels have recalled. What are the particular lessons? I. The Man. In the time of our Lord leprosy was one of the most baneful scourges which swept across the Holy Land. It is when we remember these things that we see the graciousness of Jesus Christ. He stretched out His hand and actually touched the man the hideous, repulsive, clammy creature actually touched him. II. His Prayer. And the second lesson is perhaps harder for us to see, but none the less it is beautiful. We see in this prayer and miracle how Jesus Christ restrains Himself and obeys a certain law in the work of healing. This law necessitates that before a man can be healed he must repent of his sins and ask to be healed on his own initiative. And the more we consider this, the more pathetic does the life of our Lord on this earth become to us. He had to pass numerous men as they sat by the wayside stricken or injured and helpless, for they never besought His aid or lifted up the cry for help. He saw many lepers who looked on Him not heeding Who He was, and who would not lift up their voices to ask Him for a boon. He had to see these heartbreaking sights and watch the despair of the sufferers, but still He might not speak. Why did they not understand? Why did they not cry out when just a message of love and trust would have brought Him to their side? But sodden and desperate they plodded along their dreary road: they made no sign, and He could do nothing for them. That was the law of His mission. There must be in the suppliant and in the recipient a certain moral temperament, a certain spiritual outlook, a personal desire to love that will go out from the soul towards the person of Him Who would draw it unto Himself. There must be this faith in the soul before any virtue from Jesus Christ can go forth. III. The Response. When this is there, then instantly and inevitably His life passes into theirs. They will be invaded by His strength, permeated by His vitality, quickened by His power; only they must fulfil the condition, they must make it evident by some appeal, or He is powerless. References. V. 16. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 3. James Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 128. V. 16-26. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 981. V. 17. Ibid. Sermons, vol. xii. No. 720; vol. xxxiii. No. 1991. Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 226. V. 17-26. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 120. V. 18-20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. lii. No. 3016. V. 19. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 218. V. 20. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 252. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2417. V. 21. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 285; (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 472. V. 25-27. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 38. V. 26. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2614. V. 27. W. B. Selbie, The Servant of God, p. 281. V. 27, 28. C. Ensor Walters, The Deserted Christ, p. 89. Why Ought I to Be a Christian? Luke 5:27 That was Christ's call to Matthew; it is Christ's call to us. Why should we obey it? Why to put the question in concrete form ought I to be a Christian? I. I begin with this: Goodness is the greatest thing in the world, and to seek after goodness is our first duty in life. Here is the truth I want to emphasise: there are many things that are desirable: there is one thing that is necessary. There is the greatness of wisdom, the greatness of political influence, the greatness of material power; but high above all other forms of greatness is the greatness of goodness. Ordinarily we do not question this. But there is today under certain circumstances a real temptation to do so. 'Never let us allow ourselves,' said Dean Church once, 'never let us allow ourselves the thought, which I fear comes into men's minds, that being clever and having knowledge makes up for not caring to be good.' To speak in detail of this goodness after which man ought to seek would cany me too far afield. Let me notice two points only. In the first place, the good we need is not simply power to perform one or two good deeds, but to put it in a word character. And secondly, it is our duty to seek after the highest goodness that is revealed to us. II. The highest form of goodness of which the world knows is incarnate for us in Jesus Christ. III. Goodness the greatest thing in the world man's first duty to seek after goodness, the highest goodness revealed to him that highest goodness incarnate for us in Jesus Christ; what then? I ought to follow Christ, I ought to be a Christian. I am a follower of Christ today, not only, not chiefly because in His example is the loftiest standard of human duty, but because I have found that what Christ bids me be He helps me to be. Do you say, 'So will any great example help us'? yes, but not as Christ does. He makes His own strength mine. What other, however great and good, can do that for you? Two things only I ask Do you want to do what is right? Do you want power to do it? Then obey Christ when He says, 'Follow Me'. If Christ is to be anything to you, He must come, not first as the Perfect Example to be imitated, but as the Great Deliverer who will strike off the chains and set the captive free. G. Jackson, First Things First, p. 49. References. V. 27. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 37. V. 27, 28. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 133. V. 27-29. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 193. V. 27-32. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 322. V. 31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2835. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 95. Luke 5:32 'Seeing many of the rich at Clifton church,' wrote John Wesley, 'my heart was much pained for them, and I was earnestly desirous that some of them might enter into the kingdom of heaven. But full as I was, I knew not where to begin in warning them to flee from the wrath to come, till my Testament opened on these words: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners"; in applying which my soul was so enlarged that methought I could have cried out (in another sense than poor vain Archimedes), "Give me where to stand, and I will shake the earth".' Three years later Wesley has another notice of this text. 'We came to Newcastle about six; and after a short refreshment walked into the town. I was surprised; so much drunkenness, cursing, and swearing (even from the mouths of little children), do I never remember to have seen and heard before, in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him who "came not to call the righteous, but sinners".' References. V. 33. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i p. 348; vol. x. p. 29; (5th Series), vol. i. p. 15; (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 73. V. 33-35. Ibid. vol. i. p. 347; V. 35. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 410. V. 36. T. Sadler, Sermons for Children, p. 38. Luke 5:36-37 Heine quotes this passage in his rather jaundiced and superficial sketch of English society, as the text for the following reflections: 'The concessions which have there been made to liberal ideas have been with difficulty wrested from mediaeval rigidity, and all modern improvements proceed there, not from principle but from sheer necessity; they bear the curse of that system of half-measures.... The religious reformation in England is but half complete, and one finds oneself much worse off between the four bare prison walls of the Episcopal Anglican church than in the large, beautifully-painted, and softly-cushioned spiritual dungeon of Catholicism. Nor has the political reformation succeeded much better.... Although many improvements have recently been made in this melancholy state of affairs in England; although limits have been placed to temporal and clerical avarice, and though the great falsehood of popular representation is, to a certain degree, occasionally modified by transferring the perverted electoral voice of a rotten borough to a great manufacturing town; although the harshest intolerance is here and there softened by giving certain rights to other sects, still it is all a miserable patching up which cannot last long, and the stupidest tailor in England can foresee that, sooner or later, the old garment of state will be rent asunder into wretched rags.' References. V. 36-39. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 106. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 319. Progress Needs Preparation Luke 5:38 Under this simple Parable the Saviour would teach us the far-reaching truth that progress needs preparation. If you want the new wine you must prepare new bottles. This principle of the need of preparation before progress is far reaching, and applicable in many ways. We all know that the ground must be prepared if it is to yield a full harvest; we know that animals must be trained if they are to be fit for the service of man; children need the discipline of school, and to practise obedience in their home life if they are to be ready for the station of life to which it may please God to call them; and education must not cease with childhood the young man or young woman, if he or she is to make use of the education of childhood, must still continue to learn; continuation schools, evening classes, the opportunities of apprenticeship must all be attended to, if we would make the necessary preparation for our progress in life. Thus the truth of the text is constantly before us, new wine must be but into new bottles. As the text is true with regard to the ordinary conditions of this life, so is it true with reference to our highest interests in matters of religion. I. The event which has made the greatest difference in the condition of the world and done most to advance the true progress and well-being of mankind is the Incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Even the most superficial observer can see that the foremost countries in the world, the countries which are most civilized, are those which bear the name of Christian; there may be (alas, we know there are) many imperfections, but nevertheless the nations which call themselves Christian are the foremost nations of the world. This great event in the progress of the human race, the Incarnation of the Lord, was prepared for by a great preparation. It was, we are expressly told, in the fullness of time that the Saviour came. The language and philosophy of Greece, the worldwide system and government of the Roman Empire, the special revelation to the Jews as we have it in the Old Testament, all prepared the way for the coming of Christ. He was the True Vine from which the new wine was to be made, and the world was duly prepared to receive Him. Immediately before the Saviour came, St. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way before Him, and when the Saviour commenced His ministry we read that He appointed other seventy also, and sent them out two and two before His face, into every city and place whither He Himself would come. II. The love of God and the love of our neighbour are the vital powers which flow through the stem and the branches of the True Vine and give us the new wine. The love of God will lead us to be constant in our devotion, by ourselves, with our families, in our attendance on the services of our Church, in frequent reception of the Holy Communion. The love of our neighbour will show itself in acts of kindness visiting and relieving the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, in being 'kind and tender-hearted one towards another, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us'. Bishop Edward King, The Love and Wisdom of God, p. 215. References. V. 39. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 26. W. M. Sinclair, Difficulties of Our Day, p. 147. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 17. VI. 3, 4. Alfred Rowland, The Exchanged Crowns, p. 83. VI. 4. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 9; ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 152. Luke 6:8 Of Zelter, as architect and musician, Goethe once remarked that 'as soon as he enters a city, the buildings stand before him, and tell him their merits and their faults. Then the musical societies receive him at once, and show themselves to the master with their virtues and their defects.' Luke 6:10 After some time I went to a meeting at Arne-side, where Richard Myer was, who had been long lame of one of his arms. I was moved of the Lord to say unto him, amongst all the people, 'Stand up on thy legs '(for he was sitting down): and he stood up and stretched out his arm that had been lame a long time, and said, 'Be it known unto you, all people, that this day I am healed'. Yet his parents could hardly believe it; but after the meeting was done, they had him aside, and took off his doublet, and then saw it was true. He came soon after to Swarthmore meeting, and then declared how that the Lord had healed him. From Fox's Journal for 1653. References. VI. 12. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 115. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 798. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 370. VI. 12, 13. C. S. Macfarland, The Spirit Christlike, pp. 89 and 101. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 23. VI. 13. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 130. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 21: ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 338. St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles Luke 6:15 * ; Jude 1:1 * The festival in remembrance of these two Apostles was first observed in the eleventh century, or soon after; and the fitness of a joint celebration on the same day is derived from the fact that in all the sacred catalogues their names are found in juxtaposition immediately after that of James the son of Alphæus. Very little is said of either of these saintly men in the New Testament, but that little is profoundly interesting. I. St Simon has two surnames in the Gospels 'Simon the Canaanite' and 'Simon called Zelotes'. These appellations have provoked much controversy: some biblical critics maintain that he is thus styled because he was a native of Cana in Galilee, while others maintain that this addition to his name contains no reference to the place of his birth, but indicates either his previous association with the Zealots, or his ardent temperament, which prompted him to exert himself with vehement earnestness for the spread of the Gospel, and for the vindication of its pure and holy doctrines. Be this as it may, St Matthew and St. Mark designate him 'Simon the Canaanite' the latter word of which should be rendered 'Cananite ' and St. Luke 'Simon called Zelotes' the latter word of which is equivalent to the Aramaic ' Cananite '. If he once belonged to the Zealots, he was one of a party among the Hebrews conspicuous for their fierce advocacy of the Mosaic ritual and their political abhorrence of foreign rule. One thing is certain, he belonged to the Apostolic band, and was one of the twelve disciples whom Christ called unto Him, and to whom He gave power to 'heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out devils'. He was therefore a good and virtuous man, or he had never received such a glorious commission from his Lord. On the dispersion of his fellow-Apostles after the great Day of Pentecost, he is said to have laboured successively 'in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene,' and elsewhere; and the Greek Menologies state that he subsequently visited Britain with his embassage of truth. Where and how did he die? Some say that he was crucified by the unbelieving inhabitants of this last-named country; and others affirm that he was put to death at Suanir, a city of Persia, in the seventy-fourth year of the Christian era, and at the same time as St. Jude. The workmen die somehow or other, but God carries on His work nevertheless, and will do so until the world, redeemed by His Son, is sanctified by His Spirit. II. St. Jude, like St. Simon, also has two surnames Lebbæus and Thaddæus names somewhat uncertain, but, derived from the Hebrew, are generally interpreted as 'one that praises' and 'a man of heart'. He was brother of James the Less, son of Mary sister to the Virgin Mary, and therefore of our Lord's kindred. He was called to the Apostolate with the eleven others; and is specially mentioned in St. John's Gospel as asking Jesus, 'Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world? 'Evidently, he not only saw and knew Jesus, but He was formed in his heart as 'the hope of glory'. How precious, therefore, must those words have been to him, 'In My Father's House are many mansions'. No wonder that when 'the truth as it is in Jesus' was assailed by the Gnostics, St. Jude wrote his Epistle to exhort and encourage Christian believers to avoid their grievous heresies, and 'contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,' and also to 'keep themselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life'. All this he did himself; until, after labouring in Judæa and Galilee, and in Samaria and Idumæa, his end came, and he entered into 'the joy of his Lord'. Luke 6:15 No man is ever good for much who has not been carried off his feet by enthusiasm between twenty and thirty; but it needs to be bridled and bitted. Froude. References. VI. 15. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 639-VI. 16. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 187. VI. 17-19 C. S. Macfarland, The Spirit Christlike, pp. 87, 101. VI. 19. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 187. Luke 6:20 You are poor. But poverty arrests your pride, your sloth, your sensuality. It makes men ride over your head; they drive you here and there, but they drive you to forbearance, meekness, submission, tenderness. If they drive you over the edge of life, then after that they have no more that they can do; they have let slip the leash, and can hold you no longer, and you are with God. But short of that, they can only benefit you by their oppression. James Smetham. The evangelic poverty is not so much a deliberate as an unconscious abstinence from that which most men desire. F. W. H. Myers. References. VI. 20. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 307. VI. 20-23. A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, p. 39. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 365; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 102. VI. 20-31. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 126. Luke 6:21 Wesley, describing a visit which he paid in 1777 to Bethnal Green hamlet, declares, 'I have not found any such distress, no, not in the prison of Newgate. One poor man was just creeping out of his sick-bed, to his ragged wife and three little children, who were more than half-naked and the very picture of famine; when one bringing in a loaf of bread, they all ran, seized upon it, and tore it in pieces in an instant. Who would not rejoice that there is another world?' Luke 6:23 Carlyle moralizes thus on the fate of Robert Burns: 'The world... has ever, we fear, shown but small favour to its Teachers: hunger and nakedness, perils and reviling, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice have, in most times and countries, been the market-price it has offered for wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer and Socrates and the Christian apostles belong to old days: but the world's Martyrology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and Galileo languish in priestly dungeons; Tasso pines in the cell of a madhouse; Camoëns dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so "persecuted they the prophets," not in Judea only but in all places where men have been.' Reference. VI. 25. J. H. Jowett, British Congregationalist, 25th July, 1907, p. 74. Luke 6:26 In Wesley's Journal, Wednesday, 25th May, 1763, there is this entry, describing his reception at Aberdeen: 'Surely never was there a more open door. The four ministers of Aberdeen, the minister of the adjoining town, and the three ministers of Old Aberdeen, hitherto seem to have no dislike, but rather to wish us "good luck in the name of the Lord!" Most of the town's people seem as yet to. wish us well; so that there is no open opposition of any kind. O what spirit ought a preacher to be of, that he may be able to bear all this sunshine!' In The Spirit of the Age, Hazlitt, analysing Wilberforce's character, declares that 'his conscience will not budge, unless the world goes with it. He does not seem greatly to dread the denunciation in Scripture, but rather to court it 'Woe to you, when all men shall speak well of you!' We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind, because West-India planters and Guinea traders do not join in his praise. His ears are not strongly enough tuned to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that one-half of the human species (the images of God carved in ebony, as old Fuller calls them) shout his name as a champion and a saviour through vast burning zones, and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude for deliverance from chains; he must have a Prime Minister drink his health at a Cabinet dinner for aiding to rivet on those of his country and of Europe!... He is anxious to do all the good he can without hurting himself or his fair fame.' Reference. VI. 26. E. J. Boyce, Parochial Sermons, p. 201. Luke 6:28-29 See the striking and familiar description of the genuine Cynic philosopher, drawn by Epictetus. 'He must be flogged like an ass, and when flogged he must love those who flog him, as if he were the father and the brother of all.... He must have such powers of endurance as to appear insensible to the common sort, a very stone. No man reviles him or strikes him or insults him, but he yields his body to let any one do with it what he pleases.' There is nothing which makes us love a man so much as praying for him. William Law. I am morally convinced that in all branches of the Church of Christ, in every school of philosophy (those only excepted which wilfully reject the light of reason), there are thousands of men who are kept back from a full faith, solely by the darkness which springs from the fierce passions aroused by strife. Is it impossible to bring a new element into the contest that of loving-kindness, that absolute law of charity which is the characteristic of all which comes of God? Could not Christ's commissioned writers ( ecce ego mitto ad vos scribas ) introduce a hitherto untried method of polemics, one conformable to the Gospel of Love, one founded upon those divine precepts: 'Blessed are the peacemakers'; 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth'; 'Whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire'; 'Whosoever shall strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also'; 'Be ye like unto your Heavenly Father, who maketh His sun to rise upon the just and the unjust'.... If ever any part of our work should take the shape of a course of publications, the most essential character of all our studies and discussions must be perfect gentleness and charity. PÈRE GRATRY. When any person injures me, I endeavour to raise my soul so high that his offence cannot reach me. Descartes References. VI. 30. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 287. VI. 31. R. G. Soans, Sermons for the Young, p. 51. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 422. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 464; vol. ix. p. 300. VI. 31, 32. D. Macleod, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 125. VI. 32-34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1584. VI. 34, 35. Bishop Stubbs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 129. Luke 6:35 In describing the character of Zachary Macaulay, Sir George Trevelyan ( Life of Lord Macaulay, 1.) calls attention to the calm courage, self-control and unwearied patience with which he managed the colony of Negroes at Sierra Leone. 'The secret of his character and of his actions lay in perfect humility and an absolute faith. Events did not discompose him, because they were sent by One who best knew His own purposes. He was not fretted by the folly of others, or irritated by their hostility, because he regarded the humblest or the worst of mankind as objects, equally with himself, of the Divine love and care.' References. VI. 35. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 219; vol. ix. p. 467; (7th Series), vol. x. p. 97; (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 156. J. Tolefree Parr, The White Life, p. 174. W. Y. Fullerton, Christ and Men, p. 70. Luke 6:36 History has done justice to him [Lord Canning] and his wife, who never faltered through all the horrors and anxieties of the Indian Mutiny, but through all the raging of the frantic press and the timid Anglo-Indians, held high their courage and their faith, and earned for him what was meant for a sneer and a reproach, the finest Christian title of Clemency Canning'. Sir Algernon West, Recollections, vol. 1. p. 294. Mercy Luke 6:36-38 I. Two Thoughts. In these words our Lord sets before us two thoughts: 1. The pattern of mercy, of justice, of forbearance, and forgiveness; of generosity, which we ought to follow, which is the example of 'The Highest' Whose children we are called 'Be ye therefore merciful'. And 2. The rule of God's judgment in matters between man and man 'With that same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again'. Thus, we see that, for the present, God is to us all, even to the unthankful and evil, what he would have us also to be. He is merciful, gracious; He spares, He condemns not, He forgives, He gives to us all 'good measure'. But between that life and this other comes the Day of Judgment, when we must give an account of the things done in the body, and of this Judgment this is one of the great rules: with what measure men have measured to others, it shall be measured to them again. Mercy will follow mercy, and he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy. By the rule by which we have judged and condemned shall we, in our turn, be tried. There can be no looking for forgiveness, if forgiveness has on our part been denied. God's great rule of judgment and recompense answers to the second of the two great commandments that we should do to all men as we would they should do to us; as we have done to others, so, in the end, shall it be done to us; in all things as we sow, so shall we reap. And so also in our behaviour to others, in our treatment of them, in our judgments and words about them we must expect nothing more from our Great Judge than what we have been willing to give to them. Thus, we are now choosing the rule by which we shall be dealt with by-and-by. II. God's Rule in Judgment. 'With the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.' Those words must surely seem to us some of the most awful words in the Bible, for 1. They are so plainly the words of that justice which all men acknowledge, that we not only believe, but feel, that they must be true. If we believe in a Judgment at all, then we must look to be dealt with in the same spirit, by the same measures, according to the truth and generosity which we have shown, when it was our turn to show mercy, to pass opinion, to help and share and give. Can any imagine that they may deal with men harshly, but that God ought to deal with themselves tenderly? This then is one thing that makes these words so awful, that we see for ourselves that it must be as they say. The other is that, while we feel the certainty of the law 2. We cannot see how it will be carried out. It lies in the awful darkness of the time to come. All we know is that, some time or other, a man's deeds will be returned upon him, and he will find out what God his Maker and Judge thought of his dealings with his brethren by what happens to himself. III. Man's Unreasonable Judgment. We must all judge often, and sometimes condemn. The sin is not in judging and condemning, but in doing so without reason carelessly, unjustly for the sake of condemning, condemning without mercy and without fear. In this case the same harsh and unsparing judgment awaits ourselves. Dare anyone look back into his past and venture to say that he could endure the judgment, if, in God's justice, what he measured to others was to be exactly measured to him again? Yet that is God's rule. Can we hear of it and not tremble? If there were nothing else to drive us to take refuge in God's offers of mercy in Christ, surely this alone would be enough. There is nothing but true repentance to save us from being dealt with exactly by the same measure which we have dealt to others. God repays to men what they do. He measures back, and judges them by the standard they apply to their brethren. R. W. Church, * Village Sermons. * References. VI. 36. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 212. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 362. Luke 6:37 What is not needful and is commonly wrong, namely, is to pass a judgment on our fellow-creatures. Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single man of which other men can have such a knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits, as to warrant their pronouncing a conclusive judgment upon it. W. E. Gladstone. The chief stronghold of hypocrisy is to be always judging one another. Milton. The same man who perhaps would be ashamed of talking at hazard about the properties of a flower, of a weed, of some figure in geometry, will put forth his guesses about the character of his brother-man, as if he had the fullest authority for all that he was saying.... But of all the errors in judging of others, some of the worst are made in judging of those who are nearest to us. They think that we have entirely made up our minds about them, and are apt to show us that sort of behaviour only which they know we expect. Perhaps, too, they fear us, as they are convinced that we do not and cannot sympathise with them, and so we move in a mist, and talk of phantoms as if they were living men, and think that we understand those who never interchange any discourse with us but the talk of the market-place. Sir Arthur Helps. Miss Mann... was a perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed duties in her day from whose severe anguish many a human Peri, gazelle-eyed, silken-tressed, and silver tongued, would have shrunk appalled; she had passed alone through protracted scenes of suffering, exercised rigid self-denial, made large sacrifices of time, money, health, for those who had repaid her only by ingratitude, and now her main almost her sole fault was, that she was censorious. Censorious she certainly was.... She dissected impartially almost all her acquaintance; she made few distinctions; she allowed scarcely any one to be good. Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, 10. Men who see into their neighbours are very apt to be contemptuous, but men who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of the order of God's manifold universe. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in * Elsie Venner. * Mrs. Weir's philosophy of life was summed up in one expression tenderness. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness.... 'Are not two sparrows,' 'Whosoever shall smite thee,' 'Judge not, that ye be not judged' these texts she made her body of divinity; she put them on in the morning with her clothes, and lay down to sleep with them at night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. R. L. Stevenson, in * Weir of Hermiston. * Some one, I think, asked in conversation at Rome, whether a certain interpretation of Scripture was Christian? It was answered that Dr. Arnold took it; I interposed, 'But is he a Christian?' Newman's * Apologia. * Another illustration of this is afforded by Wordsworth in his poem, Point Rash Judgment, where he describes himself and two friends, on a bright harvest morning, finding an old peasant angling on Lake Grasmere. Instinctively they blame him: 'Improvident and reckless,' we exclaimed, 'The man must be, who can thus lose a day Of the mid-harvest, when the labourer's hire Is ample, and some little might be stored Wherewith to cheer him in the winter-time.' On approaching nearer, however, they discover he is a gaunt, worn creature, no longer able to work in the field, and simply using his best skill to gain A pittance from the dead, unfeeling lake That knew not of his wants. The party felt properly rebuked for their harsh judgment of his case. Nor did we fail to see within ourselves What need there is to be reserved in speech, And temper all our thoughts with charity. They consequently named the spot, Point Rash Judgment. References. VI. 37. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 142. VI. 38. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 200. Alfred Rowland, The Exchanged Crowns, p. 38. Luke 6:39 We know how great an absurdity our Saviour accounted it for the blind to lead the blind; and to put him that cannot so much as see, to discharge the office of a watch. Nothing exposes more to contempt than ignorance.... In a governor, it cannot be without the conjunction of the highest imprudence; for who bid such a one aspire to teach and govern. A blind man sitting in the chimney-corner is pardonable enough, but sitting at the helm he is intolerable. If men will be illiterate and ignorant, let them be so in private, and to themselves, and not set their defects in a high place, to make them visible and conspicuous. If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep close within the tree, and not perch upon the taller boughs. South. References. VI. 39, 40. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1248. VI. 40. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 38. VI. 41. J. Baines, Sermons, p. 73. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 118. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 279. VI. 41, 42. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 38. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 47. VI. 41-49. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 131. VI. 42. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. pp. 224, 322. VI. 43, 44. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 76. VI. 46. J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 111. Luke 6:46 Compare Gibbon's well-known eulogy on William Law: 'In our family he had left the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.' Speaking of Law's writings, he adds: 'A philosopher must allow that he exposes, with equal severity and truth, the strange contradiction between the faith and practice of the Christian world'. Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing, and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society, without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? Oliver Wendell Holmes. 'Elsewhere,' said Knox of Geneva, 'the word of God is taught as purely, but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully.' 'The Florentine youth,' says George Eliot in Romola, 'had had very evil habits and foul tongues; it seemed at first an unmixed blessing when they were got to shout Viva Gesu ! But Savonarola was forced at last to say from the pulpit, "There is a little too much shouting of Viva Gesu ! This constant utterance of sacred words brings them into contempt Let me have no more of that shouting till the next Festa."' References. VI. 46. P. M'Adam Muir, Modern Substitutes for Christianity, p. 2. D. Macleod, Christian World. Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 125. J. D. Barlow, Bays from the Sun of Righteousness, p. 43. VI. 46-49. A. Bradley, Sermons Chiefly on Character, p. 132. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1702. Depth in Character Luke 6:47-48 Let us consider: I. The life which is simply a surface life. Some lives are altogether shallow; they are animal, their chief joy being in the senses: they are childish, being wholly occupied with trifles; they are without one serious thought, feeling, or purpose. This painful superficiality is one of the marked characteristics of our age and nation. The Puritan element the element of seriousness, reverence, and earnestness is obviously waning. Anything is better than that we should spend life in chasing bubbles. Better far the desolate oak on the naked heath, bowed by the storm and smitten by the lightning if only it acquire depth of earth and strength of fibre, than the spreading green bay-tree rooted in the surface sod. We ought to be thankful for anything that knocks the nursery toys out of our hand, that ends our idiot joy, that recalls our attention to the soul, that drives us inward and downward to the reality of things in the mind and will of God. II. The life which dips below the surface and yet does not reach the depths. (1) There is an intellectual life which pierces the surface without sounding the depths. Scholars, full of intellectual power and penetration, who never find God in the visible universe, are of this order. (2) There is a moral life which, going below the surface, fails to grasp the depths. How immense is the difference between philosophical and utilitarian moralists deriving all their motives and sanctions, rewards and punishments from social relations, material interests, and worldly happiness, and St. Paul, who finds the root of all pure and noble living in the depths of the spiritual world! (3) There is a religious life that sinks below the surface without sounding the depths. We are to build a house; unorganised spirituality has no sanction in the New Testament, but mere ecclesiasticism and denominationalism are scratches in the sand. We find the depths in religion only when we worship God in spirit and in truth. III. The life which digs deep, and rests upon the rock. In our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ do we find this rock. (1) Only as we build here do we prove true satisfaction. (2) Only as we build here do we find fullness and stability of character. (3) Only as we live this deeper life is our joy assured for ever. Building on Christ we build on the eternal reality, nor shall we suffer shame. W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, p. 265. References. VI. 47, 48. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 129. VI. 47-49. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 87. VI. 48, 49. J. Stuart Holden, The Pre-eminent Lord, p. 217. VI. 49. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 91. VII. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 443. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 402. VII. 1-10. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 353. VII. 2. J. W. Burgon, Servants of Scripture, p. 67. VII. 2-10. Mark Guy Pearse, Preacher's Magazine, vol. x. p. 486. VII. 2, 38. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 21. Three Estimates of One Character Luke 7:4 ; Luke 7:6 * ; Luke 7:9 * I. In the first place, we have the estimate formed of this man by his neighbours, 'Saying that he was worthy'. Now in regard to this testimonial, two or three remarks may be made. (1) For one thing, it must, I think, he conceded that these elders had enjoyed the best opportunities for forming a judgment regarding him. He lived in the midst of them. (2) But these elders had another advantage in coming to a knowledge of this centurion's character. He had been long enough among them to give them opportunity of testing him. (3) Nay, more, they saw that as he dwelt among them, he became an inquirer into their religion, and a student of their Scriptures, so that by and by he gave up his idolatry, and then after a time became a believer in Jehovah. Tell me what those who are closest to a man think of him after their experience of him for a course of years, or how the members of a community regard a man who has been continuously before them for half a generation, and you tell me with approximate accuracy what the man really is. II. But in the second place let us look at this centurion's estimate of himself. 'I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof.' His was a genuine feeling of unworthiness, just like that which is characteristic in greater or less degree of every truly good man among ourselves. Now it becomes an interesting question, why it is that the good man's estimate of himself should thus differ from that formed of him by his neighbours and friends. And in answer to that two things may be advanced: (1) It is owing, doubtless, in some measure to the fact that he knows more about himself than others do. (2) The discrepancy between the good man's estimate of himself and that formed of him by others may be explained by the fact that the better a man is the loftier does his ideal become. His standard rises with his very excellence. (a) We see this illustrated intellectually in the matter of knowledge. The more a man learns, the more he learns of his own ignorance. (b) But it is quite similar with holiness. The liker I become to Christ, the more I see in Christ that I have yet to imitate. III. But we come now to the third estimate of this man's character; that, namely, of the Lord Jesus Himself, who said regarding him, 'I have not found so great faith, no! not in Israel'. This testimony to his faith is virtually also a testimony to his character; for faith is not cherished except by a certain character. Faith is thus a moral test. Then again the faith which is thus rooted in character reacts upon character. As a man believes, so he becomes. Such, then, are the three estimates here given of the character of this one man. But the last is the main one after all, carrying all that is valuable in the other two within itself. References. VII. 4, 6, 7. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 137. VII. 4-9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 600. The Good Centurion Luke 7:5 There are many striking features about the character of this Roman soldier; he is one of the most attractive, noble, and lovable men in the pages of the New Testament. There are mainly three points in his character to be carefully marked. I. His susceptibility to all that is good. He had come to Capernaum probably without any definite faith, with many a story in his mind about the fanaticism and stubborn pride of the people in whose country he had come to keep order, and he must have set himself at once to study the people and their religion, with the result that he saw the good in both. We could still do with more of the spirit that detects and rejoices in good in others, other nations, other religious communities. The chief feature, however, of this man's susceptibility, is that it is most tender towards that which is highest. I see in this centurion a man who is willing to be led by the Spirit of God and of truth, who dares at the bidding of the Spirit to be original, to do what is unusual and unfashionable, singular and strange, at the call of conscience, and this is the kind of man needed today. II. His lowliness. 'I am not worthy,' is his estimate of himself. You know the world's idea; you must assert your own worth, and insist on your rights being recognised and your efforts being properly acknowledged. If modesty is at a discount in the markets of the world, it should be at a premium in the Church of Christ. Let a Roman centurion teach us 'I am not worthy,' that is the language for all of us, for some more than others, but for us all. Not lip language, not affectation; there is no more degraded and disgusting character in fiction than Uriah Heap. But the real thing oh, that we had more of it! Lowliness of mind is the sure sign of saintliness; every true saint is lowly. III. His faith. A faith which surprises our Lord. It is a part of the susceptibility to the Divine which dwelt in him. It is to be feared that there are many people professing the Christian faith who would be put to shame by the simple and complete confidence in Christ's power displayed by the centurion. Lowliness and faith go together. The proud and self-sufficient temper will make its own power and wisdom the gauge and standard of what God can do, and will probably refuse to believe in anything that it cannot understand. The man who truly sees God will be stricken through with a sense of his own unworthiness; but he will believe at the same time in the illimitable power of God. I do not want to be put to shame by the faith of this Roman soldier. I observe that our Lord acclaimed it and declared that it was the greatest He had found. Charles Brown, The Baptist Times and Freeman, vol. li. p. 251. Patriotism in Religion Luke 7:5 There are two great ideas in these few words: patriotism 'He loveth our nation'; and religion 'He hath built us a synagogue'. Because he loves the nation, says the text, he has built a religious house. The implication is that wise patriotism concerns itself with the religious welfare of the nation, and that the maintenance of religious sanctuaries is a proof of the noblest patriotism. Can that strange position be maintained? If we test it we shall find that it can. I. For the nation is indebted to the sanctuary for the best elements in its life. The differences that make our national civilisation more desirable than the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome are to be attributed to the quiet but potent influence of the Christian sanctuary, which, unknown in those states, ists in multiplied forms in modern England. The f distinction between those old civilisations and ours lies in the complete absence from them of what we know as * humanitarianism. * II. The nation is indebted to the sanctuary for the indispensable conditions of its progress. What is it that actually gives birth to reforms? The moral sentiment of the community. And what inspires the community with an ever-heightening moral sentiment? The spiritual forces of the country. And whence do they proceed but from the sanctuary? (1) It is the Churches that supply ideals; and ideals are far more necessary to national progress than Acts of Parliament. (2) They are supplied, also, by that elevation of character which the sanctuary produces. III. The nation is indebted to the sanctuary for the supply of its best citizens. Further, it is the purest form of public-spiritedness which the sanctuary fosters. Ancient Sparta was unwalled, and when a visitor wondered at the fact, the king showed him a muster of strong men and said, with a proud wave of his hand, 'These are the walls of Sparta'. And it is not the wooden walls of her ships that protect England, it is not her navy that is Britain's best defence, it is her true citizens, such as are moulded in the sanctuary of God standing in her midst. B. J. Gibbon, Visionaries, p. 42. References. VII. 6. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 274; VII. 6-8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 800. Luke 7:8 These words, better than any other, define Bossuet. Above him was God, represented in things spiritual by the Catholic Church, in things temporal by the French monarchy; below him were the faithful committed to his charge, and those who would lead the faithful astray from the path of obedience and tradition. Professor Dowden, in A History of French Literature, p. 219. References. VII. 8. H. W. Webb-Peploe, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 200. VII. 8, 9. Ibid. vol. liii. p. 414. Luke 7:9 A colonel in the Royal Artillery wrote thus to Mrs. Kingsley about her husband's influence over the soldiers he met: 'It is not hard to find a creed for a soldier to die with, it seems to me at least I have seen Mahomet's answer well. A creed to live by is a different thing. The only alternative to the beautiful evangelical Christianity of such happy soldiers as Hedley Vicars (Havelock was a Puritan out of bis age), the extreme evangelical doctrine to which most men are constitutionally averse, was the slavish Roman, or what seemed an unpractical emasculate æsthetic imitation. The average soldier found no rest, no place in modern Christianity until our apostle (your husband) tore off the shreds and patches with which for ages the Divine figure of the God-man had been obscured He who found no such faith in Israel as that of the centurion.' References. VII. 9. J. Baines, Twenty Sermons, p. 297. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 199. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 322. VII. 10. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 7. VII. 11-15. Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 72. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 297. VII. 11-17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2003. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 70. VII. 11, 12. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 150. Bishop Forrest-Browne, Christian World Pulpit, vol. Hi. p. 280. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 43. VII. 13-15. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scriptures St. Luke, p. 146. VII. 14. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 203. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 450. VII. 14, 15. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. i. p. 175. VII. 16. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 133. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 335. VII. 17. W. E. Barton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 12. VII. 18-28. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 149. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scriptures St. Luke, p. 156. VII. 18-30. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 357. The Baptist's Message to Jesus Luke 7:19 Probably the Baptist himself would judge that we waste too much emotion on his comfortless life, his early selfsacrifice, his magnanimity. The tragic character of his death, the despondent doubt which darkened his spirit while in prison, the severity of his whole life, all tend to make us oblivious of the fact that his life was filled and crowned with a deep and solid and unique joy. And after all, it not being possible to him to be the Christ, it was no small glory to be the friend, the next, to the Christ. Few men see much lasting fruit of what they have spent their life to attain. But John, to whom it was given to stir and awaken men's minds to appreciate their true King, to whom it was given to use his own figure to negotiate the marriage between Christ and men, had the perfect satisfaction of seeing men flocking to their true Lord, and of hearing His voice of welcome and of deep satisfaction. No wonder that this should eclipse all the apparent and superficial bareness of his life. No wonder that when he saw that he had been the chief instrument in finding for Christ and for God entrance into men's hearts, when he apprehended that to him had been entrusted the initiation of the greatest movement in the history of man, and possibly in the history of God, he should have been filled with humble and exultant satisfaction, and have said, 'This my joy is fulfilled'. No wonder that Christ should have declared that among those born of women none was greater than the Baptist. I. In common with all his countrymen John had to rise to new conceptions of the kingdom of God and its King. He had to discard the fancy that a great conqueror would arise to throw off the Roman yoke. Happily he took now as always the straightforward course and appealed to Jesus Himself. The authorities had mistaken the Baptist himself for the Christ; Jesus, he knew, would make no mistake. Jesus at once apprehended the state of mind of His friend, and anticipates and explodes the idea which He knew the crowd would cherish, that the personal misfortunes of the Baptist were clouding his faith. You hear the pleasure with which Jesus defends and applauds him ringing through His words. It would almost seem as if Jesus were taking revenge on Himself for uttering what might appear to be the harsh saying, 'Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me'. He turns on the people as if they had in their hearts been calumniating John, and at once defends his friend. 'Do not,' He says, 'let yourselves for one moment suppose that John has fallen from his high estate. You yourselves, when you saw him in the wilderness independent of public opinion and of criticism, knew that he was no reed bowing to every change of circumstance, moved by every passing breeze, never for two days in one mind. You saw a man untouched by luxurious living, content with a camel's skin and such food as uncultivated nature could afford. Do you suppose that such a man is much disturbed or daunted by prison-fare, or that the gloom of the dungeon has damped his optimism and blotted out the coming kingdom?' Here Jesus shows in what spirit He meets honest, serious-minded doubt. He knows that beneath that question of John's which so shocked the bystanders, there lay a heart more capable of loyalty to Him than was to be found in any of those who gave their easy assent to claims they scarcely understood. That question, sceptical as it seemed, was of more value to Him than the unreasoning hosannas of thoughtless followers, for through it He saw a man in deadly earnest to whom the answer meant life or despair. It is when a man takes the Messiahship of Jesus seriously; it is when he proposes to make the mind of Christ rule all that he himself is connected with, that he necessarily begins to question whether Christ's claim is well founded and whether His rule is right. It is through such doubt and perplexity that ultimate faith and lasting allegiance are reached. II. John's doubt hovers over each generation and has to be solved by every man. 'Art Thou He that should come, or look we for another?' Do we find in this person God, righteousness and eternity? And this doubt is nourished and strengthened much as John's was. Men are always tempted to resent Christ's method. His work seems so slow: one is tempted to say, so inefficient, so unmarked by urgency; in so many ways it disappoints the expectations of practical men fitted rather for some other world than for this actual order of things. It is precisely John's difficulty which is today preventing many earnest men in the working classes from believing in Christ. His methods bring no immediate relief, no revolution, no upturning of the social order, no instant setting right of all that is wrong. He claims to be King, and to have a special regard for the oppressed, yet generation after generation of the oppressed pass away and He gives no sign. It is this which prompts so many to turn from Him in disappointment and bitterness and to look for 'another,' generally some hasty demagogue who offers a panacea which is to cure all the world's ills in a fortnight. III. The answer Jesus sends to John is, 'Go and tell John what I am doing'. Virtually that was to say, 'I have deliberately chosen My method, and I do not mean to change it. My kingdom is spiritual. Hence I must work through the individual. Only by regenerating the individual do I expect to regenerate the world.' Jesus never answers the question thus put to Him with a categorical 'Yes, I am the Christ'. He may for the present leave doubts and difficulties in the inquiring mind, because He will win no man by compulsion. It must be by the free movement of our own intelligence, by the home-grown convictions reached by the individual that He wins His way to universal empire. As one of our greatest statesmen once said, 'No more in the inner world than in the outer has Christ come among us as a conqueror, making his appeal by force'. IV. 'Wisdom,' says our Lord, 'is justified of all her children.' We need men of the type of John and also men of the type of Jesus. We need men like John, trained to endure hardness, independent of all that society can offer, living a free life according to conscience, tied by no social or professional bonds, neither prophets nor the sons of prophets, owning no allegiance to tradition or conventions of any kind, men resolute to see iniquities suppressed and righteousness everywhere reigning. Even more do we need men of the type of Jesus, for though among those that are born of women there is not a greater than John, the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. For Jesus knows and uses a power John never knew, the power of God's Fatherly love. Marcus Dods, Christ and Man, p. 85. The Coming Man Luke 7:19 There is a phrase we hear today. It is 'the coming man'. We say of some genius in literature, or some orator in politics, or some successful man in business, 'He is a coming man'. He is likely to come to great things in his own line. He will be very distinguished. And when, after the years, we find our prophecy fulfilled, we say, 'Yes, he has come to his own at last. For a while, perhaps, he seemed slow in doing it, but now there is no doubt whatever. He has arrived.' I. What are the qualities that go to make the world's 'coming man'. I dare say if you were to ask a sufficiently large number of intelligent judges, they would generally unite on the word originality as the secret of the 'coming man'. The world is crying out for freshness. It is very old. There is nothing very new under the sun. Therefore, when a man strikes out a new and fresh note the world always listens. We have not heard this before, it says, and straightway it falls down to worship its 'coming man'. But if you were to dig deeper and ask what are the things that go to make 'originality,' I dare say you would not find such a consensus of opinion. Some of you, I daresay, would be surprised and inclined to ridicule my judgment, were I to tell you that I believe one of the strongest ingredients in originality is just * hard work. * Then another secret of 'originality' is courage, courage of action, and, what is less common, courage of thinking. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was once asked the secret of success in politics. With a flash in his eye, he replied: 'The open sesame of politics is courage.' The courageous man is the pioneer, the man of enterprise. He can take his life in his hands. And a man who has never taken his life in his hands will never take the world by the heart. II. God has a 'coming man' as well as the world. He takes longer in coming perhaps. But when He comes, He comes securely. He comes into a kingdom 'that shall never be moved'. See one of these the greatest of all in our text. 'Art Thou He,' says John to Jesus, 'that should come, or look we for another?' The words 'that should come' form one word in the Greek. They mean 'the coming One'. Jesus was the true coming One; though His coming seemed at first sight a wild dream of a poor enthusiast. 'We trusted it would have been He that should have redeemed Israel, and behold this is the third day since all these things were done!' It is all over. The tragedy is closed. Christ and His hopes have come to naught. He is already a thing of the past. 'This is the third day since these things were done!' And, lo! all the time He was coming, coming in the Cross, coming in the grave, coming in loyal hearts and true; until in Pentecost He burst forth on an astonished world to begin that grand triumphal march as the world's true 'coming man'! There is a striking Italian picture which I once saw. It is entitled, 'The Passing of the Obscure'. It represents the great mixed multitude life's 'common men' as they are driven remorselessly forward by the hand of death into the dark flood of annihilation, in which they are to perish for ever. You can see them as they drift upward to the shore. The old, the middle-aged, the young are there; but they have all one common expression on their faces. It is the expression of disappointment. Life has been so poor, so unsatisfactory. They had hoped to do great things in it. And now it is ended, and they have come to nothing. As you look at the picture you think not of 'the coming man 'but of 'the going man'. 'The passage of the obscure' yes, it is a touching thought; and yet, as I looked into the picture, I felt that if the artist had been a Christian artist, he would have given a different horizon to his canvas. Instead of that grey sea of annihilation ending in a dull, cheerless, darkening sky, he would have painted a distant gleam of light in the horizon, and that light would have spread a pathway of gold across the dark waters and lit up, at least, some of the faces in that crowd with hope and triumph. For that is the lesson which Christ as 'the Coming Man' would leave with you and me. 'Because I live, ye shall live also.' Christ came to His own through the dark waters of death, and so is it with God's 'coming men'. They may not come to their own here; but they shall come hereafter. They shall come in God's glorious kingdom of immortality, when all that was noble and promising in their life here shall reach its fruition yonder in the land of the truly 'coming man'. W. Mackintosh Mackay, Bible Types of Modern Men, p. 314. References. VII. 19. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 3. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 48. VII. 19-23. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 298. VII. 20. E. Cornwall Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 148. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 248. Luke 7:22 He would appear to me to have adopted the best as well as the most benevolent mode of diffusing truth, who, uniting the zeal of the methodist with the views of the philosopher, should be personally among the poor, and teach them their duties in order that he may render them susceptible of their rights.... 'Go, preach the Gospel to the poor.' By its simplicity it will meet their comprehension, by its benevolence soften their affections, by its precepts it will direct their conduct, by the vastness of its motives ensure their obedience. The situation of the poor is perilous; they are indeed both From within and from without Unarmed to all temptations. Prudential reasonings will in general be powerless with them. For the incitements of this world are weak in proportion as we are wretched The world is not my friend, nor the world's law, The world has got no law to make me rich. ... In a man so circumstanced the tyranny of the present can be overpowered only by the tenfold mightiness of the future. Religion will cheer his gloom with her promises. Coleridge, in * The Friend. * References. VII. 23. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 344 VII. 27. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 365. A Great Man Luke 7:28 The Bible is a book of biographies. All genuine biography is worthy of our careful study. The life of John the Baptist is specially profitable and specially instructive, perplexing and mysterious though it be Let us consider the practical side of the prophet's life, and let us see how it will help you and me to be better men, and to be truer to our convictions and our God. I. In the first place, I want you to consider the Baptist as a man. I want you to notice three characteristics of the prophet which seem to me to set him forth as a great man. (1) His spirit was fearless, brave, courageous. It does not require much courage nor much bravery to denounce sin, in general and vague terms, in the congregation or in the assembly, but it does require courage to speak face to face honestly and truthfully to those who are in our own position, and above all, to those who are set in authority over us. Now, John the Baptist not only rebuked sin amongst the poor and the degraded, amongst the publicans and the profligates, but he rebuked sin upon the throne itself. (2) But this man was great not only because of his fearless courage, but because of his transparent truthfulness. It is sincerity and truthfulness that give power to all men's works and words and lives. You may be as eloquent as Cicero, as great an orator as Demosthenes, but unless men believe in your sincerity and truthfulness, all that you say to them is of no avail it is tainted with self, with conceit, with the things of earth, and it is not the truth of God. I once heard a young man say at a public meeting, 'Not by man's preaching, but by my mother's "practising," was I won from atheism to God'. (3) And, then, his moral greatness was not only seen in his bravery and sincerity, but also in his humility. Of his own greatness he was utterly unconscious. II. In the second place, I want you to look at the preacher. The great theme of his preaching was this; that reality lies at the root of all religion. So he preceded the great Builder and Founder of the Church, that he might hew down with his axe all the rottenness and insincerity of that Jewish Church, and his appeal was, 'Bring forth fruits' i.e. show that your repentance is genuine. And is there no necessity today for this proclamation? Ah, how men and women will talk in a sentimental way of their sins! III. Then think of John as a martyr. It is one thing to be brave for the truth when it is popular and pleasant, but it is another thing to be true to your convictions when it means disgrace and death. Your truthfulness is genuine just as far as you are prepared to suffer for it; to suffer for it in this life, that you may attain the life of God hereafter. T. J. Madden, Addresses to All Sorts and Conditions of Men, p. 95. References. VII. 28. W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 108. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 161. VII. 30. Ibid. p. 170. VII. 31-34. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 127. Luke 7:31-32 You will behave just like children, who play now at wrestling, now at being gladiators, now at blowing trumpets, now at acting tragedies, after they have seen and admired such things. You are like that You are now an athlete, now a gladiator, now a philosopher, now a rhetorician. But you are nothing with all your soul. Epictetus. Reference. VII. 31-35. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 16. Luke 7:32 The doings of grown folk are only interesting as the raw material for play. Not Theophile Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more callously upon life, or rate the reproduction more highly over the reality; and they will parody an execution, a death-bed, or the funeral of the young man of Nain with all the cheerfulness in the world. R. L. Stevenson, * Child's Play. * References. VII. 32. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 171. VII. 34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2484. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 178. Expositor (7th Series), vol. x. p. 90. VII. 35. W. L. Alexander, Sermons, p. 46. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 147. VII. 36. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 272. VII. 36-50. Ibid, vol. iii. p. 335. VII. 37. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 333. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 83. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 145. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 801. The Tears of Love Luke 7:38 I. Here is love built upon pardon. Christian love is no irrational emotion which cannot give an account of itself. (1) It rests upon a distinct fact: the assurance of forgiveness through Christ. (2) For love there must precede the conviction of Christ's love to me. (3) There must also precede it the consciousness of my sin. II. Here is sorrow blending with love. The consciousness of pardon brings tears; breaks up the fountains of the great deep. The more we grow in Christian character the deeper should be our sorrow for sin. III. Here is thankful service built on both. Her service was very natural. What was it good for? (1) It was an expression of her love. (2) It meant entire abandonment to Him. A. Maclaren. At His Feet Luke 7:38 Behold, saith the Holy Ghost, a sinner at His feet! It is a blessed place for the weeping sinner. May we take the same attitude with her, and learn lessons from her. I. First, it is a place for all who are in distress. II. But the feet of Jesus is also the place for worship; in fact, it is the only place where true worship is possible. For what is worship? Worship is self-prostration and self-surrender, and you must be at the feet of Jesus for worship. Worship is the realisation of a presence which sinks you to the very dust. III. And as it is the place for worship, so it must be also the place for service, because worship must show itself in action. IV. It is the place for learning, for the Christian life consists not merely in active service; there must be also the time when the Christian takes Mary's place, and sits at His feet to hear His Word. It is those who are willing to take the learner's place that will become the learned. In one of the ancient academies they had a three years' course, and the first year the students were called the wise men, and in the second year they were called the philosophers (those who wished to be wise men), and in the third year they were called the disciples (learners). And so the more progress we make in the Christian school, the more shall we be willing to take our place at His feet, and learn of Him. E. A. Stuart, The Communion of the Holy Ghost and other Sermons, vol. x. p. 145. Reference. VII. 38. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2066. The Blindness of the Pharisee Luke 7:39 I. We notice here the entire ignorance of what sin is. II. He has no notion that such a sinful past can be obliterated. III. He has no notion that the highest purity comes closest to the repentant sinner. IV. The cynical contempt for religious emotion. A. Maclaren. References. VII. 39. J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 348. R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 23. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 225. VII. 40. John Watson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 281. VII. 40-43. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 115. VII. 41. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2768. VII. 41, 42. Ibid. vol. lii. No. 3015. VII. 41-43. Ibid. vol. 1. No. 2873. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St Luke, p. 188. When They Had Nothing to Pay Luke 7:42 If any of you have ever known the shame or the misery of debt you will be able to understand the metaphor better. We are debtors to God in this respect, that we are the creatures of God's creation. 'It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.' Everything we have comes from God our existence, our friends, our blessings, our pleasures, our faculties and powers, all come from the same hand, and have been poured plenteously upon us by our God. I. If God has Bestowed all these Things upon us, has He not a Right to expect that they shall be spent in His service? Has not a master a right to the services of his servant; has not our King a right to the services of his subjects? So God, Who undeniably is our Creator and the Author of our life, also the Giver of all we have, has a right to all our services; and if those services are not His, then we are debtors to Him for them all. Our state of indebtedness to God being very great, and since we can make no atonement, since it is impossible to plead any extenuating circumstances, there remains but one thing to do, and that is to cast ourselves on the mercy of God and to cry, 'God be merciful to me the sinner'. 'And when they had nothing to pay, he freely forgave them both.' II. Till the Sinner Realises his Sinfulness, there can be no Forgiveness. III. Every Person is either Forgiven or Unforgiven. It is not easy to repent, but it is thus alone we can be saved. We must repent of our own choice. If conscience tells us that we are living in unrepentant sin, then not health, not happiness, not life itself is of such importance as repentance. May we not see how infinitely more gracious, generous, and compassionate is God than man under like provocation would have been, and yet that man might have the perfect assurance of God's forgiveness He willed that there should hardly be a page in His Word which did not in some way or another proclaim this truth. God is there set forth as the Pardoner of sin, the passer by of transgression. By type, by prophecy, He still declares the blessed truth. Peace comes only with the consciousness of forgiven sin. References. VII. 42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1739. VII. 42, 43. Ibid. vol. xxxvi. No. 2127. Contrasts in Virtue Luke 7:44 What a striking and pathetic little drama this incident presents to us. Consider the three characters and what they stand for. They are thoroughly representative of three great facts in life. I. We have in the Pharisee loveless virtue, blind both to the elements of hope in those beneath it and to the superior goodness of those above it. What is loveless virtue? It is lifeless virtue; virtue on the one hand which has in it no upward tendency, no Godward movement, no desire to be better, and which, on the other hand, has no downward tendency, no manward movement, no passion to help and redeem. Such a man can neither understand sin nor goodness. II. We have in the woman nascent virtue. There was in her no acquired good, but the struggle for it had begun, the new life was born. The Pharisee did not see the woman, he only saw the * sinner. * III. We have in Christ virtuous love. It was the virtuous love in Christ that had brought into its present activity the goodness of the woman. We have a right to generalise from this, since Christ showed us the Father, and to say that this is God's attitude towards the sinner. J. Wright, The Guarded Gate, p. 21. References. VII. 44-50. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 130. VII. 45. R. Higinbotham, Sermons, p. 178. VII. 46. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 161. Penitence Luke 7:47 I. Is penitence unreal? When we look at it, and ask on what true penitence is founded, we find that so far from it being connected with unreality, the whole object of penitence is to grasp facts. The man who thinks that his life is perfectly smooth, perfectly complete, the man who thinks that his faults are nothing, he himself is living under the most utter delusion in which a man can live. Penitence is founded on reality. II. Is it necessary. And there comes back in answer to that question the voice of every spiritual teacher who has ever taught the world. 'Repent,' says John the Baptist, 'for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand'. 'Repent,' says Jesus Christ; 'except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish'. 'Arise, and be baptised, and wash away thy sins,' echo the Apostles. III. If penitence is necessary, and penitence is real, is it true that penitence is morbid? It is not penitence that creates depression. Want of faith, want of courage, anything you will, but not penitence. Penitence is like a narrow valley that leads the way up to sunlit heights; penitence is the valley of Achor, but it is also the door of hope. Happy is the man this is the experience of the ages whose iniquity is forgiven and whose sin is pardoned. Miserable is the man whose iniquity is not forgiven because it is unconfessed, and whose sins still cry to heaven. IV. What, then that comes to be the question are we to do, if penitence is a constituent part of the Christian character? (1) And the first thing is to get alone by ourselves and ask two questions: First, What do I think of God? And, secondly still more awful question What does God think of me? (2) At the foot of the Cross I must confess my sin to God. (3) I must do it with restitution and amendment. (4) Then, having confessed with restitution and amendment, go back a forgiven sinner, with the image of Jesus Christ crucified in your heart. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 48. Little Forgiveness, Little Love Luke 7:47 That lovely little parable addressed by our Lord to Simon laid down two principles: that forgiveness precedes and is the cause of love; and that the measure of forgiveness is the measure of love. I. Here we have the acknowledgment of little sins. Our Lord fully recognises the real distinction between the respectable Simon and the profligate woman. There are great and there are little sins. (1) 'Little' here applies not only to the distinction between the magnitude of the transgressions, considered in themselves, but also to the difference between men's estimates of the magnitude of their own transgressions. (2) The measure of a sin is by no means determined by taking its superficial dimensions. (3) There is another thing to be remembered, which limits the distinction in my text, in so far as it is taken to apply to the actual magnitude of the deed in itself. It is that, properly speaking, there are no small sins, inasmuch as nothing which affects wrongly our relation to God can be regarded as a little thing. And so we come to this, that, whilst the distinction between sins as in themselves great and small can only be sustained with much limitation and with many explanations, the fancy that many of us have that our sins are small is utterly incapable of being sustained at all. II. We have here the principle if little sin then little forgiveness. Whether we get that pardon, which we all need, in scanty drops or in a full flood depends upon ourselves, and is settled by the measure of our recognition of our own sinfulness and the measure of our true repentance. III. If little forgiveness then little love. (1) Love comes from pardon, and in its perfection comes from nothing else. (2) The measure of forgiveness experienced is the measure of love returned. Clean, dry sand bears no weeds, but it will not bear any flowers. A bed of fertile soil, untilled and uncultivated, will be abundant in weeds, but it will be abundant in wheat crops, too. Though we must be careful as to how far we push the principle, I think the principle is a true one, that the greatest sinners, judged from the external point of view, often make the most fervent saints. (3) But however we may think that to be questionable, the other aspect of this principle is unquestionable. And that is that the measure of a man's sense of forgiveness is the measure of his love. That is the key to the impotence and tepidity of all the forms of Christianity which make light of sin and do not give a prominent place to Christ's work of redemption. Here, too, you get the explanation of the coldness of many nominal Christians. Enthusiasm should be the work of every Christian soul. And the only way to get it is to realise my own guilt, and Christ's great redemption. A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 210. Luke 7:47 'Mary's sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much,' and her sins were many, first because she loved much too much. It is usually the same gift which damns or saves us, according as it is ill or well used. Father Tyrrell, Nova et Vetera, p. 95. References. VII. 47. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 404. A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, p. 91. W. P. S. Bingham, Sermons on Easter Subjects, p. 162. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 190. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches (2nd Series), p. 275. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 140. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 198. VII. 47-50. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 286. VII. 48. J. W. Houchin, The Vision of God, p. 99. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 151. J. Bolton, Selected Sermons (2nd Series), p. 264. W. J. Knox-Little, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 200. VII. 48-50. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 449. VII. 50. A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, p. 146. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 189. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1162; vol. xxxvii. No. 2183, and vol. xlviii. No. 2770. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p. 249. Ibid. Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 210. VIII. 2. J. Farquhar, The Schools and Schoolmasters of Christ, p. 130. VIII. 2, 3. G. Clarke, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 104. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 217. Luke 8:2-3 This passage, one of Luke's special contributions to the gospel narrative, describes the double circle of Christ's followers. (a) And with Him, the twelve, i.e. those specially called to high enterprise and service. This represents the circle of people in the Church who are conscious of a definite vocation and moved by the Spirit of Christ to serve the Church with consecrated lives. (b) But alongside of these are certain women which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, e.g. Mary Magdalene, etc. The dominating motion of their discipleship is gratitude for personal benefits. Theirs is not the vocation of the twelve, but they have their own place and work. The memory of their deliverance moves them to support by their gifts the disciples who form Christ's inner circle (cp. Galatians 6:6 ). This represents the subordinate role of many in the Church, who rank among the followers of Christ, and who, though they cannot take part personally in the great Christian mission, can make the task of the active servants easier by their liberality and sympathy. James Moffatt. References. VIII. 3. J. Baines, Sermons, p. 214. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. pp. 118, 121. VIII 4-8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 308. VIII. 4-16. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 229. A Sower Luke 8:5 I. We have here, first of all, the Christian work described. It is sowing. But sowing is not the first agricultural process. The soil in its natural state will not receive the good seed and bring forth fruit. There are the primaeval forests to be cleared, there is the tangled undergrowth of thorns and briers to be removed. And then the ploughman must come with his share and break up the soil before ever there can be any harvest from the seed. 'A sower went out to sow his seed.' Not a pioneer with his axe, not a ploughman with his share, but a sower with his seed-basket scattering his seed. And why? Because this is pre-eminently the work of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was pioneer work to be done; that was done by the iron ploughshare of the law; that came first. And then, again, it is not merely that the Gospel work is this gentle work of the sower, but the sower gives to the earth that which it had not before; he gives life, he gives that which has life in itself, and which can produce life, by which the mineral can be raised up into the vegetable. The seed, as it were, the Godhead coming down into this dead earth and raising it up into beauteous life. Now this the function of the sower is our function. II. Notice the loneliness of this sower. A sower. Contrast the loneliness of the sower with the sociability of the reaper. The reapers go forth in bands, the sower goes forth alone. The great Sower was always a lonely Man. All the great sowers of the world have been lonely men. III. The sphere of the sower. 'A sower went out to sow his seed.' And you must go out And this implies self-denial, it means leaving many comforts, many luxuries, it means going out into the darkness. There can be no real reaping until, first of all, there has been the sorrowful sowing. IV. The seed must be your own seed. His seed. Not, of course, that he made it. He cannot make it; the seed is something which is far beyond his power. But it must be his seed, he must have toiled for it, it must be the fruit of his last year of labour; it is part of his brain, part of his hands' toil. And so it must be with ourselves. The seed must be ours. Have we this seed? Do we know something of this life-giving power of Jesus Christ? It is only thus that we can scatter the seed. God is calling out for sowers. We are told that when Captain Cook circumnavigated the world, he used to take with him parcels of our English seeds, and leaving his boat's crew down on the beach, he would go inland and empty out one of these packets of our common English seeds, so that he belted the whole world with these same flowers. So we have come into this world, and we want to scatter those seeds of heaven wherever we go. E. A. Stuart, Elisha's Call and other Sermons, vol. viii. p. 193. ** Sowers ( Sexagesima ) Luke 8:5 ** Subject: All Men are Sowers. The meaning of the text has been explained by Jesus Himself. The sower is the Son of Man, the seed is the Word of God, which is sown in different people with varying results. We may take the text, however, in another way. We are all sowers. As soon as we know right from wrong, we begin to go out and sow our seed. The child in the nursery, the child at school, the youth entering on life, the busy man or woman, all are sowers, sowing the seed of habit, of character: Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. II. Cultivating our Life Garden. First, there is the weeding. The fairest garden will be ruined if the weeds are not kept under, the noblest life will be spoilt if sins and bad habits are allowed to get the mastery. How to get rid of the weeds. Take two hands to them, and pull them up. That is, clasp your hands in prayer and struggle with the evil, crying out to God to help you. Get * the weeds up by the roots. * III. The Seed and the Sowers. We are all sowers, but we do not sow the same seed. 1. Some sow the seed of frivolity or idle pleasure. To these life has no responsibilities, no serious purpose, the world is a playground, and like the Roman Emperor, they would give anything for a new form of amusement. Their motto is Gather ye roses while ye may. But the time of harvest comes. To all sowers comes the time of ingathering, and whatsoever we sow, that shall we reap. If we sow only the seed of life's roses, if pleasure be our only aim, the harvest is a sorry one. 2. There are those who sow the seeds of selfish greed. The world is a mere gold mine, where they toil, shut out of the light of God's countenance. If, like the fabled king of old, they have turned all things golden by their touch, they find they have no pleasure in them. They know that they must leave their riches to others, and strangers shall spend the selfish gathering of their lives. Like the French Cardinal, they may walk among their treasures, and weep over the thought of leaving them, but they must leave them all the same. However rich they may be, they die as paupers, for in the land whither they go, worldly money is not current. 3. Some there * are who sow the seed of extravagance and dissipation. * 4. Men sow the seed of selfishness, and they reap as a harvest a lonely old age, without love or companionship. If we would have a fair garden, we must sow good seed. If we would have a beautiful life, we must cultivate it for God. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Notes of Sermons for the Year, p. 121. References. VIII. 5. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 203. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2843. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 123. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 207. VIII. 6-8. R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, p. 14. VIII. 6. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2845. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 454; ibid. vol. vii. p. 390. VIII. 7 H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 44. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 168. VIII. 9. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 236. The Word As Seed Luke 8:11 The similitude is so apt, that it seems to come of itself, and to be so familiar to us that we fancy it must always have been obvious to men. One is surprised to be told that it is not found in the Old Testament. Even in our classic literature parallels that are like it are few, and not very close. In fact, it is our Lord's own, and bears the stamp of His original mind upon it that truth operates in the sphere of our spiritual life as seeds do in nature, carrying a germinating or fructifying power wherever it meets suitable soil and favourable environment, so that we disseminate the Divine truth among men like sowing seed broadcast, to grow where it can, trusting to the native vitality that is in it. I. My first point is that it is the truth of God by which we have to seek for the ultimate power of the new life. Of course, reason forbids us to divorce this truth from the Son of Man. Truth is sought apart from Him who is the Truth. Scripture bids us recognise the Holy Spirit at work vivifying the soul. Truth finds its adequate soil in human nature, and draws its fertilising and transforming energy from the presence within it of God Himself. II. My next point is that the truth of the Gospel reaches us through the Word of God. I have employed the word 'truth 'in preference to the expression 'the word,' because the latter is wider and governs something else besides. It governs the truth, but it also governs the expression and form and medium of the truth. The 'word 'is thought uttered in language. It is the sign that conveys the idea. It is both in one, and not the one without the other. It seems to me of some consequence that we should rightly comprehend the relation between the Gospel truth and its language or verbal form of utterance. Notice this, language of some sort is essential, and for the truth of God to reach the spirit of man it must clothe itself in something, either in the visible language of symbol, or in the clearer spoken and written word language. Unless it come to us in such a form we could not receive and understand it, or convey it to our fellows, or sow it abroad among men. Through words the truth must come; words acted, spoken, written, and printed. Through that marvellous medium, human speech, God Himself must speak His thought to me. And He has spoken. J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. p. 308. The Parable of the Sower (For Sexagesimal) Luke 8:11 Perhaps the Parable of the Sower is the easiest of all our Lord's parables; and happily it is also the pattern of all, the one by which the rest are best explained (see Mark iv. 13). All our Lord's teaching is most truly practical, and it is only when we begin to try to live according to its spirit that its full meaning becomes clear; and even before putting it into practice our best chance of understanding it is to compare it, step by step, with what we already know of ourselves and our own hearts and our own lives. I. Who is this 'Sower?' None of the Evangelists tell us precisely. Christ Himself says that the seed is the Word of God: and the Sower is often said to represent those whose duty it is to preach, the Ministers of God's word. This is no doubt a lawful application of the figure, but assuredly it is not its first meaning. We may borrow the explanation from the next Parable, 'The Tares'. There we are plainly told that 'He that soweth the seed is the Son of Man'. He, without doubt, is the Sower here. The Parable is about Christ Himself, not merely about what He did or said as a Sower in the days of His flesh, but about His 'sowings 'from the beginning of the world till His Incarnation; His 'sowings 'from then till His Ascension; and from then till now, the sowings He is daily making among ourselves. II. But how does He sow His seed? Assuredly not by the lips alone; or how little by comparison would be included in the heavenly sowing. We are influenced by much which is never actually spoken. The ground cannot be the ear. That is a mere passage to our hearts and minds. It is there within that the Divine Sower, sowing good seed, and the enemy, sowing tares, are both at work; in the heart. He who sows the good seed is the same that made the ear and the heart, too. Whatever becomes of the seed, He, the Sower, is always the same, and He has a hand in every part of the process. He made us to be His tillage, to be under His constant care. The Heavenly Sower's work is everywhere and at all times. III. 'He that soweth the seed is the Son of Man.' The (Incarnate) Son of God is known to us as 'The Son of Man'. Thus He speaks to us in the still small voice of our own nature. He can speak straight to the heart, without anything coming between. The difference between good and evil men (and God has spoken to both) lies in how they hear, whether they take heed, and act on what they have heard. It is the same good seed which is sown, whether it grows or perishes. IV. The different soils require little explaining, if we have any knowledge of ourselves. Have we not often felt and known that seeds from God have fallen on (a) the outside of careless hearts: that we have let them lie there uncared for, till in a week, a day, an hour, we have looked for them, and lo! they were gone? They had no hold on us, and were carried away without our making any resistance or effort to keep them. (b) Again, we have received other seed easily, perhaps gladly. We have not been hard, we have even been soft-hearted, emotional, enthusiastic; yet, withal with no steady resolve, no resolute conflict with evil thoughts, no quiet endurance; beneath the soft surface there was a rock of hard selfishness, and so the seed grew with a feverish growth, but lacking depth of soil, and moisture, it soon withered away. (c) Or, again, the plant of God's sowing may be most surely choked and killed; and it will, if we do not see that the space round each seed is free. We all have our cares; we cannot change our place, but we can see that the seed is allowed free growth. However men may be divided, each of us has all the soils in his heart, and he has the sower always with him. God's ministers may preach, His Bible may teach, but it is within that the true Word of Words is sounding. Though the corn may have failed, He will sow other; He neither faints nor is weary. Whatever resists is not from Him, but from the enemy. When we learn not to harden our hearts against the blessed influences of His Holy Spirit, then all barrenness and failure will cease. F. J. A. Hort, * Village Sermons. Luke 8:11 * Speaking of the Norfolk peasantry and their vein of coarseness, Dr. Jessopp, in The Trials of a Country Parson, concludes that it is idle to remonstrate. 'You might as well preach of duty to an antelope If you want to make any impression or exercise any influence for good upon your neighbours, you must take them as you find them, and not expect too much of them. You must work in faith, and you must work upon the material that presents itself. "The sower soweth the word." The mistake we commit so often is in assuming that because we sow which is our duty therefore we have a right to reap the crop and garner it. 'It grows to guerdon afterdays.' References. VIII. 11. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 190. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 44. C. E. Beeby, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 331. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p. 82. VIII. 11-15. R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, p. 14. VIII. 12. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. i. p. 121. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1459. Seed Among Thorns Luke 8:14 The three different instances of failure in this parable represent to us: I. The seed carried off at the very beginning, before it has sunk into the ground and before it has had time to germinate. The picture of my text is that of a man who in a real fashion has accepted the Gospel, but who has accepted it so superficially as that it has not exercised upon him the effect that it ought to produce, of expelling from him the tendencies which may become hindrances to his Christian life. If we have known nothing of 'the expulsive power of a new affection,' and if we thought it was enough to cut down the thickest and tallest thorn-bushes, and to leave all the seeds and the roots of them in our hearts, no wonder if, as we get along in life, they grow up and choke the Word. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,' that is just putting into a sentence the lesson of my text. II. Note the growth of the thorns. Luke employs a very significant phrase. He says: 'When they have heard, they go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life'. That is to say, the path of daily life upon which we all have to walk will certainly stimulate the growth of the thorns if these are not rooted out. As surely as we are living, and have to go out into the world day by day, so surely will the thorns grow if they are left in us. Let us make certain that we have cast out the thorns. There is an old German proverb, the vulgarity of which may be excused for its point. 'You must not sit near the fire if your head is made of butter.' We should not try to walk through this wicked world without making very certain that we have stubbed the thorns out of our hearts. III. Lastly, mark the choking of the growth. Of course it is rapid, according to the old saying, 'Ill weeds grow apace'. You cannot grow two crops on one field. It must be one thing or another, and we must make up our minds whether we are going to cultivate corn or thorn. Our text tells us that this man, represented by the seed among thorns, was a Christian, did and does bear fruit, but, as Luke says, 'brings no fruit to perfection'. Is not that a picture of so many Christian people? They are Christian men and Christian women bringing forth many of the fruits of the Christian life, but the climax is somehow or other always absent. The pyramid goes up many stages, but there is never the gilded summit flashing in the light, 'No fruit to perfection'. A. Maclaren, The Baptist Times and Freeman, vol. li. p. 155. References. VIII. 14. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 66. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 168. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 208. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 448. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 236. Patience with Slow Growth Luke 8:15 This is part of our Lord's description of the growth of Divine life in the human soul and in the world. If it were not for this allusion to patience with slow growth, we might have imagined that after once receiving the germ of new life in our hearts, we need not expect anything more than the easy, natural, and swift development of it. But here we are reminded that, as a matter of fact, we need patience in regard to it: and this is the point towards which we shall direct our attention. I. Let us first consider the need there is for the patience referred to in the text. Patience is not indifference; it is not self-contentment, it is not religious indolence it is self-control in presence of disappointment, suffering, temptation, and seeming failure. It is the capacity to hold ourselves in calmness when our adversary is scorning us: it is the steady resolve which attempts new effort, and hopes for better things even when all seems to be against us for evil. There are few things more likely to bring about failure, whether in the spiritual life or in any other kind of life, than the expectation of failure. We may be helped to resist the temptation to inpatience by the reflection that as a rule what is slowest in reaching its end is highest in nature, grandest in result. You might almost measure the value of an effect produced by the length of time taken to produce it. As the loftiest moral nature is higher than the loftiest mental gift, so its attainment is slower. II. Let us turn our thoughts to the occasions for patience. (1) Our first application of it shall be to the development of our own Christian character, which is likened to seed, springing upward and rooting downward, appearing first as the blade, then as the ear and afterwards as the full corn in the ear bringing forth fruit with patience. I can imagine that some get to be disheartened because they do not now seem to make the progress that they did at the beginning. In the first realisation they had of Christ's love and ownership, they abandoned certain practices and changed very considerably their mode of life, but now there is not much alteration from year to year. They should remember that then they had to deal with what was lower, and therefore more swiftly attained; whereas now they are concerned with what is higher, and in it they ought not to be discouraged if only the heart is right and the aim is straight and the love to God is true, for already a process is set up which in God's good time shall conform them to the image of Christ. (2) Apply this to our work for the Master. We are working, remember, in the higher sphere where results are more slowly reached, and are less easily tabulated! (3) I would venture to apply this thought still more broadly. It may give us cheer when we are downcast about Christ's work in general. Christ is patient with the world, and would have us patient too; ploughing, sowing, working, praying, believing that a harvest will come at last, and that we shall see issues by-and-bye which we never saw or even expected here. A. Rowland, Open Windows and other Sermons, p. 144. References. VIII. 15. H. Alford, Sermons on Christian Doctrine, p. 150. F. B. Woodward, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 158. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 287. VIII. 16. Ibid., p. 459. Luke 8:17 Compare Lord Bacon's phrase, in The Advancement of Learning, about 'the inseparable propriety of time, which is evermore to disclose truth'. Reference. VIII. 17. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 381. The Transiency of the Unreal Luke 8:18 These words are the climax of Christ's discriminating study of those who listened to His Gospel. He has been explaining to His disciples the parable of the seed and the soil, and has told of the different classes to whom His Evangel comes and who receive it with such diverse result. In view of the dark possibility there is of men hearing and receiving His Word in such wise as to bring forth no abiding fruit in holiness of life and character, He warns them to take heed how they hear, and expresses in these sentences the inevitable end of a mere profession which is not verified in actual possession and present experience. There is a law which governs the permanence of all things in the realm of the moral and spiritual just as on lower planes. The real alone is abiding, the unreal is only transient And this is the lesson which the Saviour enforces when He declares that that which a man only seems to have shall inevitably be taken away from him. I. He is not here declaiming against mere hypocrisy, but is rather warning those who are in danger of self-deception. The hypocrite is one who endeavours to deceive others, but there are many who, though they are far from having such a desire, are nevertheless being themselves deceived as to the reality of the things which they imagine themselves to possess. Reality is one of the keynotes of the Gospel, nor is it too much to say that Christ sets greater store on reality in His followers than on any other possible attitude of heart. For reality conditions all things else, and He is ever seeking for the man who honestly 'willeth to do His will'. Such an one cannot but abide for ever. Whatever be the cause of self-deception, it is certain that a man's seeming possessions will be taken away from him. This law operates with regard to things material and spiritual alike, and it is only a matter of time and experience for a man to stand before his own conscience, naked and miserable, and blind and poor. 1. For life is made up of occasions of test, first among which are the tests of duty by which a man is tried. He imagines himself to be strong to do the right, but his strength is in reality only a sense which has grown within him by reason of the lack of test Swiftly and suddenly the imperative voice of duty demands the application of the principles of Christ of which he has always thought himself to be master, on some level of life, to some phase of conduct, or regarding some attitude toward men and things, and he suddenly discovers that he is unable to obey the dictates of God and of conscience. The things which he seemed to have are suddenly taken from him. Blessed is the man who in that hour of self-discovery betakes him to the place of forgiveness and renewal, there to exchange that which has profited not for the true and abiding riches. 2. Again, a time of crisis or of special need testa the reality of our spiritual possessions. 3. And then, again, it is certain that a man's seeming possessions will be taken from him when face to face with death. And if this be true of the portal, what can be said of that which follows in the Presence-chamber the Judgment? Reality alone will endure the trial of the revealing fire, and all the wood, hay, and stubble which has been painted to represent 'gold, silver, and precious stones' will be consumed. In the face of these things how important it is therefore that we assure ourselves as to the reality of our hold upon and by the things of abiding worth! J. Stuart Holden, The Pre-Eminent Lord, p. 51. Seeming to Have Luke 8:18 You will observe that when our Lord speaks of the man who seems to have, He is not referring to the hypocrite. The hypocrite deceives others, not himself. But this is a case of genuine self-deception. The man is not practising trickery on anybody. There are things that a man may imagine that he has, and Jesus says he only seems to have them. I. There is probably no one of us, in pew or pulpit, but is giving himself credit for what he does not possess. Can we detect the causes of this delusion? (1) The first and the most innocent of all is inexperience. In all inexperience there is a seeming to have, which the rough and pushing world helps to dispel. (2) Again, this strange deception is intimately connected with self-love. We seem to have much that we do not really have, simply because we love ourselves so well. In all love, even the very purest, there is a subtle and most exquisite flattery. (3) Often, again, we imagine we possess, because of the pressure of the general life around us. There is always the danger of mistaking for our own the support we get from the society we move in. And it is only when that external pressure is removed that we discover how we only seemed to have. Sooner or later, as our life advances, we shall have our eyes opened to these fond delusions. II. What are God's commoner methods for making clear to us what we only seem to have. (1) One of the commonest of them all is action. We learn what we possess by what we do. There are powers within each of us waiting to be developed; there are dreams within each of us waiting to be dispelled, and it is by going forward in the strength of God that we learn our limitation and our gift. (2) This, too, is one great gain of life's variety. It shows us what is really our own. We are tested on every side as life proceeds, and every mood and change and tear is needed, if we are to be wakened to what we seem to have. (3) And if life fails, remember death is left. There will be no delusions concerning our possessions when our eyes open on that eternal dawn. III. The words might apply even to those we love. Is it not true, in the realm of the affections, that sometimes we have and sometimes we seem to have. We are thrown into close relationship with others; we are bound to them with this tie and with that. We call them friends; we think we love them, perhaps. Is it real, or is it only seeming? Nothing can tell that but the strum of life, and the testing of friendship through its lights and shadows. Nothing can tell that finally but death. G. H. Morrison, Sun-Rise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, p. 114. Prayerful Hearing Luke 8:18 In his sermon entitled 'Take heed how ye hear,' J. M. Neale has the following passage: 'Did it ever strike you that how ye hear and what ye hear depends to a certain extent on yourselves? You knew, for example, all of you, when you first got up this morning that I was going to preach to you this evening. Did any one of you, either then or at any time today, ask God that what I said might be blessed to you? I might say what Joseph said to Pharaoh: "It is not in me; God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace". See how St. Paul asks those to whom he was writing to pray for him. "For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through through what through your prayers". We can do or say nothing of ourselves, however hard we try, whereas, if God helps us what then? Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 92. References. VIII. 18. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 1. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 188. H. C. Beeching, Seven Sermons to Schoolboys, p. 73. T. Barker, Plain Sermons, p. 109. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 282. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 245. Desert Flowers Luke 8:21 St. Jerome sent to his friend Heliodorus a tender and eloquent letter, pleading for his return to the desert from Aquileia, where the young officer had adopted the family of his widowed sister. 'Ah!' wrote Jerome, 'I am not insensible to the ties by which you will plead that you are held back. My breast, too, is not of iron, nor my heart of stone; I was not begotten of the rocks of Caucasus; the milk I sucked was not that of Hyrcanian tigresses. I also have gone through similar trials. I picture to myself your widowed sister hanging about your neck, and trying to detain you with caresses; and your old nurse, and the tutor who had all a father's anxieties over you, telling you they have not long to live, and begging you not to leave them till they die; and your mother, with wrinkled face and withered bosom, complaining of your desertion. The love of God, and the fear of hell, easily break through such bonds as these! 'You will say the Holy Spirit bids us obey our parents. Yes; but He teaches also that he who loves them more than Christ, loses his own soul.... "My mother and my brethren," He says, "are they who do the will of my Father which is in heaven." If they believe in Christ, let them encourage you to go forth and fight in His name; if they do not believe "let the dead bury their dead".... O desert, blooming with the flowers of Christ. O wilderness, where are shaped the stones of which the city of the great King is built! O solitude, where men converse familiarly with God! What are you doing among the worldly, O Heliodorus, you who are greater than all the world? How long shall the cover of roofs weigh you down; how long shall the prison of the smoking city confine you? 'Do you fear poverty? But Christ calls the poor blessed. Are you frightened at the prospect of labour? But no athlete is crowned without sweat. Are you thinking about daily food? But faith fears not hunger. Do you dread to lay your fasting body on the bare ground? But Christ lies beside you. Do the tangled locks of a neglected toilet shock you? But your head is Christ. Your skin will grow rough and discoloured without the accustomed bath, but he who is once washed by Christ needs not to wash again. And, in fine, listen to the Apostle, who answers all your objections, 'The sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory which shall be revealed in us'. You are too luxurious, my brother, if you wish both to enjoy yourself here with the world and afterwards to reign with Christ. Does the infinite vastness of the wilderness terrify you? Walk in spirit through the land of Paradise, and while your thoughts are there, you will not be in the desert.' E. L. Cutts, Saint Jerome, p. 41. References. VIII. 21. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 288. VIII. 22. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 377. VIII. 22-25. J. P. Lange, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 370. VIII. 25 H. Allen, Penny Pulpit, No. 1596, p. 163. VIII. 26-40. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 270. VIII. 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 778. VIII. 35. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v. p. 145. J. S. Maver, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 252. Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 80. VIII. 36. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. pp. 213, 216. Religious Use of Excited Feelings Luke 8:38-39 In his sermon on 'The Religious Use of Excited Feelings,' based on this text, J. H. Newman says: 'Let not these visitings pass away "as the morning cloud of early dew". Surely you must still have occasional compunctions of conscience for your neglect of Him. Your sin stares you in the face; your ingratitude to God affects you. Follow on to know the Lord, and to secure His favour by acting upon these impulses; by them He pleads with you, as well as by your conscience; they are the instruments of His spirit, stirring you up to seek your true peace. Nor be surprised, though you obey them, that they die away; they have done their office, and if they die, it is but as blossom changes into the fruit, which is far better. They must die. Perhaps you will need to labour in darkness afterwards, out of your Saviour's sight, in the home of your own thoughts, surrounded by sights of this world, and showing forth His praise among those who are cold-hearted. Still be quite sure that resolute, consistent obedience, though unattended with high transport and warm emotion, is far more acceptable to Him than all those passionate longings to live in His sight, which look more like religion to the uninstructed. At the very best these latter are but the graceful beginnings of obedience, graceful and becoming in children, but in grown spiritual men indecorous, as the sports of boyhood would seem in advanced years. Learn to live by faith, which is a calm, deliberate, rational principle, full of peace and comfort, and sees Christ, and rejoices in Him, though sent away from His presence to labour in the world. You will have your reward. He will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.' Waiting for Christ Luke 8:40 Why did they not go on? There were plenty of them, a hundred men or a thousand; why did they wait for another man? We pay unconscious tributes to the Son of God. To be waited for is a creed, a faith, an uprising and an outgoing of the soul, a testimony rich as blood, quivering and tender as anxious love. 'They were all waiting for Him.' He was but one, why wait? why not proceed? We know why; the heart always knows why. There is a great gathering in the church, and every attendant has flowers in her hand or his hand; there is a light on every face, there is a subtle joy thrilling the air: why do these people wait? why does the priest tarry? why do all the attendants look at one another? Because the bride has not yet arrived. What, waiting for one woman? Ay! If thou, poor fool, couldst read life aright, that is life waiting for one, the other one, the completing one, the vital one. I was sitting in a great hall thronged with some five thousand enthusiasts: why did we not go on? Because he had not yet come. Sitting immediately in front of me was Henry Rogers, the famous Edinburgh reviewer, and a great critic and philosopher; and turning round, he said, 'Now we are all ready for the great man'. Rogers himself was immeasurably the greatest man in that assembly, but he, too, was waiting, and presently the whole air rent with a thrilling cheer, a noise of gladness, for John Bright came up the platform stairs and passed to the chairman's side. Now! Why not an hour ago? The magnetic presence was wanting, and the magnetic touch was waited for; no other man could take up just the position which that man was about to assume; when he came, beat the drum, wave the red banner, for the man for whom we have been waiting is face to face with us, and we shall catch his solemn music in a moment. They all waited for Christ. I. 'They were all waiting for Him.' So shall it be one day with the whole earth. The earth has always been waiting for some one, not knowing the name, and being quite unable to give expression to its own aspirations and mystic desires. What makes you uneasy today? Because he has not come. Who has not come? I do not know, but the mysterious pronoun, the being that is always alluded to rather than specifically indicated. A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you. Has He not sent one? He has sent a hundred, but not the one. We are thankful for Moses and the prophets and the great singing ones, the minstrels of Israel, but I am expecting another one that shall gather them all up into a personality more majestic than anyone of themselves could sustain. Are you sure He is coming? Certainly. What makes you so certain? My soul. There is an aching heart that means to prophesy, there is a broken sob that is a fragment of a song; and we know, without being able to tell psychologically and literally why, that there is another coming, always coming, must come; the circle is nearly complete, one more turning of the compasses, and it will be beautiful as the circle of a completed desire and completed love. II. There has always been a great expectation of another coming one, some one who can interpret the waiting of the world; some man of rare genius who understands what it is the poor dumb world wants, and is looking about for and is quite sure will come, but does not know when he will come; he may come now, or as a thief in the night, or like a flash of lightning, or like an unforetold impression upon the soul. The isles shall wait for his law. There is not a soul that is fully satisfied, but it is to be satisfied tomorrow; it may be satisfied in the dawn, or it may have to wait until sultry midday, or it may be taxed in patience until the gathering shades of the sunset, but tomorrow it will be satisfied, or tomorrow the other morrow, throbbing, coming, pledged, if God so will. There is a great cry going up from the brokenhearted and disappointed world, saying, Who will show us any good? III. The congregation that waits for Christ is never disappointed; the congregation that waits for anyone but Christ ought never to be gratified. If we wait for Christ, He will come to us; for He knows that we are waiting for Him, and He knows everything, He never breaks His word. 'Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst.' He is there before they are; He only waits to be manifested, revealed, and set in concrete and unmistakable figure and emphasis; He is there all the time. Said John the Baptist, 'There standeth one among you whom you know not; He it is'. The people had been looking to the horizon when they should have been looking at the man who was standing next to them. God is nearer than we often suppose, and His satisfactions are prepared before our desires are formulated. Joseph Parker, C ity Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 108. References. VIII. 40. J. Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 108. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliv. No. 2593. VIII. 41. Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 309. VIII. 41, 49. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 276. Luke 8:42 Oh! it is a distressing thing to see children die. A dying child is to me one of the most dreadful sights in the world. A dying man, a man dying on the field of battle, that is a small sight; he has taken his chance; he has had his excitement, he has had his glory, if that will be any consolation to him; if he is a wise man, he has the feeling that he is doing his duty by his country and by his Queen. It does not horrify or shock me to see a man dying in a good old age. But it does shock me, it does make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child die. From a speech of Charles Kingsley at a Sanitary Association. References. VIII. 42. C. S. Robinson, Simon Peter, p. 196. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 358. VIII. 42-48. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. liii. No. 3020. VIII. 43. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 456. VIII. 43, 44. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2018. VIII. 43-48. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 242. VIII. 45. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 201. C. Stanford, Symbols of Christ, p. 205. Nobody, Somebody, Everybody Luke 8:47 Here is a story beautiful as it is blessed, the story of how nobody became somebody, and how somebody became everybody. I. First then, Nobody. The story opens with the picture of a woman not important enough to have a name. Poor and feeble, she comes before us thrust hither and thither in a crowd. And this woman was enfeebled by twelve long years of sickness. She was poor, wretchedly poor. The very sympathy of those about her had spent itself. How many there are in a like evil case who seem to have everything against them, who are shut off from all help, look where they will. II. But now let us turn to the second chapter of our story, Somebody. We see again this feeble woman wasted and wearied by being pushed and hustled to and fro in the crowd, all unable to hold her own amongst the press. Then suddenly some happy chance brings her close to Jesus. Without a moment's delay, or the opportunity will be lost, she thrusts forth a trembling hand and touches the hem of His garment. Instantly she feels the healing virtue flowing like a tide of new life within her, and she is whole. But see, Jesus stops, and the host of people stand still. ' Somebody hath touched Me.' So then this poor nobody was somebody now; somebody. He who felt the touch read with infallible love all that it meant. III. Everybody. Look at her at His feet where Jairus had been, she, the poor wasted woman in the place of the ruler of the synagogue! As they stood, and watched, and listened, they saw Him, the Almighty Prophet, lay His hands upon her tenderly, and He said, 'Daughter, be of good comfort'. It fell like healing balm upon her timid soul. 'Be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace.' Now is it indeed as if she were everybody thus to have His tender recognition of her, to hear His benediction, to feel His virtue healing her, to have the blessing of His touch and the sweetness of such a name from His lips, and to go away as into an atmosphere that He has charmed and hallowed. Everything about the Lord Jesus, everything that He said, and everything that He did, and everything that is said of Him, reveals to us this separate and individual love. All that religion really means is a separate, personal work, or it is nothing at all. M. G. Pearse, The Gentleness of Jesus, p. 67. References. VIII. 47. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2019. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 222. VIII. 48. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 359. VIII. 49. C. Stanford, Symbols of Christ, p. 233. VIII. 50. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 245. The Weapon of Ridicule Luke 8:53 It is of ridicule, in some of its aspects and suggestions, that I wish to speak. I. Now the first thing which I want you to observe is how often Jesus was assailed with ridicule. When a man is loved, his nature expands and ripens as does a flower under the genial sunshine. When a man is hated, that very hate may brace him as the wind out of the north braces the pine. But when a man is ridiculed, only the grace of heaven can keep him courteous and reverent and tender; and Jesus Christ was ridiculed continually. Men ridiculed His origin. Men ridiculed His actions. Men ridiculed His claims to be Messiah. II. Nor should we think that because Christ was Christ He was therefore impervious to ridicule. On the contrary, just because Christ was Christ He was most keenly susceptible to its assault. It is not the coarsest but the finest natures that are most exposed to the wounding of such weapons, and in the most sensitive and tender heart scorn, like calumny, inflicts the sorest pain. Probably it is thus we may explain why ridicule is most keenly felt when we are young. 'He was one of those sarcastic young fellows,' says Thackeray of young Pendennis, 'that did not bear a laugh at his own expense, and of all things in the world feared ridicule most'; and Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the enthusiasms of his own boyhood, said, 'At that time I feared ridicule more than I have ever done since'. III. It is notable, too, that Christ was laughed to scorn because the people failed to understand Him. The same truth meets us in the story of Pentecost, as we read it in the vivid narrative of Acts. There also, on the birthday of the Church, we light on ridicule, and there also it is the child of ignorance. IV. We must appraise ridicule at its true value. It is not always the token of superior cleverness. It is far oftener the mark of incapacity. You cannot refute a sneer, said Dr. Johnson; but if you cannot refute it, at least you can despise it. Of course I am aware that in a world like this there is a certain work for ridicule to do. So long as shams and pretensions are abroad, a little gentle ridicule is needed. A jest is sometimes the wisest of all answers, and a little raillery the best of refutations. I should like to say also to those who are tempted to see only the ridiculous side of things, that perhaps in the whole gamut of the character there is nothing quite so dangerous as that. When we take to ridiculing all that is best and worthiest in others, by that very habit we destroy the power of believing in what is worthiest in * ourselves. * G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p. 256. Reference. VIII. 64. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 381. Healing the Sick Luke 9:2 It is the pressing task of the Christian Church to see, first, that the faith of Christ shall not be reduced to mere philanthropy; secondly, that it shall earnestly appropriate all that is good in human life, and animate, elevate, and enlarge it by making it the expression of Christian faith and love. The particular good in human life to which we shall now apply Christian principles is the noble work of healing the sick. I. The healing of the sick as a part of the ideal mission of the Christian Church. Healing the sick was a part of Christ's work on earth, not as a disconnected marvel, but in necessary and organic connection with the moral and spiritual redemption He came to effect. He healed the sick, not by superior medical knowledge, nor by supernatural power acting independently of human moral conditions, but through the energy of moral and spiritual forces. He confined His miraculous work within a limited sphere, and within that limit there were still further limits to its exercise. So, even if the Church had been able to continue His work on all its sides, it would not have meant the complete abolition of sickness. The work of healing the sick would continue to be definitely limited by deeper moral and spiritual conditions. Only a perfected moral humanity can bring the entire abolition of disease. II. The relation which the Church should sustain to the general art of healing. There ought to be a peculiarly close and active relation between the Church and medical science and art. It is of very great importance both for Christian principle and for the general elevation of humanity that medical science and art should not become materialistic and atheistic. We ought not to rest until we have completely Christianised medicine, have imbued it with the Spirit of Christ, and made it the bounteous handmaid of the Church. In order to accomplish this there lie before us three duties of pressing importance: (1) We must hold fast and earnestly teach the truth that the moral cannot be divorced from the physical healing of man without grievous injury to both, for it is the spiritual man that gives worth, dignity, and grandeur to all besides. (2) We must earnestly strive to imbue the medical profession with the Christian spirit and Christian ideas. (3) We must see to it that there shall be no poor sufferer lying unhealed for lack of the love and practical sympathy of Christian people. III. The course of our thought must ere this have impressed upon us the sanity and humaneness of the Christian view and treatment of the human body. The Christian conception of a complete life is that of a great dominating spirit in a vigorous and responsive body. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 37. References. IX. 1. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 74. IX. 2. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 17. J. H. Jowett, British Congregationalist, 5th Sept. 1907, p. 198. IX. 2-6. Bishop Stubbs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 152. The Missionary for Today Luke 9:6 For a double curse there must be a double cure. That prince of African missionaries, Dr. Robert Moffat, in laying the foundation of the Livingstone Medical Missionary Memorial in Edinburgh in 1877, uttered these words: 'I have often said, and I say it again, that a missionary is a good thing, and anyone who knows his work will say so; but a medical missionary is a missionary-and-a-half or, rather, I should say, a double missionary'. I. Medical Missions Their Origin and History. The Bible is the oldest medical journal in the world. Far back in Old Testament story we see traces of medical missionary work, for we read that Elijah and Elisha were healers as well as prophets and teachers. But the greatest of all medical missionaries and the perfect model for all time was our Divine Master, Jesus Christ. After Christ came the Apostles, who faithfully carried on the healing work which He had so nobly inaugurated. It is evident, then, that preaching and healing were old-time allies; but, unfortunately, the alliance was dissolved for centuries, and the kingdom of Christ suffered incalculable loss. II. Medical Missions Their Object. (1) One object in view is bodily healing. Men are not disembodied spirits; and Christian philanthropists are just beginning to realise this fact. (2) Another, and far nobler object, which the medical Evangelist has in view is spiritual healing. All the medical work is preparatory for, and subsidiary to, the higher work of soul salvation. III. Medical Missions Their Authority. (1) We find our authority in the special command of Jesus Christ: 'And He sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick' a beautiful union of the two ministrations. (2) We also find our authority for medical missions in the noble example of Christ ' Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses'. IV. Medical Missions The Crying Necessity for Them. V. Medical Missions Their Positive Advantages. (1) The medical missionary has a fine opportunity of teaching the heathen the preciousness of human life. (2) The medical missionary has a fine opportunity of shaking the confidence of the heathen in their charms and superstitions. (3) The medical missionary has a wonderful power of removing agelong hatreds and prejudices. (4) The medical missionary has an unrivalled opportunity of winning the confidence and affection of the heathen. George Eliot once wisely said: 'The tale of the Divine pity-was never yet believed from lips which had not first been moved by human pity'. VI. Medical Missions Their Perils. (1) It is a dangerous experiment to send out unqualified men as medical missionaries. (2) Another peril which has to be guarded against the Evangelist must not sink himself in the Physician. VII. Medical Missions Their Wonderful Success. The story of the medical Evangelist reads more like a romance than a page of sober history. J. Ossian Davies, The Dayspring from on High, p. 132. References. IX. 6. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 398. IX. 10-17. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 254. IX. 11. Bishop Wilberforce, Sermons , p. 24. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 889; vol. xxvii. No. 1624. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 260. Luke 9:13 God requires no man to do, without ability to do; but He does not limit His requirement by the measures of previous or inherently contained ability. In many, or even in a majority of cases, the endowment of power is to come after the obligation, occurring, step by step, as the exigencies demand.... All the pillars of the Church are made out of what would be weeds in it, if there were no duties assumed above their ability in the green state of weeds. And it is not the weeds whom Christ will save but the pillars. No Christian will ever be good for anything without Christian courage, or, what is the same, Christian faith. Take upon you readily, have it as a law to be always doing great works; that is, works that are great to you; and this is the faith that God so clearly justifies, that your abilities will be as your works. With your five loaves and two fishes He will show you a way to feed thousands. Horace Bushnell. References. IX. 18. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 43. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 39. IX. 18-27. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. v. p. 4. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 271. IX. 21. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 193. IX. 22. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 122. The Law of Self-denial Luke 9:23 I have seen the face of a high-souled and sensitive teacher colour with the deep flush of a young girl in her moment of keen feeling when he was compelled to censure a slothful student. The face of Christ was flushed with pain when He uttered His words of rebuke to Peter, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan'. Jesus did not love to utter reproach. His usual method of rebuke was by a silent look. For that reason He turns at once from the ashamed man and begins to speak to them all. He will no longer emphasise his fault. And He is well aware that the mind which was in Peter was in all his fellow-disciples, and would require to be purged out of every man who would come after Him. He lays down that law of self-denial which is the primary law of the Cross. The Christian life presents itself in a full-orbed teaching under two contrasting aspects. In one aspect it is a life of liberty in Christ. It is the coming into full and lovely flower of the whole nature of man. Its keyword is not repression, but expression. Its method is culture, not restraint. Christ has come to give us life, 'life more abundantly'. It is a call to walk in the Spirit, and to live in that kingdom whose delights are righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Augustine states this truth in his great saying, 'The Christian law is to love, and to do as you please'. But in the other aspect it presents itself not as a liberty but as a captivity, not as a self-abandonment but as a self-control, not as an easy yoke but as a stern and ceaseless struggle. This contrast is to be found on every page of the New Testament. It is set down clearly in Christ's teaching, and it is illuminated by His life. Let me make this law clear by considering two points. Look, in the first place, at the spheres of the law of self-denial; and, in the second place, at the penalty of its refusal. 1. In the first place: * the spheres of the law of self-denial. * We must, to begin with, deny ourselves in the sphere of our natural appetites. There are appetites which are God-given, and, when wisely indulged, are God-blessed. We have the natural hunger for our daily food, a healthful longing for pleasant sights and sweet sounds, and all that ministers to our delight, a craving for rest when we are weary, and for recreation when we are jaded, and a longing for the satisfactions of the mind and the heart. As we grow older we thirst for recognition and influence and reward. From youth to age we crave to love and to be loved in return. These are all natural and innocent appetites, but every one of them must be controlled if our life is to be Christlike. The law operates with a sterner rigour in the subtler sphere of duty. The demand of duty may not fall upon our ears with so sharp a tone as the call to school our appetites, but it persists through all the hours, and exacts a more trying obedience. A third sphere in which this law must be obeyed is the sphere of service. Service is a continuous self-denial. Young hearts present themselves for the service of Christ in an hour of chivalrous devotion, but they do not walk far on in the way until they find the pressure of this law. I have seen a shadow fall upon the face of a man who was worn by nights of service he had given to Christ, when some other, who had sat beside his evening fire, was pouring forth the treasures of a full mind to the delight of all who heard him. He felt a keen pang as he realised his impoverishment. But there were many to whom that shadowed man was dear, to whom his very name was music, and I doubt not but that He, whom he had come after, had given him other rewards of his obedience to the law of self-denial. In the great day when the secrets of all hearts are revealed, he may be amazed to find how rich he is in the treasures laid up in heaven. Yet the cost is great. II. In the second place: the penalty of its refusal. 'If any man will come after Me,' said Jesus, laying down the penalty of the refusal of this law. We may think that we are following in His footprints. We may call ourselves by His name. We may be busy with the exposition of His thoughts. We may preach His Gospel. We may be melted to tears by our visions of His grace. But if we will not deny ourselves in all the spheres, up to the sphere of the Cross, we are not to be found in the company that follow Christ. We do not come after Him. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p. 96. Luke 9:23 It seems that Christian obedience does not consist merely in a few occasional efforts, a few accidental good deeds, or certain seasons of repentance, prayer, and activity, a mistake which minds of a certain class are very apt to fall into. This is the kind of obedience which constitutes what the world calls a great man, i.e. a man who has some noble points, and every now and then acts heroically, so as to astonish and subdue the minds of beholders, but who in private life has no abiding persona] religion, who does not regulate his thoughts, words, and deeds according to the law of God.... To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all, it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us. Newman. References. IX. 23. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 276. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 6. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 177. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p. 209. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iii. p. 32. J. Stuart, Baptist Times and Freeman, vol. lv. p. 3. A. H. Bradford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 127. A. Stewart, Eden and Gethsemane, p. 16. IX. 23-25. Len. G. Broughton, British Congregationalist, 11th Oct., 1906, p. 249. Luke 9:24 In his volume on Bushido, Dr. Nitobé quotes the following sayings of a seventeenth-century priest in Japan: '"Talk as he may, a Samurai who ne'er has died is apt in decisive moments to flee or hide". "Him who once has died in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of Tametono can pierce."' 'How near,' adds the author, 'we come to the portals of the temple whose Builder taught, * He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it!' * All really human persons want to give themselves away, at least for something, if not for somebody.... We may preach a prudential morality sometimes, because it seems so sane, and men are so selfish, ourselves included, we say; but we know very well that no man ever satisfied his soul with prudence with the sanest selfishness though many have tried. The only thing that can satisfy a human being is an object of devotion, not himself, for which he can feel it worthy of him to sacrifice himself without limit. No man is fully alive, who is not ready to die for something. The characteristic law of human life, as we feel it in our most vivid moments, is not self-preservation, but self-devotion passing into readiness for selfsacrifice. 'He that loseth his life for My sake' for some sake 'shall find it.' Dr. Sophie Bryant, Studies in Character, pp. 47, 146 f. References. IX. 24. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 278. IX. 25. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 333. Ashamed of Christ Luke 9:26 I can understand how men were ashamed of Christ as He moved about the villages of Galilee. Born in a humble and malodorous village, living in the deepest obscurity for thirty years, then suddenly appearing with a claim to be Messiah yet contradicting the warmest hopes of Israel, it is not to be wondered at that there was disappointment, and that many were ashamed of Jesus and His words. But the thing that is difficult to understand is how any man can be ashamed of Jesus now. The man who is ashamed credits that Christ is living and is energetic in human hearts today; and the mystery is how crediting all that, it should be possible to be ashamed of Christ. That it is possible every one of us knows, and it is on that strange possibility I wish to speak. I. First, then, about its revelation, about the way in which this shame of Christ betrays itself; and (1) the first feature that rises before me is concealment. When you are ashamed of a man you are ashamed of being openly seen with him; and as that is a feature of all shame between man and man, it is a mark of the man ashamed of Christ. (2) The second feature of all shame is silence. The feeling of shame whenever it is operative has a way of putting a seal upon the lips. (3) The third witness of shame lies in avoidance. II. What are the roots of this shame? Whence does it spring? It will be best to keep close to Scripture in our answer. (1) Sometimes we are ashamed of Christ through fear. We are ashamed as Nicodemus was. He came to Jesus by stealth and in the night-time, and he came so because he feared the Jews. (2) Again the cause of this shame may be social pressure. We may be ashamed of Christ as Simon Peter was. Peter sat by the fire in the courtyard, and they taunted him with his discipleship; and then the girl who kept the wicket recognised him, and every one present was antagonistic; and Peter denied his Lord Peter was ashamed of Him and the shame had its source in His society. (3) One other reason only would I mention, and that is intellectual pride. Men are ashamed of Christ because His message is so plain that the illiterate peasant can live by it and die by it. III. What are the remedies for this besetting shame? (1) Endeavour to realise who Jesus is. (2) And then endeavour to realise what Christ has done for you. When we once feel deeply all that we owe to Him, the black bat, shame, has flown. G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p. 20. Luke 9:26 The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue. R. L. Stevenson. References. IX. 26. S. A. Tipple, The Admiring Guest, p. 92. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 236. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p. 151. IX. 27 . Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 22. Ibid. vol. x. p. 191. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 372. IX. 28. Marcus Dods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 155. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 43. The Mount of the Transfiguration Luke 9:28-35 Mr. Robert Hichens says: 'The ascent of Mount Tabor is often omitted from the programme of visitors to Nazareth. I confess to having enjoyed it much more than any time spent in the town. Ever since the fourth century Mount Tabor has been claimed as the site of our Lord's transfiguration. On this account monasteries have been built there. The best authorities, however, think it improbable that the transfiguration took place there, as in our Lord's time the summit was crowned by a fortified town. Nevertheless, multitudes of pious pilgrims, heedless of authority, and intent only on earnest belief, with imaginations aflame, wind up among the little oaks, the terebinths, the bushes of sweet-scented syringa, the starry daisies and small scarlet poppies, singing hymns upon the way and ceasing only when they reach the plateau on the crest of the helmet-shaped hill where stands the Latin monastery. There they pause near the door of the little chapel, above which is boldly written: "Hic Filius Dei Dilectus Transfiguratus est". The good fathers at least have no doubts as to the sacredness of their strange and beautiful home, and their quiet certainty adds a flame to the fire of the devotees from far-off lands.' The Holy Land, pp. 128, 129. References. IX. 28, 29. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 384. IX. 28-31. D. Macleod, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 261. IX. 28-36. A. B. Davidson, Waiting upon God, p. 139. The Transfiguration Luke 9:29 I. Consider the transfiguration-glory in its relation to the inner life of Jesus Christ. Godet, that magnificent expositor, gives us a suggestion on this head which is as wonderfully beautiful as it is fruitful. He says that our Saviour had now arrived at the highest possible pinnacle of human attainment in the moral and spiritual domain. He had forced His way from point to point until He now reached the very gates of heaven: and now He stands on the glory-peak of a perfect human life, and the way of the eternal glory is open for Him to enter. This is true in Godet's suggestion: the transfiguration-glory means this, that if Jesus had been man and nothing more, only an individual fighting for His own hand, He had reached the point when, having victoriously perfected His life, He would have found the way open for Him into the eternal glory. But Jesus was more than an individual. He had not come simply to conquer for Himself. He had come to be the Saviour of the world, and so, even though he merited for Himself and in Himself the crown of glory then, yet that crown must not be seized by Him until He had entered the shadows of death, and brought others upward with Him into the glory. In this transfiguration-glory of Jesus Christ we have a picture of the way in which man would have entered into glory if he had not fallen. II. The next thought that presents itself for our consideration is, the transfiguration-glory in its relation to the passion of the cross. Now that Jesus has reached the height of personal victory, the time has come when as a Conqueror He must descend into the valley and into the darkness in order to fight the final battle on behalf of men. The mount reveals Him perfected for suffering; by the cross He will be perfected through suffering. III. The transfiguration-glory in its testimony to the sole authority and lordship of Jesus Christ. Now we have reached a point where we are compelled to see that Jesus is not in the same plane as other men. He stands absolutely alone. He is the one and only victor in a world of defeated men, the only one in human history that has ever won His way through unsullied holiness and gained the crown of transfiguration by unbroken triumph. Yes! but how do you account for such a man? There is only one explanation of Jesus, and it is this; that He was 'God manifest in the flesh'. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 213. The Metamorphic Power of Prayer Luke 9:29 It is in the study of our Lord as a Man of Prayer that we realise the blessedness, the potentiality of prayer. In every crisis of His experience He found inspiration and strength in prayer. He who, humanly speaking, needed prayer least, prayed most. And He was always in the spirit of prayer. I would have you consider the strength and inspiration of prayer from its practical side. I. It produces a calm, a contentment, a peace in our souls which the world cannot give. There are days of dull monotony, of depressing drudgery; there are days when our souls are vexed within us because of the hardness of the way. Then it is that the evil spirit of discontent strives to enter in and possess the heart, then it is we have need to fall on our knees in prayer and to cast all our * care upon Him. * II. Prayer engendereth courage. The prayer of Gethsemane preceded the courage of the judgment-hall, the victory of Calvary. What is the lesson? That, as for the Master, so for the disciple. Prayer braces the human spirit for the conflicts of life. III. But we learn from my text that there is a metamorphic power in prayer, that prayer transfigures. The face reveals the inward life. It is when our faces are turned heavenward day by day that the fashion of our countenance is changed. T. J. Madden, Tombs or Temples? p. 90. References. IX. 29. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 1. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 364. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p. 178. The Holy Mount of Prayer Luke 9:29-30 Prayer is the toilet of the mind, the bride of the heart, the key to things invisible. Jesus prayed, and, as He prayed, three wondrous things came to pass. I. There was a revelation of the unseen. The three who were with Jesus on the Mount saw, and felt, and heard the invisible. They became conscious of what Emerson calls 'the sweep of the celestial stream'. And is not the law of the spiritual life this that knowledge of unseen realities by the human soul is contingent upon the diligent practice of spiritual intercession? The man of mind may 'hitch his waggon to a star,' but the man who prays has fellowship with Him who makes the stars. II. There was a glorification of common things. Common things took on new forms of loveliness, and both nature and life revealed new splendours while He prayed. It is thus that prayer both hallows and transfigures all life's commonplaces. The exaltation of the ordinary to the sublime is characteristic of the Christian religion. Pope, in his preface to his translation of the Iliad, says, that Homer's poetry 'brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour'. And prayer, by which I mean reverence, sympathy, worship, adoration in the presence of the Supreme, can alone create that spiritual mood which in common things discovers the beauty of the Lord. III. There was a transfiguration of self. It is a law of science that environment influences life. It is also a law of the spiritual realm that associations colour personality. Looking unto Jesus will produce a new face, as well as fashion a new soul. Prayer has power to transform flesh as well as spirit. J. Flanagan, Man's Quest, p. 149. References. IX. 29. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 117. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 277. IX. 30. E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 388. IX. 30, 31. H. J. Bevis, Sermons, p. 279. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 286. IX. 31. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lard, p. 190. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 270. The Pre-requisite of Vision Luke 9:32 I. It is one mark of every great awakening that it reveals to us unexpected glories. When intellect is quickened and the feelings are moved; when the will is reinforced and conscience purified, the world immediately ceases to be commonplace, and clothes itself in unsuspected splendour. Do you think it is an idle figure of speech when we talk of the long sleep of the Middle Ages? Do you imagine that we are only using metaphor when we describe the Reformation as an awakening? I hardly think that we could speak more literally than when we use such simple terms as these. It was not till powers and faculties were quickened in the great movements of Renaissance and Reform that the clouds scattered and the blue heaven was seen. II. In spiritual awakening we find that the suggestion of our text arrests us. There are many glories which we never see till the call of our Lord has bidden us awake. (1) There is the Bible, for instance. It is one thing to feel the Bible's charm, and it is another thing to see the Bible's glory: and the glory of the Bible is a hidden glory, until a man is spiritually awake (2) Or think again of the life of our brother man. Underneath all life of passion and affection there are spiritual possibilities for the meanest, and not till the world is wakened by the Gospel are the hidden glories of humanity revealed. (3) And the same thing is true of our dear Lord Himself. We must be spiritually wakened if we would see His glory. It is only then that He reveals Himself, in the full and glorious compass of His grace. III. It is part of God's discipline with us in the years, that the years should waken us to see glories which once we missed. (1) The value of our college education is not the amount of raw knowledge which it gives us. True education is not meant to store us; true education is intended to awaken us; and the joy of the truly educated man is no poor pride in his superior knowledge: it is that he has been so wakened that in every realm and sphere he can see glories unobserved before. (2) Now if this be true of our schools and of our colleges, do you not think it holds also of God's education? It is a truth we should ever keep clear before us. But the deepest interpretation of the text is not of this world. It will come to its crown of meaning in eternity. G. H. Morrison, Surprise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, p. 290. Fully Awake Luke 9:32 Thus it must ever be. Most men are half-asleep, and they do not know it So they see nothing, and go home to tell nothing, and say, worst of all, that there was nothing to be seen. It is always so, and yet men complain that they have but little success in life. They have all the success they deserve. It would be surprising if some men had success. They are half-asleep; to put it more charitably, they are only half-awake, and they wonder when they hear what other people have seen. They do not believe it; they say that the other people have spoken in a tone of rhetorical exaggeration. Christianity is a fully-awake religion. It is no blurred dream, it is no shifting nightmare; it is a stand-up and fully-awake religion. That is the reason that so few people are religious. We speak of some men in business as being wideawake; it may be a great compliment, it may be a poor one; still, wakefulness may be the key of success. Watch everything. In order that we may watch there is a preliminary rule, and Jesus Christ laid it down; He said, 'Be sober'. The blurred eyes of a drunkard can see nothing. Be sober, be vigilant. You cannot alter this arrangement; this is the rhetoric of God. If we are not sober we shall make but poor watchmen, and the city gates will be violated by any enemy that cares to assail them. I. 'When they were fully awake they saw His glory.' The Christian religion is a challenge to the highest powers of the mind. The Christian religion waits until a man is fully awake, and then says, What of this, this vision, this revelation, this solution of what you call the social problem? O ye makers of toy words, india-rubber or alabaster words, with your social problems! The Gospel attacks man at his highest power, wakens him, stirs him up, says, 'Awake, thou that sleepest!' Christianity only addresses attentive people. It is because we are not awake that we see so little. Christianity has great messages to the intellect; the Christian Gospel is a wonderful and most pathetic appeal to the highest imagination of the soul. II. As the Gospel will have no half-awake assent, so the Gospel will have no half-awake service. It will not accept it; it repudiates it. Of course the most of people live under the delusion that business must be first attended to. Christ never said so; I have been with Him now some fifty odd years, and He never said to me, The first thing you have to do in the morning is to arrange all about the business of the day, lay it out, and then if you happen to have half an hour in the afternoon, come and meet Me in the sanctuary. Never! He is an austere Master, austere even when the tears are welling in His eyes. He says, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness'. 'But, Lord, my business must be attended to down in the City.' He said, Why? He takes all these things so calmly; He always took this whole creation, so far as we can see it, as a thing that was to be burned. You say, 'We must live'. Christ says, Why? who wants you to live? what necessity is there for you to live? at what cost are you going to live? and is it living if the cost exceed a certain value? is it not really suicide, self-slaughter. III. 'When they were fully awake.' The word 'fully' is in the Revised Version. We have in the Authorised Version 'awake,' in the Revised Version we have the 'fully,' bringing up the condition to the very highest efficiency. 'When they were fully awake,' and there was no mistake about the environment, 'they saw His glory,' and they saw a great perspective of law and prophecy, going back to the morning when the fountains of waters were opened, and the Lord set a bound to all habitable things. We have not seen this; in fact, we say, Now do you think on the whole that all these things in the Bible are really true? Not to you who ask the question in that dreary tone; there is nothing true to you; you are not true to yourself; you are shut out, and your place is in outer darkness. And yet my dear young Mends, my young men and temporary disciples, come to me and say that somebody has asked them if they think this miracle really did occur. Not to them; no miracle ever occurred to them. Why not? Because they are half-asleep; when they are fully awake they will have no difficulty about miracles. It is when the Lord is seen by eyes that are purged to see Him that the soul enters into full Sabbath-tide and into the whole festival of the Divine love. IV. Remember that this wakefulness is a duty. We have to stir ourselves. 'Stir up the gift that is in thee,' said the Apostle to the younger man; stir it up. There is so much to distract attention, to break it into two, to split it up into many, so that we can hardly give our whole soul to one continuous thought or prayer. The Apostle Peter said, speaking of this very incident of the text, in which he himself was concerned, 'We were eye-witnesses of His majesty'. And what if we have to wait for our full view of Christ until we have passed through the valley? 'When I am awake, my soul shall be satisfied when I behold Thy likeness; when I awake I am still with Thee. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vi. p. 84. References. IX. 32. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2658. IX. 33. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 42. IX. 34. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 1. IX. 34; 35. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p. 229. IX. 34-36. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 1. IX. 35. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 286. J. Learmount, The Examiner, 14th June, 1906, p. 580. IX. 36. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 389. IX. 38. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p. 308. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 462. IX. 39. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 210; ibid. vol. iv. p. 210; vol. viii. p. 189. IX. 42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No. 100; vol. xxix. No. 1746. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 211; ibid. vol. iv. p. 211. Rivalry and Service Luke 9:46-48 With a fearless candour, the Evangelists tell us that more than once the spirit of rivalry manifested itself among our Lord's disciples, and the first occasion is that of which the description has just been read to you. Christ calls upon His disciples to be voluntarily and deliberately what children are unconsciously. They are not to be self-seeking and self-asserting, like the grown children of this world, but meek and lowly of heart, not thinking of their relative rank and importance, but in singleness of heart giving themselves to the twofold service, that of each other and that of their King. In this sense the greatest of all in the Kingdom, the Head of the Kingdom Himself, was the humblest of all. I. It was New Teaching for the World that the meek were to inherit the earth, and that self-repression was a surer mark of worth than self-assertion. The Apostles of Christ, on whom that teaching had been so often, so emphatically impressed, placed it in the forefront of their ministry. Yet it is evident that the childlike spirit was not easy to develop, even in the first days, when hearts glowed with a newly-found peace and joy in believing. The Epistles speak in many places of a disappointing state of things, reveal to us jealousies and heart-burnings, assertions of superiority, factious efforts to gain the upper hand, and St. Paul has to insist again and again on the greatness of meekness and lowliness. The temper for which He pleads is the voluntary surrender of the individual for the common good. II. The Spirit at Work in Society To-day. Is it not disquieting, to say the least, to turn from such teaching to observe the spirit at work in the society of today? It has been well remarked that not only has humility fallen into disrepute, but even its place in the list of virtues has been questioned. As with humility in its political phase, so also with its social phase. Men ask themselves, 'Why should I be humble? Why should I even temporarily take up an attitude of subordination to another? Why should not my will, my wishes, my purposes prevail, or at least assert for themselves whatever place they can gain?' and the answer to be given to all these questions seems conclusive, even apart from the Christian motive. It is this: that civilised society would be impossible, or if possible would be intolerable, were it an arena from which conciliation was absent, and in which every man was fighting for his own end. III. The Place where we can Serve Best. To a man in whom the Spirit of Christ is at work, the humblest place is the highest if his heart tells him it is the place where he can serve best. It is a law which only a sincere faith can bow to and cheerfully live by, but the very severity of the law which makes service the highest dignity has a fascination for every noble nature. References. IX. 46-48. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 416. IX. 48. J. H. Jowett, British Congregationalist, 15th Aug. 1907, p. 138. The Providence of Time Luke 9:51 If we look carefully into things, we shall find that every matter is related to a plan, a method or scheme of life. Time has hitherto been treated in the sacred record almost with contempt; it is spoken of as so transient, so empty, and our very life as measured by time is as a post hastening on his way, is as a vapour rising up to be blown away by the wind. What is our life as measured by time? A breath, a gasp, nothingness. Yet here we have time elevated into a kind of significance and special importance. 'When the time was come:' cannot man hasten the time? That man can never do. Cannot man hasten the coming of the summer? Not by one hairsbreath. Is it not in the power of man to say to the snow, Be melted and flow away in fertilising rivers among the valleys and the meads and the fair gardens? The snow does not know the name of man. The Lord keeps all the great opportunities and appointments in His own hand, and He will not allow the most scientific and painstaking of us to interfere for one moment in the degree in which His providences shall ripen and take effect. I. This or that action, says the Divine Ruler, shall be done at such and such a time; it shall not be done one hour before the appointed moment; all the kings in the world cannot hasten the chariot-wheels one hairsbreadth; we simply have to stand still and see the Divine movement and watch the palpitations that make the very clouds of mystery alive as if a heart were throbbing within their folds. Jesus Christ was very careful in pointing out this matter of providential time, and so was the Apostle Paul. Jesus Christ said, 'Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come:' it may come at any moment, but that moment itself has not yet arrived; we must not forestall or anticipate. Jesus Christ was ready to show the world all His miracles; He was prepared from eternity with all the wonders which were to accompany the Messianic reign. Yet Jesus Christ waited for the moment, Jesus Christ tarried for the Divine will; Jesus Christ said, Mine hour is not yet come, I am watching, I am waiting, I am neither wishing nor praying, I am simply awaiting the ripening of time, the almost visible presence of the one moment that is critical and agonistic. We are too small to live as Jesus did; we can only hope and pray to live in the direction of His life, to show what we would be if we could but for this sense of death that outruns the summer and this sense of incompleteness that mocks our most aspiring ambition. II. Something is to be learned from the almost taunt with which Jesus Christ replied to the scribes and Pharisees upon one occasion; said He, 'Your hour is always ready'. That is the distinction between philosophy and impatience or ignorance. Your hour is always available; it came from nowhere, and it is not going anywhere in particular; it is something that comes and goes bubble-like, but how it rose, how it burst, and how it was forgotten are matters of no concern to the sorrowing heart of the world. You have no forethought, no afterthought, no sense of the relation, fitness, and spiritual music of things; so you can at any moment do what you want to do, only the thing you want to do is not worth doing, because it goes not back into the eternal or forward into the everlasting. III. The Apostle Paul also made observations upon this matter of moments of time. Said he, in 1 Corinthians iv. 5, 'Judge nothing before the time'. If we could be kept to that rule what generous judgments we would often pronounce! We should be no longer censorious, vengeful, resentful; we should wait for the signal from heaven. When all is known much will be forgiven. You cannot even in your confession tell your priest everything. Even when you think you have emptied your memory of its last recollection you have not begun the real story. Your words are not understood because you cannot explain yourself; if you are charged with this or that sin or offence, it may be broad black crime, you cannot always tell exactly and exhaustively how it came to be; you would have to go over the centuries and dig up your grandsires and call them as living witnesses to say what lives they lived. There is a descent of poison, there is an old, old acridness traceable two centuries since or ten centuries ago. Beware of ill-timed judgments; beware of hasty speeches upon other men's conduct; beware of that foul Pharisee who thanks God that he is not as this publican. When the two histories are searched into and lifted up into the light, what if the publican have the crown and the Pharisee be not in the broad heaven at all? Therefore judge nothing before the time. Wait another moment; by the next post we may get the explanation; in a moment more the light may flash. Great things are done in great moments. 'Let there be light,' and there was light; no chronometer could measure the distance between the fiat Lux! and the shining glory. Judge nothing before the time. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 59. The Appointed Time Luke 9:51 Is not every time alike? Is there a ripening ministry proceeding in nature and in the affairs of men? Is there any poetry in the clock? May we not strike our own hours? What is the meaning of this continual allusion to punctual moments, points of time, the analysis of hours, the waiting, the watching, the flying, the word of command as to time and arrangement? Can we not do things just when we like? Certainly not. Why not? Because we are not atheists. There is a providence of moments; everything is settled, defined, delimited, and is to be known at the altar. We are impatient because we are small; the humming-top goes round sooner than the sun. There is a religion of magnitude; the velocity of every planet is determined and the fall of every sere leaf is known; not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father. Is this the teaching of Jesus Christ? This is pre-eminently the doctrine which Jesus Christ laid down and upon which Jesus Christ acted; He did nothing roughly He moved step by step according to the footfall of the Divine going. 'Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.' Is there a coming of hours? are there jubilee days and victory moments? has the summer a birth-time? is she calendared and scheduled among the expected and certain visitors? does she come regularly? is there a punctual moment in which summer, the daughter of the skies, is born? 'Mine hour is not yet come.' I. And Jesus said, 'Father, the hour is come.' Do you recognise this? The same voice of patience; it has lost its reproving accent. 'Woman, what have 1 to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come:' a whispered rebuke, a censure amid the wedding favours and confectioneries and wines; then years after, 'Father, the hour is come' just come, it came a moment ago 'now glorify Thy Son'. Why not three years before, or thirty? The hour was not then come; now that the hour has come, let the glory flow. I would enter gratefully and reasonably into these mysteries of the economy and providence of time that I may chide myself with many a cutting rebuke for impatience and hurry, when I ought to have been tranquil with the calm of God. II. This makes life very solemn. This consideration, and all the issues that belong to it, should penetrate into our business calculations and arrangements and all our forecasts and vaticinations of things; specially ought it to penetrate into that evil temper of ours, which is prone to ascend the judgment-seat and doom men to penal servitude. 'Judge nothing before the time:' you do not know the whole case yet; you think you know it, but you are only common jurymen under the direction of a paid magistracy, and you are only wanted to return a verdict according to the evidence that is laid before you, and within these small points you can build prisons, and put irons on the wrists and ankles of men. It is not judgment, it is a miserably inadequate reply to a sin old as the devil and inwardly as hot as one of hell's own cinders. 'Judge nothing before the time:' the man is not so bad, or so good, as you think him to be; all the evolution will take place, and the harvest will determine everything; let us have no offhand, hurry-scurry judgments, but a waiting upon God, because only God can show you the evidence of the man's heart, and there you will some day trace how he came to be a criminal, and you will forgive him and kiss him and break bread with him. 'Judge nothing before the time.' III. What, then, have we to do? To wait. You have not to force your destiny, you have not to be impatient with time, but to accept its slow hours; and oh, how leaden can be the foot of time! the weary day, the endless night, the pendulum that oscillates, and yet ticks off no sign of progress, the sleep that will not come, the tranquillity that puckers its face into a bitter sneer! Yet we have to wait; we think we could open the gate now, but God says it is not now to be opened; He keeps us standing outside gates which we could vault, but we must stand outside until the gates are opened. What can keep us in any state of quietude during those moments of resentful, impatient waiting? Only one ministry can keep us right, and that is the ministry of faith. Is there a text upon that subject? There is a beautiful text which every man should write upon the very equator of his heart and make a belt of gold bearing this legend, 'He that believeth shall not make haste'. IV. There are two times that cannot be too soon recognised. 'It is high time to awake out of slumber, for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed.' That time is ready, the time to get up, to shake off slumber, to rise to kiss the morning wind and to lay hold of the morning plough and have a good long day's work of honest service. The man who is going to succeed is the man who gets up first and works with a will, and that tells old mocking, tempting, bribing slumber to stand back till he has tired himself into a condition to deserve and enjoy it. There is another time, a pre-eminently Biblical time; that time has come, that time has always been here, making its silent or its resounding appeals to human attention. What is that other time? Shall I name it? 'Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.' 'Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.' 'Now' that is God's time in the matter of salvation of the soul. Blessed are they who hear that Now and answer it with a great love! Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 71. References. IX. 51. J. Bannerman, Sermons, p. 163. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p. 323. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 307. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 51. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 297. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 296. IX. 62, 63. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2463. Misused Precedents Luke 9:54 I. Elias is a New Testament name for the Elijah of the Old Testament. Elijah was a prophet of fire and vengeance and doom, a most austere and terrible man, well fitted for his time, speaking the word of the Lord directly and with memorable effect Once he called down fire, once he called out bears from the woods to devour those who insulted him; he handled the great ministries of vengeance and resentment like an expert. The poor disciples who had been rejected in the village referred to in the text, a village of the Samaritans, thought they might do something in the way of fire; they besought the Lord saying, 'Wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?' Take care how you play at being Elias! Only an Elias can do what Elias did. We are not all Elijahs. Fire is a dangerous thing even when handled by the most noble and powerful of the prophets; fire would very likely consume us if we attempted to use it in the destruction of other people. What a tendency there is to quote history just as it may happen to suit our purpose at the time! This is characteristic of human life, this is notably characteristic of religious life; we do not look at the man in his totality, but at some little odd incident which marked his life or some peculiar phrase which was distinctive of his speech, and if we can use either of these to our own advantage we are willing to choose some emblematic flower by which to commemorate his name and memory. II. We may, I think, edify ourselves by bringing together a few thoughts under the general title of Misused Precedents. Many people would almost die for a precedent; they may not thoroughly understand what a precedent involves in all its applications, but their instinct of order and traditional decency is so great that they would almost cut off a right hand in order to support a precedent, especially in the degree in which they do not understand either the precedent or its application. What would the world be without precedents? What did they do in the olden time? What has been the custom of this society? If you were to move anything novel in that particular organisation which is now present to the consciousness of your memory, some very small man not more than five feet high would rise in a distant corner of the room and inquire of the presiding officer what the precedent is upon this matter. The disciples thought they had a good precedent to rely upon; it never could have occurred to their infertile and non-enterprising minds to cut their way through difficulty and opposition by fire, but they suddenly remembered that once Ellas called down fire from heaven, and as he was not present at that particular time they did not see why they should not be Elias by proxy. They mentioned the matter to the Saviour, and He burned them, He called down fire upon their suggestion, He condemned them as misrepresenting the precedents of history, the great emblems and types of the Divine dispensations in their mysterious and beneficent evolution. What, then, is the lesson? Not to quote the shortcoming as a defence of our own deficiencies, but to look at the sum total of the character and to endeavour to emulate it according to our ability and opportunity. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 61. References. IX. 64. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 167. IX. 54-56. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1601, p. 211. IX. 55. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 190; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 298. The Mission of the Son of Man Luke 9:56 I. The title assumed by Jesus, 'The Son of Man'. It is remarkable that throughout the Gospels no person ever addressed the Christ as the Son of Man, or even called Him by that name. It is, however, the most common title used by Him in speaking of Himself. (1) The title 'Son of Man' affirms his incarnation, his real humanity. (2) By becoming man He has magnified humanity. (8) The title implies that Jesus owns humanity. II. The mission of the Son of Man. (1) We have a negative view of His mission. He came not to destroy, (a) There was no need for Jesus to become man in order to destroy. (b) There was no need for Him to come to destroy, because the element of destruction was already in man himself, (c) He has not come to destroy, for it is contrary to, His nature to destroy. (2) The positive aspect of His mission. He came to save, (a) This suggests the benevolent character of His mission, (b) This marks the preciousness of humanity. Richard Roberts, My Jewels, p. 61. References. IX. 56. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 130. IX. 57, 68. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p. 244. John Watson, The Inspiration of our Faith, p. 48. The Three Candidates for Discipleship Luke 9:57-62 I. The circumstance which evoked this scribe's sudden exclamation was simple enough. Jesus, wearied with a forenoon of attendance on the sick, and an afternoon of loud speaking from a boat to the crowd on the shore in an atmosphere sultry, close, and thundery, portending the storm that quickly followed, proposed to cross over to the wild, eastern side of the lake, and so for a time get quiet from the pressure of the busy, thickly peopled western shore. The scribe had evidently been greatly impressed by the parables regarding the kingdom which our Lord had been uttering, and which are recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. Himself a man of education, he saw, perhaps more clearly than the multitude, the extraordinary literary grace and point of these parables, and probably, also, he was influenced by a desire to have a secure place in the kingdom spoken of, which he expected our Lord would immediately establish in Jerusalem. Seeing our Lord about to leave, he proposes to attach himself to Him. The scribe was sincere but hasty. He was the kind of man who leaps before he looks: by no means the worst kind of man, and very decidedly better than the man who neither leaps nor looks. He was a man of impulse. And impulse has a most important function in life. Now, a person who is naturally impulsive will be so, of course, in his religious actings as much as elsewhere. He will fail to weigh the issues of becoming a disciple of Christ He will run into the matter heedlessly. He will not anticipate and make quite present to his mind the kind of life he is committing himself to. He will not look at the matter all round, in every light, from every point of view. And so when the strain comes he gives, he yields like the bad bolt, he proves to be no Christian at all. Our Lord, therefore, does not wish facile converts, headlong followers. He desires that those who propose to follow Him should see both sides of the matter. It is not that He does not want followers, but that He wants persistent followers. He does not reject this man; He throws him back on a more resolute desire. He bids him exchange his whim for a purpose rooted in conviction. Therefore He says to the scribe, 'To follow Me means homelessness, vagrancy, to be hunted down'. To the fishermen accustomed to spend nights in an open boat on the treacherous Sea of Galilee this want of shelter might not seem formidable, but it was a serious prospect for the scribe. 'Every man has his price,' it is said; and it is true in this sense, that for every man there is a test which will bring out the real worth of his attachment to Christ: some condition in life which he so shrinks from that, if he can make up his mind to accept that for Christ's sake, nothing else can separate him from Christ. II. Strangely enough, while one member of the crowd was deterred, another was urgently pressed to follow. The Lord has a fresh method for each individual. One He retards, another He quickens. There is no mechanical or uniform or formal appeal; no urging the same action on every one. Entrance to Christ's kingdom is obtained not by a password known only to the initiated, but by the knock of the ignorant suppliant. The wall of His kingdom is all doors. From opposite quarters, with diverse pleas, needing distinct individual treatment, come the applicants, and are dealt with as differently and discriminatingly as the patients who are ushered one by one into the presence of the physician. While our Lord restrains and moderates the ardour of the scribe, He claims as His follower one who had been merely viewing the scene as a spectator. But whether by previous acquaintance or present discernment, Jesus sees in him the stuff of which disciples are made, and utters the determining word, 'Follow Me'. Think of the joy of being thus singled out by Christ, and summoned by Him into eternal connection with Him. But has not His call come to you? Ought you not to recognise that you are thus summoned into that connection which is fruitful of every blessing the soul can crave? Can you say that He has not given you reason to know that He desires your friendship and service? III. On the third candidate for discipleship there is not time to dwell. The essence of what our Lord says to him is: 'You must carry your discipleship through to all its issues and consequences, and this you can only do by giving your heart and mind to it'. To serve Christ with the fag-ends of life, to be devoted when in the mood, to give Him a third or fourth place in our thoughts, or even a second place, will not do. We all compromise, but compromise is fatal. All life must run on one line, and all interests must be subordinated to Christ's service, included in it, coloured by it. The figure He uses brings this out. The plough demands undivided attention foot, hand, and eye always on the strain. You cannot even walk straight for a few yards if you turn your head to look behind you, still less can you draw a straight furrow. Success in any work demands that we give ourselves wholly and heartily to it. The late Master of Balliol, who launched so many men upon successful careers, when asked what it was that secured success, promptly replied: 'Complete devotion to the end we have in view. Pleasures and feelings and society must all be made to give way to it.' Our fitness, then, for Christ's Kingdom is thus tested. If we would be Christ's followers, we must be prepared to make His experience ours, His work our work, His person our chief joy. In other words, we must be prepared to be unworldly, consecrated, devoted. Marcus Dods, Christ and Man, p. 96. References. IX. 57-62. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 211. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No. 2273. J. D. Jones, The Gospel of Grace, p. 41. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 286; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 1; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 350. The Homeless Life Luke 9:58 We shall much misunderstand these words if we think of them as merely referring to the circumstances of Christ's outward life and to the duties of discipleship then. They are true for all time, and the contrast and the requirement in them is for us quite as much as for the disciples who companied with Him as He walked through all Judea, preaching the Gospel and healing the sick. I. This homeless life raises man above the beasts. What a contrast between the rest of the creatures of the field and the unrest of man! This contrast is really the exhibition of man's superiority. Our sense of homelessness comes from our loftier endowments and can only be stifled by self-degradation, by becoming material and confined to the present. II. This homeless life must be ours if we are to follow Christ. It is not the mere natural facts of transiency and change which are spoken of here, but it is our attitude in regard to them. Christ's homelessness embraced the literal, and that is wonderful when we reflect that day by day He consciously surrendered it all, and for our sakes. But what constituted it with Him must with us. (1) There must be the habitual sense of transiency and change. (2) Habitual consciousness of disproportion between this and us. (3) Habitual detaching of ourselves from all the outward that we may live in and strain towards God. This strain of mind is ours in proportion as we are Christ's disciples. III. This homeless life is the only one which makes us feel at home here. A. Maclaren. The Burial of the Past Luke 9:59-60 Let the dead bury their dead. Ah! if only they would! If only the dead things could be left to the dead men to put away! If only the dead world would make itself scarce and clear up its rubbish and disappear off the scene! But that is just what will not happen. The dead generations have left behind them a heavy deposit. All about us their ruins block the roads and choke the passages and obstruct the channels. I. We find this literally true in physical fact. Our town plannings, for instance, with their seemly schemes, cannot get forward an inch without being brought up short by the dead weight of the past. We cannot get our spaces clear. The dead hand withholds. We are powerless against the dead. It is they who are strong; it is we who are as impotent ghosts. Those who are in their graves long ago put out their wills upon the living world of today and forbid it its free growth. The bad cities that the dead built up for our damage and disgrace are round us still. They breed their ancient diseases; they spread their familiar plagues. We cannot sweep them into some vast dustbin, and breathe freely and begin again. The dead have gone their way, but they have not taken their work with them. It is we who have got to bury them somehow, and half our time is taken up in the dreary job of burying dead things which have been left on our hands. Bishop Creighton ironically declared that each generation as it came along had for its main occupation the task of undoing the mistakes of the generation that preceded it. A dismal picture of a melancholy half-truth! Yet, again, in the social world, what a weary amount of wreckage still encumbers the ground, that no one has the leisure, or the strength, or the heart, to clear up. Old relics of a dead tradition are still about us. They have no intelligible significance now. They carry no responsibility with them. They tell of a story that is told. Yet they are here still, and have power to prevent the realities of the actual day from making themselves felt. They carry on a pretence which disguises the ideals which are now doing the real work. They hinder us, therefore, from understanding where we are, or taking true measure of the forces under which we are living. They are dead, but there is no one to bury them. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ The Service of Men Luke 10:1-2 Jesus in this conversation counsels His disciples concerning the conditions of the best service of man by man; and since we are all still apprentices to the Great Worker and Master, we welcome the opportunity of sitting at His feet, breathing the atmosphere of His presence, catching hints of the laws of all true work in and for His kingdom, and mastering the secret of His own intense, ceaseless, and wonderfully reproductive activity. I. But, first, we must observe that Christ chooses the most opportune moment for imparting His advice to these men. In this account Luke makes clear the fact that Jesus is on His last pilgrimage to the Holy City. He is on His way to the cross. It was to men infected with His zeal, sharing His intensity, alive with His enthusiasm, that He gave these lofty and exacting counsels. General Gordon once said of soldiers, 'Send us no more of your lukewarms'. These men were not 'lukewarms'. The service of men needs the full delight of those who are aflame with the love of Christ and men. II. But note, in the next place, Jesus sustains and inspires His workers by declaring the close and inseparable relation they hold to Him, in and through, and by their service of men. They 'go,' but they 'go where He is about to come'. Now, nothing is so potent as personality. The living Christ is a source of exhaustless power in the service of man. He is our contemporary. 'Lo, I am with you.' III. We must add to this the fact that Jesus authorises, in the strongest conceivable way, the proclamation of the speedy and irresistible advent of the kingdom of God as the soul and substance of the message these newly consecrated workers are to deliver. Could any message be more magnetic, or offer ampler room for great souls? IV. More help still these heralds must have found in Christ's original and creative interpretation of life. Men miss the deepest meaning of existence. They fail to see that it is one brief but golden opportunity of service, and so they fall short at once of the glory of God and of the glory of man, which is the glory of redemptive work. But to see this significance in life we must accept Christ's conception of man of the individual human life. Thoreau exclaimed, 'Every man is a revelation to me'. V. Moreover, Jesus supplies a sketch of methods of service for the guidance of His followers. 'Heal the sick.' 'Heal' and then 'say'. Give service and then sermons. Sympathetic social service holds a high place in the method of Jesus. Serve men, says Christ, in full view of the solemn and grave issues of life. J. Clifford, The Secret of Jesus, p. 153. References. X. 1-7. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 126. X. 1-11. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 310. God's Harvest 'The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth labourers into His harvest' Luke x. 2. This is a short parable in which our Lord describes the condition of the masses of men, and the high duty and privilege of His disciples. I. The first thing to impress us in the passage, probably, is the definition of men which it gives. They are a harvest or there is a harvest to be reaped from among them. And the harvest is going to waste and ruin because no one sees its value. Our Lord was teaching His disciples to look at men with His eyes. He saw the crowd and He said, 'They are a flock that needs shepherding, a harvest that needs gathering. Tares are there, doubtless, but wheat also.' It is wonderful how He believed in men, what He saw in them. No one has ever believed in the golden possibilities lying in men as He did. No one has taught the rare worth of a human soul as He did. No one else would have seen what He saw in those men whom He picked up on the shores of the Lake of Galilee and chose to be with Him. To everybody else they were grain hardly worth gathering. And now He seeks to impress His thoughts on us. We cannot fail to be struck with the wonderful fertility of human life; its resourcefulness, skill, power of endurance; what men will do and suffer, if you can furnish them with a sufficient motive or object. And our Lord saw, what the centuries have proved, that men were capable of doing, daring, suffering for his sake, and goodness' sake, more than for any other object. No one and no thing has ever created the enthusiasm, devotion, sublime heroism, and selfsacrifice which He has inspired. The harvest which was being reaped for self, for the world, for the devil, He saw could be reaped for God and goodness. II. Secondly. Observe how this harvest is to be gathered. By the labour of men. This is quite a commonplace, but a commonplace which needs to be insisted upon. Ever since the time of Isaiah, and long before, God has been calling, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' The figure of the man with scythe or sickle going out in the early morning, to work on through the burden and heat of the day, until the dews of night fall, in sweat of brow and skill of hand, is the figure which our Lord chooses to set forth what He would have His disciples do for the salvation of the world. III. The disciples are not urged by the Lord to go and reap the harvest, but to pray to Him to whom the harvest belongs that He will send forth labourers. There may be some mystery about this. Whatever it be, we are sure that He to whom it belongs is not unwilling to gather the harvest The remembrance that He gave His only begotten Son to die for the world forbids the thought. There are two things that appear to be clear from this exhortation. The first is, that if these men really prayed, they would think about the matter for which they prayed, and about the condition of those on whose behalf prayer was offered. The other thing is, that those who went into the harvest, if the prayer were answered, would be sent of God, would go as His servants, and under His direction. Charles Brown, Light and Life, p. 193. Luke 10:2 These words may be used in the wrong sense, to excuse personal sloth and cowardice. They were used in this sense by Gerard Roussel, Canon of Meaux, when he refused to strike out boldly on the side of the early French and Swiss Reformers. He wrote: 'The flesh is weak! As my friends, Lefèvre and others urge, the convenient season has not yet come, the Gospel has not yet been scattered sufficiently far and wide, we must not assume the Lord's prerogative for sending labourers into the harvest, but leave the work to him whose it is or who can easily raise up a far richer harvest than that for whose safety we are solicitous.' Such were the paltry evasions of cowardly souls, writes H. M. Baird, 'to excuse themselves for the neglect of admitted duty.' A bolder man, Pierre Toussain, made these comments on the attitude of Roussel and Lefèvre: 'Let them be as wise as they please; let them wait, procrastinate and dissemble; the Gospel will never be preached without the cross. When I see these things, when I see the mind of the King [Francis I.] the mind of the Duchess [Margaret of Angoulême] as favourable as possible to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and those who ought to forward this matter, according to the grace given them, obstructing their design, I cannot refrain from tears.' Luke 10:2 In dedicating The Traveller to his brother, Rev. Henry Goldsmith, Oliver Goldsmith applies this verse as follows: 'I now perceive, dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away.' References. X. 2. W. Baird, The Hallowing of our Common Life, p. 39. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 64. Luke 10:3 * ; Luke 21:15 * A single individual cannot easily change public opinion; but he can be true and innocent, simple and independent; he can know what he does, and what he does not know; and though not without an effort he can form a judgment of his own, at least in common matters. In his most secret actions he can show the same high principle which he shows when supported and watched by public opinion. And on some fitting occasion, or some question of humanity or truth or right, even an ordinary man, from the natural rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up arms against a whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too much for them. From Jowett's Introduction to the * Gorgias. * References. X. 3. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 236. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 121; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 11. Luke 10:5 When Edward Irving was visiting the slums of the Gallowgate in Glasgow, as assistant to Dr. Chalmers, he entered every home 'with the salutation, "Peace be to this house," with which he might have entered a Persian palace or desert tent.... A certain solemn atmosphere,' says Mrs. Oliphant, 'entered with that lofty figure, speaking in matchless harmony of voice its "Peace be to this house". To be prayed for, sometimes edifyingly, sometimes tediously, was not uncommon to the Glasgow poor; but to be blessed was a novelty to them.' References. X. 4. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 122. X. 5. C. S. Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 365. X. 5-8. J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Blessed Sacrament, p. 55. X. 7. W. Cunningham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 307. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. pp. 71, 76; ibid. (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 46. X. 9. Robert J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, p. 297. X. 11. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 1. X. 12. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 190. X. 13. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 308. X. 16. P. H. Leary, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 38. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p, 286; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 284. Luke 10:17-21 There are three joys First, ver. 17, a sense of power in the subjection of evil, which may have good in it, but also the great danger of vanity and ambition the Loyola spirit which would make ministers into priests; Second, ver. 20, the joy of the pure and Divine felt in our own souls, binding us to the life eternal. What can be better than this? Then is, Third, ver. 21, Christ's own joy gladness for the advance of God's kingdom, and the way in which it grows, through the spirit of lowliness and self-abnega-tion. This is higher than ver. 20, and saves from all the danger of ver. 17. Now I am not sure that our Lord spoke all these sayings in this very order, but I am sure He taught all. these truths, and I think Luke meant to let us see them by ranging them together. Dr. John Ker's Letters, p. 333. Much as pain has to teach us, it has but a few things to show us, while the revelations of joy are infinite. No one perhaps has ever been strong for the Lord without having experienced the deep baptism of spiritual gladness, making the soul one with God. Dora Greenwell. References. X. 17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 297. X. 17-20. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 310. X. 18. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 471. Serpents and Scorpions Luke 10:19 I. When we read a word like that in such a connection, we know that we are not to be literal. Our Master is speaking in parables. The serpent and scorpion are typical of the evil things that lurk in the narrow path of obedience. The snake in the grass, the poisonous scorpion hiding under a stone in the path ready to sting the heel of the pilgrim these are figures of the subtle dangers that lurk about our feet in the pathway of life. What are they and where do they lie? They are everywhere. Our Master in marking out a pathway for His servants does not mark a path from which dangers are to be excluded. Dangers are more numerous in the pathway of obedience, at any rate at the beginning, than elsewhere. Certainly they are more virulent there. The text speaks to people who are in danger of being kept back or turned aside from the path of right, being hindered and caused to stumble, and it says, 'Do not let discouragements, slights, neglect, opposition, sting and wound. Remember the word of Jesus and let His strength make you strong. II. Secondly, the text refers to the subtle dangers which lurk in our common things. There is hardly a thing, even the most wholesome, in which there is not a danger to be guarded against. In unsuspected things and places it lurks. If I understand my text aright it does not suggest that we should abstain from the things that I have named, or that we should be like the old monks who endeavoured to cheat the body of sleep and of food, or pretended to, or be like the people who abjure all pleasure and amusement as sinful in themselves; but that we should walk warily in the midst of them all, hand in hand with Christ, and go as these seventy people went under His direction, obeying strictly His commands, living in communion with Him, breaking away from everything which interrupts that communion. There our strength and safety lie. For when our Master says, 'I give unto you power,' He does not mean that He gives it to us in a lump, but that we may obtain it daily by daily contact with Him. Our power to keep right, our ability to win, is found in communion with Him. III. Thirdly, my text may be applied to the things that are positively evil, that are in the world and in our own hearts; and concerning these, they promise us the victory, and they point out the methods by which victory is secured. I do not know that any good purpose would be gained by dilating on the evil things that lurk, serpent and scorpion-like, in our natures. Nothing could be better than that at a service like this we should each one of us look into his heart, face himself honestly, and seek to discover what his besetment is, what the thing is that menaces his life. IV. Whatever be the full explanation of its presence in your life, this is true the evil is there, that you may win the victory over it. The question is, how? The text answers it: 'I give unto you power'. It is by union with Christ. I do not believe that there is any real and permanent victory for any of us apart from Him. You may try, and no one may seek to hinder you, but you will fail. He is the seed of the woman Who will bruise in you the serpent's head. The great purpose of His coming, living, and dying is to bring you to Himself, that He may work His great work of deliverance in you. Charles Brown, God and Man, p. 199. References. X. 20. A. Scott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 148. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i. p. 264. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 189. T. B. John-stone, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 208. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1321. W. M. Clow, The Gross in Christian Experience, p. 89. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 212; ibid. vol. xii. p. 146. The Joy of the Lord Luke 10:21 I. Notice the joy of the Lord. (1) The joy of love. (2) The joy of sympathy. (3) The joy of prophecy. II. We may enter into the joy of the Lord. (1) The joy of love may be ours. (2) The joy of sympathy may be ours. (3) The prophetic joy may be ours. The present successes are an omen for future victory. III. We may fulfil the joy of the Lord. We may carry on His purpose and minister to His joy. A. Maclaren. References. X. 21. W. M. Sinclair, Difficulties of our Day, p. 1. Bishop Gore, The New Theology and the Old Religion, p. 181. J. N. Friend, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 503. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2319. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 288; ibid. vol. v. p. 26; ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 25; ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 193. X. 21, 22. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. 1571. Len. G. Broughton, The Prayers of Jesus, p. 29. X. 21-24. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 152. X. 22. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 93; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 258. X. 23. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. ii. p. 262. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays after Trinity, p. 12. The Happiness of Easter Luke 10:23-24 On Easter Day we are able to look away from everything else and give full play to the conviction which lies deep down in every Christian heart, and that is the happiness of being a Christian. It is a happiness intellectually, morally, and spiritually. I. And first, intellectually. We have been dwelling upon the five revealed secrets or mysteries of God the existence of a living Person behind the veil; the certainty that all things work together for good at last to those that love God; the revealed secret that sin can be forgiven; that there is a life of the world to come; and that there is a mysterious power to fit us for it, which we call grace. All these things prophets and kings desired to know, but were never able to find them out. And yet they are things so essential to human happiness that even if there were no more to know we might echo the blessing over those who do know them. 'Happy are the eyes which see the things which ye see: for many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.' But Easter Day brings two fresh truths to light to give us intellectual joy. First, the truth that the Divine Spirit cannot only live, but perfectly triumph in human nature. And, secondly, that death is a mere incident in life. Happy, then, are the eyes which see the things which the Christian sees. He does not put his reason behind his back in the least. He loves his reason. He recognises its right nay! its duty to ask questions, and to want to know the why and the wherefore of the world. But because the telescope of reason only carries him a certain way, he does not disdain the telescope with the higher power called revelation lent him by God Himself, Who Stooping, shows sufficient of His light For us in the dark to rise by. And man, looking through this telescope, sees the thing which he almost could see, but could not quite see before the living Person, the loving purpose, the sin forgiven, the life of the world to come, the power of grace, the ideal of human nature, and the passing character of death. II. But if intellectually we stand on Easter Day on a glorious peak and look round in rapture at the view, how happy should Christians be morally at what they see and hear! There is much to depress a man morally in London life. It is not merely the shocking things which are done by those who should be loving children of God, not only the callous betrayals of innocent blood, of which I have had two terrible cases lately; but the steady, relentless pressure of a worldly world which is so trying. Men and women in what is called Society are very much afraid of taking a decided stand for Christ, and the young men and the young women of today get dragged down to the level of the people who happen to surround them. But Easter not merely gives hope, but gives victory. 'No one need despair,' I heard it said during the Three Hours' service on Good Friday, 'no one need despair in the palm of whose hand lingers the touch of Jesus Christ,' and we may go farther than that and say 'Nothing can break down the moral strength of the man or woman, boy or girl, who holds fast by the crucified risen Lord'. We have had two thousand years' experience of whether this is true or not. In every case the man or woman who has fallen has left hold of Christ's hand first. III. But if intellectually and morally the eyes and ears of the Christian are blessed, it is, most of all, true spiritually. If you come to think of it, how cold and abstract was much of the religion of early days. The Jews made the most of the personal superintendence of their nation by Jehovah out of Egypt and the revelation on Sinai; and the Psalms are marvellous in their tenderness when you remember that they were written before the Incarnation. But when all is said and done, the thunders of Sinai struck terror, rather than won love, and through the thunders came no human voice saying O heart I made, a heart beats here. But what the prophets and kings of old would have loved to have seen was God Incarnate in human form, to have heard Him say, 'He that has seen Me has seen the Father'; to have wondered at the gracious words proceeding out of His mouth, and to have known that they were the words of God Himself; to have loved the most lovable and loving Person Who ever appeared in this world, and to have found out that in loving Him they were loving God Himself. This is the happiness of Christians. This lifts them into the spiritual joy which the world can neither give nor take away. They have their trials, their pains, and their disappointments, but so long as they have their Lord with them, they have the source of happiness welling up within them, which prophets and kings never knew, and which will last into life everlasting. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Church Times, 1st April, 1910. References. X. 23, 24. J. Denney, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 81. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 23. X. 24. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 194. X. 25. G. A. Smith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 376. Joseph Parker, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 88. X. 25, 26. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 40. X. 25-28. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 145, and vol. lii. p. 161. X. 25-37. J. Bush, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 52. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1360. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 69. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 315. X. 26. Joseph Parker, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 21. Luke 10:27 Ideal love dwells not in the soul alone, but in every vein and nerve and muscle of a frame strung to perfect service. George Gissing. Luke 10:31 'Your neighbour,' says Professor G. G. A. Murray in his Euripides (p. lxiii), 'is so vivid an element in life that, unless you do love him, he will spoil all the rest.' Affectionate relations, even with our nearest and conventionally speaking dearest, demand a good deal of attention and of leisure, if they are to be cultivated with success. Lucas Malet. References. X. 27. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 134. B. J. Snell, The All-Enfolding Love, p. 97. J. Edwards, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 272. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 107. The Lawyer's Question Luke 10:28 I. This was our Lord's answer to the Jewish lawyer's question, 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' The whole of the discourse, and the parable of the Good Samaritan itself, turns entirely on this: 'This do, and thou shalt live'. Put your knowledge into practice. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself, and you will have the full and complete answer to your question. This man had to learn what every one of us has to learn namely, that learning and working must go together, hand in hand, in religion; that knowledge and practice must not be separated. This man had the one he had the knowledge, but he had not got the other; and if he would gain that which he sought he must link the two together. The lawyer's answer could not possibly have been better; but he stands out from the pages of Scripture as an example of one who had learned without working, who had knowledge without practice. II. Well, what is the use of education? Certainly to develop the powers of the mind certainly that. But surely its first and chief object is to enable a man to do the duties of life which lie before him in the spirit of the Master. The separation of knowledge and practice is simply disastrous. Christianity is a practical matter, and unless we use the strength given to us by that God to Whom we pray we miss the point altogether. Knowledge without practice in religious matters is useless and disastrous, as faith without works is dead. But faith is like a little child that must needs take the smallest and the shortest steps first. Has it ever dawned upon you, when you have read an account of some splendid race, that, in the case of the most famous athlete, who commands the praise of the public and the admiration of the strong, there was a day when he could not even toddle across his nursery without the help of a woman's hand? III. So we must not despise the day of small belief; but, as we follow the law of Christ, 'This do, and thou shalt live,' even in the simple and apparently insignificant details of Christian duty, leaning the while on the supporting hand of God, we shall find by degrees the strength we need to put our knowledge into practice. Now our Lord's life was pre-eminently a life of deeds. For the most part they were like the acts of the Samaritan in the parable. They were mostly concerned with the feeding of the hungry, and the healing of the sick, so that His commission to the lawyer, 'This do, and thou shalt live,' was literally the law of His own life a law that fits the smallest as well as the largest matters, be they what they may. 'This,' He says, 'which thou hast learned of none other than Me this do, and thou shalt live.' Who Is My Neighbour? Luke 10:29 Most people's lives are so full of occupation and anxiety that it may seem unkind and useless to offer them any considerations that would appear to add to their responsibilities. 'We all have as much as we can do, we have as much as we can bear,' would probably be the self-protecting exclamation of each one of us if asked to undertake any duty beyond that we already have. The sufferings and anxieties attached to our bodily health, the consciousness of our power of work depending upon it, and, it may be, the further consciousness of the dependence of others upon ourselves, the anxieties which many have for their own family, or near friends these and many other kinds of anxieties are to be found so plentifully, without going further than the narrow circle of our own homes, that for many it seems enough if they can bear up against the trial of the daily task which the round of daily duties brings to them. And yet even from this point of view it is not so needless, nor so unkind, as it seems at first sight, to lead people even thus burdened to the consideration of a wider field of responsibility, and perhaps of still greater troubles than their own. There is a natural tendency in all of us to exaggerate the troubles we feel ourselves and to regard them as greater than those of other people. We know that a hand or a leaf held close before the eye will shut out the whole immensity of the sun itself, the nearness for the moment destroying all sense of proportion; hence the turning away from our sorrows to the troubles of others has before now been rewarded by the consolation that our difficulties are not greater, often not nearly so great, as the difficulties of other people. The visit to the infirmary or the hospital or the sickroom of a friend has raised not only a spirit of benevolence and the desire to relieve others, but what was less expected, a spirit of thankfulness for the relative littleness of the sorrows we thought so great, now seen in their true proportion beside the greater griefs of other people. And once more, if our own lot be at present free from trouble, still more necessary may it be to guard ourselves against a selfish forgetfulness of the sufferings of other people; sufferings, it may be, in body, mind, or spirit, endured by people with whom we are in constant daily contact but of whom we have been totally unconscious through our habitual prosperity. The habit of consideration for others will save us from this isolated selfishness, from the exaggeration of our own sorrows or from a selfish forgetfulness of the troubles of others. I. It is indeed a great position gained when a man sees and determines upon what should be the right principle of life. But when this is determined upon, another question, often of bewildering importance, almost of necessity must arise, viz ., What is to be the standard of my life? Accepting the maxim of life to be ceasing to do evil and learning to do well, how shall I know when I have done enough? What is to be the standard of my efforts to do right? How much good must I do? Who is my neighbour? II. Christianity may be said in one sense not so much to have changed the nature of virtue as to have enlarged its area. To the educated Greek, the highest representative at least of Western morals, the idea of a virtuous life, or as we should say of a good life, was confined to a few selected nations. The great mass of the world were barbarians. The great masses even of the favoured Greek nation were regarded as incapable of social responsibilities, incapable of taking part in ministering to the well-being of the State. In plainer words, the masses of the people were regarded as mere goods and chattels, slaves and instruments, for the convenience of the upper classes, incapable of social rights and responsibilities, and therefore according to the Greek view incapable of virtue. Only those who were capable of taking part in the well-being of the State had moral claims or capabilities while the rest were instruments of their convenience. To a Greek the answer to the question, 'Who is my neighbour?' would be very limited, limited to a few nations, limited again to small circles within the nations themselves. Christianity changed this and extended the area over which man's capabilities and responsibilities were to extend. 'In Christ Jesus there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free, but Christ is all and in all.' This gives to the answer to the question in the text an extended meaning wide as humanity itself; for all nations were to be made members of Christ, He died for all. The answer given to the question of the text, 'Who is my neighbour,' by the Parable of the Good Samaritan is wide indeed. It would imply 'every one whom we can help,' or who helps us, so that the answer is found by asking two questions, 'Who needs my help? Whom can I help?' There is my neighbour. Our separate lives are to be ruled not by pleasure, not by our selfish profit, but by that which is right. The standard of our actions is to be the extent of our capacities; the area of our responsibilities is wide as humanity itself. Bishop Edward King, The Love and Wisdom of God, p. 105. The Law of Christian Neighbourliness Luke 10:29 I. Neighbourly responsibility has nothing to do with formal and prescribed conditions of race, Church, creed, and social status. Any or all of these conditions may strengthen the claim of an individual on the service of his fellows, and may facilitate the rendering of that service, but the claim itself has a deeper root, and emerges when all these auxiliary circumstances are absent. Man is divinely required to stand towards his fellows in a covenant of mutual help, and no artificial claims may override that primary and continuing requirement. II. Never to acquiesce in any conscious violation of the Christian Law of Neighbourliness implies necessarily a rigorously conscientious habit of life. No human life is destitute of the claimants on neighbourly service; begin by proving yourself neighbour to those who are nearest, and you will be in the way to reach higher levels of Christian service. The theory will grow out of the practice of religion. 'If any man willeth to do His will,' said Christ, 'he shall know of the doctrine.' H. H. Henson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii. p. 145. References. X. 29. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 375. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 1. Bishop Creighton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 347. W. H. Stephenson, A Book of Lay Sermons, p. 191. X. 30-37. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 212. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 122. Luke 10:31 'Non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a high political virtue,' wrote Mrs. Browning, in the preface to her Poems before Congress. 'But non-intervention does not mean, passing by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves or Phariseeism would recover it from Christianity.... If the man who does not look beyond this natural life is of a somewhat narrow order, what must be the man who does not look beyond his own frontier or his own sea?' Missions Luke 10:33 To me the sentence suggests the fact that the unfortunate man who had fallen among thieves was in such a pitiful condition as to appeal for help by the silent eloquence of his bruised and lacerated body, his empty purse, and stolen goods. It is as if any properly constituted man was bound to feel pity the moment he saw the traveller's plight. He saw, and so he pitied, and I maintain that the same result must follow when we realise the intense and pathetic need of the heathen. We shall be ready to give of our own our time, our money, our sympathy, our effective help when we see for ourselves. I. Do you Understand the Condition of the Heathen? Why do not our missionaries and our newspapers tell us the truth as to what paganism is at this moment in large tracts of our own Empire? In the preface to a remarkable book on mission work in India, which is called Things as They Are, and which lights up the gross darkness of the Hindus, it is said of the authoress: 'What she says is the truth, and nothing but the truth, but it is not the whole truth that she could not tell. If she wrote it, it could not be printed; if it were printed, it could not be read.' In the book itself the writer says of what she calls 'deified devilry': 'Do you wonder I call this sort of thing a look deep down into hell? Do you wonder we burn as we think of such things going on?... And the shame of shames is that some Englishmen patronise and in measure support the iniquity.' And the missionary work that is going on in such parts is a gigantic struggle between light and darkness, between the army of Jesus Christ and the army of the devil. II. What Perversity is it that makes us Close our Eyes to the Facts? We so willingly disregard them and so complacently forget them that the wonder may reasonably start to mind whether this strange oblivion is entirely due to secondary causes. St. Paul speaks somewhere of those whose minds 'the god of this world hath blinded'. Is it just possible that our interest and concern are directly lulled to sleep by the strong man who is straining every nerve to prevent the stronger than he from entering into his house and spoiling his goods? See how readily our attention is diverted from the real point, which is the awful hold that Satan has upon God's earth. III. The Good Samaritan as he journeys is no longer standing over the poor mangled body and using the few remedies he has at hand. We have found the inn to which the poor man may be carried to be taken care of. Our great Missionary Societies are formed for this express purpose, and they are fulfilling that purpose. Luke 10:33 Melanchthon wrote to Camerarius amid the troubles of 1550: 'Some day these wounds will be healed by that Citizen of Samaria, who cured the wounded traveller and took him to a neighbouring house'. References. X. 33. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 473. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 113. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 298. X. 33, 34. P. M'Adam Muir, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 346. X. 34. John Watson, Christian World, Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 57. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 364. Whatsoever Thou Spendest More Luke 10:35 'Whatsoever thou spendest more' A tenderer light is thrown upon the story by the carefulness of the good Samaritan. He did not take out a handful of money, but twopence. He promised that if more was spent he would pay it back. This was probably one of the innumerable cases of the poor helping the poor, a case in which the gift was sacrificial. We shall take the words as suggesting the four stages in Christian service. I. The Christian service commences with a provision. He took out twopence and gave them to the host Whatever our charge may be, at the beginning it seems easy. A man undertakes the reclamation of a drunkard. The pledge is signed, and for a little everything seems to go well, and there is a glow in the heart of the succourer and the succoured. A young girl begins a class in a ragged school, and there is a romance and glamour about the children, and in her own heart a true spring of life which will meet her needs for a time. A young minister is set in charge of a congregation, and how beautiful is the beginning, how eager even the world-worn and weary are to listen to the youthful preacher, how they believe in him, in his singleness of heart, and rejoice in his true vision of God! How he believes in them, and how impossible it is for him to imagine that one day there will be cold looks and colder hearts! We turn back to such beginnings when the morning was fresh with dew, when the spirit was buoyant, when the wind of life sang freshly in our ears, when there was about us the ravishment and the mystery of youth, when it seemed as if no task was too hard for us to undertake, when we never dreamed that the day would come when we should say, 'I am tired; I am not well; the climb is too steep'. There was more than the mere freshness of the morning. There was besides a kind provision by Christ. He gave us His two pence, and we joyfully received them, and gladly gave them away, but we did not realise that the time would come when they would be exhausted, and we should have to look up for more. II. The second stage of Christian service is when we find at last that the twopence are spent. It is not merely that the holding charm of youth passes from us, that the early confidence and triumph diminish, that the deep undertone of pain makes itself heard. It is also that the twopence are spent. That gladsome first vision of the Gospel, that undying sense of its power to save, the trustfulness and the hope with which we first preached it, the intense love for fellow-believers these are not with us as they were. Men have disappointed us, and we have disappointed them. It seems now as if a stern and grey day of the Lord had come down upon the once roseate life, and made it poor and cold. This is the true crisis in the life of the Christian servant, none the less real because it is so little spoken of. There is a point up to which Christ can say to His servants, 'Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, ye have not yet known what true sacrifice means'. Perhaps He says that of many to the very end: but He does not say it of His chosen vessels. 'I will show him,' He said of Saul, 'how great things he must suffer for My name's sake' not how great things he must say or do for Me, but how great things he must bear. Without shedding of blood there is no entrance into the higher life. In a manner the Lord's experience is spiritually repeated by the Christian. We die into the deeper union with Christ, into the pro-founder life, through the offering up of ourselves upon the altar. III. The third stage, then, is when we discover that in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings we have the power of His resurrection. It is that fellowship which St. Paul, after years of endurance, still prayed that he might know. We discover that in the spending we are enriched from the unsearchable stores of Christ. The work is not done, the sufferer is still unhealed. What then? We have to go on spending. Our Lord knew it, hinted it 'Whatsoever thou spendest more'. In the beginning we missed these words, we did not recognise their significance, but now day by day as it passes makes the meaning clearer. Yes, we must spend more and more and more, stripping the garments from us one by one, and at last spending our very heart's blood. But it is in that spending that we are enriched. It is in that spending that we become conscious at last that the unsearchable riches of Christ are ours, the riches that will never give out. If when the twopence are spent we cease to spend, if we go back upon the past, if we repeat old words that have lost their freshness, if we do our tasks slackly, then we are already dead. But if we go on working and working at greater cost, then we shall at last come to understand the saying that verges on the unsayable, not on the unintelligible, 'I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me'. IV. The last stage of Christian service is reached when we suddenly find ourselves in the land of Beulah. Christ has been with us all the years, pouring His own life into the barren river-beds of ours. Then of a sudden we seem to behold the Lord at hand, and to hear Him saying, 'I will repay thee'. No more than that. The host had just the good Samaritan's word, and he was content. Christ will come again, and when He comes He will repay us. The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and we are to live in the strength of the promise. Dr. Dale has told us that at one point of his ministry he read the New Testament over to see whether there was any great aspect of revealed truth which he was neglecting in his ministry. He came to the conclusion that he was ignoring the repeated promises of reward given in the Gospel. Human sympathy and joy and praise are very sweet, but we can live without them if we have before us the welcome of the Eternal. In the ministry of Christian service the last is the best. It may be best with us long after the twopence are spent, when we are spending more and more, and yet spending far more consciously than before what is not ours by nature. The promise marks an ascent, though it may not seem to do so. 'They shall mount up on wings as eagles.' There is a better thing, 'They shall run and not be weary'; and best of all there is this, 'They shall walk and not faint'. It is the climax of covenant grace. So as of old I follow Him, Only another way; When the lights of the world are growing dim, And my heart already is singing the hymn Of twilight grown to day. W. Robertson Nicoll, The Lamp of Sacrifice, p. 21. Luke 10:35 It is simply and sternly impossible for the English public, at this moment, to understand any thoughtful writing, so incapable of thought has it become in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is, as yet, little worse than this incapacity of thought; it is not corruption of the inner nature; we ring true still when anything strikes home to us; and though the idea that everything should 'pay' has infected our every purpose so deeply, that even when we would play the good Samaritan, we never take out our twopence and give them to the host without saying, 'When I come again thou shalt give me fourpence,' there is a capacity of noble passion left in our heart's core. Ruskin, * Sesame and Lilies. * References. X. 35. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays after Trinity, p. 21. X. 36. B. J. Snell, Sermons on Immortality, p. 79. Sympathy and Dependence Luke 10:37 The parable speaks to us of a law of limitless sympathy based on the fact of absolute dependence. We owe to our fellow-men all we can give them, because we owe all we have to God, our Father and theirs. I. The lesson of dependence. Never have men traced out before with the same devotion and success as in our generation the processes of Nature, the order of changes through which each living thing passes, the certain laws, for so we must regard them, by which all living things act and react upon one another; but never have they declared more plainly that the principle of life itself is beyond all explanation. That principle we see as Christians in the immediate power of God Himself, unseen, yet always present. II. The lesson of dependence on God passes at once, as you will see, into the lesson of sympathy with man. Dependence in which we are all equal is coupled with sympathy which we all require. In virtue of our common lot we are called upon to extend to others what sooner or later we shall ourselves need. III. There is just one other thought suggested by our subject, and it is this, that opportunity is the test of character. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 343. The Bethany Sisters: A Lesson in Quietude Luke 10:38 I. This narrative of Christ's conversation with the Bethany sisters furnishes us with two sharply defined types of womanhood which we all recognise. (1) Martha is a woman who cannot bear to see any one unemployed. She is such a woman as George Eliot has given us in Mrs. Poyser, such a woman as we ourselves have met many times perhaps in our observation of life. (2) But Mary seems sadly slight and inefficient beside this bustling, practical-minded sister of hers. Has she then no use or place in the world? The strange and wonderful things that alter and determine the movements of society are often effected by women of the type of Mary? it is only such a woman as Mary who could ever have dared to introduce Jesus to the hospitality of Bethany. II. What, then, is the spirit of Christ's criticism of these two women? It is that bodily activity is not everything, that there is a spiritual nature which also demands attention, and that it is possible to be very energetic in body at the expense of the soul. The student of the truth is as needed as the soldier of the truth. Be as energetic as you will, but while you feed others, do not let your own soul starve. III. So, then, out of this incident there emerges a principle the principle that quiet may do as much for us as action, and that we may be doing most when we seem to be doing least. (1) Do we not see, for example, how true it is in our relation to Nature? He does not learn most of nature who applies himself to the task with the hottest energy. (2) So, again, is it not true in all that relates to the culture of the mind? We commonly act as though we believed the mind could only grow by feverish processes of energy. We read everything, whereas it would be infinitely better for us if we read less and thought more. (3) Does not life itself perpetually illustrate the same truth? There are a hundred purposes and aims in life that seem precious to men and women only because they are showy and win immediate reward, and many seek them and lose the better part. (4) Or we may apply the suggestion to many other matters in the general ordering of our lives. Year by year we seek the calm and freshness of Nature, often rather as a physical duty than as a genuine delight. Do not grudge the hours that are given to that relaxed and unenergetic interval of calm. (5) Or the theme may find its application in relation to the worship of the sanctuary. Contemplation is the true spring of labour. W. J. Dawson, The Comrade Christ, p. 167. Luke 10:38 Macaulay, comparing Naples and Rome, the former a place where religion is accessory to civil business, the latter a city of priests, writes: 'A poet might introduce Naples as Martha, and Rome as Mary. A Catholic may think Mary's the better employment, but even a Catholic, much more a Protestant, would prefer the table of Martha.' References. X. 38. H. E. Thomas, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 215. X. 38-42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No. 927. C. S. Macfarland, The Spirit Christlike, p. 13. T. H. Wilkinson, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 253. The Devotional Type Luke 10:39 I. It is important that we should note the estimate our Lord Jesus Christ passed on Mary and those who, like her, love to sit at the Master's feet and hear His word. That estimate, as we know, comes in the form of a warm and generous defence of her from her sister Martha's criticisms. 'She hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.' And of all those who in sincerity show forth the true religion of devotion, of the heart, of personal love and adoration, we must say in the same way, 'they have chosen the good part: they have the root of the matter in them'. And how do we know this? Because the leading principle in the lives of these good people is dependence on God and love for Jesus Christ His Son, and dependence and love are the first conditions of the spiritual life. The strength of the mystical, pious, devotional type of Christian lies in his firm realisation of a personal life in God, and the need of cultivating this supreme fellowship, by a prayerful, meditative habit of life. II. But there is another side to all this. The pious man, like the intellectual man, is one-sided. Let me point out a few of these perils of piety. (1) The first peril is to turn religion into a kind of spiritual self-indulgence. The purpose of devotion is to open the heart, quicken the affections, and rouse the moral sense; in a word, to permeate and reinforce the whole nature with Divine influence. But even prayer may become an indulgence. If you forget that it is a means to an end and give yourself over passively to devotional moods, you will at once begin to lose their benefit. You will begin to measure yourself by your moods. This is one of the dangers connected with revivalism, and with religious conventions. (2) Another peril of piety is indifference to intellectual honesty, and in extreme cases, to moral integrity. One of the sources of strength in the devotional type of character, at least in this country, is the stress it has laid on a personal study of the Scriptures as the rule of life and the source of inspiration to holy living. But it is one thing to read, it is another thing to read aright. And some of the most devotional and pious people err greatly in their method of Bible study. There is too great a tendency to read with their heart and not their understanding. (3) But there is a still deeper and worse danger behind. In its lowest forms pietism is associated with a divided and inconsistent life. There is a way of indulging in the luxury of feeling good at the expense of the reality of being good. E. Griffith-Jones, Types of Christian Life, p. 44. References. X. 39. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 3. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2927. Luke 10:40 Mrs. Fry, during her mission to the English prisons, found that her labours were exciting fears on her behalf among some rather officious if well-meaning Quakers, who dreaded lest her success should spoil her spiritual state. In one of her letters she refers to this as follows: 'The prudent fears that the good have for me try me more than most things, and I find that it calls for Christian forbearance not to be a little put out by them. I am confident that we often see the Martha spirit enter about spiritual things; I know by myself what it is to be over-busy. O Lord, enable us to keep our ranks in righteousness.' References. X. 40. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 421. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 152; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 275. X. 40-42. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 61. X. 41. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 101. X. 41, 42. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 256. One Needful Thing Luke 10:42 Was ever transition from the material to the spiritual sphere more delicately mediated than by this great word of Jesus? One moment we are at Martha's table; the next, we are in the spiritual world. A less elaborate dinner would do, Jesus seems to say; only a few things are needful at the table, and a few in life; or rather in life there is only one thing that is really needful. With one swift, sure stroke He smote down into the eternal significance of this pathetic little scene; and in words that are a marvel of kindliness as well as of solemnity, He brought home to a soul distracted by the 'many things' the need of unifying and simplifying her life. Many things we may have, but one thing we must have if life is to be life. Many things are useful, many are important; but one is necessary, absolutely necessary. Mary had chosen it; and we are almost given to understand though Jesus gently refrains from saying so that Martha had not. While Martha was preparing one meal, Mary was enjoying another; for the 'portion' of which Jesus speaks is the word used elsewhere for the share of a meal. Two banquets were preparing in that house; and Mary was already sitting at the table of her Lord in the heavenly world, partaking, at His gracious hand, of that bread of which he who takes shall never hunger again. This portion could never be taken away from her. I. One's sympathies run out to Martha. It is easy, we say, to honour the Lord by sitting at His feet; it is a harder thing by far to honour Him by active service. And yet in many points we must come to feel that Martha was mistaken. She does not well understand either Mary or Jesus. Her appreciation of Jesus is genuine but not profound; and she does not speak to Him with the deference which is His due. She may have been almost hurt by His assurance that Mary had chosen the good part; she thought in her heart that Mary had chosen the bad, or, at any rate, the selfish part. There was only one way, she thought, of honouring her Lord at that moment, and she herself had chosen it. Martha and Mary are sisters, and their virtues are sister virtues Martha, the symbol of strenuous energy; Mary, the pattern of sweet contemplation. In the kingdom of God there is a place for both; for the unwearied activities of Protestantism, and for that gracious and unobtrusive devotion which has so often marked Catholicism. After all, it is not so much the 'many things' that are at fault, for all things are God's; it is the being 'anxious and troubled' about them. II. Martha is anxious. Mary is not anxious. She is calm. She can rest. The practical person may have little use for Mary. She may seem to him to be a simpleton or a sluggard. Yet the contemplative Mary was more practical than her practical sister after all. She knew how to seize the golden opportunity which came to her with the visit of Jesus; and she had the wisdom to gather, in this quiet hour, strength for the lonely days to come, when the Master would sup with them no more. III. One thing is needful. What is that? It is very characteristic of Jesus that He does not say. To the interpretation of His great words we must go forth with our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts. He does not always tell us plainly what we should so much wish to know. He does not tell us, but He shows us. One thing is needful. Look at Mary, and you will see it. There it is! or rather, there she is! for Mary is that thing incarnate. Sitting at the Master's feet, and hanging wistfully upon His every word, she is an immortal illustration of the truth which Jesus would bring home to the restless Martha, and to all those eager, strenuous spirits of which Martha is the type. 1. In one of its phases, the one thing needful is the power to sit down. 2. In another of its aspects, the one thing needful is to hear the words of Jesus; for it was to hear those words that Mary exposed herself to the misunderstanding of her sister, by sitting at the Master's feet. Many words are wise and fruitful, but there are none like His. J. E. Macfadyen, The City with Foundations, p. 13. Always Listening Luke 10:42 I. Note that a life of listening to Christ is the highest life. II. That such a life is possible for us all. A life of communion may be lived even in the midst of our outward occupation. III. That such a portion is permanent A. Maclaren. Luke 10:42 Under this heading Tolstoy issued a long, comprehensive survey of the world's situation, in Church and State, with an exposure of the externalism and oppression of society, and an earnest appeal for individual regeneration. The closing paragraph runs as follows: 'We have become so accustomed to the false idea that the improvement of the life of men can be attained by external (and in most cases compulsory) means, that we also think that the alteration of men's inner state can be attained only by external measures brought to bear on others. But this is not so. And it is well for men that it is not so. If it were otherwise and men could by external means change each other, then, first, irrational, light-minded people might alter men in a mistaken way, injuring them and depriving them of their welfare; and, secondly, an activity of this kind for the attainment of the welfare of life by external means might meet insurmountable obstacles. But this is not so. The alteration of the inner spiritual state of men is always within the power of every separate man, and man can always infallibly know in what consists the true welfare of himself and of all men, and nothing can stop or keep back his activity in the attainment of this aim. Man attains this aim his own and other men's welfare only through the inner alteration of himself, by elucidating and strengthening in himself a rational religious consciousness and then ordering his own life conformably to this understanding of life. As only a burning material can ignite other material, so also only the true faith and life of one man, being communicated to other men, can spread and confirm religious truth. And it is only the spreading and confirmation of religious truth which improves the position of men. 'And therefore the means of deliverance from all those evils from which men suffer, including that dreadful evil which is committed by Governments (such as all the present calamities in Russia), lies however strange it may seem only in one thing, the inner work of each man upon himself. '"Martha! Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful."' References. X. 42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1015. R. Flint, Sermons and Addresses, p. 123. J. Keble, Miscellaneous Sermons, p. 287. F. B. Woodward, Sermons (1st Series), p. 207. D. C. A. Agnew, The Soul's Business and Prospects, p. 232. C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p. 237. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 229. X. 50. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 186. Christ's Lessons in Prayer Luke 11:1 The disciples had all prayed many times, and yet they came to Jesus with this request. For they were not satisfied with their praying. Their hearts were full of longings for which they could not find utterance, and the silence in which they dwelt oppressed them. For answer, Jesus began by teaching them how not to pray. It may well be, that with such bad examples of devotion in their synagogues and streets, the very habits of devotion which they had formed were hampering them. The request itself may give a hint of this, as if prayer were an art which might be taught by rules. The Pharisees were past-masters in the art of prayer, but, in Jesus' sense, they knew not how to pray at all. For prayer is not an art but a spirit, and when it has become an art it has ceased to be prayer. The immediate answer of Jesus was the Lord's Prayer, and its first words gave them all they had asked. I. The Lord's Prayer was not given as a ritual or formula of prayer to be superstitiously repeated. It was not even given as in any exhaustive sense a 'model' prayer, for much is omitted from it which we shall often need to ask. It is rather fundamental than complete, setting for us on the one hand the broad and generous spirit of sympathy with our fellows and their life, without which devotion tends to self-indulgence; and on the other hand selecting the elementary needs of men, bread for the body and purity for the soul. II. That was His immediate answer, but He gave them two other answers to their request. His example taught them to pray. As they followed Him they saw that He, who apparently needed least, yet prayed most of all men. The Syrians speak of the lamps of hermits shining through the night from far seen hill-side caves, as 'hands folded in prayer'. So the remembrance of the Master, withdrawn but not forgetting them, must often have made the day feel safe, and taken its terror from the darkness. There could be no better defence than the prayers of Jesus. III. But the greatest answer of all which Jesus gave to that request lay in the simple fact that He was Himself. There are some of our friends whose very presence is an influence upon us towards holy things. In their company we feel our souls drawn nearer to God, and we desire to pray. In the well-known picture of Satan watching the sleep of Christ, there is something wistful in the expression and attitude of the enemy, as if even over the foulest heart the Saviour had cast His spell. And the disciples found that as they lived with Jesus they turned instinctively towards God. Every hour of His company taught them to pray. He brought them to their best, and wakened all their slumbering desires after God and holiness. John Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p. 44. Reference. XI. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 287. The Disciples' Request Luke 11:1 Looking at this request of the disciples, will you notice that it is I. A confession of need. 'Teach us to pray.' We ask the question sometimes, 'Why do men pray? 'Why do men pray! We might just as well ask, 'Why does the nightingale sing?' Why does the eagle soar into the boundless blue? The nightingale sings because it was made to sing; the eagle soars away because its pinions were made for flight, and man prays because he was made for prayer. 'Teach us to pray.' That is just the cry of men who must have their instincts satisfied. Man was made to pray. Let me remind you that this is not a need which Christianity has created. Oh, no! the need is in the very make and constitution of man. Christ only satisfied the need. Prayer is as old as man himself. This sense of need is universal. II. This request of the disciples is a confession of ignorance. 'Teach us to pray.' Teach us how! for there is a right and wrong way of praying. Man must pray he cannot help himself. But how he blunders in his attempts at prayer sometimes! Look at the Hindu cutting and maiming himself! Look at the Mongol with his praying machine! Ah, yes, man needs to be taught how to pray. But further, these disciples knew not what to pray for. Nor do we! We are 'the sons of ignorance and night'. We do not know what is best for us! III. This request of the disciples is a confession that the old prayers are no longer good enough. There is a familiar ballad the first line of which runs, 'I cannot sing the old songs'. Some change has taken place in the singer's feelings, which makes the old song inappropriate, impossible. It was so with these disciples. They could not pray the old prayers, because their hearts were changed. We all know something of this kind of feeling. Notice what the disciple adds, 'As John also taught his disciples'. Christ might imitate John in the act of teaching, but in the prayer taught Jesus was no imitator. This was a new prayer He gave. J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 1. Teach Us to Pray Luke 11:1 We all need to be taught to pray, for it is not easy nor is it obvious. Prayer is a great art, it is a great practice, it is a great life. I. I will mention one or two very simple things about the mode and the place of prayer. (1) For instance, the question of the gesture or the attitude in prayer is not altogether without its importance. We are curiously influenced by our own motions, and the physical attitude we adopt determines very largely our mental attitude. You know that the constant attitude adopted by us in prayer has been kneeling, as the Apostle puts it, 'For this cause I bow my knees'; and because that attitude is traditional the very act of kneeling becomes an incentive to prayer; indeed, 'to kneel' is almost synonymous with 'to pray'. Then, to clasp the hands, or even to put them together, has come to be the symbol of submission in the presence of God, and it is not without its influence upon the mind. And to close the eyes is an aid to realising that when we are praying we are dwelling with an inward spirit, that there is a witness within to whom and through whom our prayer is made. (2) Then, as to the place of prayer, it is of some importance, if it is possible that you get in your house a room where you are accustomed to pray; and if it is not possible to have a room, it is something to have a place in a room where you are accustomed to pray. It is important that you should not attach to the mere secondary conditions of prayer an undue importance, as if the attitude and the place could really affect the communion of the Spirit with God. II. Let us turn to the question of the times of prayer in your own individual life. You should secure one half-hour every day in which you give yourself to wait upon God to pray, to meditate, to worship, but, in any case, to wait upon God. Now, the question arises, Where should that half-hour come in the day? and I think it is beyond all doubt that the best half-hour if there is to be only one, is the first half-hour of waking consciousness. In that half-hour you can set currents flowing which will run through the day without you being conscious of them. III. It still remains to say something about the subjects of prayer. I would lay special stress upon two points. (1) The importance, the necessity of the daily confession of sin, because you will observe that the life of the soul is constantly being choked by little collections and accumulations of unobserved sin. (2) You should not forget to give thanks, not only because it is due to God, but because it is infinitely valuable to you. R. F. Horton, The Hidden God, p. 161. Jesus Our Example In Prayer Luke 11:1 I. I propose that we should take briefly some of our own difficulties in prayer, and strive to learn from our Blessed Lord's life how we should meet them. (1) Did our Lord say morning and evening prayers? We find, do we not, so many excuses for making them very imperfect; in the morning we are so late in rising that they have to be reduced to a very few minutes, and hurried over then, in order that we may get to the work of the day. How did our Lord do under those circumstances? 'And in the morning rising up a great while before day, He went out and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.' Our Lord shows us that the press of work, or work begun very early, is no excuse for the neglect of prayer. (2) And then again at night time, how often we excuse ourselves for very hurried poor prayers because we are so tired! How did our Lord manage on those occasions? I take but one instance that very, very busy day in which He had fed the five thousand in the wilderness. When night came on our Lord went back to the mountain alone and spent almost the whole night in prayer. II. And then in the many difficulties of our life our Lord shows us that He always met them in the power of prayer. (1) For instance, we often have to make a great decision, and we worry ourselves as to which is the best thing to do; we think it over and over again in the power of our own small reason and experience, until sometimes we reach such a condition of perplexity that we are quite incapable of making any calm decision. What did our Lord do? When the time came for Him to make that great decision, the choice of His twelve Apostles, we are told most clearly that, 'It came to pass in those days, that He went into a mountain to pray, and continued all the night in prayer to God,' and the next morning He called to Him the twelve Apostles. (2) And then we have not only decisions to make in life, but we have, alas! in this vale of tears, great sorrows to bear. (3) But in addition to decisions and to sorrows one has often to face in life terrible trials. Our Lord in Gethsemane teaches us the power of prayer to prepare us to meet a storm, to give us strength to bear up against its utmost violence. (4) And then, lastly, in the hour of death. On the hard death-bed of the Cross what is He doing? Listen! Still he is praying: 'Father, forgive them! for they know not what they do'. III. Let us conclude by glancing at our Lord's method of prayer. (1) First we are told that He knelt down and prayed. (2) Then we are told that He was in an agony, and the word 'agony' means struggle. (3) And then in His prayer our Lord repeated the same words again and again: 'If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me'. So we learn that it is of little importance that our prayers should be lengthy or eloquent; we can say the same simple prayer over and over again, so long as it be earnest. (4) And what was the result? The result of that prayer in Gethsemane was courage and strength to face the horrors of the Passion. Prayer is the link which joins man to God. A. G. Mortimer, Lenten Preaching, p. 101. Luke 11:1 In the Blithedale Romance Hawthorne speaks of one of the inmates of the farm-colony as the only member 'of all our apostolic society, whose mission was to bless mankind,' who 'began the enterprise with prayer. My sleeping-room being but thinly partitioned from his, the solemn murmur of his voice made its way to my ears, compelling me to be an auditor of his awful privacy with the Creator. It affected me with a deep reverence for Hollingsworth, which no familiarity then existing, or that afterwards grew more intimate between us no, nor any subsequent perception of his own great errors ever quite effaced. It is so rare, in these times, to meet with a man of prayerful habits (except, of course, in the pulpit), that such an one is decidedly marked out by a light of transfiguration, shed upon him in the Divine interview from which he passes into his daily life.' References. XI. 1. A. Whyte, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 136. S. Bentley, Sermons on Prayer, p. 39. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 354. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 335. C. Stanford, The Lord's Prayer, p. 1. A. E. Bolch, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 199. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 113. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses (2nd Series), p. 68. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 328. XI. 1, 2. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 63. XI. 1-13. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 321. The Lord's Prayer Luke 11:2 There are some interesting facts, and thoughts, and lessons that emerge from a general survey of this most beautiful prayer. It was given twice first in the Sermon on the Mount, and then again six months before the Crucifixion. In the Sermon on the Mount it is referred to as a pattern of all our prayers. 'After this manner, therefore, pray ye.' When our Lord gave it the second time to a disciple, whose name we do not know, He gave it as a form of prayer to be used as it stands. The Lord would have us understand the meaning of the words and of the teaching of the different petitions that we might not only use the prayer as it stands, rightly and to our benefit, but that we might found all our prayers, our private prayers, upon the teaching, structure, and meaning of the Lord's Prayer. I. The Spirit of the Prayer. There are two interesting circumstances connected with the second giving of the Lord's Prayer. It was given then in answer to prayer. An unknown disciple realised so the beauty and the wonder of prayer, through seeing Christ engaged in prayer, that he said, when our blessed Lord concluded His devotions: 'Lord, teach us to pray'. We shall only understand the Lord's Prayer, only be able truly to make it our own, to drink in its meaning and to get all the comfort and help from it, as we come in a spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer, and ask: 'Lord, teach us to pray'. II. The Brevity of the Prayer. And then, looking at the prayer as a whole, notice how very short it is. Is it, do you think, that the Lord's Prayer is not so much a prayer as a summary? I do not think so. I take it that it is not a summary, but a prayer as it stands. Each clause is a petition, not a head. Then was it, do you think, quite accidental? I do not think so, because in St. Matthew's Gospel the Lord's Prayer follows a very striking utterance on the part of the Master against long prayers. What, then, is the meaning of it? Does it not mean then, surely, that our Heavenly Father does not delight in long prayers, that He loves short and definite petitions? Does it not mean that He would have His children pray less, that we may pray the oftener? The message to you and to me is, Do not try to carry a burden, a grief, all day long, waiting for the long set evening petition. Pray all day long when you want a special word; go to the Father above, and take the trial, or the sorrow, or the difficulty, whatever it may be, take it at once to Him in a short definite prayer from your heart, and that will please the Father above. III. The Lord's Example. And then, glancing at the prayer as a whole, is it not very beautiful, is it not very helpful to notice how the Lord Jesus Christ not only gave us the prayer to use ourselves, but how He seemed to say: 'I give you this prayer, to you My disciples, to you My people, after I have used every petition of it Myself. IV. The Meaning of the Prayer. We have been struck by the most beautiful simplicity of the prayer. I suppose if a saint of God were asked now to write a prayer he would hardly like to write one so simple, and yet what a wonderful fullness, and richness, and depth of meaning there are in the Lord's Prayer. What is the Lord's Prayer? (a) It is a theology. Not a poor, weak theology such as men would create, but a true theology. We have set forth a true God in all His beauty, in all His loveliness, in all His blessedness, His glory and power. That is a theology. (b) It is also a religion. Not a man-made religion, but a religion that comes from above, that puts God in His right place, and that puts man in his right place a religion that will not only do for the sunshine but for the dark. (c) It is the basis of brotherhood. The Lord's Prayer binds all Christian people together into one loving family the only true brotherhood of love, and charity, and helpfulness. Here is the basis of brotherhood. Here we shall learn how we should treat one another. (d) It is a guide for life. Take the Lord's Prayer as your guide during life, and you will make, with God's grace, few mistakes. You will learn what are the first things, and that they should be put in the first place, and what are the second things, and that they should be put in the second place. (e) It is a prophecy, the grandest, mightiest prophecy in the whole Book of God, a prophecy that pierces the sky, a prophecy that takes us on to the time, that glad, triumphant time, when there will be no more sin and no more sorrow, when all shall be light, and brightness, and glory. Our Father Luke 11:2 The prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray begins with a new name for God. 'When ye pray, say Father.' In the Old Testament God is very seldom spoken of as Father, and when the name is used, it is always with reference to the nation of Israel and not to individuals that is to say, the name 'Father,' the few times it occurs in the Old Testament stands for a national not a personal relationship. No one can pass from the Old Testament to the New without being conscious of a change of atmosphere Between the books there is a difference of theological climate. And the whole of this vast difference is made by this word 'Father'. It is a name no one but Jesus could have revealed to men. We could never have known God the Father save through the Incarnate Son. Men only saw God from the outside. But here we get a view of God, if I may so speak, from the inside. Is God Father to everybody? Yes, to everybody. That is the truth that has been rediscovered within the last half-century, the truth of the Universal Fatherhood of God, and a blessed and glorious truth it is. That many men have forgotten God and rebelled against Him does not affect the reality of His Fatherhood. But let me go on to say paradoxical as it may sound that though God is the Father of all men, all men are not sons. Wendt, the great German scholar, puts it in this way, 'God always is the loving Father of all men, nevertheless, men must become sons of the Heavenly Father by attaining His spirit of gratuitous, forgiving love'. Possible sons all men are: but sonship becomes actual and real only in Jesus Christ. I. Now this new name, 'Father,' Christ places at the very commencement of the model prayer. This name is to be the very basis of our prayer. What warrant have I for coming boldly to the throne of grace? I have no warrant save that which the name 'Father' supplies. II. This word also suggests to us the spirit in which our prayers must be offered. (1) We must believe first of all in the reality of God. (2) We must also believe He is a Rewarder. J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 19. Thy Kingdom Come Luke 11:2 There are three portions of God's empire which are particularly included in the petition, when we say, 'Thy kingdom come'. There are the reign of grace in a believer's soul, which is personal religion; the extension of that kingdom in many hearts, which is the Church; and the final state, or coming in of eternal glory, which is heaven. I. Personal Religion. Let us look at it, first, in its particular, private sense. We have in it the aspiration of an awakened mind, feeling its disordered state, and its rebellion, conscious of great disobedience, painfully anxious after peace and holiness, 'Thy kingdom come'. What is the nature of that kingdom in the heart? See what it is * not. * 1. It does not consist, nor is it compatible with, the glory and the show of this present life 'My kingdom is not of this world'. 2. It is not meat and drink nor the strictness of outward observances. That is nature's kingdom of God. 3. Neither, again, does 'the kingdom of God come with observation'. It does not make its entrance as man generally expects it to make its entrance. Now let us turn and try to see what 'the kingdom of God' in the soul of a man really is. (a) It is spiritual. The Holy Ghost broods over the soul; there is a breath, and that is the breathing of the Holy Ghost, and it awakens a new feeling in a man's mind; it is a hope, it is a principle of action; it comes, and it exercises its deep influence over that man's mind; and there is a 'kingdom' begun. (b) And then it is free; no one knows liberty who does not know the kingdom. (c) It is also comprehensive. It includes a vast range, yet it gathers up the whole range into a system. All Nature points, in the laws of its 'kingdom,' to a centre, a centre of light and heat, round which, in their orbits, all things roll. So in 'the kingdom of grace' in the heart; the centre of its motion, and the focus of its attraction, are one. Every affection, every desire, every action, every thought, fixes itself upon the Lord Jesus Christ. (d) Yet it is exclusive. The heart grows so full of God that it can hold nothing else. II. The Church. The Saviour also intended His words to refer to the setting up of His kingdom upon this earth. If you ask where that 'kingdom' is and when it was established, I answer, it is the Church; and it was set up when Christ, having ascended as a conqueror, took upon Himself the administration. III. Heaven. This prayer 'Thy kingdom come' has a prophetic sense. There pervades all Scripture from Moses and Daniel to St. Paul and St. John a universal expectation that Christ will Himself come again, and set up a glorious kingdom. Hallowed Be Thy Name Luke 11:2 The glory of God was always the master petition in the prayers of Christ. His own wishes were always kept in a subordinate place, it was ever' God first' with Him. That is the true order in prayer God first. I. Let me first of all try to explain what is meant by the name of God. As Bishop Westcott points out in his Revelation of the Father, no thoughtful person can read the Bible without being struck by the importance which is attached to the Divine names in the different books. And the names of God are important because they are revelations of God's nature. II. Where and how has that name been revealed to us? (1) It has been revealed to us in Nature. John Ruskin has said: 'It is but the outer hem of God's great mantle, our poor stars do gem'. The Arabs speak of tracing God's footsteps in the world; Kepler in studying the planets said, he was thinking God's thoughts after Him. Mrs. Barrett Browning cries, 'Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God'. It is true, as Coleridge sings in his magnificent 'Hymn before sunrise in the vale of Chamouni': Earth with her thousand voices praises God. But Nature does not tell all the secret. (2) God's name has been revealed to us more plainly in the Bible. (3) God has revealed Himself fully to us in Jesus Christ. III. How may we hallow God's name? (1) By cherishing worthy ideas of God. Believe with Faber, that Nothing can be good in God, which evil is in me. Say with Browning, 'Thou, God, art Love. I build my faith on that.' You must cherish lofty, beautiful, gracious thoughts of God if you are to hallow His Name. (2) By the trustfulness of your life. Distrust, suspicion, is an insult to friendship. Samuel Rutherford honoured God's name when, writing from his prison in Aberdeen: he said, 'I have nothing to say of my Lord's cross but much good'. (3) By our obedience. The Italian brigand will repeat the Pater Noster and then go on with his robbery. The Mussulman will interlard his filthiest talk with appeals to Allah. But nothing is so dishonouring to God as profession without practice. Obey Him promptly, absolutely, willingly. J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 40. The Second Petition Luke 11:2 The Bible is a book of hope. It looks not backward, but forward. The 'golden age' of the Bible is before, not behind. We are still looking for that glorious 'last for which the first was made'. 'Thy kingdom come' is a prayer for the good time coming, a prayer for the golden age, for the better Eden. For the earth's golden age will come when God is King. But you may say to me, 'Is not God King now? Is not the world His? Are not all men in His hands? That is perfectly true. But if you will examine the basis of that Kingship you will find it rests on God's Creatorship. But God wants to be King in Jesus Christ, that is to say, He wants to be King in virtue not of His power, but of His love. The prayer, you will notice, regards the 'kingdom' as something still to be realised. In other places in the New Testament it is talked of as actually existent. Both views are true the kingdom is both present and future. The presence of the kingdom is the most noticeable fact in the world's life today. And yet while the kingdom of God is thus present and potent, it is still future. Its full realisation has yet to come. I. What kind of kingdom is this? (1) The kingdom of God is righteousness, justice. (2) The kingdom of God is peace. (3) The kingdom of God is * joy. * II. What is the sphere of the kingdom? (1) The individual heart. God's kingdom must come in our own hearts before it can come in the world at large. (2) The prayer embraces the wide world in its sweep. Thy kingdom come 1 Where? Everywhere. (3) In every department of life. III. How is this kingdom to be established? It cannot be established by force? Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon built up their empires with the sword, and cemented them with blood, but not so is the kingdom of God to be established. Not by the sword is the kingdom to come, but by the Cross! Constantine of old, when on the eve of a critical battle, dreamed he saw a cross in the sky, and around it this legend, 'by this conquer'. That is the weapon we have to use in our warfare. Exalt the dying Redeemer of men! Men have called the visions such men as Plato and Sir Thomas More have given us of the 'Ideal State,' 'Utopias,' 'Nowheres,' to mark their idea of those visions as fantastic, unpractical, impossible. But let no one dare to call the kingdom of God a Utopia. 'The world is grey with morning light.' J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 60. Thy Will Be Done Luke 11:2 Do we not feel sometimes that we shall be strange in heaven? I am quite sure that we shall be, unless we begin to practise for it here on earth, and I suppose the only possible way of feeling at home in heaven when God has called us to be there, will be to have looked out for opportunities to get into touch with the spirit of it while here on earth. There is a King in heaven the Lord Jesus Christ and we had better get to know Him, for He also is King upon earth, and there will be one link between earth and heaven which we have forged while we are here. There is one will dominating heaven and earth, so we had better begin doing the will of God on earth, so that when we get to heaven it may be quite natural to us. I. Surrendering our Will. That is one reason why Jesus Christ taught us to pray as the will of God is done in heaven so may we do it here on earth. It is not easy. 'Our wills are ours,' we say, quoting Tennyson. Yes, that is true. Are we not some of us feeling that at the present moment? The very first step towards a Christian life is the surrender of that will to Christ by accepting Him as King. II. Doing God's Will. We know very little about the angelic beings, but we are sure of this: (a) that love is the motive of all that is done in accordance with the will of God. There is no servitude about the angels giving their will to God. (b) We imagine, too, that these beings do the will of God with full intelligence. Do we try enough to get an intelligent view of God's plans and purposes for us? If we try to do the will of God as it is done in heaven, we must do it not only because it is God's will, but because by study and prayer we have come to see that it is wise and good. (c) The angels obey in a atmosphere of joyful service. Work moved by joy becomes highest pleasure. III. Bearing God's Will. To do God's will is easy enough sometimes, but to bear it, that is different There is a good deal about burdens in the Bible. We are told that everybody must bear his own burden. That is beautifully and solemnly true. There is ever a burden of responsibility personal to each soul, not perhaps greater in one than another, but different. There is a burden to preach the Gospel. There is the responsibility, too, of refusing it, or receiving it. Then it is said that we are to bear one another's burdens. Thank God for that. We can go side by side with each other, and when one is panting the other can lift him up and help him to stand upright again. No one can bear the burden of another without feeling far more the joy than the toil. 'Cast thy burden upon the Lord.' How a light breaks in upon that heavy burden which God has given us. That is the thing which in His infinite wisdom He thought was best for us. Let us be content if in truth our will is surrendered to Christ, if in truth we have made Him the King of our life, knowing that we are thus preparing for heaven, where His will is perfectly done. Luke 11:2 In 1869 Carlyle wrote a letter to Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, from which the following sentences are excerpted: 'Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy will be done! what else can we say? The other night, in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand Prayer, came strangely into my mind, with an altogether new emphasis; as if written, and shining for me in mild, pure splendour, on the black bosom of the Night there; when I, as it were, read them word by word with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that Prayer; nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of Man's soul it is; the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor Human Nature; right worthy to be recommended with our "after this manner pray ye?"' Luke 11:2 May the kingdom of God and of Christ (that which I conceive to be intended in the Lord's Prayer) truly and fully come, though all the kingdoms of the world be removed, in order to make way for it. Dr. Priestley. 'Nor,' writes Carlyle in the first of the Latter-Day Pamphlets, 'in any Nation where there has not yet (in some supportable and without some constantly-increasing degree) been confided to the Noblest, with his select series of Nobler, the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ignoble, has the "kingdom of God," which we all pray for, "come," nor can "His will" even tend to be "done on earth, as it is in heaven" till then. My Christian friends, and indeed my Sham-Christian and Anti-Christian, and all manner of men, are invited to reflect on this. They will find it to be the truth of the case. The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all times and in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law.' References. XI. 2. Homes Dudden, Christ and Christ's Religion, p. 228; ibid. p. 142 f. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 205. C. Stanford, The Lord's Prayer, pp. 29, 52, 84, 112, and 130. Archbishop Magee, Christ the Light of all Scripture, p. 185. F. W. Woodward, Sermons (1st Series), p. 250. G. Jackson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 183. XI. 2, 3. R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 92. Luke 11:2-4 (with Matthew 6:9-13 * ) * Dr. Marcus Dons wrote at the age of twenty-eight, to the Rev. S. R. Macphail: 'Do you use the Lord's Prayer? Some days when all else has been thick darkness with me, these words, "My Father which art in Heaven," have shot through to the eternal light, and carried my soul to the presence of Him who is "over all, God blessed for evermore".' Early Letters, p. 238. Reference. XI. 2-4. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 9. Fourth Sunday Evening in Lent Luke 11:3 Let us look at the believer's way of seeking temporal things. Observe the piety, the faith, and the moderation of the prayer. I. The Piety of the Prayer. It is reasonable on this account not only because God made the body, and because God made the bread, but because God, Who knows the body, only knows how to adapt the bread. And is not it a delight, brethren, with every little thing, every crumb we eat, to feel, 'My Father gave me this; my Saviour died that I might have this; this is purchased bread for a poor, undeserving sinner?' And it is in this way that this prayer becomes part of the Gospel, to remove and hallow the curse. 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,' was the condemnation. And the toil remains; God has not abated one iota of it. But what is the bane of toil? Not labour, but the doubt which hangs over the issue of labour. So that the 'Give us day by day our daily bread' is the alchemy which neutralises the woe 'In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread'. II. The Faith of the Prayer. And now turn to the faith of the prayer. It is a strange thing, but there is no doubt about it, that it is more hard to trust God about temporal things than it is about spiritual. How many children of God there are who have really cast their sins on Christ, and have committed their souls to His holy keeping, who are nevertheless to be found disquieted and cast down about some little matter which, after all, concerns themselves or somebody dear to them at the most but for a few short years. Is it not, therefore, for the exercise of faith that God puts this prayer first, visible dependence on Him for the most common and familiar mercies? And if you find it a lesson hard to learn, let me advise you to take these three views: (a) First, remember the perfect fellowship of the Son of Man, Who lived the prayer, 'Give us day by day our daily bread'. He was the poor man's brother. (6) Next, realise that grand image of the Almighty, 'He openeth His hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness'. (c) And remember that it is covenanted to us, a thing purchased, receipted, endorsed, for He is 'the Saviour of the body,' 'bread shall be given him, and his water shall be sure'. III. The Moderation of the Prayer. But now see the moderation of the prayer. I see the moderation in three things: moderation of time, moderation of matter, moderation of degree. 'Give us day by day our daily bread.' Daily Bread Luke 11:3 What a gracious light this petition throws upon the condescension of God! Our Lord is the High and Holy One who inhabits eternity, and yet He stoops to lowly folk and lowly things. Erasmus, the great sixteenth-century Grecian, thought a reference to physical food would be incongruous 'in so heavenly a prayer'. But far from being incongruous, the prayer becomes more gracious and beautiful because this petition for bread is in it! It is not too trivial a request to bring to God; for God is not a God simply for great crises, supreme emergencies, tremendous catastrophes; He is a God for every day, and for the common events of every day. I. This prayer proclaims the fact of our dependence upon God for the very simplest of boons. It is a prayer for all, because all are absolutely dependent upon God. Nowhere is this utter dependence of man upon God more clearly seen than in the matter of daily bread. For, all wealth in the last resort depends upon the produce of the soil. Man cannot make food. He cannot create bread. With all his knowledge of chemistry he cannot command a harvest. God must give it And He gives the harvest year by year. Some things, as Dr. Dods remarks, God gives us once for all our supply of coal and the various minerals and metals. But corn, food, bread He gives us year by year as if to emphasise the fact of our dependence upon Him. II. The modesty and simplicity of the request made in this prayer. 'Bread,' that is what is asked for the bare necessities of life. As T. T. Lynch quaintly puts it, 'This is a prayer for daily bread, not for daily cake'. We are to pray for only as much of that as will suffice for the day, or meet our present needs. III. We pray for others as well as ourselves. It is not 'give me,' but 'give us 'our daily bread. Christ will not let us forget the fact of brotherhood. He will not let us forget what moderns call 'the solidarity of the race'. The gospel of charity and mutual helpfulness is in this verse. IV. We pray for what is legitimately and honestly our own. I do not think it is at all fanciful to interpret this pronoun our, as Dr. Dods does, to mean that the bread we pray for must be our own and not another's; that is to say, it must be fairly and honestly come by. The Divine law is that the bread a man eats should be bread won by his own labour. We need not exclude altogether from our thoughts that spiritual bread, that Bread of Life, to which the old Fathers saw reference here. The soul needs fit nourishment even as the body does, and that fit nourishment the soul finds in Jesus Christ. J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 102. References. XI. 3. G. A. Bennett, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 246. C. Stanford, The Lord's Prayer, p. 156. Luke 11:3 While my wife was weeping over her child, I am ashamed to say I was distracted with other feelings besides those of grief for its loss; and I have often since thought what a master nay destroyer of the affections want is, and have learned from experience to be thankful for daily bread. That acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation, is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away. From The Hoggarty Diamond, xii. Thackeray returns to the same theme at the close of his Roundabout Paper, 'On a Pear Tree'. '"What had he been doing in Germany?" "Earning his daily bread, no more and no less." "And what has he been doing in Java these twelve years?" "Earning his daily bread, not less but no more." "I know," mused Ursula, with feminine inconsistency. "It seems so ridiculous, a Von Helmont earning his living." But this was a red rag to a bull. "It is never ridiculous," cried the pastor. " Give us this day our daily bread; that means: we would accept it, Lord, from no other hands than Thine."' Maarten Maartens, in * My Lady Nobody. * Forgiveness Luke 11:4 Here we have the two great fundamental facts of the Gospel-man's need of forgiveness, and God's willingness to bestow it. I. Perhaps we are too apt to think of sin only in its effect upon ourselves. We shall never see sin in its naked horror, we shall never see it in its awful hatefulness until we look at it from another standpoint. We sin not against ourselves alone but against God. Even though sin entailed no loss to the sinner, involved no penalty, brought with it no curse, it would remain still utterly loathsome and hateful if we only realised that every sin of ours caused grief and pain to the heart of the eternal God, our loving Father in heaven. Now that is the point of view from which sin is regarded in this prayer. Matthew uses the word 'debt'. As Dr. Morison says: 'When we sin there is something in our act for which we become liable to God. Formerly He had a claim upon us; now He has a claim against us.' The sins of our past history are included in this word 'debt'. 'Debt is something we owe. 'Debtors 'we all of us are. We have come short we have given God less than His due, we are in debt to Him. Can we work it off in the days and years that are to come? I cannot hold out to you any hope of doing that. II. Here is the Gospel in a nutshell. Something can be done. You can do nothing. I can do nothing, but God, the God against whom we have sinned, He can do everything. He will cancel the debt. The wonder of the world still is that the God against whom we have sinned is the one who will take our sin away. All the souls that were, were forfeit once, And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy. That remedy was the Cross of Christ. There is nothing which His mercy cannot do. A poor criminal in Scotland, as he went forth to his place of execution, kept crying out, 'He is a great Forgiver. He is a great Forgiver.' Yes, He is a great Forgiver. And what was the price of pardon? It cost God the death of His only Son. But what will it cost us? it will cost us nothing. God does not sell. God gives. All that is required is that we should ask for it. Therefore He teaches us to pray 'Forgive us our trespasses'. III. Notice the qualifying clause: 'For we ourselves also forgive everyone that is indebted to us'. (1) These words are meant to be words of encouragement. (2) Also words of solemn warning. Emerson says of Abraham Lincoln, that 'his heart was as big as the world, but there was no room in it for the memory of a wrong'. J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 121. Temptation Luke 11:4 'Forgive us our debts 'is a prayer that God will blot out the record of past sin. 'Lead us not into temptation 'is a prayer for protection in the future. For I want you to notice that the man who has truly repented of his sin wants not simply the past to be blotted out, but he wants grace to shun sin in the days to come. He wants not only to be delivered from the penalty of sin, but he also longs to be emancipated from its * power. * This prayer recognises the fact that: I. This world is full of peril to the Christian, because it is full of temptation. The word translated 'temptation' in my text really means 'testing, trial'. God does not 'tempt' in the sense of inciting to evil; God tests. The presence of evil in our world, the incitements to evil that abound, looked at from God's standpoint, are tests tests of character, tests of moral strength. But these incitements to evil appeal to weakness and evil in our own hearts, and so to us they become 'temptations'. And of such 'temptations 'our world is full. Bunyan described the Christian life as a journey, but it is a journey through a very dangerous country. The old Greek legends speak of the syrens creatures half-women, half-fish who lived upon the rocks and could sing the most ravishing songs. So entrancing was the music that whoever heard it was irresistibly drawn to the singers. But it was woe to them; for the rocks whereon the syrens lived were strewn with the bones of dead men who had listened to their song and yielded to its fascination. That syren's song is still being sung, and every mariner on life's main hears it. The world, the flesh, and the devil are the syrens of today. II. This verse implies the weakness of man. It is because we know our own weakness, it is because we know how liable we are to break down under any severe test that we pray, 'Bring us not into temptation'. I can only discover One Man in the history of the whole world who was proof against temptation, and that was the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus Himself. III. This petition illustrates the spirit of true Christian courage. True courage will keep away from danger; true courage will only incur risk and peril when duty demands. There is nothing sinful in being tempted. We sin only when we yield to temptation. No conflict need end in defeat J. D. Jones, The Model Prayer, p. 142. Forgiveness Luke 11:4 I. All Forgiveness springs from God's Love. It is first of all that all forgiveness springs from God's love, and it is in the sacred Passion, I think, that we see so wonderfully how the love of God acts. We may notice it in four particulars: (a) God in His great love determined to place before us the way of recovery. God seeks us; He sent His son; He came 'to seek and to save that which was lost'. And in the Passion you see that the Lord is, as it were, going down into the very depths, for you see Him 'made sin'. 'The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.' (b) And then He pleads with us. The Lord pleaded with Judas up to the very last. 'Friend, wherefore art thou come?' He pleaded with Peter. 'The Lord turned and looked upon Peter,' that wonderful look! He pleaded with Pilate, and Pilate sought to release Him. He pleaded in silence on the Cross, so that He won the thief and the centurion, and others. 'All the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts and returned.' (c) And then, again, we see in the Passion the love that forgives us interceding. 'Father, forgive them!' (d) And then, once more, you see love suffering. There is the wonderful thing that God in saving us should suffer! Suffer to the very extremity! Yes: because it was the law of God that sin must be punished, that 'the soul that sinneth it shall die'. He suffered and died to save us from our sin. And what we see our Lord did in His Passion He is doing now. He still seeks. He sends things, circumstances, people, messages, that arrest us in our downward course, to bring us back to Him! He still pleads, pleads by His Holy Spirit. And He still intercedes. 'He ever liveth to make intercession for us.' II. Man's Response. If we are to lay hold of this forgiveness, what is our part? We must respond. The Lord seeks us, we have got to seek Him. His seeking will be in vain if you do not respond to it. It is so easy to want to have our sins forgiven. We ask God to forgive us, but we are very slow to listen when He points along the narrow way. He pleads with us by His Holy Spirit. Woe be to us if the Lord speaks to us this Passion-tide and we refuse to listen. And then, if He intercedes for us, we must be very careful to respond to His love. We can plead the merits and death of God's dear Son before the Father. Again, as He suffered, so we must take up our cross and follow in His steps. III. The Spirit of Forgiveness. But once more, if we are to lay hold upon forgiveness our Lord tells us that there must really be the spirit of forgiveness in us. All our hope of forgiveness springs from the love of God; and if God so loved us we must return love for love, and, as a test that our love is genuine, we must take heed that we love our brethren. Luke 11:4 The twenty-ninth chapter of Sylvia's Lovers contains some reflections by Mrs. Gaskell on forgiveness, which she puts into a dialogue between Sylvia and Philip. The latter is endeavouring in vain to persuade his betrothed to 'forgive the man who gave information leading to her father's condemnation; but Sylvia replies: 'Thee and me was never meant to go together. It is not in me to forgive I sometimes think it's not in me to forget. I wonder, Philip, if thy father had done a kind deed and a right deed and a merciful deed and some one as he'd been good too, even in the midst of his just anger, had gone and let on about him to the judge, as was trying to hang him and had gotten him hanged hanged dead, so that his wife were a widow, and his child fatherless for evermore I wonder if thy veins would run milk and water, so that thou could go and make friends, and speak soft wi'him as had caused thy father's death?' 'It's said in t' Bible, Sylvie, that we're to forgive.' 'Ay, there's some things, as I know, I niver forgive; and there's others as I can't and I won't either.' 'But, Sylvie, yo'pray to be forgiven your trespasses, as you forgive them as trespass against you.' 'Well, if I'm to be taken at my word, I'll noan pray at all, that's all. It's well enough for them as has but little to forgive, to use them words.... I tell thee my flesh and blood wasn't made for forgiving and forgetting. Once for all, thou must take my word. When I love I love, and when I hate I hate; and him as has done harm to me, or to mine, may keep fra' striking or murdering, but I'll never forgive. I should be just a monster, fit to be shown at a fair, if I could forgive him as got father hanged.' Luke 11:4 To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall. It is lawful to pray God that we be not led into temptation; but not lawful to skulk from those that come to us. R. L. Stevenson. References. XI. 4. C. Stanford, The Lord's Prayer, pp. 179, 203, 229. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. pp. 124, 281, 454; ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 122. XI. 5, 6. G. H. Morrison, The Return of the Angels, p. 256. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 283. XI. 5-7. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 421. XI. 5-8. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 119; ibid. vol. x. p. 109. XI. 6-13. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 135. The Message for Midnight Luke 11:6 Christianity is the religion for midnight. Midnight in Holy Scripture is the hour of God's great inter-positions and deliverances. At midnight the children of Israel were led out with a high hand. At midnight the angel of the Lord smote the camp of the Assyrians. At midnight the iron gate opened of his own accord. At midnight the prisoners heard Paul and Silas singing. At midnight the Lord of Life woke in the rocky grave and said, 'I will arise and go to My Father'. As it is written, 'At midnight I will rise and give thanks unto Thee because of Thy righteous judgments'. When He had given thanks, He broke the bars of iron and shattered the gates of death. And at midnight we who preach Christ can preach, to whosoever seeks us, the delivering God. That is what we have to set before the pleading wayfarer at midnight. We have to set before him God the Father. It is unnecessary to spend much time in describing the midnights of the soul. They are midnights of remorse, of sorrow, of despair. It is midnight when our thousand hopes die together at one blow of fate. It is midnight when our landmarks change, when great shadows blot and chill the world, when a sudden darkness falls on all things. These midnights seem completely to overthrow not only our natural strength, but even the defences of our faith. But if Christ brings us to God the morning breaks in triumph. I. We read in the Romance of Grace the words, 'Thy brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found'. The order is a true order. To bring home the lost is a greater and harder thing by far than to raise the dead. Dr. Dale wrote to Archbishop Tait a letter of consolation on his son's death, in which he said that it was so much better to lose a child by death than to lose one by sin. We all understand this, but for the present let us take sin and death in the order of time. What can we say to the friend, the wayfarer who comes to us in the midnight of sin? Let us learn from the story of the Prodigal Son. We have told, and we have done right to tell, what Christ accomplished when, as Priest and as Victim, He offered up the evening sacrifice of the world. We have preached how in His substitutionary offering He released His believers from the guilt, the penalty, and the power of sin. We have discussed as theologians, and we have done well to discuss, the meaning of forgiveness. We have tried to discover how far forgiveness means the release from consequences, the breaking of the close-linked chain. Yes, but there is a simpler and deeper word than any of these. Christ by His living and dying brings us to God. II. What is true of the midnight of sin is true of the midnight of death. The Christian thought is that death brings us and our God together. The literature of Christian consolation, especially in recent times, has done little justice to this great truth. It has dwelt upon death as the knitter of severed ties, as the restorer of those loved long since and lost awhile. It has contemplated death as the severer. We know how the heart craves for such comfort, and we know that such comfort is true and Divine, but we wrong ourselves and we wrong the Father when we think of death first as bringing us to our beloved. The sting of death is drawn when we know that death brings us to God. Love wanders to every desert and calls to every sea and knocks at every grave, and demands its own back again, and God, Who is love, cannot, will not, dare not refuse. Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. We can preach all that, and preach it from our hearts, but death brings us first of all to Christ and to God. I am afraid that modern preaching has led many to think of a future blessed life in which God is as much in the background as He is here. There is, I am sure, a belief that in the next world the relations between ourselves and our beloved will be brought to a perfection of tenderness and security, and God will lie in the distance, still the background, still the helper, still the answerer of prayer and nothing nearer. The faith in immortality will never be maintained without a lively faith in God the Father. Who of us can say with full sincerity of heart, 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none on earth that I desire beside Thee'? St. Paul could have answered. For him to live was Christ, and to die was gain, because to die meant to have more of Christ. He looked for his loved ones, like the rest of us. He looked to see them transfigured in the glow of the soft eternal sunshine: but to St. Paul his dear ones were robed and homed in Christ, and it was for Christ, for God that he waited. If we love as he loved, we shall find as he found that the change from grace to glory is less by far than the change from nature to grace. In Russia and in the great North lands I have read that sunset is almost in the north, and the sunrise takes it by the hand. In St. Paul's triumphant dying the rose of evening became suddenly and silently the rose of dawn. 'O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!' W. Robertson Nicoll, The Lamp of Sacrifice, p. 97. Luke 11:7 Borrow, in The Bible in Spain, describes an inhospitable reception on the road to Villafranca, where 'at the first posada which I attempted to enter, I was told that we could not be accommodated, and still less our horses, as the stable was full of water. At the second, and there were but two, I was answered from the window by a gruff voice, nearly in the words of Scripture: "Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot arise to let you in".' Luke 11:9 In a letter to his daughter, Mrs. Ireton, Cromwell tells her that her sister, Lady Claypole, 'sees her own vanity and carnal mind; bewailing it: she. seeks after, as I hope also, what will satisfy. And thus to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder; and such an one shall every faithful, humble seeker be at the end. Happy seeker, happy finder!... Dear Heart, press on; let not husband, let not anything cool thy affections after Christ.' References. XI. 9. J. C. Lees, Christian World Pulpit, vol. J. p. 108. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 478. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 305. XI. 9-10. R. Rainy, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 70. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1091. Luke 11:10 Speaking of Schlegel's Philosophische Vorlesungen, Carlyle exclaims: 'A solemn, mournful feeling comes over us when we see this last work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker, end abruptly in the middle; and, as if he had not yet proved, as if emblematically of much, end with an Aber , with a "But!" This was the last word that came from the pen of Friedrich Schlegel; about eleven at night he wrote it down, and there paused sick.' References. XI. 10. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 231. XI. 11-13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No. 959. Luke 11:11-12 You expected bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrised; do not doubt that your mental stomach if you have such a thing is strong as an ostrich's the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind: in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test some, it is said, die under it you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. Charlotte Bronte, Shirley, vii. The stone under foot has, for careless men, nothing in it but stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind; nothing but the symbolism of the hard heart, and the unfatherly gift. Ruskin. The Greatest Gift Luke 11:13 It may be observed that we have here incidentally two illustrations of Christ's consciousness that He was unlike other men. He places Himself outside the circle of earthly parentage and relations and outside the shadow of sin which troubles it. These words and others of His have done much in helping to produce that consciousness of the wonderfulness and greatness of parental love which has been the joy of thousands of homes. To feel that a loving parent and a trusting child are the likest to God of all creatures, and that the voice of the child asking is the best type for us of the wonderful act of prayer who can tell what effects have been thereby produced. They are an exhortation to earnestness and confident supplication. They give us: I. The shadow of parental love on earth, and its reality in heaven. The purest and best earthly love has its limitations and imperfections. (1) The earthly is limited, the heavenly is unbounded. (2) The earthly is imperfect, the heavenly is perfect. The evil of the parent heart interferes with, though it does not prevent, the flow of love. II. The gift that includes all good. The Holy Spirit is that gift which includes all besides. The gift of the parent bears some correspondence to the giver. The earthly being evil can yet give good, but only of an inferior and limited kind. God being good can give what is like Himself. That gift is itself the all-inclusive good. (1) The highest. 'This is the true bread.' (2) The pledge of all besides. 'Freely give us all things.' III. The gift is given for the asking. (1) The asking should be with loving confidence, not expecting a denial. A child never dreams of being angrily repelled. It is beautiful how a child will break in upon anything with its requests, and beautiful to see how the strongest nature will move in response to a child, like some big rocking-stone that an infant's hand can cause to vibrate. (2) With submission. (3) With importunity. A. Maclaren. References. XI. 13. H. M. Butler, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 145. J. W. Houchin, The Vision of God, p. 21. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 231. C. Bosanquet, Blossoms from the King's Garden, p. 277. E. Griffith-Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 376. R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 92. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 38. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 447; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 159. XI. 14. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 60. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 223. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. i. p. 159 and (1st Series), vol. i. p. 219. XI. 17. J. Hammond, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 196. XI. 20. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 155. XI. 21. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2157. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 117. XI. 21, 22. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 42. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 376, XI. 21-26. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 613. XI. 23. E. J. Boyce, Parochial Sermons, p. 129. C. J. Ridgeway, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 51. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 213. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 220. XI. 24. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 141. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 57. Luke 11:24-26 A revival of any form of sacerdotal Christianity would be a matter of practice and not of theory. The system which sapped the foundations of patriotism in the old world; which wellnigh eradicated the sense of intellectual honesty, and seriously weakened the habit of truth-speaking; which lowered men's reverence for the marriage-bond by placing its sanctions in a realm outside of nature instead of in the common life of men, and by the institution of monasticism and a celibate clergy; which stunted the moral sense of the nations by putting a priest between every man and his conscience; this system, if it should ever return to power, must be expected to produce worse evils than those which it has worked in the past The house which it once made desolate has been partially swept and garnished by the free play gained for the natural goodness of men. It would come back accompanied by social diseases perhaps worse than itself, and the wreck of civilised Europe would be darker than the darkest of past ages. Prof. W. K. Clifford. References. XI. 24-26. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 277. XI. 25. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 205. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 109. XI. 26. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 118. XI. 27. W. M. Sinclair, Words from St. Paul's (2nd Series), p. 156. Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 321. XI. 27, 28. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p. 69. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches (2nd Series), p. 282. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 233. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading (2nd Series), p. 92. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1920; vol. lii. No. 3018. XI. 29. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 898. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 283. XI. 29-32. Ibid., vol. v. p. 139; ibid. vol. vi. pp. 356, 417. XI. 30. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 26. Ibid. vol. v. p. 226. XI. 31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1600. Luke 11:33 This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ Luke 12:1 The words follow an account of the Pharisees' attempt to ensnare Jesus, and Weiss's contention is that Jesus warns His disciples, not against the 'simulatio' of the Pharisees, who 'cloaked their real disposition under the appearance of extreme piety, but simply against "dissimulatio" in the sense of Gal 2:13 , i.e. the temper which would hide its true convictions owing to the fear of man'. The man who practises ὑπόκρισις of any kind plays a part. He is insincere. But his motives may vary. The real self which is kept in the background may be worse or better than the open actions and words in which the man seeks to come before the public. In one case, ὑπόκρισις may be 'the compliment paid by vice to goodness'; the man may pretend to possess beliefs higher than his real ones. In another case, it may be toll paid needlessly and hurtfully by goodness to expediency and false prudence. The latter case, Weiss holds, was in the mind of Jesus when he uttered this warning. James Moffatt. References. XII. 1. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 237. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 135. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 190. XII. 2. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 381. XII. 2-12. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 344. Luke 12:3 It is constantly whispered that it would be dangerous to divulge certain truths to the masses.... If a thing is true, let us all believe it, rich and poor, men, women, and children. If a thing is untrue, let us all disbelieve it, rich and poor, men, women, and children. Truth is a thing to be shouted from the housetops, not to be whispered over rose-water after dinner when the ladies are gone away. Prof. W. K. Clifford. References. XII. 4, 5. J. Bolton, Selected Sermons (2nd Series), p. 147. XII. 5. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 208; ibid. vol. iii. p. 283. XII. 6. C. Bosanquet, Blossoms from the King's Garden, p. 155. Christ's View of the Modern World Luke 12:6-7 That is a simple saying, and yet how deep! Could any illustration be more homely, or humdrum, more inadequate, or commonplace? And yet Jesus Christ takes it for the purpose of expressing His conception of the substance and soul of our human life what its contents are; what is the infinite care that is over it and through it, over the whole of it, and through the whole of it, even to its minutest details! And then He shows, by the turn He gives it, to what mighty courage and patient devotion men may be inspired who accept His view of life. I. What, then, is His interpretation of this complex and bewildering thing we call the world? It is, in brief, that human life is not a weltering chaos but a well-ordered family in a graciously ruled world. This Universe is a Home God is Father and Mother. We are the children of His family. II. What, then, is it makes the Home? There are four responses that we can give to that inquiry. (1) First of all, the vital factor of the home is the parental. Jesus claims the home as the true type of our human life, and He gives new meaning to the word 'God' when He represents Him as Father and Mother of this Home. It is the glory of our Christianity that it has given us a new conception of the word 'Father,' and that it has authentically applied it to God. (2) What makes the Home? Lift the shutter and look through the window at the family, and you recognise at once that the spirit of the home is love, selfsacrifice, devotion on the part of mother and father to the care and welfare, the discipline and up-bringing of the children. The spirit that rules the life of man is the spirit of selfsacrifice; a Divine sacrifice for our redemption. (3) What makes the Home? Look into it again, and you see that the methods of the home contemplate and provide for the development of freedom. As of the home, so of all our life. He does not put us here as machines wound up to go in a certain prescribed way: He offers us the sovereignty of ourselves, and He Himself undertakes the task of training us in the use of such sovereignty; that is the meaning of temptation and difficulty, of desire and aspiration. Hegel says: 'The history of the world is the gradual development of human free-will'. Slowly but surely God is educating His children in the right use of their divinest prerogative, their power of personal choice. (4) What makes the Home? My last answer to this question is, Service makes the home. We are made for service; and Jesus assures us that the quality of our service and the amount of it both depend upon the view which we take of our life. J. Clifford, The Secret of Jesus, p. 35. Luke 12:6-7 While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy for it, Nature was holding on her calm, inexorable way, in unmoved and terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was making brilliant day to busy nations on the other side of the swift earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships were labouring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest; and sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has fluttered down to its nest, with the long-sought food, and has found the nest torn and empty. George Eliot, in * Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story. Luke 12:8 * Clough's lines, entitled A Protest, describe such a confession of faith upon the part of a woman: In act to speak she rose, but with the sense Of all the eyes of that mixed company Now suddenly turned upon her, some with age Hardened and dulled, some cold and critical.... The mantling blood to her cheek Rushed up and overflushed itself, blank night her soul Made dark, and in her all her purpose swooned. She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon, With recollections clear, august, sublime, Of God's great truth, and right immutable, Which, as obedient vassals, to her mind Came summoned of her will, in self-negation Quelling her troublous earthly consciousness, She queened it o'er her weakness. At the spell Back rolled the ruddy tide, and leaves her cheek Paler than erst, and yet not ebbs so far But that one pulse of one indignant thought Might hurry it hither in flood. So as she stood She spoke. God in her spoke and made her heard. All varieties of formalism have one quality in common, that the strength they give to religion is not vital, it is only social and external. They have a weakening effect upon faith, even in the faithful. Formalism lowers the temperature, not on one side only, but all round it, like an iceberg floating in the sea. Its disapproval of dissent is accompanied by a chilling want of sympathy with religious earnestness and zeal. Formalism is to faith what etiquette is to affection; it is merely taste, and it is quite as much a violation of taste to have the motives of a really genuine, pious Christian, and avow them (in religious language, 'to confess Christ before men'), as it is to abstain from customary ceremonies. In short, formalism is the world with its usages, substituting itself for Jesus and His teaching; it is 'good form' set up in the place of enthusiastic loyalty and uncalculating self-devotion. P. G. Hamerton, French and English p. 177. References. XII. 8. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 174. XII. 8, 9. J. M. Whiton, Summer Sermons, p. 161. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 379. XII. 10. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 26. His Brother's Inheritance Luke 12:13 I. Here is an instance of man's strange tendency to avoid personal application of Christ's teaching to themselves. It is his brother that he thinks about, not himself at all. The last thing a man thinks of is applying religious truth to himself. The same thing is true about all moral truth, about all maxims which have a bearing on life and conduct The Gospel message is essentially * Individual. * II. Here is an instance of the operation of worldly cares in shutting out the Gospel. This man listens to Christ, and keeps on thinking his own thoughts all the time about the estate. Men are so absorbed in their worldly affairs that they pay no heed to the Divine message. While giving all honour to worldly occupation, it is not to be forgotten that (1) it tends to become absorbing and engrossing. (2) It blinds to all high and true thought (3) It specially blinds to Christ's message. III. Here is also an instance of a very common mistake as to what Christ has come to do. He thinks of Him as a Rabbi, and wants Him to speak to his brother and get him to do justly. He looks upon Christ as a moral teacher who restrains by His word social abuses. You find this view in many different forms. (1) That is often the politician's view of Christianity. (2) That is the sentimental novelist's view of Christianity. (3) That is the view held by all people who have not learned their own sin. Now look at Christ's answer. 'Beware of covetousness.' Christ's first work is to the individual, then to society. He is Redeemer before moral Teacher. The hope of the world is in the Cross of Christ. A. Maclaren. References. XII. 13-15. E. Bersier, Sermons in Paris, p. 107. XII. 13-23. T. Heath, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 277. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 337. Luke 12:14 Now for jurisdiction, this dear saint of the prelates, it will be best to consider, first, what it is: that sovereign Lord, who in the discharge of His holy anointment from God the Father, which made Him supreme bishop of our souls, was so humble as to say, 'Who made Me a judge or a divider over ye?' hath taught us that a churchman's jurisdiction is no more but to watch over his flock in season and out of season, to deal by sweet and efficacious instruction, gentle admonitions, and sometimes rounder reproofs; against negligence or obstinacy will be required a rousing volley of pastoral threatenings.... In some, his jurisdiction is to see the thriving and prospering of that which he hath planted.' So Milton, in his animadversion in the Remonstrant's Defence, concluding with the definition: 'True evangelical jurisdiction is no more than for a minister to see to the thriving and prospering of that which he hath planted'. Reference. XII. 14. A. Shepherd, The Gospel and Social Questions, p. 3. Self-centred Or Christ-centred? Luke 12:15 I. How came our Lord to use these Words? They were spoken in answer to a man in the street There had been an interruption by one of the crowd, who called out, 'Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me'. But our Lord refused to interfere in this domestic quarrel. Is it not strange that He should refuse to help a troubled soul like this one? I think I may say that our Lord's reason was the same reason that He does not interfere in our own daily affairs. We read of disasters by land and sea, earthquakes in far-off lands, the poor out of work, the children's cry for bread, and though we may not give utterance with our lips, yet in our hearts we wish that the Lord would come and put all things right. But He does not come. Instead, the voice from heaven says, 'In your patience, possess ye your souls My time is not yet come'. II. Whilst our Lord Refused to be a Judge and a Divider He did not Refuse His Help Altogether. He related a parable. And this is the picture that He painted. The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully, and because of this prosperity there followed perplexity, as he said, 'What shall I do? I have no place to bestow all my fruits and my goods.' How easy it would have been for him to have said, 'I will give some of them to my brethren who have not any'. But what do we read that he said? 'This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods, and I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' Prosperity and perplexity. Selfishness and shortsightedness. These characteristics are painted very vividly by our Lord in this picture. If there is one thing in this world more despicable than another it is selfishness. Mark the selfishness in the remarks of this man in which the pronoun 'I' seems to predominate. 7 will pull down; this will I do; I will restore; I will build. Is there anything more despicable in the sight of God than a self-centred soul? III. Self-Centred or Christ-Centred? You may ask what do I mean by a self-centred soul? One whose thoughts and actions are centred entirely upon himself. He will rise in the morning, and his first thoughts are, 'What shall I put on? What am I going to have to eat? What am I likely to get in the way of work or play?' And his whole day is spent in 'getting' for himself. But his soul is lost in misery. And what of the happy man who possesses a Christ-centred soul? He wakes in the morning, and before he leaves his bed his thoughts go up to God on high, and he thinks of Christ who died for him. In proportion to our holiness is our happiness. 'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.' 'This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom He hath sent.' This alone will suffice on that day when He returns. Luke 12:15 We rarely find Christ meddling with any of these plump commands, but it was to open them out, and lift his hearers from the letter to the Spirit.... And thus you find Christ giving various counsels to varying people, and often jealously careful to avoid definite precept. Is He asked, for example, to divide a heritage? He refuses: and the best advice that He will offer is but a paraphrase of that tenth commandment which figures so strongly among the rest. * Take heed, and beware of covetousness. * R. L. Stevenson. References. XII. 15. W. M. Sinclair, Difficulties of our Day, p. 96. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 94. J. Eames, Sermons to Boys and Girls, p. 95. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 121. W. R. Inge, All Saint's Sermons, 1905-7, p. 69. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 253. XII. 15-21. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 248. J. M. Whiton, Summer Sermons, p. 89. Rich and Yet Poor Luke 12:16 Why is this man called a 'fool'? The epithet is a strong one. It is one the use of which Christ discouraged. It falls hot from the lips of Christ Himself. What is there in the conduct of this man to justify the use of such an opprobrious term? I. (1) This man is evidently what is known as a 'successful man'; but surely it does not follow that his folly lay in his success? Presumably it is all due to his own forethought, diligence, and the prolific generosity of 'mother earth'. There is nothing unworthy in any success that is well and wisely gained. (2) Nor can we detect anything like folly, but something very like common sense and prudence, in the man's question, 'What shall I do with my goods'? (3) Nor do we perceive any particular folly in what he determined to do 'I will pull down my barns, and build greater'. II. There is one thing that is very noticeable in this man's mind and speech, and that is the utter absence of any idea of, or reference to, God. There is a popular saying, if it may be used here without vulgarity, 'He reckoned without his host'. The picture is a common one. It is the picture of a man whom prosperity has made Godless. There are two things a man may never forget; at least, if he do, God will not be slow in reminding him of them the one is, that what he calls his own is not his, it has been lent him by God; and the other is, that what has been lent him by God is intended to be used for God. III. This man has literally no sense of responsibility. IV. But let no one go away, saying, 'There is nothing here for me. I am none of your prosperous men, I have neither money nor goods laid up for "many years!"' Hear me Thou hast not this Thou has not that Thou hast a soul! and the night is upon us, and it might be required of thee and then? J. Thew, Broken Ideals, p. 165. Luke 12:18 Want is a growing giant, whom the Coat of Have was never large enough to cover. Emerson. References. XII. 18. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 186. XII. 19. T. Arnold, Christian Life, Its Hopes, p. 75. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 192. XII. 19, 20. W. H. Evans, Short Sermons for the Seasons, p. 50. Our Lord's Fool Luke 12:20 The word for 'fool' here is the same which St. Paul employs in his argument about the Resurrection. It signifies one who does not perceive what is passing before his eyes. He stands in the midst of life like a senseless statue. And when Jesus terms the man in His parable a 'fool,' He means that he is one who misses the proper significance of life and has no perception of its real values. He does not see the true issues. He is blind, unperceiving. Now look at the man and observe the justice of this characterisation of him. I. And, first of all, you will notice that he was not in any sense a bad man. There was no wickedness, no depravity about him. On the contrary, he was a most estimable person. He was rich, but there was no harm in this. Of course there was none. Success is an excellent thing if it be rightly achieved, and it is the stupid or indolent man who cries out against it. It is, to my mind, a good omen when a lad is ambitious of getting on in the world, of fighting his life-battle and winning it. 'I think,' said an old gentleman toward the close of his busy and successful career, 'there are three questions which will be put to us on the Day of Judgment: Did you make all you could? How did you make it? What use did you make of it?' And which of these questions would have convicted the man in the parable? He would have passed the first with the utmost credit. He had made all he could; he had missed no chance. He was a clever farmer. He had skill in crops and herds and understood the ways of the market; and he had prospered amazingly in his harvesting and breeding and buying and selling. And it was all to his credit. And as for the second question: 'How did you make it? 'he would have passed that too. It is not suggested, you observe, that he had been guilty of any dishonesty, any sharp practice, any unfair dealing in the conduct of his affairs. But what use had he made of it? Ah! there he had failed. He had a fault, and it is one to which the successful man is ever prone. And it was this that he was so much taken up with his farm, his crops, his cattle, his buying and selling, that he had never a thought for the higher and more momentous interests of life He neglected the supreme concerns, made no account of them, never took them into his reckoning the supreme concerns: Death, Judgment, Eternity, God. II. When a man sells his soul and he never means to sell it he not only pays the price but loses the purchase. And so it happened with the Rich Fool. He bartered his soul for the world; and he got the world, did he not? Yes, but he had no enjoyment of it while he had it, and he quickly found that he could not keep it. There is a grim Italian saying that 'our last robe is made without pockets'. And the supremely important question is what sort of things we are living for and setting our hearts upon things which need pockets, or the things which the heart carries. It is well for us to pause from time to time amid our worldly employments and consider what the years have brought us and whether it be gain or loss. And it is so easy to determine. Perhaps they have brought us broader lands and fuller barns; and these are goodly things if only we have wisdom to use them. But have they brought us also more love and gentleness and patience and courage and faith and hope, more spiritual-mindedness, a deeper knowledge of God, a closer intimacy with Christ and a fuller sympathy with His mind and will? Whatever of temporal success or failure they may have brought us, the changeful years have brought us nothing but good if the world be less to us than it used to be, and Christ more. David Smith, Man's Need of God, p. 125. Luke 12:20 We rode by a fine seat: the owner of which (not much above fourscore years old) says he desires only to live thirty years longer; ten to hunt, ten to get money (having at present but twenty thousand pounds a year), and ten years to repent. O that God may not say unto him, 'Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee'. Wesley's * Journal. * References. XII. 20. D. Brook, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 33. G. Campbell Morgan, ibid. vol. xviii. p. 154 H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 160. XII. 21. D. O. F. Macdonald, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 205. Luke 12:21 The influence of ancient philosophies, and also that of Christianity (so far as it has been taken seriously), have both been hostile to money-making; but the influence of all visible realities is so constantly in its favour, that the word 'success' in the middle classes both of France and England means money and nothing else. The phrases, ' Il a réussi; il est arrivé ,' and the expressions, 'He has done well; He has risen in the world,' do not mean that one has attained any ideal excellence, but simply that he has betted money; and in certain classes a man is considered a poor creature if he has not realised a fortune. P. G. Hamerton, French and English, p. 377. If thou turnest in towards thyself to live to thyself, to be happy in the workings of thine own will, to be rich in the sharpness and acuteness of thy own reason, thou choosest to be a weed, and canst only have such a life, spirit, and blessing from God, as a thistle has from the sun. William Law. References. XII. 22-31. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 342. XII. 24. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (3rd Series), p. 213. How the Lilies Grow Luke 12:37 They grow: I. Slowly. So slowly that increase is only noticeable at considerable intervals. It is Nature's usual method. In the stalactite caves of Cheddar though the pendants and pillars are evidently in constant process of formation, there has been no appreciable lengthening or heightening for half a century. And as it is in the realm of the natural, so it is in the realm of the spiritual, e.g. in our personal religious experience. So also in the work of the Church. II. Mysteriously. 'How they grow.' But who knows how? So in all spiritual experiences and work. We must leave room for the mysterious and inscrutable. III. Under certain conditions. Absence of sunlight and moisture, poverty of soil, or lack of gentle breezes, will cause the flower to droop and die. So in all spiritual matters; growth is conditional. Let the conditions be observed and strength with beauty of Christian character are secured. Under some conditions spiritual vigour is almost impossible. The Cashmir proverb says, 'A fat man has no religion'. In that quaint fashion we have but a version of 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God'. H. Windross, The Preachers? Magazine, vol. vii. p. 323. Luke 12:27 There are times when I cannot rest in the ethical, when I cannot find any satisfaction in historical facts. The very evangel satisfies me not. I cannot read my Bible, and I cannot pray. But I go out into my garden to consider the lilies how they grow. Μὴ μεριμνᾶτε , they seem to preach: carking care, away! Dr. John Duncan. The highest voice ever heard on this earth said withal, 'Consider the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these'. A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. 'The lilies of the field ' dressed finer than earthly princes, springing up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful eye looking out on you from the great inner sea of Beauty! How could the rude earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty? Carlyle, on Heroes (Lecture iii). Beside the moist clods the slender flags arise, filled with the sweetness of the earth. Out of the darkness under that darkness which knows no day save when the ploughshare opens its chinks they have come to light... Yonder a steam-plough pants up the hill, groaning with its own strength, yet all that strength and might of wheels, and piston, and chains, cannot drag from the earth one single blade like these. Force cannot make it; it must grow an easy word to speak or write, in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth and life, of beauty and sweetness and colour, starting out of the clods, that gives the com its power over me. Richard Jefferies. To us this is a truism. In the first century it must have seemed a paradox of paradoxes.... Almost all Christ's moral precepts might be paralleled or illustrated by something in Hebrew or Jewish literature. This praise of the beauty of flowers cannot, apparently, be so paralleled. And it helps Christians to approximate to a realisation of the spiritual altitude of Christ's conception of beauty and glory in the moral world. Of all Christ's sayings it is the most original. E. A. Abbott, The Son of Man, pp. 714, 715. Reference. XII. 28. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 184. Luke 12:29 Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph. Walt Whitman. References. XII. 29. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. 1. No. 2871- A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 349. Luke 12:31 Speaking of the idealist Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, Dr. Nitobé, in his book on Bushido (p. 18), observes that, 'Making allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, conveys a thought which may be found on almost any page of Wan Yang Ming'. Luke 12:31 If you do not happen to have the means to go to Brazil, set out travelling to heaven. It is a longer journey, and you will see more by the way. Nay, I would say to the wealthy, travel in your own township. Put off your fine clothes and go among the poor and oppressed; work at the bench with the carpenter's son, and in the pit with the collier; go on the road with the tramp and lighten the way a little for his feet and you will hear things you never thought to have heard. You will see things that in all your grand tours you could never attain to see. Like other problems the problem of property is best solved indirectly. That is, not by seeking material wealth directly, but by seeking that of which material wealth is only the symbol. 'Seek ye first the kingdom... and all these things shall be added unto you.' Vaguely metaphysical as these words sound, yet I believe they express a literal fact.... Seeking ease we have found disease; scrambling for wealth, our civilisation has become poverty-stricken beyond all expression; prizing mere technical knowledge, we have forgotten the existence of wisdom; and setting up material property as our deity, we have dethroned the ruling power in our own natures. Not till this last is restored can we possibly attain to possession of the other things. Carpenter, England's Ideal, pp. 159, 160. At a certain time of life certain things cease to interest: but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing? Thackeray. An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself. R. L. Stevenson. The Gift of the Kingdom Luke 12:32 I. The kingdom of God is the gift of God. II. The gift of the kingdom includes all other gifts. The greater includes the less. III. So the children of the kingdom ought to be brave and glad. (1) Keep the kingdom before you. Look far enough forward and you will not be afraid. (2) Interpret all life by it. A. Maclaren. References. XII. 32. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 173. H. Woodcock, Sermon Outlines (1st Series), p. 39. T. H. Barlow, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 392. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 68; ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 35. Luke 12:33-34 We listen in church with formal assent when the love of money is denounced as the root of all evil. But we hold practically that this language has ceased to be applicable to the conditions of modern society. Energetic men are ambitious, and desire to excel. The only road by which they can now rise to preeminence lies in the accumulation of riches. Success is measured even in literature and art by the money which can be made out of them. Froude, Short Studies, vol. iii. p. 152. Because a man has shop to mind In time and place, since flesh must live, Needs spirit lack all life behind, All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive, All loves except what trade can give? But shop each day and all day long! Friend, your good angel slept, your star Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong! From where these sorts of treasures are, There should our hearts be Christ, how far! Browning. 'I declare,' said Wilberforce, during the anti-slavery crusade, 'my greatest cause of difference with the democrats is their laying, and causing people to lay, so great a stress on the concerns of this world as to occupy their whole minds and hearts, and to leave a few scanty and lukewarm thoughts for the heavenly treasure.' Can you have ownership of inorganic matter of the mere materials of life?... Can you say to the treasures in chest and closet which the moth and rust are duly and diligently all the while corrupting, Treasures, Treasures, you are all mine, mine, mine? Yes, you can say so; but in what sense exactly do you say so? It is merely in the legal sense that you rub your hands as you gaze bending over them, and say, 'I can prevent any one else from using you' or is it in a grander sense than this? And if so, in what sense? Carpenter, England's Ideal, pp. 144, 145. Reference. XII. 33, 34. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 28. Luke 12:35 Ursula Rovers was not one of those who serve their Lord with dancing and a shout. Yet she sang to herself, very sedately, as she broke off each bursting pod, amid the fiercer jubilations of the passion-drunk blackbirds and finches: Stand then with girded loins, and see your lamps be burning; What though the sun lies fair upon your paths today, Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning? The night comes surely. Watch and pray. Maarten Maartens, in * My Lady Nobody. * Luke 12:35-37 This was the passage from which Principal Rainy preached his last sermon on board ship on his voyage to Australia In the course of the sermon, in speaking of the 'watches' in which it is said that the Lord may come, he remarked it is 'perhaps not altogether fanciful' to divide the life of man into 'three watches'. The first is child-life, 'when we have not yet begun to awake to the seriousness of life and only see the bright and joyous side,' and the third is age, 'when our experience is ripe, but when we feel the ties that have bound us to earth gradually but surely lessening their hold upon us and we are forced to look on to the great end'. 'But,' the preacher continued, 'there is a second period of life let us call it the middle watch, though it may be the last,' and it is 'the time when we are in the greatest danger of forgetting watchfulness'. 'When the cares of business, the pleasures of society, the greed of gain and the glamour of the world threaten most to choke out the good seed from our hearts, then it is we need to pull ourselves together, to strive to realise we are not living for this world alone, and to listen most intently, amid the confusing voices of earth, for the rustle of the angels' wings.' References. XII. 35. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 155. XII. 35, 36. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St Luke, p. 358. XII. 35-37. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1643, p. 185. XII. 35-38. R. Allen, The Words of Christ, p. 245. XII. 35-48. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 52. XII. 36. J. Bolton, Selected Sermons (2nd Series), p. 308. J. Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p. 325. XII. 37. C. Bradley, Faithful Teaching, p. 86. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 366. XII. 37, 38. J. Moffatt, The Second Things of Life, p. 117. XII. 37, 38. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2302. XII. 37, 43, 44. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 373. XII. 38. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 336. Luke 12:40 During the Scripture reading with the villagers at the Hall in the evening, he ( i.e. Joseph John Gurney, the great Quaker banker and philanthropist) spoke of the awful consequences of delaying preparation for a dying hour, alluding to two deaths which had just occurred, and ending with the words, Be ye also ready, for at such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. The very next day he became unwell; all that week he failed, and almost without suffering grew feebler till Saturday evening, when he said to his wife, 'I think I feel a little joyful,' and, with these words, fell into the sleep from which he never woke here. Quoted in Mr, Hare's Gurneys of Earlham, ii. pp. 220, 221. References. XII. 40. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 1. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 121. St. Peter's Weakness and Strength Luke 12:41 I suggest for our study the character-sketch of the failure of the very Apostle who spoke to our Lord the words of our text. In it I think we shall find it necessary to make very little allowance for the change in outward circumstances before we arrive at a living, bright lesson for ourselves in that wonderfully human narrative of St. Peter of his goodness, his weakness, his fall, his penitence, his forgiveness, his new start For nothing will help us more to make progress in the future than clearly to see the reason of our fall in previous encounters; then it is that holy penitence, leading up to God's forgiveness, builds the bridge by which men pass from sin to righteousness. And while we cannot, of course, say that the study of St. Peter's failure can exhibit to us the whole source of the failures of all men, seeing that the reasons of men's sins are as numerous and varied as are men themselves, yet the story of St. Peter's denials, if we read it with a little care, is beyond question very instructive and far-reaching, and we can, I think, see reflected in it the origin and the history of many at least of our own falls. I. In thinking over the little drama, for such it almost is, we must not dwell on the fall of St. Peter as if it were just the natural sequel to a mere rash boast as if, I mean, St. Peter had been insincere from the beginning, as if from the beginning he had not been prepared to do or suffer for the Lord. Far from it: when the Lord was arrested in the garden, it is St. Peter who strikes a blow in His defence and thereby exposes himself to great danger, though the Lord's last wrought miracle appears to have saved him from arrest; and when all the others, with the exception of St. John, forsook the Lord and fled, St. Peter more bravely follows to the high priest's house, where his recent act of violence must have placed him in special danger in the company in which he found himself. Of his sincerity when he spoke and declared that, however unfaithful others might be, yet he would be true, of this we need not doubt; the bitter tears which he shed when it was all over tell the same story; it was because he really loved the Lord that he spoke as he did; it was because he really loved the Lord that he wept. The mistake he made was that he compared himself with others, and boasted of his love; for however great it might be, it could offer no reason for the disparagement of others. And then he made the further mistake of under-estimating the difficulty of that which he had taken upon himself; I say under-estimating advisedly, for the temptation to deny the Lord was all the greater because it came in such a comparatively contemptible way. If he had imagined anything clearly, perhaps he had pictured to himself some such scene as that in which he did boldly strike to defend the Lord. The question of a maid-servant and the greater difficulty of meeting that, he had not foreseen. And let me call attention to the fact that, as St. John describes the matter, in the first and second denial St. Peter merely follows the lead of his questioner. The question is so put as to show that it expected St. Peter to say that he was no friend of Jesus of Nazareth, and St. Peter only said what he felt he was expected to say. If the first question had come in a less trivial way, if it had been a formal inquiry, and St. Peter had felt that he was on his trial, the result would no doubt have been different. As it was, he was in rather a difficult position, the company was dangerous; it was a mistake, so he would feel, to contradict any one and begin a quarrel; he simply wished to escape observation, perhaps, with the very purpose of bravely dying for the Lord when the right moment should arrive when he could assist Him. And so with easy compliance, not thinking that there was yet anything to fight about, he simply assented to the lead of his questioner and avoided any unpleasantness. II. All this is very true to our timid, self-saving nature. Can we not recall occasions when, really being at heart on the right side, we have allowed ourselves to appear to be on the wrong side because we have thought that the occasion was not big enough to call for a real declaration of our principles? Something wrong has been proposed and a young person, man or woman, assents, in the hope that after all it will not be done, and so all will end well, without anything disagreeable being caused by an outspoken protest. Something clever has been said about another, not by way of good-humoured character-study, but possessing its only point in its maliciousness and sting; some risky joke has been made, and Christ's timid follower has not laughed outright, for he could not really approve, and he was not really in the least amused; but he has feebly smiled, enough, so he hoped, to save his conscience on the one hand, and not to make him singular or unpopular on the other. My firm conviction is that in many of the dangers of life the gravest harm will often have as its first step this easy half-pretended assent to the wrong spoken by others, and, on the other hand, Christ's faithful follower will be saved from further attack of wrong if from the beginning he or she meets such remarks with the unspoken but unmistakable dissent of a self-respecting silence, or with just the look that simply and modestly bespeaks a different standard of thought, the look before which a meaner nature by instinct is cowed. And observe, while St. Peter, in his timid effort to avoid anything awkward, had begun to slip further and further away from his high resolve, St. John, who kept near to the Lord, and made no kind of compromise, was not even assailed. What a contrast! What a lesson! The place of faithfulness true, simple, and complete will always be the place of safety; when we keep nearest to Christ we have least to fear. III. We know now that which St. Peter then did not know. Christ must die for Peter before Peter could die for Christ; such is an old comment on all this. But Christ did die for Peter, and in the end Peter was privileged to die for Christ. 'Verily, verily,' so, soon after, the Lord said to him, 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake He signifying by what death he should glorify God.' And some of us in a famous book, accurate and imaginative, have read details of the story of St. Peter's death for Christ. But we need not travel outside the limits of Holy Scripture to recognise the change that came over St. Peter after Christ had died for him and the Holy Spirit had been sent His nature was not altered; God's influence does not change men in that sense; He does not abolish and annihilate the disposition with which we are born; He chastens, and ennobles, and consecrates it. In the Epistle to the Galatians we read that St. Peter still had the same tendencies as ever. But in the Acts of the Apostles we read of his boldness and his defiance of the great authorities of Jerusalem; we read of his public speeches for Christ's name; we read of his love for Christ made good in action; and those humble words of his involving no comparison of himself with others, and only claiming that he had a personal affection for Christ, 'Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee,' were justified by his life and by his death. Bertram Pollock (Bishop of Norwich), The Guardian, 21st October, 1910. References. XII. 42. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 404. XII. 48. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p. 332. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 62. The Fire Christ Flung on Earth Luke 12:49 According to a word of His own, Christ came from the heavenly sphere to fling fire on earth. In language which from any other lips would have been called reckless, He said this and more that He sent not peace, but a sword. Into a world where already so many sharp swords were busy, He brought another keener than all the rest, that was to cut asunder the nearest and the dearest. Whatever may be involved in the symbol of fire, this, at least, is clear, it means assault and transformation of the existing state. So in the Christ's thought His religion did not come to crown, with a final glory, a fair temple long in building and needing but that to complete it. A religion welcomed by men as sweetly reasonable, accommodated to their imaginings, disturbing but little the peace of their conditions, is not Christianity. To Christ the world as it was needed transformation; out of fervent heat the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, was to rise. I. What can be easier than to fling fire? A child may throw the brand and raise a conflagration that will not cease till the great city lies a mass of charred and blackened ruins. Building is slow and difficult, but one needs no skill to destroy. The young reformer is flushed with brilliant anticipations. He doubts not that his own ardours will spread from heart to heart and change the face of things. Christ was wiser. His were the noblest and most kindling thoughts; they dropped from the height of the Divine nature, but they could not set the world ablaze. Though He came to send fire on earth, and longed to see it burning, He bethought Himself that first He must be baptised with the baptism of death, and was straitened till it was accomplished. That Christ foresaw and meant His death is the key to the true understanding of His life. II. Christ knew what we have each to discover, that the world is very hard to set on fire. He underrated neither the greatness nor the difficulty of the work He had to do. But He did not despair. It was possible, but possible only in one way. He must die, and so kindle the fire which would never be put out. He knew best, we may be sure. It is not His example that will save men, perfect though it is. We have all of us had examples enough to condemn us, though we had never seen Him. It is not His counsel and wisdom that will redeem a world that has almost been advised into hell. It is His death that absolves us, renews us, brings us back to God. If for the hour thought retreats from the central theme of Scripture, it must return to what St. Paul deemed the very triumph and crown of the Eternal Reason. If the Church begins to forget the death of Christ, her sinking fires will remind her of her loss. To use the old language of the burnt offering, it is the fire kept burning on the altar that burns day and night and shall never go out. III. The great token and witness of Christ on earth is the life kindled by Him in the beginning and burning on steadily to the end. Perhaps none of us know what such Jives have been and are to us; how our faith and hope hang on them. They always burn on the altar of Christ's death, and may we not say on an altar of their own selfsacrifice. Christ came nearly two thousand years ago to set the world on fire has He done it? He has kindled a fire; that cannot be denied. The years are years of the Lord. But will it go out? Many hope that it will. They do their best to extinguish it. First put it out, some of them are telling us, and you will see what our science and politics will do for you. Many fear it. They give heed to despairing voices at home and abroad and see the fire languishing and dying. But it shall never go out. It is burning and it will spread till the whole world is caught and wrapped in its flames. W. Robertson Nicoll, Ten Minute Sermons, p. 301. References. XII. 49. W. L. Alexander, Sermons, p. 1. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 128. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 854. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 381. XII. 60. J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p. 24. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Beading, pp. 96, 102. Luke 12:51 * , with 2:14 * True Christianity is both, and alternately a cement and a solvent. Vinet. References. XII. 54. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 140. XII. 54-57. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1135. XII. 56. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 235. XII. 57. T. Sadler, Sermons for Children, p. 77. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p. 39. XIII. 1. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 96. XIII. 1-3. J. A. Atkinson, The Cholera: Is it the Visitation of God? No. 1. XIII. 1-5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 408. XIII. 1-9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 232. Luke 13:2-3 Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. In one day the nay will command a ready assent: but the warning added, and the character with which it stamps such events as foreshadowings of judgment, will not readily be entered into. M'Leod Campbell. The Call to Repentance (For Lent) Luke 13:3 I. The Voice of the Love of God. Let us make quite sure that the call which comes to us now is the voice of the love of God, seeking to awaken those who are asleep in careless sin, seeking to bring back those who have wandered, to set free those who are tied and bound by the chains of evil habit. The voice of God is even now calling us to search and examine our hearts and lives only because He loves us and would lead us into the paths which lead to perfect peace. II. Its Universal Application. If there should be any one who thinks that this matter has no meaning or importance for him, if there be any who intend to put aside all thought of Lent as regards their own inner life, or who are content to go on as they are without any prayerful self-examination, without any effort of self-discipline, I would ask them very seriously to take to heart what St. Paul says on this subject. He was no self-indulgent idler, and yet, after perhaps twenty years of devoted service, he says, 'I keep under my body and bring it into subjection'. Is there any one here whose past life has been so wholly given to Christ that he can dare to say that he has risen above the need of that self-discipline which St. Paul found necessary for the safety of his soul? III. The Lesson Needed. We have in the words of our text a striking instance of the way in which our Lord answered the thoughts rather than the words of those around Him. He laid down for all time this rule, that we are not to judge of the misfortunes of others as to how far they may be the result of their own misdeeds; we are not to claim for ourselves any merit or favour because we have been shielded from loss or suffering. IV. Make-believe Repentance. Repentance had become too much a mere matter of words, an empty show for what had no real existence in the heart. We seem to gather this from our Lord's own teaching with regard to the make-believe repentance of the Pharisee. Let us be quite sure, and especially at this season of Lent, that our repentance is real, that it is in the sight of God, and not merely a show to man. It will be well for us to be on our guard against some of the common imitations of repentance, which may suffice to silence a conscience which has never been really aroused, but which cannot bring peace to a troubled soul. (a) The first of these imitations of repentance, because the most common, is to be satisfied with a sorrow for the consequences of sin and not for the sin itself. (b) Another danger is that we should be satisfied with a general confession of our evil deeds, merely repeating the words that we are miserable sinners. That is good but it is not enough. (c) And one more caution, let us be very careful to take God's standard and not the world's. How many silence their conscience by saying they are no worse than their neighbours! How can such an excuse stand before the great white throne? In their early years young people will not think; in the busy, active prime of life they do not think; when the heart becomes hard and worldly they cannot think; and then perhaps, when the realities of death and eternity are close at hand, they dare not think. Surely then it is well for us to have a special time appointed when we may force ourselves to think of sin and death and judgment. References. XIII. 3. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 90. XIII. 3-5. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 431. Luke 13:4 'We cannot tell what is a judgment of God; 'tis presumption to take upon us to know. Commonly,' adds Selden, 'we say a judgment falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide.' Addison moralises on this in the Spectator for 13th September, 1712. 'One would think,' he observes. 'that several of our own historians, in particular, had many revelations of this kind made to them. Our own English monks seldom let any of their kings depart in peace, who had endeavoured to diminish the power or wealth of which the ecclesiastics were in those times possessed. William the Conqueror's race generally found their judgments in the New Forest, where their father had pulled down churches and monasteries.'As the essayist observes, in conclusion, the presumptuousness of such a temper is evident from two considerations 'First, that, generally speaking, there is no calamity or affliction, which is supposed to have happened as a judgment to a vicious man, which does not sometimes happen to men of approved religion and virtue'. And secondly, 'It is impossible for us to know what are calamities, and what are blessings'. The common, trashy mind of our generation is still aghast, like the Jews of old, at any word of an unsuccessful virtue. Job has been written and read; the tower of Siloam fell nineteen hundred years ago; yet we have still to desire a little Christianity, or, failing that, a little even of that rude old Norse nobility of soul, which saw virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was yet not shaken in its faith. R. L. Stevenson, Preface to * Men and Books. * References. XIII. 4. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 330. XIII. 6-9. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 324. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 30. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. pp. 220-366. The Barren Fig Tree Luke 13:7 This parable, one of the shortest, is yet one of the fullest of Divine teaching. It was spoken, primarily, about the Jewish nation. But it refers also to the individual, and the teaching is also to the individual. We notice three things about it. I. God is Working out a Mighty Plan. God's plan is this. His vineyard, His Church, His Kingdom is to extend all over the earth. His Gospel to be preached to every nation: 'that every man should know Jesus as his Saviour'. Such is God's plan. We are only units in God's mighty plan, only fig trees in God's vineyard. He has a right to expect something of us, and so He comes and inspects us. II. A Fruitless Tree. If God finds the Christian not living as he should, not bearing the fruit that was expected of him, there can be only one result. That Christian must be taken up, cast out, and destroyed. There can be no room in God's vineyard for the sluggard; he must be destroyed, forgotten, driven away from God. Let us apply that to ourselves and let us keep that thought close before us. We are fig trees in God's mighty vineyard. God has put you and me just where we are at present. He has not forgotten our whereabouts. He has tended us carefully, He has given us capacity of body and of mind. He has expended upon us all this loving care; and in return He makes inspection of our state at unexpected moments, and so finds out the result of this wonderful care. I tell you these are solemn times when God does this, when He comes very near to us. III. The Cause of Barrenness. Let us take another glance at the fig tree of the parable. Why was it barren? It had received every attention, had been carefully nurtured, its externals were healthy, it made a good show. Why did it not produce fruit? There was no power in it. It did not possess that life-producing sap which could percolate from the roots and produce the fruit. There was something retarding this flow of the sap which produces fruition, something which had caused it to dry up. Outwardly, it looked well; inwardly, it was unhealthy. Is that what God means us a part of His Church to be, a fig tree barren of fruit? He has given us all those blessings, and the result is nothing, or very little at best. Can we say why there are so many weak Christians, why our lives are so barren? Yes, because there is no power no power of the Holy Ghost. References. XIII. 7, 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 650. XIII. 8. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 230. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1451. XIII. 8, 9. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 213. XIII. 9. Brooke Herford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 362. J. Stuart Holden, The Pre-Eminent Lord, p. 197- XIII. 10-13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1426; vol. 1. No. 2891. XIII. 10-17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 272. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 1. XIII. 12. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 103. Luke 13:15 In Sylvia's Lovers (chap. xxx.) Mrs. Gaskell describes Sylvia after her marriage and change from the country life to that of a town. 'Sitting in the dark parlour at the back of the shop, and doing "white work," was much more wearying to her than running out into the fields to bring up the cows, or spinning wool, or making up butter. She sometimes thought to herself that it was a strange kind of life where there were no outdoor animals to look after; the "ox and the ass" had hitherto come into all her ideas of humanity; and her care and gentleness had made the dumb creatures round her father's home into mute friends with loving eyes, looking at her as if wistful to speak in words the grateful regard that she could read without the poor expression of language.' References. XIII. 16. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 557. XIII. 18. Llewelyn Davies, The Prayers of God, pp. 41-54. XIII. 18, 19. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 81. R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, p. 52. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2110. XIII. 18-34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2630. XIII. 19. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 421. XIII. 20. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. iv. p. 249. XIII. 20, 21. R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, p. 70. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 81. XIII. 21. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 380. XIII. 22-30. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 8. The Question of Folly Luke 13:23 This question may no doubt be asked from different motives. Nevertheless it is a foolish question. When it comes from the head it always is so; only when the heart lends it its tenderness and anxiety can it be profitably asked. And Jesus treats it as a foolish question: He does not respond to the speaker's curiosity or speculative interest; turning away from him to the others who were present, He says: 'Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I tell you, shall seek to enter in and shall not be able'. It is the same word, no doubt, which we find in a fuller form in the Sermon on the Mount: 'Enter ye in at the strait gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way which leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it'. I. Question and answer alike recognise, what is recognised by every unsophisticated conscience, that there is such a thing as salvation, and that it cannot be taken for granted. In other words, what is put before us in this life is an alternative. There are two gates, two ways, two goals, two sides of the throne, two kinds of foundation for the house we build; and we have to make our choice between them. We can go in at the strait gate, or at the wide gate, but not at both. We can travel in the broad way or the narrow way, but not in both. II. The strait gate, as we see from the Sermon on the Mount, is so called in opposition to the wide gate, and the wide gate is not so hard to understand. A wide gate is one through which you can pass easily, carrying what you please, and no questions asked. That, Jesus tells us, is the kind of gate which opens on the way that leads to destruction. Anybody can go in, and take what he likes along with him. The wide gate is always busy; the broad way thronged with travellers. You can drift in with the stream, you can have the pleasant sense of being well supported, you can maintain a certain self-respect by pointing to the large numbers of people, of all possible capacities, tastes, and characters, who have taken that way. Nevertheless, it leads to destruction. III. What, then, is meant by the strait gate which opens on the path of life? It is a gate, as the name suggests, which excludes much. You can carry a thousand things to hell which you must lay down before you can take the first step on the way which leads to heaven. In one sense it is wide enough; it can admit any man; it can let the whole human race pass through, if they come one by one, and strip at the outside; but it is not wide enough for anything else. The question has sometimes been asked, 'What, in one word, is the strait gate?' and various answers have been given. It has been called Repentance, Faith, Christ, and what not. Even if these answers are in some respects true, as they are, they are misleading; they divert the mind from the very point which Jesus wishes to emphasise. His purpose is to make us feel that the entrance to the path of life is an entrance in front of which man becomes suddenly, profoundly, perhaps startlingly conscious, that if he is ever to pass through there he must leave much behind him. If there is one word which expresses this, it is Renunciation. IV. Jesus takes it for granted that every one has something to part with. The gate is a strait gate for all who go up to it. There is not a man on earth who can be saved as he is: he has something to renounce before he can enter into life. This is one of the indirect ways in which Jesus assumes the natural sinfulness of the human heart. The heart may have the capacity of heroism, and of making the great renunciation which is required; but no heart is spared renunciation; no man enters the kingdom without the sense of sacrifice and constraint. And it is because the renunciation is painful and requires a great effort that Jesus says with such solemnity and urgency: ' Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in and shall not be able'. James Denney, Gospel Questions and Answers, p. 120. References. XIII. 23. A Scotch Preacher, The Strait Gate, p. 27. XIII. 23, 24. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 72. S. Bentley, Parish Sermons, p. 85. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 236. The Narrow Door Luke 13:24 What are the things against which men have to strive to enter into God's kingdom? I. That against which most people have to strive, if they would enter into life, is the pride of their own heart. There is no hindrance standing between more people and God than that of pride, and there is no sin which people are more anxious for others to think them guiltless of than pride. Therein lies its subtlety. How is pride manifested? Pride manifests itself in a refusal, first, to accept the Divine estimate of the heart's condition; and secondly, and consequently, pride manifests itself in a refusal to obey the first Divine injunction 'Repent'. II. There are those who will have to strive against false confidences. There are those who are trusting in their observance of law; those who are trusting in the fact that they have never openly broken the commandments of the Decalogue. There are those who are putting confidence in a profession of Christianity, putting confidence, moreover, in Christian service. III. Many are being kept out of the kingdom by some false conception of God; who are being kept out of the kingdom by some doctrinal difficulty. To speak of the knowledge of God and of the counsel of God as a reason for your indifference and your continuing in sin, is to attempt to grasp within the compass of your finite mind infinite things which cannot be, and is to disregard and disobey the tender, compassionate voice of the Omnipotent One who calls you to personal, individual, immediate responsibility, and says to you 'Your business is to strive to enter in'. IV. Some one else is not a Christian because they believe that if a man does his best God is so good that He will save him. That is not true. And why not? Because a man is best when he is worthless. Because man's best in the sight of heaven is unholy. V. Many are not Christians because they are afraid of the strife. People have said to me: 'I would like to be a Christian, but I could not keep it'. Their idea of Christianity is that they make a start, and then have to keep it. Once you have made a start you do not keep Christianity, Christianity keeps you. Strive to pass the narrow door, and beyond the place where it swings upon its portal, find the breadth and the magnificence, the sweetness and the light of God's kingship and comradeship with Christ. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. p. 241. Strive to Enter in Luke 13:24 I. Vagrant desires are not enough without a settled earnest purpose. Be in earnest. II. Desires to be in the kingdom are not enough, unless you seek the right way. Be in earnest in the right direction. Christ is the Door. To enter in we need (1) Humiliation. (2) Repentance. (3) Faith. III. Future seekings all vain. This is the time. A. Maclaren. References. XIII. 24. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 150. G. Bellett, Parochial Sermons, p. 65. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 128. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 475. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 191. Luke 13:25 There is no scarcity of faith now, such as it is; for ye shall not now light upon the man who will not say, he hath faith in Christ. But, alas! dreams make no man's rights.... I verily think that the world hath too soft an opinion of the gate to heaven, and that many shall get a blind and sad beguile for heaven. For there is more ado than a cold and frozen 'Lord, Lord'. It must be a way narrower and straighter than we conceive. It were good to take a more judicious view of Christianity. For I have been doubting if ever I knew more of Christianity than the letters of the name. Samuel Rutherford. References. XIII. 25. W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 25. XIII. 26, 27. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (3rd Series), 155. XIII. 27. A. R. Ashwell, God in His Work and Nature, p. 59. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 410. Luke 13:28-29 Envy will not always prevail envious scoundrels may chuckle for a time at the seemingly complete success of the dastardly arts to which they have recourse, in order to crush merit but Providence is not asleep. All of a sudden they see their supposed victim on a pinnacle far above their reach. Then there is weeping and gnashing of teeth with a vengeance, and the long melancholy howl. Oh, there is nothing in this world which gives one so perfect an idea of retribution as the long melancholy howl of the disappointed envious scoundrel when he sees his supposed victim smiling on an altitude far above his reach. From Borrow's, Wild Wales, chap. xxxvii. References. XIII. 28. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 340. XIII. 29. F. W. Symes, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 511. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 140. XIII. 30. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2934. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 334. XIII. 31. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 54. XIII. 31, 32. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 202. XIII. 32. J. Baines, Twenty Sermons, p. 91. XIII. 32, 33. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 14. XIII. 33. Newman Smyth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 267. C. F. Aked, ibid., vol. lix. p. 323. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 27; ibid. vol. iii. p. 133; ibid. vol. v. p. 15; ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 16. XIII. 34. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 209. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 238; ibid. vol. vii. p. 133. XIII. 34. A. T. Robertson, Epochs in the Life of Jesus, p. 120. Luke 13:35 If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ the history of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, un-buried death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills think of it. Thoreau. Compare the apt use made of this in Tennyson's Aylmer's Field, with its closing cry: As cried Christ ere His agony to those that swore Not by the temple but the gold, and made Their own traditions God, and slew the Lord, And left their memories a world's curse 'Behold, Your house is left unto you desolate.' References. XIV. 1. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses (2nd Series), p. 163; Christianity in Daily Conduct, p. 227. XIV. 1-14. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 23. The Men Without a Sabbath Luke 14:3-6 The Lord delivered His primary challenge to the Jews through the Sabbath Day. It was, as it were, His gauge of battle, His test case. For His own personal significance turned on His relation to this Sabbath Day question. Not that in this He challenged the validity of the older Covenant. On the contrary, He always claimed the authority of the older Covenant on His own side. He appealed for His own justification to the principles established in the Law of Moses, or to the precedents recorded in the sacred books. He asserted that He Himself was giving to the Sabbath its proper legal value, and that the Jews, in obstructing His action, were defying their own law. The collision arose wholly on the interpretation to be put upon the Sabbath. And here the logic of Christ worked in exactly the opposite direction to the logic of the Pharisee. He and they, therefore, could never come to terms, for they drew opposite conclusions from the same premiss; that premiss was the sanctity of the Sabbath. Both held by that. The Sabbath was the day consecrated to God, when man came before His Maker to rejoice in the work of His hands, as God had rejoiced in His own works in the day when He pronounced all very good. I. 'All was very good.' That was the note of the day. God's benediction was on everything that He had made. He found the peace of His repose in that splendid satisfaction. So it had been at the beginning. So it still was for those drawn within the covenanted relationship, for that Israel whom He had redeemed out of slavery, for that first-born race ransomed by the Passover Lamb, lifted out of Egyptian darkness into the light of Divine knowledge, sanctified and purified by deliverance through the waters of the Red Sea. All was good for those, at any rate, bound to Him by covenant. The eternal verdict stood fast. Each recurring Sabbath proclaimed it afresh. Israel stood in the favour of God, and could come up with delight, with praise and thanksgivings into the courts of the Lord's house. It was the day of privilege and favour. And, therefore, out of it must be cast all that offends. There must be nothing to blur or stain the happy fellowship of man with his God. There must be no interruption to the harmonious intercourse. Yes; and if so, then, argued the Jews, let us clear away out of sight all that breaks this gracious pause, all that wrecks this perfect harmony. For today let it be left alone, untouched and unregarded. Other days are enough to occupy ourselves with our own affairs and to remedy our own troubles. To-day is God's only. Give it all to Him. He asks for it all. It is all to be filled with joy, with rest, not with care. Leave for at least this one day your pains behind you, out of sight, out of mind. And come and sing, in thanksgiving, unto the Lord your God. II. The call to cease from your own labour in order to rejoice in God's work on your behalf presupposes that you are in a condition so to praise God, and give Him thanks for all that He has done for you. What if you are deprived of any reason for thanksgiving? What if the Divine work for you and upon you has been wrecked, broken down, defaced? What if you have been flung outside the conditions which God had pronounced to be very good? What if those conditions are no longer at all good, and are unfit to be presented before the Divine review, and are unworthy of the Divine satisfaction, and traverse the very purpose of creation which the Sabbath celebrates? What if they fail their primal meaning, and their intended glory, and are harsh, hideous, cruel, godless? What is the use of talking this Sabbath-talk over them? What is the use of declaring that all is very good when it is not good? It may be a question who has sinned to bring about this or that disaster, whether it was the man himself or his parents. Anyhow, there the disasters are. You cannot sing praises and thanksgivings, as if these outrages on all praises and thanksgivings did not exist. Your zeal for the honour of the Sabbath, and for the blessing laid on the first creation, ought to force you to attend to the blots that deface it. Far from sweeping them away out of sight, it ought to make it impossible for you to keep your eyes off them, or to forget them. Before you can keep your Sabbath you must get the poor creature out of the pit. That is the first necessity, and that necessity is no breach of the Sabbath itself; for the Sabbath call assumes that you are qualified to keep it. It assumes that all is well with you. It bids you recognise that God and you are at peace. It invites you to offer thanks for your peace and gladness. If things are not right, then you must at all costs put them straight at once, in order to make your Sabbath possible. Hurry off, then! If your ox is in the pit, that is what is violating the Sabbath, not the labour of pulling it out. The labour spent on pulling it out is labour consecrated to the demands of the Sabbath. You work under the immediate stress of the Sabbath in order to make its fulfilment practicable. Work then with all your power. Never rest until you have won the right to rest and to bless God that all is very good. And if you ought to do so for ox or ass, how much more so for this or that poor woman whom Satan has bound these twelve years? So the counter-logic works, the logic of the Lord's salvation. III. For He came on earth out of this very desire, to renew our ancient Sabbath joy. It was for the sake of the Sabbath that He made His unique claim. For man's Sabbath had fallen into suspense. Its command, indeed, stood, 'Come before God and rejoice in Him who rejoices over you'. 'Leave all your own works aside to do this one work of Divine thanksgiving.' The call was as imperative as ever. But what if man himself had fallen into a pit? What if he was powerless to obey? Then the Sabbath itself cried aloud for his deliverance. The Sabbath itself enforced the prime necessity of restoring him to himself. There was only one way of enabling the Sabbath requirements to be satisfied, and that was by pulling man out of the pit there and then by opening his eyes if he was blind, by healing his limbs if they were withered, by casting out his devils if he were possessed, by raising him to his feet and giving him power to walk and carry his bed if he was paralysed. Sabbath works these! For without them no Sabbath could be kept. 'If you Jews loved your Sabbath for its true sake, you could not help rejoicing in anything that removed the obstruction that had its blessings. Your passion for the honour of the Sabbath would inevitably kindle in you the wish to see its honour verified. You would clamour for its good name to be unsullied. You would release anything that set its full peace free. You would be restless and miserable in your own Sabbath spirit, so long as you saw it blotted and spoilt for others. Oh! the leap of relief if some strong hand more capable than your own could do the work that restored to them their Sabbath and gave back the good peace that had been lost.' The whole challenge of Jesus Christ lies here. That is why He made the Sabbath day His critical test. 'You men are professing to rejoice in your God-given Sabbath. But is there any one of you who can keep it? You claim to walk in the light of God's eyes. Dare any of you face them? I am here to give back the Sabbath to man by making man fit for the Sabbath. That is why, as Lord of Man for whom the Sabbath was made, I am Lord also of the Sabbath, which is My crowning gift to that humanity which I have redeemed that it may enter into My rest.' H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxviii. p. 251. Reference. XIV. 5. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 213. Luke 14:7 In his treatise on the Holy Spirit, St. Basil the Great inveighs against the contemporary ambition of the Christians around him. 'Every one is a theologian, even he whose life is stained with countless pollutions. Self-appointed individuals with a keen appetite for place reject the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and then divide among themselves the high offices of the Church. There is an indescribable pushing and elbowing for precedence, every one who is eager to make an appearance straining every nerve to put himself forward prominently.' References. XIV. 7-11. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 222. XIV. 8. J. Learmount, British Congregationalist, 26th July, 1906, p. 733. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 306. XIV. 9. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 141. Luke 14:10 In the letter to Napier, in which he refuses to republish his reviews, Macaulay protests: 'I will not found any pretensions to the rank of a classic on my reviews. I will remain, according to the excellent precept in the Gospels, at the lower end of the table, where I am constantly accosted with, "Friend, go up higher," and not push my way to the top at the risk of being compelled with shame to take the lowest room. If I live twelve or fifteen years, I may perhaps produce something which I may not be afraid to exhibit side by side with the performance of the old masters.' Luke 14:10 Cardinal Perraud, in his Life of Père Gratry, describes his last watch by the death-bed of his friend. 'My dear father,' he said, 'it was you who called me to the service of God, and to you, after Him, I owe my vocation. Do you remember, how twenty-five years ago, at the Normal School, you so often repeated to me the words of the Saviour in the Gospel, " Amice, ascende superius ?" He pressed my hand, to show me that he heard and understood. Then I knelt down and said to him, "My dear father, bless me and Charles also"' [his brother Charles Perraud, another saintly priest who had been a pupil of Père Gratry. The names of Adolphe and Charles Perraud, Henri Perreyve and Eugene Bernard, will be always associated in the annals of French religious history with those of Gratry and Lacordaire.]. References. XIV. 10. H. G. Daniell-Bainbridge, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 86. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays after Trinity, p. 154. E. Armitage, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 333. Luke 14:11 The English are an Old Testament people; they never cared about the New. No other nation has such profound sympathy with the history and creeds of Israel. Did you ever think of it? That Old Testament religion suits us perfectly our arrogance and our pugnaciousness; this accounts for its hold upon the mind of the people; it couldn't be stronger if the bloodthirsty old Tribes were truly our ancestors. The English seized upon their spiritual inheritance as soon as a translation of the Bible put it before them. In Catholic days we fought because we enjoyed it, and made no pretences; since the Reformation we have fought for Jehovah.... The English are the least Christian of all so-called Christian peoples. They simply don't know the meaning of the prime Christian virtue humility. George Gissing, in * The Crown of Life. * References. XIV. 11. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 335. J. Learmount, The Examiner, 19th July, 1906, p. 709. XIV. 12. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 212. XIV. 12-14. C. Bradley, Faithful Teaching, p. 30. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 135. XIV. 13. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 383. The Selfishness of Society Luke 14:13-14 There are certain passages of Scripture which are condemned to suffer an almost perpetual martyrdom. It is not because they are either unimportant or hard to understand, but rather because they seem to be pitched in too lofty and exacting a key. Among the number of these the words selected above may well be reckoned. Christ's most exacting sayings are the most searching tests of our spiritual condition. They demand what nobody else thinks of demanding, and their claim upon our observance is drawn exclusively from His authority. I. There can be no doubt that the course which Jesus here disapproves is the one that is still most generally followed. Indeed it is alarming to think on how thoroughly selfish a basis the friendships of this world rest. The bonds that draw people together are mainly of the most mercenary sort Perhaps some will demur to this as a little extravagant and overdrawn. Well, you must see that you are not deceiving yourselves, and shelving the real issue, because its serious consideration may prove unpleasant There cannot be Christian society which has not a Christian object, or at least does not coincide with Christian aims. Let us, then, ask ourselves one or two questions. Do our social engagements contribute to the strength of our Christian character? Or, do they leave behind the exhaustion and weariness that succeeds excitement? If so, how can you reconcile them with faithfulness to Christ? But it is not so much the excitement and dissipation of excessive social enjoyment which Christ condemns, as the calculating, sordid spirit which too often regulates its whole arrangement. II. What, then, is it to which Christ exhorts us? in what direction does He bid us advance? He tells us that when we make a feast we are to call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and we shall be blessed. Then He adds as the reason, that they cannot recompense us again. Disengaging the truth which is taught us here from the particular connection in which it occurs, we find He inculcates that spirit of unselfishness which does not contemplate or seek for a present reward. But the principle receives its direct application in another and a wider area. It inculcates the spirit of the good Samaritan, the doing of good for its own sake or rather for Christ's sake. It directs us to give where our gift is most required, and will confer the largest amount of happiness. C. Moinet, The Great Alternative and other Sermons, p. 231. Well-meaning Blunderers Luke 14:15 * ; Luke 11:27 * We have here two instances in which well-meaning persons lost their heads when they heard Jesus speaking plain home-truths. They have their successors in every age, and stand for peculiarly characteristic types of the two commonest ways of turning aside the edge of conviction. The woman turns it aside by an emotion, the man by a pious remark. I. The Woman. Women were ever quicker than men to perceive the greatness of Jesus. In this instance we can see the woman's rising excitement as we read the story. The perversity and rudeness of His treacherous enemies must have stung the hearts of His friends. His reply to them, describing the miserable plight of the devil-haunted, and the wandering of demons in the wilderness, further heated her imagination, until perhaps she had grown almost hysterical, and needed the relief of speech. It was the cry of one full of delight in His human power and more than human grace. The kind and womanly heart of her speaks out, it may be with the passion of the childless or the yearning of one whose children had shamed her. She blesses the unknown mother of Jesus, thinking how proud she herself would have been to have borne such a son. Her cry was the spontaneous utterance of the purest and most natural emotion. Yet Jesus turned it aside with pointed words about the blessedness of those that hear the Word of God and keep it. His words were very gentle, yet they were relentless. He was carrying on His great work, intent upon the supreme moral and spiritual issues of men's lives. This inrush of emotion, distracting attention from the line of His teaching, was in the nature of an interruption; and He was not one who would allow the beauty or even the kindliness of an emotion to interfere with His higher mission. II. The Man. Seated at the table as a guest, this unnamed man interrupts the discourse of Jesus with a somewhat similar remark. It does not look like an original saying, and may very likely have been a familiar quotation from some of the Rabbinical writings. Matthew Henry takes a kindly view of the incident: 'Even those that are not of ability to cany on good discourse themselves ought to put in a word now and then, to countenance it and help it forward'. It is an interpretation characteristic of that most courteous of divines, but it is quite impossible here. Jesus evidently regards the words as an intended interruption, and throws them aside in His very pointed parable of the feast and the excuses. We all know the type of man who, when the situation is becoming somewhat strained, exclaims, 'Blessed 'is somebody or other! 'Don't let us talk about that, let us talk about something pleasant.' This is the sort of man who might conceivably be saved by an outburst of clean anger or even frank profanity saved from nervous timidity and bloodless want of character. As it is, his motto is caution. So the two instances are really common examples of the practice of making excuses which Jesus so explicitly rebukes in the parable which follows. John Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p. 248. References. XIV. 15. S. A. Tipple, The Admiring Guest, p. 1. H. Bell, Sermons on Holy Communion, p. 120. W. R. Inge, The Guardian, 13th May, 1910. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 117. XIV. 16. H. Bell, Sermons on Holy Communion, p. 99. XIV. 16, 17. Bishop Brickersteth, Sermons, p. 110. XIV. 16-24. J. S. Maver, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. pp. 14, 95, 231, 271. XIV. 17. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 147. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1354. Excuses Luke 14:18 I. It is necessary to bear in mind that the supper or, as we should call it now, the dinner is a spiritual feast; it is the supper of the Lord. The behaviour of the invited guests is strange enough as it is, but, unless the supper were a feast of Divine things, it would be unintelligible. For most people are glad of an invitation to a dinner-party; at least I suppose they are glad, or why do such parties exist? Your host seeks 'the honour of your company,' and you express your 'great pleasure' in accepting the invitation to dine with him. Let us charitably suppose that the truth is spoken or written on both sides. It is plain, I think, that the guests of the parable had not only been invited, but had accepted the invitation. For the host sent his servant to remind them of his dinner-party. It is probable that the invitation had been given verbally; the guests might have forgotten it. Anyhow, it was in accordance with the usage of the East to remind them. So the message went out, 'Come, for all things are now ready'. But the response was disappointing. 'They all with one consent began to make excuse.' If I am right in thinking that the guests had accepted the invitation, then the excuse now offered by each of them was the breach of an engagement. They had promised to do something, and they did not do it, because they did not want to do it They broke their word. May I pause here to remark that we do not think half enough about the simple Christian duty of keeping engagements? What a world of trouble we often cause by breaking them! Here was the master of the house with his dinner prepared, his oxen and his fatlings killed, and all things now ready, but with no guests. I can well believe he was angry. Most of us, I suspect, would have been angry too. I do in my heart believe that we ought to be far more scrupulous than we are in the matter of keeping engagements. Our word, when once it is given, should be our bond. Nothing, or scarcely anything, should be allowed to come in the way of our doing what we have undertaken to do. There was a King of England whose lifelong motto was Pactum Serṽa 'Be true to your plighted word'. It is a motto well worth remembering in these days. II. 'They all with one consent began to make excuse.' How true it is and yet how sad that men and women too are so ready to make excuses for abandoning their highest prerogative! We need religion; we all need it so vitally; we need the grace of God, the services and sacraments of His Church for the high and holy inspirations which lift the soul to heaven. We need them so much, yet we suffer any poor threadbare pretext to tear us away from them. For the excuses in the parable are no more than types of the various ways in which we all excuse ourselves for not doing what we know to be our duty. Let me warn you against excuses. III. The habit of making excuses is only too common. 'They all with one consent began to make excuse.' It is none the better, nay, it is the worse, for being so common. For it almost invariably betrays some flaw or fault, some act which will not bear inspection in the past history of a life. The only sure way of avoiding excuses is so to live as to be in no need of making them. Let us then have 'a conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man'; let us live a life simple and sincere, bright as a crystal lake; let us eschew subterfuges and prevarications, the half-truths which are always half-lies; let us seek to be true as He was, who could say of Himself not so much 'I speak the truth,' or even 'I do the truth,' as 'I am the Truth'. Bishop Welldon, The Gospel in a Great City, p. 155. The Failure of Success Luke 14:18 The tragedy of suffering is often terrible, but it is as nothing to the tragedy of success. Not indeed that all success is tragic, but perhaps it would be true to say that all success is at least dangerous and most of it tragic. It is always a menace to the higher life, and often its destruction. And so the quest for it is one of the most pathetic things in the world; it is as if a man were to strive, by every means and with what speed he may, to compass his own ruin. I. Nothing tests a man so surely as his definition of success. He loves best that in which he is most anxious to succeed; and it is a pathetic testimony to the externalism of our standards that the men most commonly called successful are those whose wealth or worldly position has dazzled the eyes of the multitude. But is it not very plain, upon reflection, that the only successful man is the man who has most triumphantly done the real business of his life? And here we are face to face with the question which is ultimate for all of us: What is the real business of life? Is it not just to make the most and the best of ourselves, and the most through the best? In a letter to a friend, Carlyle happily defined success as 'growing to your full spiritual stature under God's sky'. II. Under modern conditions, success, as commonly understood, lies in doing one thing well; and it is sadly true that most men contrive to do one thing well by neglecting things of at least as much importance as those which they consider. The attitude of ordinary men to the highest things has been immortalised by Jesus in His parable of the supper. It was a great supper this worthy of so generous a host and guests of all sorts were invited. But as soon as the table was spread and they had nothing to do but come, they all began to excuse themselves. One had to see to his cattle, another to his fields, another to his home; and so they allowed business and pleasure to shut them out of the banqueting-hall. They cared more for the oxen and the land than for the great King who had graciously asked them to come in to Him and sup with Him; and their terrible, but reasonable, doom was that they should never taste of His supper. If they should come, they would find the doors shut, and they would be left in the darkness with the weeping and the wailing. III. Doubtless every man's profession is a Divine school of discipline. It is by doing its duties that he develops his capacities and attains to any power that is ever his. But to most men it proves a prison as well as a school. They can see little of the great and beautiful world beyond the cruel bars of their window, and they seldom travel beyond the courtyard. In allowing our work to develop us, we ought not to allow it unduly to restrict us; for all things are ours. The famous words of Darwin should be taken to heart by those who feel that they are giving their exclusive affection to the work of their lives, however important and honourable that may be. 'Up to the age of thirty,' he says, 'or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays.... Pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music.... I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.... My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.... If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.' The preacher, like other men, is asked to the great supper; and he is tempted, like other men, for professional reasons, to plead, 'I pray thee, have me excused'. But here, as often elsewhere, it is true that he who excuses accuses himself. J. E. Macfadyen, The City with Foundations, p. 211. References. XIV. 18. H. S. Holland, Old and New, p. 81. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. li. p. 93. St. V. Beachey, The Excuses of Non-Communicants, p. 7. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 148. A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, p. 102. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 578. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 280. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 28. XIV. 18-20. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 127. XIV. 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxvi. No. 2122. Luke 14:21 Oh this wonderful, wonderful world, and we who stand in the middle of it are in a maze, except poor Matthews of Bedford, who fixes his eyes upon a wooden cross and has no misgiving whatsoever. When I was at his chapel on Good Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon on some of the people to say merely this, that they believed Christ had redeemed them; and first one got up, and in sobs declared that she believed it; and then another, and then another I was quite overset all poor people: how much richer than all who fill London churches! Fitzgerald's * Letters. * References. XIV. 21. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 29. XIV. 21-24. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 353. Luke 14:22 The question has often been repeated which was asked in the time of Christ, 'Are there few that be saved?' The answer is twofold. The counsels and invitations of Divine wisdom and love are large, generous, and free; but the obstacles which are offered by human indolence, incredulity, and sin, are serious and formidable. In one aspect the way is easy and pleasant, in another it is toilsome and painful. The language of the text reminds us that there is abundant provision in the counsels of God, and a gracious welcome in the heart of God, for all who need the Gospel and who are willing to comply with its requirements and accept its blessings. I. Where there is Room. (a) In the heart of the Father. His desire is that all men should be saved, and should come to the knowledge of the truth. His appeal to men is, 'Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters'. His entreaty and expostulation is, 'Why will ye die?' (b) In the Covenant of Christ. He died for all. He was lifted up to draw all men unto Himself. His blood was shed for many. (c) In the Spiritual Kingdom. The greatness of a kingdom lies largely in the number of the subjects. No right-feeling man can do other than rejoice in the inclusion of multitudes in the kingdom, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Our Saviour Himself foretold that the tree shall grow and that the leaven shall spread. (d) In the Heavenly Mansions. There are many abodes, and, to people these, many shall come from the east and from the west. No limitation, no exclusiveness there, but room for men of all nations, kindreds, and tongues. II. For Whom there is Room. (a) For the Indifferent. There is room for those whose possessions and pre-occupations too often render them indifferent to the Gospel invitation. The wealthy, the busy, and the festive, who, in the parable referred to respond to the summons, are not excluded, save by their own folly. (b) For the Indigent. There is room for the spiritually indigent, who are sensible of their wants; those who may be represented by the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind. (c) For the Outcast. There is room even for the outcast and the despised, who are abandoned by men, and who have given themselves over to despondency. And if there be any others, with human hearts and human wants, there is room for them. Yet, thus far, even now, there is room. But the hour shall come when the Master shall arise and close the long-open door. Luke 14:23 'When I had been long vexed with this fear,' of being too late for salvation, says Bunyan, 'and was scarce able to take one step more, these words broke in upon my mind, Compel them to come in, that My house may be filled; and yet there is room. These words, but especially them, and yet there is room, were sweet words to me; for, truly I thought that by them I saw there was place enough in heaven for me; and moreover that when the Lord Jesus did speak these words, He then did think of me; and that He, knowing that the time would come that I should be afflicted with fear that there was no place left for me in His Bosom, did before speak this word, and leave it upon record, that I might find help thereby against this vile temptation. This I then verily believe. In the light and encouragement of this word I went a pretty while; and the comfort was the more, when I thought that the Lord Jesus should think on me so long ago, and that He should speak these words on purpose for my sake.' References. XIV. 23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 227. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 15. J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p. 163. A. Shepherd, The Gospel and Social Questions, p. 123. Words of Warning Luke 14:24 Here is a warning to us all lest we should be shut out of heaven. I. There is only One Thing which will prevent us coming under the Condemnation, the warning contained in our text. Unless we repent we shall none of us reach heaven. Six component parts go to make up repentance: a. Self-examination, to find out our sins. b. Sorrow for our sins. c. Confession of our sins. d. Making satisfaction for our sins and trying to undo the wrong we have done. e. Trying to lead a better life and to keep from sin in the future and to take advantage of His grace. f. Willingness to forgive others as we hope God will forgive us. Love is the beginning and the end of repentance. But what a contrast: God's love for us and our carelessness and want of love for Him! We take such care of our bodies, but how little care do we take for our souls those precious souls our souls eternal! How little love we have for them! Is it not a fact that we starve them? We cherish our bodies, which return to dust, but do we take sufficient care of our precious souls? II. Let us Feed and Nourish these Souls in the only way in which they can be nourished, which is surely the taking of the Blessed Sacrament referred to especially in this parable the great Sacrament: the Last Supper, the Holy Communion. References. XIV. 24. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 390. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 86. XIV. 25, 26. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 153. Luke 14:26 Compare Milton's noble words, describing his resolve to risk his eyesight for the sake of writing his Defence of the English People. 'The choice lay before me,' he avers, 'between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if Æsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from heaven. I considered with myself that many had purchased less good with worse ill, as they who give their lives to reap only glory, and I thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was in my power to render.' References. XIV. 26. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2650. Reuen Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 406. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 258. XIV. 26, 27. Ibid. vol. iv. p. 285. XIV. 27. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 726. Luke 14:28 In every action consider what precedes and what follows, and then proceed. Otherwise, if you do not consider, you will start with spirit, but afterwards, when some of the consequences emerge, you will barely give over.... Consider, first of all, the particular action, and then your own nature: consider what you can endure. Epictetus. References. XIV. 28. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 394; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 87. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 38. XIV. 28-30. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1159. The Policy of Concentration in Foreign Missions Luke 14:28 There must be a generous seed-time; but there must be careful preparation for harvest, lest we fail to gather it There must be youthful zeal, but there must also be quiet, resolute thinking as to how it can best be used. And it applies equally well (as indeed the illustrations show) to large operations as to small; to the building up of a kingdom as to the edification of an individual; to a campaign with heathen forces as with personal passions. And, further, there are indications in the New Testament that it was always borne in mind. Our Lord's own mission is a singular illustration of it He was the first and the great Apostle of God, as the Epistle to the Hebrews declares, the first Christian Missionary, and He came to evangelise the whole world. But how does He set about it? He does not, like some great human leader, carry the standard of the Faith He proclaims from Nazareth to Rome. He does not seek to accomplish what St. Paul does in the three years between the first and third missionary journeys; makes no attempt to cover a wide field. He confines Himself to the narrow and limited district of Judaea. And before doing so He does what He urges us to do. He retires to the wilderness that He may think out how the evangelisation of the world is to be carried out To use His own illustration, He sits down first and 'counteth the cost' of the great sacrifice; consulteth with Himself as to how the campaign is to be undertaken. I. The Restraint of the Church. The example of our Lord in this respect was emphasised by His direction that His disciples should bear witness to Him in Jerusalem, Judæa, Samaria, and into the ends of the world. And though, no doubt, at the time there was no clear knowledge as to how the direction was to be obeyed, it seems highly probable, as we look at the work accomplished by the end of the second century, that, whilst the evangelisation of the whole world was never out of sight, only a comparatively small part was attempted. In spite of the legend that was afterwards circulated that the Apostles preached the Gospel to the whole world, there was no real attempt, as some have dreamed of in these days, to evangelise the whole world in one generation. A study of Dr. Harnack's two maps in his interesting work on the Mission and Expansion of Christianity, the one giving the spread of Christianity down to A.D. 180, the other down to A.D. 325, together with the exhaustive and detailed summary of such facts as his wide historical knowledge gives, shows clearly that this was not expected. It is true that their geographical knowledge was very small compared with ours, but they knew of a much larger world than they evangelised. Owing to the wide dispersion of the Jews, they were more or less familiar with countries far distant from Palestine. The Persian Empire beyond the Tigris, and stretching as far east as India, had representatives in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, so also Arabia and parts of Africa. But though known, yet so far as can be discovered there were no Christian Missions there of any account, even at the time of the Council of Nicæa. The policy directing the evangelisation of the world was then evidently very different from that which would send broadcast anywhere those who were ready to preach the Gospel. From the direction which the first missionaries took, from the care with which their journeys were repeated, from the comparatively very restricted area in which they worked, it would seem clear that there was a more or less settled policy, and that this was that of concentration. It was felt to be better to do a little thoroughly well than a great deal imperfectly; better to keep the communications between Christian towns and villages open than to have them scattered and isolated; better to have one country Christian than twenty where only the Gospel is preached. This is the more surprising when we remember two facts. First, that the number of missionaries was large. In the Apostolic days every Christian was a missionary whether man or woman, every member of the body felt himself bound by his love to the Lord Who had died for him to communicate his faith to those who were without it. This was everywhere taken for granted, and there was no necessity to press it. The idea of a Society within the Church pledged to promote its propagation would have seemed to them ridiculous. And, secondly, there was a confident expectation during the lifetime of most of the Apostles that the Lord would return during the first century. II. The policy of concentration is abundantly justified. I say nothing as to how this was brought about, as to whether it was due to the master mind of St. Paul alone, or to his counsels with the Apostles, but only suggest that there are passages in the narrative of the Acts suggestive of caution and restraint. At the outset, St. Paul is three years in Arabia in retirement, a time that must have been partly used, as our Lord's stay in the wilderness was used, in thinking out the campaign. And when it is begun and carried on there are limitations. When they had passed through the Galatian country they are 'forbidden' to preach the Word in Asia, and when they make for Bithynia the Spirit 'suffers them not'. A vision leads them into Macedonia, but they pass by large towns like Amphipolis and Apollonia, apparently because there are no synagogues there. Though St. Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, he insists on first preaching to his own countrymen. III. The weakness of a widely scattered and diffusive Christianity is plain to all in spite of the splendid enthusiasm and the generous devotion by which it is sustained, and it seems as though the time had now arrived to return to that old self-denying policy of prudence which the Lord commended both by His example and His words. Must it not be confessed that in the past, owing to the fervour of an awakened interest in Foreign Missions, for which we devoutly thank God, we have supposed that zeal and enthusiasm are of themselves sufficient to secure success; that the proclamation of the Gospel will of itself build up a strong Church without foresight and care as to locality or nearness to Christian centres; that the heroism of one devoted missionary standing by himself in the midst of a densely dark heathen city must from its very grandeur accomplish great things. Prudence and caution when urged have been argued as lack of faith. Did not Christ say, it is asked in reproachful surprise, 'Go ye therefore and teach all nations'? as though He gave no other direction. May it not be hoped that a more patient study of the principles and laws which govern all warfare may be made by those who have time and, when carefully thought out, applied to the great tasks that lie before us? A tower must be builded whose top is to reach heaven. A war is to be waged with an Adversary whose subtle cunning and skill is well known, and who has still a marvellous hold of the world, and no lasting success can be looked for except on those lines which our great Leader has sanctioned both by His example and His words. Bishop Walpole, The Guardian, 21st January, 1910. Not Able to Finish Luke 14:30 That which God in the person of His Son condemns in others He can never permit Himself to do. Thus we gain, as it were, unexpectedly a sudden but clear and large vision of the method of God. It is infinitely profitable to turn the parables into their Divine as well as their human applications. We did not expect to see God so clearly self-revealed. Let us look at the case. It is a figure drawn by the greatest Artist, more beautiful than light, more mystical than the sacrament of the rainbow. 'Which of you,' said Christ, 'intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.' Jesus Christ practically led the laughter of the world against the fool who began something which he could not end. It was a case of bitter taunt and mockery. If the man had done nothing, nothing would have been said about him, but he began to build and left off half-done; took away the scaffolding and left the ruin. That is Christ's own picture; we want to apply it, in the first instance, to God. He who buildeth all things is God; men are only underbuilders; square and compasses and triangles are all Divine revelations and man was taught how to strike the stone into shape and into music. It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. The point to which I want to fasten down, so to say, the Divine Teacher is this, that if God mocks the man who began to build and was not able to finish, how He must laugh Himself into destruction if He began to shape the universe and could never fill up the outline. I. It is impossible to think of God creating man as we know him that is to say, as we know ourselves and allowing that man to end in nothingness. Here is man, as we know him, so abject, so august; he has thoughts, dreams, poems, philosophies, high purposes, noble ambitions, a heart that is like a golden fountain of love, and God made him so; and it is all going to end in smoke and nothingness! Never! The parable of the text is against that theory. God does not make men that He may mock them. God does not hang Himself up in His universe to be laughed at as the God who began a man and built only his feet, could not reach to his head, much less put a crown on the man whom He had created. This cannot be; the whole shuddering universe, appalled with his black blasphemy, says, No! II. It is impossible to think of the Bible reducing all its own promises, oaths, assurances, consolations, to falsehood or mockery. Not perdition itself has fire enough hot enough to burn the book that has so misled us as the Bible has done if its oaths are lies and its promises are illusions. Man cannot be brought in that agony to regard the lying Bible as a mere effort in literature, the brightest and most exciting of the romances. The true heart has never read the Bible in that sense; the true heart has regarded the Bible as sent from God, written by God, pledging God to a ministry of love and redemption, of righteousness and judgment. We are assured that there will be no failure on the part of God. Being confident, said the Apostle, the most heroic of all souls, that He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His; he that endureth unto the end shall be saved. There is sustenance on every mile of the road, there is comfort for every condition of life, there is ample preparation made for all the changes of the case; be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life. Be there when the crowns are given out! Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. i. p. 268. References. XIV. 31. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p. 267. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 171. XIV. 31, 32. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 632. Forsaking All Luke 14:33 I. The entire giving up of all self-dependence is the indispensable condition of discipleship. It is to be noticed that the text inculcates this self-surrender not as a meritorious act in itself deserving anything, nor as what we have to pay for Christ's mercy, but as a condition of discipleship. II. The entire forsaking of self as an object in life is the inseparable accompaniment of discipleship. III. The surrender of outward goods to Him is the outward expression of the inward dependence and regard. The outward surrender is worthy only when it is an outgrowth of inward trust. A. Maclaren. References. XIV. 33. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 62. Bishop Gore, The New Theology and the Old Religion, p. 251. Luke 14:34 Oh let us remain faithful to the altars of the ideal! It is possible that the spiritualists may become the Stoics of a new epoch of Cæsarian rule. Materialistic naturalism has the wind in its sails, and a general moral deterioration is preparing. No matter, as long as the salt does not lose its savour, and so long as the friends of the higher life maintain the fire of Vesta. The wood itself may choke the flame, but if the flame persists, the fire itself will only be the more splendid in the end. Amiel. References. XIV. 34. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons vol. iii. 203. XIV. 34, 35. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 1. XV. 1. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 89. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 809. The Approachableness of Christ Luke 15:1-2 This truth of the approachableness of Christ, the freeness with which He opened Himself to every needy and suffering soul, is not of subordinate importance, but of the very essence of His Gospel. It rests on the constitution of His Person. It is necessitated by the very fact of His being what He is, the man Christ Jesus, and by His having come to do what He declared to be the object of His mission. I. First of all, it rests upon the fact of His humanity. He assumed our human nature pure and simple, the humanity which is common to us all; but He did not assume any of its distortions, or those idiosyncrasies into which it runs and works itself up in every other person. This truth we express when we say that He became not a man, but man. In virtue, then, of His becoming man, Christ has brought Himself equally near to us all. He is related in exactly the same degree to every one, and to every one He belongs exactly to the same extent. None has a prior or special claim upon Him, and when you come to Him you come with precisely the same recommendation which every one has had, and with the same certainty of success. All you have to make out, in order to succeed in your errand to Him, is the fact of your being also a man. It is this that binds Him to you, and constitutes the tie between you. II. The second ground on which the approachableness of Christ rests is the declared purpose of His mission. He Himself said: 'God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved'. The reason why He lived and died as He did was simply that He might take hold of us and deliver us from death. He is not, then, a God who happens to be a Saviour who, in addition to various other offices, if I may use that word, such as Creator. Preserver, Lawgiver, Judge, fills also the office of Redeemer. Christ, the God-man, is pre-eminently the Saviour, the Divine Deliverer, who makes everything subordinate to the good of men. And you must not think of Christ as having a great many things to do, as God, which to a certain extent He must leave alone if He is to pay regard to you. When you come to Him you do not interrupt Him in the doing of something else, or call Him aside from a more momentous or congenial occupation. He is on the outlook for you. He is waiting for the first symptom of a relenting heart. He is listening for the faintest sound of a returning step. C. Moinet, The Great Alternative and other Sermons, p. 19. References. XV. 1, 2. J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 281. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 139. J. Marshall Lang, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 124. XV. 1-3. J. S. Boone, Sermons, p. 318. XV. 2. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 219; vol. xi. No. 665. F. B. Woodward, Sermons (1st Series), p. 93. J. Edwards, Preacher's Magazine, vol. x. p. 180. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 25. W. H. Harwood, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 218. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 312. W. Baird, The Hallowing of our Common Life, p. 77. XV. 3. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 97. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 127. J. Flanagan, Man's Quest, p. 25. XV. 3-7. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 293. XV. 3-10. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 255. Man's Need of God and God's Need of Man Luke 15:4 The three parables of St. Luke xv. record for us man's need of God and God's need of man. They describe in all its phases and in all its intensity our sin and His love. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. I. Man's Need of God: (a) Sin in its beginning. The lost sheep is for us the picture of transgression, of that which sin is, in its beginning, the careless wandering from the Father's home, from the shelter and the pasture which is our normal condition of life the carelessness which forgets the prayers, the memories, the teachings of the past, the little road out of the common line of spiritual life, the heedlessness concerning the warnings by which God would limit and discipline our souls, the blindness, temporary blindness, which refuses to look at the notice boards which God has set upon the road of life, warning us that trespassers will be prosecuted. (b) Sin through worldliness. And then there is the second aspect of sin in the lost coin. What is the lost coin? It has fallen through carelessness, through the attraction of the earth, in other words, through worldliness, out of the Father's hand, and it has rolled away into the dark corners of life, where life is dark, because deeds are evil, mere worldliness, the law of earth's gravitation that attracts us downward instead of lifting us upward, so that the coin that goes out of the Father's hand of necessity goes down and not up. (c) Sin in its open defiance. And then the third aspect of sin is in the lost son, and it is open defiance, lawlessness. It marks the last stage of all in the history of sin. It is when the man or the woman has grown so discontented with life as God has ordered it that he or she means to live life without God in future. It is the open defiance of God, it is the cry of those who say, 'Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, and I will go into a far country where God is not known and I can do as I will'. II. God's Need of Man. God is the owner Who is robbed. (a) God robbed of His Property. In the lost sheep it is His property which is taken from Him, it is that which is His own possession, created by Himself to serve Him and be of use to Him, that is gone, and therefore, as the Owner robbed of His property, He goes after that which is lost until He find it. (b) God robbed of His honour. And in the lost coin we have the loss not merely of property, but of honour. To the Jewish woman the loss of one of those coins in the circlet which she wore round her forehead meant not only loss of property, but of honour, loss of prestige. (c) God robbed of His love. And then, lastly, there is the lost son. And if, in the transgression which wanders from God, He loses His property, and in the lost coin which has slipped away from Him through the attraction of worldliness He is robbed of His honour, in the lost son He is robbed of His love. It is the great heart of God that is wounded when the prodigal goes into a far country. III. For You Two Questions Remain. (1) What are you doing to help God in His search? (2) Where do you stand in that category, that threefold category of sin? References. XV. 4. Bishop Spalding, Church Times, vol. lx. p. 152. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2821. W. M. Clow, The Cross in Christian Experience, p. 243. Luke 15:4 What is Christianity? It is the belief in the inexhaustible love of God for man. He came to seek that which is lost, * until He find it. * Erskine of Linlathen. Seeking the Lost Luke 15:4-5 Christ's three most precious parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son, all illustrate the one thought that the Divinest act of the Divine love is to seek the sinner and bring him back. They do so from different points of view, and if we wish to get the whole breadth of Christ's teaching we must take them altogether. Consider, then, three things: I. God seeking man. II. God finding man when man seeks God and finds Him. III. God rejoicing in the found man, and man rejoicing in the found God. A. Maclaren. References. XV. 4-6. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2065. XV. 4-7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1801. XV. 4, 8, 11. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 49. XV. 4-9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 27, XV. 5. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 37. Twenty-fifth Sunday After Trinity Luke 15:6 We are very familiar with this parable as the parable of the Lost Sheep. Shall we look at it now in the light of a parable of the Seeking Shepherd? The chief interest of the parable centres in most people's minds round the sheep. But did it so centre in the mind of Christ? The real centre of the parable is not the sheep, but the Shepherd. The real interest of the parable lies in Him. It was not a parable which illustrated a lost soul; it was one which revealed am anxious redeemer. And, after all, is not that what we want not parables to show us what we are, but greater parables than these to show us what Christ is? There are three points in the attitude of the Shepherd towards the lost sheep. I. The Seeking Shepherd. The first is this: The Shepherd goes in search of the sheep. He has no notion in His soul that the sheep will ever come in search of Him. The Incarnation of the Lord Jesus was the girding of Himself to go after lost humanity till He found it. His whole life was lived for that purpose. Just think for a moment how He lived for souls, how He worked for them, how He prayed for them, how He died for them, and now that the redemptive work is over and accomplished, Christ is still bent on the single mission of seeking for souls by His Spirit. II. Seeking till He Finds. And then, secondly, the Shepherd goes in search of the sheep till He finds it. That is just a life-sized picture of the untiring patience and inexhaustible love of Jesus. Till He finds it; for remember the great object of all Christ's work, and what ought to be the great object of all our work for Christ, is not to seek that is a mere process; but to find that is the object. The Saviour does not go after the wandering sheep for a mile or two in the wilderness, and then because the way is wet, or the sun is hot, or the body is weary, or the clouds of evening are thickening, say to Himself in a self-satisfied kind of way, 'I have done the best, I could do no more'. Not till He finds it, is the measure and the limit of His love. What a word, for you and me, for all the servants of Jesus Christ who, it may be with troublesome sheep, are trying to do work for Him. III. Bringing Back the Lost. Then, thirdly, notice, one more thing about the Shepherd. When He has found it He brings it on His shoulders. There is something more than seeking yes, there is, I know; but there is something more than finding there is bringing back. The Gospel for the Lost Luke 15:6 In reply to the murmuring of the Pharisees the Saviour spake unto them 'this parable' a parable that is three and yet is one, as the artist sometimes tells his story in three panels, each complete in itself, yet each finding its completeness in the others. In the first there is the. lost sheep. The second panel is of a woman who has lost a piece of money not much to many, perhaps, but very much to her. The third panel is of the prodigal son. We well may think of these three pictures as setting forth three types of character. I. The first is the sheep the silly sheep, that goes astray almost without meaning it or knowing it. Is it not the picture of thousands about us souls not bad so much as weak and silly? May it not be that the Lord Jesus put these first because they are so common, and because it is so easy to turn away from them as if they were scarcely worth saving? There is nothing attractive about them, nothing hopeful. But does not love see in this their every need, their claim upon our help? About us are ten thousand men and women who can never get to heaven unless they are carried there on somebody's shoulder. Such people swarm about us: people without any resolution, without any strength of character. II. The lost piece of money sets before us another type of character. Here it is not weakness that goes astray; you cannot blame the piece of money that it had gone down in the dirt, or got lost in the darkness. Somebody let it slip somehow; somebody's misfortune, or carelessness, or sin brought it where it is. This is the picture of those who are damned by their circumstances. III. The last is the prodigal son type of him who has deliberately gone astray, and must deliberately come back again who will go on, and therefore must go down, down until there comes the blessed want that brings him to his senses, that kindly hunger that prompts him to come home. The great lesson here is that at his coming there be no hard words, no cold suspicion, no harsh probation; but love, glad love, that runs and cries: 'Bring out the best robe, and bring hither the fatted calf,' and that begins to be merry. M. G. Pearse, Naaman the Syrian and other Sermons, p. 201. References. XV. 6. J. Reid, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 262. Mark Guy Pearse, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 316. Joy in Heaven Luke 15:7 I. Notice the joy of Jesus in repentant souls. The sources of His joy were: (1) Obedience to and communion with God. (2) Self-forgetting love to men. II. The joy of Jesus is the joy of God. The firm starting-point is that Christ is the Revealer of the Divine Mind and Nature. So when He yearns over sinners and when He rejoices over penitents He is revealing to us God. III. The joy of God is spread through all His friends. A. Maclaren. The Angels' Joy Luke 15:7 * ; Luke 15:10 * We have in these two verses a positive statement that (1) there is joy in heaven, (2) there is joy in the presence of the angels of God, and (3) that the object of the joy is the sinner, the man who repents. I. What is Exactly the Nature of the Angels? It is impossible for us to say. It would appear that the angels are constituted like men in respect of joy. I do not see that they are affected by grief or pain. I apprehend that even under the most grievous and distressing circumstances the presence of the angels, according to God's Word, ever sheds brightness and comfort and peace. The statement that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God must apply to some capacity which these servants of God are able to express. It is only reasonable that they should be affected by the happiness of man; the joy of God's creatures. If the most beautiful things in this world were merely shadows, images emblematical of future reality, surely these portents of pleasure must indicate the magnitude of pleasure in God's presence, which we are told is the fullness of joy. II. The Object of this Particular Joy. It is the change from sin, the alteration of the man or woman over which there is joy. There is an expression of joy. Will this have the effect of enlarging our ideas to imagine that the greatest interest is taken over the affairs of man and woman in heaven? If we carry out this idea of repentance and forgiveness and the restoration of every sinner into the arms of Jesus Christ, into the fold of God, it enhances the amount of joy which ever abides in the hearts of God's special ministers the angels. III. It is a Beautiful Thought. It should lead every one of us who have any doubt about our way of living to try and examine our hearts to see if we are doing anything to diminish the happiness of the souls in heaven the angels of God. So simple and yet such a beautiful picture moral and spiritual change in the man or woman or child producing happiness for those celestial beings. Is it not a glorious idea that the angels of God have no sorrow or pain? Try to enhance the pleasure of God's angels, who are His ministers and our guardians. They are His mouthpiece, and always speak, although we do not always hear them. God has given them their duty to guard and keep His children that they may be saved when He comes Himself to take them in His arms to the fold. Luke 15:7 It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance, and certain ingenious philosophers of our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of another that has 'learned pity through suffering' is likely to find very imperfect satisfaction in the 'balance of happiness,' 'doctrine of compensations,' and other short and easy methods of obtaining thorough complacency in the presence of pain; and for such a heart that saying will not be altogether dark.... For the man who knows sympathy because he has known sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy of angels over the repentant sinner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, has a meaning which does not jar with the language of his own heart. It only tells him that for angels too there is a transcendent value in human pain, which refuses to be settled by equations; that the eyes of angels too are turned away from the serene happiness of the righteous to blend with yearning pity on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert where no water is; that for angels too the misery of one casts so tremendous a shadow as to eclipse the bliss of ninety-nine. George Eliot, in * Janet's Repentance. * By His saying, 'There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons, who need no repentance,' He made humility the gate of entrance into paradise. Amiel. References. XV. 7. A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, p. 108. W. J. E. Bennett, Sermons Preached at the London Mission, 1869, p. 37. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 362. The Worth of Man Luke 15:8 One of the most striking features of Christ's work on earth was His vindication before men of the worth of man. In those days the value of man as man had sunk very low. Human life was so little valued in those days that it was thought fitting for men to die by the score in the Roman Coliseum to amuse a holiday crowd. Slavery in one of its worst forms prevailed too, and the degradation which existed among the slave caste passes description. Yet no one protested; it never occurred to any one that man as man had any great or sacred value to be asserted or defended. Now Jesus Christ came and altered all that; He came to proclaim and to vindicate the worth of man as man. The title He Himself most cared to use was that of Son of man; by that name, you know, He always described Himself, by it He asserted the dignity of humanity and claimed brotherhood with all, the least and the lowest as well as the great; and by so doing He lifted the least and the lowest of the race to the nobility of fellowship with Himself. He sought the company of the despised, eating and drinking with them, He cared not if He were called the Friend of publicans and sinners; and in doing this He never sunk to their level, rather He raised them to His. He purposely depicted humanity as none before had ever done, showing men that sin and degradation are not their normal, proper state, but an abnormal one, an unnatural one into which they had fallen, and out of which He had come to lift them. I. Man, Christ taught, was the true Son of the Heavenly Father, Who had never ceased to love him and was waiting and longing for him to give up his degradation and sin. That surely is one of the lessons which the short parable teaches us; the parable of the lost piece of silver which its owner cared for and sought for till it was found. II. You and I are that lost Piece precious metal and stamped with the image of the Great King, but we have fallen into the dust, we have lost ourselves, the brightness of the Divine effigy is dimmed and spoilt. But thanks be to Him, though lost, though fallen, we are not despairing; we are members valued, sought for, we may be saved and restored. It is for us to respond to the Divine Seeker's labours, Who, when He finds, rejoices with exceeding great joy, for we are precious in His sight. III. But the Story has also Something to tell us of how we should Regard our Fellow-men. Those whom you and I perchance despise God loves and values. Get a heart big enough to love as God loves; get a hope large enough to hope as God hopes; get eyes penetrating enough to see as God sees the good that lies in each and every human being. References. XV. 8. Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 86. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 106. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 84. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. iv. p. 260. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 117. XV. 8-10. T. Davies, Sermonic Studies, p. 114. Hugh Macmillan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 376. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 970. The Choir Invisible and Their Music Luke 15:10 In the higher universe the true value of things is known, and this peep into glory is most instructive. I. We are taught the significance of the individual. 'Over one sinner.' It is often seen how Christ sets at nought the tyranny of numbers, and concentrates attention on the unit. Christ discovered humanity; there was no sense of the solidarity of the race before He came: yet He also discovered the individual, for there was no recognition of the value of the single soul before He came. One of the very foremost teachings of Jesus Christ declares the supreme worth of personality. The lowliest must not forget his mysterious greatness nor the fact that in the highest world his fortune is followed with impassioned interest. II. A further lesson of the text is that the importance of the individual lies in his moral life. 'One sinner.' The heavenly universe is interested exclusively in the history of souls. How different with us! We survey life from an altogether different standpoint; and gold, culture, greatness, or pleasure is the consuming theme of our contemplation. If the celestial world is absorbed in the history of the soul, ought we not to concern ourselves far more than we usually do with the inner life? III. The final lesson we note is that the most important event in the individual life is the restoration of the lapsed soul to God. 'One sinner that repenteth.' He who came into the world to revolve all our values declares that the return of the prodigal son to his heavenly Father is the most momentous of all acts. How vividly this narrative brings out the blessedness of repentance! God rejoices. 'In the presence of the angels.' The angels also rejoice. When the tide rises in the ocean, it rises in a thousand creeks and rivers; and when the sunny sea of God's blessedness swells, it streams through the celestial universe, and fresh music everywhere breaks out like the sound of many waters. But if repentance is an event to make heaven glad, is it not one to make us glad also? W. L. Watkinson, The Ashes of Roses, p. 256. References. XV. 10. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 264. J. H. Ball, Persuasions, p. 178. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 301. R. J. Campbell, The Restored Innocence, p. 73. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 203, and vol. xlviii. No. 2791. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 211. XV. 11, 12. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 16. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 260. XV. 11-13. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 420. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 162. XV. 11-16. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 199. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 96. XV. 11-24. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 334. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 69. XV. 11-32. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 114. John Watson, Scottish Review, vol. iii. p. 360. A. M. Fairbairn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 33. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 160. XV. 12. J. J. Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 122. Luke 15:13 Though science gives us a good deal to boast of, and may enter for a great deal into our hopes, the most that can be said in this respect is that it is like a splendid inheritance, which gives the wise man twenty years start in life, and precipitates the prodigal into irretrievable ruin. C. H. Pearson. Profligacy consists not in spending years of time or chests of money, but in spending them off the line of your career. Emerson. References. XV. 13. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 166. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 29. Luke 15:13 * ; Luke 15:30 * In the pain and the repentance, and in the acquaintance with the aspects of folly and sin, you have learned something; how much less than you would have learned in right paths, can never be told, but that it is less is certain. Your liberty of choice has simply destroyed for you so much life and strength, never regainable. It is true you now know the habits of swine who taste of husks: do you think your Father could not have taught you to know better habits and pleasanter tastes, if you had stayed in His house; and that the knowledge you have lost would not have been more, as well as sweeter, than that you have gained? Ruskin, Queen of the Air, sec. 153. References. XV. 14. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 40. XV. 14-16. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 429. XV. 15. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 20. XV. 15, 16. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 49. Disillusionment Luke 15:17 The Prodigal and Miser. The prodigal in this, the greatest of Jesus' parables, was a miser. He is the type and picture of the present day. You tell me that there is no vice so abhorrent to your nature as avarice. You say that the thin, bloodless, shrivelled creature, whose lean and bony claws are nervously outstretched to rake in the glittering coin, and who hugs his money-bags beside the dying embers of a penurious fire, has no place in our free and generous English life, where those who have money are expected to turn it over, and a liberal hand is all but inseparable from a full purse. And we are scarcely less ready to repudiate the life of riot and excess, which dissipates upon unworthy pleasures what has been painfully amassed by years of unremitting toil. If a generous, we are a thrifty people, and of reckless waste we are no less scornful than of miserly stint. But pardon me, what is it in the miser that seems to your enlightened judgment absurd, incomprehensible, and vain? Is it not the strange, unreasonable fascination with which he fondles the yellow pieces or smooths out the curling notes? Poor dotard! you exclaim, unhinged in mind and fancy. To wear the chain of a bondage to those inanimate tokens which should be the ministers of his own comfort and happiness! He has lost his conception of the end in the eagerness with which he gathers the means. For him the means have become the end. He is a bondservant, a slave. But is it not precisely the same with him whom you call the prodigal? He, like the miser, is squandering his opportunities. He has exchanged his coin for that which it represents. He has purchased his money's worth of that material outside himself which a modern philosopher has described as permanent possibilities of sensation. That only means what you can touch or taste, hear or see. The spendthrift is only surrounding himself with a profusion of material means, so that the prodigal and the miser are alike in what is essential to both characters the exaltation into an end of what, according to the true proportion of things, has no value whatever except as a means to the development of a higher life. J. G. Simpson, Christus Crucifixus, p. 175. The Homesickness of the Soul Luke 15:17 I want to take the thought that the soul is homesick, and use it to shed a little light on dark places. I. First, then, under this light we may view the unrest of sin. It is notable that it was in this light that Jesus viewed it, in the crowning parable from which we have taken our text. The prodigal was an exile; he was in a far country. It was the memory of his home that filled his heart. It was not terror that smote the prodigal deep. He came to himself, and he was homesick. (1) Now I think that Jesus would have us learn from that that wickedness is not the homeland of the soul, and that all the unrest and the dissatisfaction of the wicked is just the craving or his heart for home. We were not fashioned to be at home in sin. The native air of this mysterious heart is the love and purity and joy of heaven. We shall always be dissatisfied, always be homesick, if we are trying to live in any other land. (2) This thought, too, helps us to understand why men cover evil with a veil of goodness. It is just the longing of the exile or of the emigrant to give a homelike touch to his surroundings. (3) And we can understand the loneliness of sin when we remember this homesickness of the soul. The man who is homesick is always lonely. Slowly but surely, if a man lives in sin he drifts apart into spiritual isolation. II. Under this light we may view the craving for God. We often speak of heaven as our home, and in many deep senses that is a true expression. But in deeper senses heaven is not our home, or if it is, it is just because God is there. In the deepest sense our home is not heaven, but God. Do you see, then, the meaning of that craving for God that is one of the strangest facts in human history? (1) We crave for God because He is our home. (2) Now this homesickness of the soul for God is one of our surest proofs of God. It is an argument more powerful than any that philosophy affords to convince me that there is a God. Without a home, homesickness is inexplicable. My craving for God assures me that God is. G. H. Morrison, Sunrise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, p. 1. Coming to Oneself Luke 15:17 'When he came to himself' when he became himself then in his years of riot he was not himself. It was not the prodigal who was the real man. The real man was the penitent, not the prodigal. This parable has not only influenced thought; like all the parables it has also affected language. When some one whom we love is cross or irritable, we say of him, 'He's not himself today'. And what is that but our instinctive certainty that a man is more than his vices or his failures, and that if you want to know him as he is, you must take him at the level of his best. It was always thus that Jesus judged humanity. I would remark, too, about this prodigal, that his one object in leaving home was just to find himself. We come to ourselves when we deny ourselves; when life has room for sacrifice and service; when the eyes are lifted to the love of heaven, and the heart is set upon the will of God. I. That our text was no chance expression of the Master's we may gather from many Gospel passages. Think, for example, of that memorable hour when Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem. Our Lord had begun to speak plainly of His death, and it was all so shocking and terrible to Peter, that Peter had taken Christ to task for it. 'Far be it from Thee, Lord; this never shall befall Thee. While I have a sword to draw they shall not touch Thee.' And then the Lord flashed round on His disciple, and said to him, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan'. Only an hour before he had been Peter 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build'. That was the true Peter, moved of God, kindled into the rapture of confession. Of course in such a hopeful, splendid outlook there is no lessening of responsibility. A man is not less guilty for his failures, because they do not represent his real manhood. II. I would further remark that when He was on earth that was one great aim of Jesus' toil. It was not to make men and women angels. It was to make men and women their true selves. Christ aimed at more than making people better; His aim and object was to make them themselves. And that is the reason why the follower of Christ is the possessor of the largest freedom. The nearer a man is to being himself, the nearer is he to sweet liberty. G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p. 246. References. XV. 17. Archbishop Magee, The Gospel and the Age, p. 277. D. W. Simon, Twice Born and Other Sermons, p. 21. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1000, and vol. xli. No. 2414. W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 105. XV. 17-19. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 436. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 182. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 66. XV. 17-21. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 109. XV. 18. J. G. Simpson, Christus Crucifixus, p. 188. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 113. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 235. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 26. XV. 18, 19. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 292. XV. 19. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 264. J. Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p. 275. The Greeting Luke 15:20 Here we are carried right up into the heart of the Christian revelation. We shall be prepared to allow, I think, that the picture of the father, going forth with eager haste to anticipate his son's return, requires some justification before it can be accepted as adequately representing the Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. What I mean is this. There is a passage in the Epistle to the Romans, in which the Apostle Paul declares that the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, the propitiation set forth in His Blood, meets a great necessity, which could not have been satisfied by an act of amnesty extended to transgressors of the eternal law. God cannot pronounce a verdict of acquittal which is not true in fact. He cannot be the justifier of the ungodly and at the same time just, unless He can show, make good, and vindicate His righteousness. I. The Lord Jesus has Himself made it plain to us that there is a true analogy between human and Divine forgiveness, and that the oblivion, in which the tenderness of human compassion will consent to shroud the unhappy past, is the counterpart of that remission of sins, whereon are based the relations of the Father with His reconciled children in the kingdom of heaven. A pardon freely granted has justified itself again and again in the experience of ordinary human relations. II. Nothing can be plainer than the certainty with which Scripture ascribes the whole work of our redemption from the penalty and power of sin to the free grace and spontaneous loving kindness of the Eternal Father. It was God who 'so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son'. It was God who was 'in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself'. It is God who 'commendeth His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us'. 'This,' says the Saviour Himself, 'is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth in Him, may have eternal life.' Or again, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father'. Passage after passage, Scripture after Scripture, might be quoted to show that the atoning work of Christ takes its rise in the heart of the Divine Fatherhood. The plan of our salvation, as it is unfolded to our adoring gaze, is nought if it be not the means which the Father has Himself devised that His banished may return. III. But, while we make this declaration without reserve, it must be claimed with equal emphasis that the Scripture sets forth the Crucifixion as a meritorious act of propitiatory sacrifice. What else but the language of ancient ritual is uttered by the Baptist when he cries, 'Behold the Lamb of God'? What is the whole argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews but an exhibition of the reconciling work of Christ, in terms of the Mosaic ritual, as an expiation offered for the sins of the people by a merciful and faithful High Priest? 'God hath set (Him) forth to be a propitiation,' says St. Paul. 'He is the propitiation for our sins,' says St. John. Such language as this will not hold in the ordinary relations of mankind. When I find the Epistle to the Hebrews declaring that 'without shedding of blood is no remission, I see in these words the expression of that great mystery of propitiation, which provides 'the lamb for the burnt-offering,' the perfect substitute, the complete representative, which covers the approach of the outcast to a God from whom he has been separated by his sins. Explain it how you will, it yet remains true, and, while human nature continues what it is, it will always remain true, that no religion will satisfy the heart of man which does not turn upon the presentation of an offering for sin. And, if it is a fact that Christ reveals the Father as the fountain of inexhaustible love, the source of a compassionate forgiveness, it is also a fact that He reveals Himself as the Way, the new and living Way, which through the offering of His body He has consecrated once for all, and of which He declares that 'no man cometh unto the Father but by Me'. On its manward side the Cross of Jesus is big with the power of an intense morality the victory of patience, the consecration of pain, the supremacy of love, the power of a regenerated life. On its God-ward side it is a truth veiled yet manifested. 'He tasted death for every man.' 'The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' 'He made Him to be sin for us.' It is because such words ring out from Calvary that it is eloquent also of a Divine mystery. J. G. Simpson, C hristus Crucifixus, p. 200. Recognised, Though Afar Off Luke 15:20 I. This parable shows us that man is very far off from God. You and I never realised how far we were from God until we tried to come back; then we found we had gone far off from Him. But why do we go far from God? We go from God for the same reason that that poor prodigal went from his father. He could not enjoy himself in his father's presence. II. But this text assures me that in spite of the distance there is recognition. 'Whilst he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.' Why? Because, I fancy, he had always been looking out for him. God sees us however far off we may be. E. A. Stuart, The City Pulpit, vol. x. p. 51. Luke 15:20 Many anxious and honest Christians may be yet consciously far from the spiritual haven where they would be. Let such be consoled in remembering that the Father who draws us to Christ beholds us, yea, sets forth to meet us, while we are yet a great way off. A great way off, and yet upon the way herein lies all the difference between resistance and returning. Dora Greenwell. References. XV. 20. H. P. Liddon, Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, p. 1. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. pp. 196, 214. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 176; vol. x. No. 588; vol. xx. No. 1189; vol. xxxvii. No. 2236; vol. xliii. No. 2507. T. G. Selby, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 243. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 80. XV. 20, 21. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2520. XV. 20-22. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 218. XV. 20-24. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passion-tide, p. 442. The Father and the Three Sons Luke 15:20 * ; Luke 15:25 * I. Withdrawing the light from Himself, our Lord concentrates it on three, the prodigal son, the father, and the elder brother. He teaches us what we have been so ready to forget, that the coming home of the soul is not merely a coming to oneself, a coming to the father, but also a coming to the elder brother. That was how Christ peopled the house which the son had left with a father and an elder son. He might have filled it otherwise, for sometimes the prodigal comes back to a mother and brothers and sisters, but for His purpose He needed but the two. Christians are very slow to learn that conversion in the New Testament sense is not the return of the lonely soul to the only God. It is the renewal of human ties that have been broken as well as of Divine. The return to God is a return to the Church. There have been mystics who have found God and lived on Him without entering into relation with their brethren in Christ But just as the perfection of human life cannot be achieved apart from fellowship, so the soul separated from its kindred takes distorted forms. The New Testament contemplates every Christian as a member of the Church of which Jesus is the Head, growing up in harmony and fullness to the measure of the stature of Christ. Christian growth becomes fair and strong not in a cloistered and remote piety, but in the communion of the household of God. So whenever evangelistic work has been fruitful and permanent in its results, it has conducted the soul home to the Church as well as home to God. The work of George Whitefield was in its day as successful and outstanding as that of Wesley, but there is no comparison now, for whereas Whitefield allowed his work to become scattered by ignoring methods of organisation, Wesley was constructive, and formed his converts into classes and churches. This, then, is the first lesson, that conversion is a return to the brethren as well as a return to the Father. II. Nothing could add to the picture of the father and his grace given by Jesus. A modern writer has said that the feature of the parable is the magnificent repentance of the prodigal. It was a magnificent repentance, a repentance that made no excuses, that humbled itself utterly. But more magnificent by far was the forgiveness of the father. Day after day he was watching when there seemed no hope of the wanderer appearing, day by day looking out with a hungry, expectant heart, running a great way to meet the sinner whenever he turned to the abandoned home, asking no question, speaking no word of rebuke, refusing to hear the confession out, calling for the robe, and the ring, and the feast. How Jesus delighted in God the Father as He told this story! What faith He had in the abysses of fatherly tenderness. This was the love which had been the life of Christ, the love of the Son for the Father, of the Father for the Son. To Him there was no love like a Father's love. There was no wonder of grace too wonderful for the Father's heart. On the part of the father there is no obstacle. He is willing to be gracious, he is waiting to be gracious, he is on the watch-tower, he runs a great way to meet the penitent. Day by day, year by year, he keeps looking, and when every one else has given up hope, the father still refuses to despair and to say, 'He will not return to me'. III. What is the attitude of the Church to the self-made exile? What is the attitude of the elder brethren? This parable contains a representation of that attitude by the Eldest Brother, and we shall see the more we dwell on it how true and pitiful the picture is. In the first place, there is a good side to the Church, for we read 'his elder son was in the field'. That was a good place to be in, incomparably better than the far country. We are told how the elder brother worked there. 'Lo, these many years do I serve thee,' and it is a great thing to serve for many years in the heat by day and in the frost by night. 'Neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment,' and that also is a great thing to say, no black, foul transgression staining and soaking the years, a record of obedience never broken by a refusal. Yes, it meant much, and the father knew it, for he said, 'Son, thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is thine'. Let us not be unjust to the elder brother, for the Eldest Brother is most just. The farm had to be kept up and worked, and he did his part well. He had never been away perhaps, had not even sought amusements or holidays. Prosaic and monotonous all must have been at times, as all good work is, but he had stuck to it, and therein was most worthy of praise. Now what is true of him is true of the Church of Christ. The Church of Christ is being constantly reproached in these days, reproached by those outside, reproached by her own, till loyal workers grow disheartened, and wonder sometimes whether there is any better means of doing God's work in the world than by being faithful and diligent in His Church. There is no better way. In spite of all failures, how much of loyalty, fidelity, self-denial, endurance, and heroic constancy mark the life of the wonderful Church of Christ! What the critics do for the regeneration of the world has never been clear to me. What is clear is that it is the work of the Church in the field, the unnoticed, regular, obscure work, that has kept the soul alive in England. IV. What is the Church to do? 1. Keep the children at home. Who drove the prodigal out? Perhaps it was his elder brother. Anyhow, we must never let the children out. Christ never meant we should. Bom into the Church of Christ, they should never leave it Hear the solemn and tender command of Christ, more imperative as it comes to a parent than as it came to an apostle, 'Feed My lambs'. 2. Then, are we sure we wish them to come back after they have long gone? They have been in the far country for years now, and will never be what they were. Do we want them to come again and trouble us in their rags, their misery, their sores, their shame? Are our eyes on the long, dusty road down which they may be coming even now? When the Church longs for the prodigal as the Father longs, then will come the great day of reconciliation and weeping. 3. You will observe that the Eldest Brother leaves the end doubtful. Did the elder brother go in and sit down with the father and the prodigal and servants? Will the Church of Christ cease to play the part of the elder brother, and share the father's heart? We have been letting them slip; all the time they have been slipping from our homes, from our Sunday schools, from our churches. They are slipping away still every hour of every day. If we are to bring them back we must do much more than welcome them. Some of us at least must go out with the Eldest Brother to seek and to save that which is lost. 'The Church was born crucified,' said Lacordaire. Have her wounds been healed and their record obliterated? If so, the wounds must be inflicted anew. The world will come back to the Church when it sees the Church crucified with Christ And so Measure thy life by loss instead of gain, Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. W. Robertson Nicoll, The Lamp of Sacrifice, p. 172. Reference. XV. 21, 22. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 91. The Robe Luke 15:22 So we reach the accomplishment of the purpose of reconciliation. The awakening, the meeting, the home-coming, and now the festal array. 'Bring forth' the father speaks to his servants; the robe is laid up for the penitent sinner in the father's house. 'Quickly' then it is a transformation which is immediate and complete. 'The best robe' it is the garment of praise which they wear who feast in kings' houses. 'Put it on him' it is the grace and favour of him who makes the feast which clothes the returning wanderer in a vesture not his own. 'They found the man sitting, clothed and in his right mind, at the feet of Jesus.' I. Here I see the great truth to which the Reformation of the sixteenth century recalled the mind of the Church, the doctrine of justification by faith which carries with it, as I believe, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. It is the teaching, I rejoice to think, of the Church of England, and nowhere has it received a nobler vindication than in the writings of the greatest English theologian. 'Faith,' says Richard Hooker, 'is the only hand which putteth on Christ unto justification; and Christ the only garment which, being so put on, covereth the shame of our defiled natures, hideth the imperfections of our works, preserveth us blameless in the sight of God.' While this is preached from our pulpits you need have no fear for the Protestantism of our Church. Do not, I beseech you, be suspicious of the lighting of a candle or the swinging of a censer. But be very jealous for the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith. II. The correlative of the doctrine of justification by faith is the imputed righteousness of Christ God covers us with the robe of righteousness, which is the merits of our adorable Redeemer. For consider what the full statement of the doctrine of justification is. It is expressed thus: 'By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God'. We have, then, to ask, What does the Bible mean when it speaks of grace? A word so constantly on the lips of the preacher as this is apt to lose the fullness of its meaning in the variety of its applications. What, then, is grace? Grace, as the Bible employs the term, is God's free favour. St. Paul opposes it to debt. 'To him that worketh the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt.' The contrast is obvious. It is with a salvation to which we have earned the right by our own toil that we contrast a salvation bestowed upon us as God's free gift. This is the very breath and life of the Gospel. Of our own we have nothing save the surrender of faith to Christ. All the rest, including those fruits of righteousness which manifest themselves in the saintly life, is His, and remains His, even when it seems to become ours. III. The whole power of the Gospel, its moral and spiritual power to transform the life and transfigure the character, lies in its appeal to the disturbed and anxious soul to cast all its care on Him who has wrought salvation. 'Be of good cheer, my son, thy sins are forgiven. Believe in Jesus Christ who was crucified for thy sins.' I do not want the assurance that by the careful use of a medicine provided for sick souls I may at last achieve a character upon which God can look with approval. I want the message that the debt is paid, that the pardon is sealed, that my restored sonship is an actual and present fact. It is only under cover of this shelter that we can make anything of our lives at all. It is related of one of the greatest men who have ever consecrated the finest gifts of intellect to the furtherance of religion and the service of the Church of England, that, as he lay a-dying, he confessed to his chaplain that he was oppressed with a sense of his own unworthiness. If there ever was a man who might have been content to stand upon his achievement, then this was the man. Not only had he lived a pure and blameless life, but he had given to the Church an immortal vindication of faith in his Analogy of Religion. But in the hour of death he was great enough to know that of himself he had nought to plead. 'But, my lord,' replied the chaplain, 'our Saviour has said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out".' 'Ah,' was the answer, 'I had forgot. I die happy.' J. G. Simpson, Christus Crucifixus, p. 231. The Best Robe Luke 15:22 God has no second best. For Himself and for us He will have no other than the best. He would have the best of everything and everything at the best. He is always putting upon things the best robe. God loves beauty. He is Himself the author of all beauty and can only rest in things beautiful. How the Lord Jesus loved beauty. How He turned to the fowls of the air and the flowers of the field and the little child, that He might illustrate and adorn His teaching, 'Bring forth the best robe.' It seems to be the voice of God in the summer, and the days are swift to obey the command of the Most High. 'Bring forth the best robe.' To the very birds it seems to be spoken in the spring-time. And now what think you? Is there not in all this a blessed message and promise for us men and women? For you and me it shall be spoken Bring forth the best robe. Let us see something of what this meant in the wonderful story that the Lord has given us. The prodigal has wandered into the far country and spent his substance in riotous living has spent all. At last in his sorry plight he said; I will arise and go to my father. And what then? 'When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And he said to the servant, Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.' Nothing was too good for him. I. The best robe is the beautiful picture of an utter and complete forgiveness. All that had been the rags, the wretchedness, the poor, thin, wasted frame are all covered and hidden by it. It is the very picture of what God's great love longs to do for us. 'The best robe.' Ah, what a costly robe it is! Who could count its worth? 'God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' And lo, this best robe is for us if we will have it. II. 'The best robe' then see what goes with it. When God gives the best robe He gives the character of which it is but the token and expression. The best robe goes with a right spirit. See how God decks the earth with its best robe, not from without but from within. The seed in the earth is quickened by the sun in the heavens; the soft wind blows and woos the timid bud into the light A host of subtle influences that we know not of work together until at last the earth is decked in all her summer glory from within, not from without. So is the best robe ours. The love of God moves upon us, the truth becomes as a seed in the heart and is quickened into life. Our will and God's commandment are made one. III. Then, again, the best robe was a claim and a pledge. It meant on the son's part a claim, 'If I am to have the best robe, father, I must have all that is in keeping with it. I must have all that I want to live up to it' And it meant on the father's part a pledge. 'My son, I give thee the best robe, and all that goes with it is thine.' M. G. Pearse, The Preacher's Magazine, vol. xi. p. 245. References. XV. 22. J. G. Simpson, Christus Crucifixus, p. 213. XV. 22, 23. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 65. Luke 15:22-24 In Robert Falconer, George Macdonald makes the hero read this parable to the dying soutar: 'There,' cried the soutar triumphantly, 'I telled ye sae! O Lord, I'm comin' hame as fast as I can; but my sins are jist like muckle bauchles upon my feet, and winna lat me. I expec' nae ring and nae robe, but I would fain hae a fiddle i' my grup when the neist prodigal comes hame!' Mr. Cardrew began by saying that this parable had been taken to be an exhibition of God's love for man. It seemed rather to set forth, not the magnificence of the Divine nature, but of human nature of that nature which God assumed. The determination on the part of the younger son to arise, to go to his father, and above everything to say to him simply, 'Father, I have sinned,' was as great as God is great: it was God God moving in us; in a sense it was far more truly God far greater than the force which binds the planets into a system. But the splendour of human nature is shown in the father as well as in the son. 'When he was yet a great way off.' We are as good as told, then, that day after day the father had been watching. Oh, my friends, said the preacher, just consider that it is this upon which Jesus Christ, the son of God, has put His stamp, not the lecture, not chastisement, not expiation, but an instant unquestioning embrace, no matter what the wrong may have been! Mark Rutherford, * Catherine Furze. * References. XV. 22, 23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1204. XV. 23, 24. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 103. XV. 24. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p. 161. W. Brock, Penny Pulpit, No. 1705, p. 679. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 1. XV. 25. Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 80. F. Ballard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 211. XV. 25-28. J. Denton Thompson, God and the Sinner, p. 119. Christianity in Daily Conduct, p. 199. XV. 27. Mark Guy Pearse, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 277. Our Duty Towards Our Equals Luke 15:28 On the matter of our duty to our equal, the New Testament is comparatively silent. It speaks to us, not infrequently, of the duty which we owe to our superiors. Men are to reverence those who sit in Moses' seat; they are to render unto Cæsar the things which are Caesar's; they are to pray for kings and all who are in authority. It speaks constantly of our duty to inferiors. That is one great theme of the New Testament. Everywhere, with all variety of appeal, that is insisted on and urged. But as we read the Gospels and Epistles we gradually become aware of a strange silence it is the silence, the comparative silence of the Gospel, on the matter of our duty to our equals. That does not mean that such duties were of little consequence to the men who have given us our New Testament. It means that there were certain causes which inevitably put the emphasis elsewhere. Let me suggest three of these causes. I. In the first place, there was that new humility which was present so powerfully in Christian character. Working in the heart of the new-born, it did not suggest equality at all. However glad was the good news of the Gospel, however it cheered and comforted the world, one of its first effects on human hearts was to deepen the sense of personal unworthiness. And this deep feeling of personal unworthiness so coloured every estimate of self, that men were readier to deny than to assert their equality with anyone whatever. II. The second reason is to be found in this in the Gospel message of compassion. That was so new, so new and so amazing, that for a little it obscured all else. There may be elements in the ethic of the Gospel which were familiar to the older world. That is exactly what we should expect, since God has never left Himself without a witness. But there was one thing in the Gospel which was new, and set it apart from all the thought of ages, and that was its magnificent insistence on the need and the blessing of compassion. It was the Christian's mark to be compassionate to help the poor, to cheer the solitary. He went to the least and lowest of mankind, in the great love wherewith his heart was burning. And you cannot wonder that that great enthusiasm, so utterly unknown in paganism, pushed into the background, as it were, the statement of our duty towards equals. III. But there is another reason, not opposed to these, yet standing just a little apart from them. It is the fact that Christian morality is so vitally dependent upon Christ. Paul never thought of morals by itself. He never spoke of isolated ethics. For him to live in every realm of life for him to live was Christ. To be like Christ was his idea of goodness; to be in Christ his idea of glory; to follow in the steps of Christ was his compendium of all morality. Now the very foundation of the Church was this, that Jesus Christ had no equal. 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God' it was on that foundation that the Church was built. Neither in heaven above nor on earth beneath had Jesus Christ a duty to His equal. Trials from inferiors are bad enough, trials from superiors are worse; but trials from our equals are worst of all, and I shall tell you why it is so. The reason is that trials from our inferiors are trials from which we always can escape. We can return again to our own levels, and leave thus the sphere of our vexations. But from the trials of our equals there is no such refuge our equals are our habitual environment and therefore always, every day we live, we are exposed to the buffet or the thorn. It is thus that the trials of our nearest may be blessed in a more certain way than any others. There is no one we can fly to except God; there is no one we can lean on except God. Tried by inferiors we have still our equals, in whose society we are secure. Tried by our equals every refuge fails, and 'hangs my helpless soul on Thee'. And so, I would urge upon you to test and try your character that way. Be chary of accepting any verdict, except the verdict of equality, Distrust the subtle flattery of deference. There is no self-knowledge to be gained that way. Distrust the judgment of the poor and needy, whom in your warmth of compassion you have helped. If you want to know yourself go to your equals find what you think of them, and they of you. Reckon yourself by what you are at home, or with your brother merchant or your brother minister. It is thus and thus alone we learn the truth, and when we learn the truth we are never far from Christ Seeing ourselves, we see our need of Him, and in that sight is the beginning of salvation. Driven from the rest of self-esteem, so easily fostered by our very pity, we hear Him saying to us irresistibly, 'Come unto Me and I will give you rest'. G. H. Morrison, The Return of the Angels, p. 152. The Elder Brother Spirit Luke 15:28 I want to speak to you, not about the central figure in this, the pearl of all parables, not about the erring son who went away and lived in a far country, and then, drawn back by the memory of a father's love, returned to experience a father's forgiveness; but I want, rather, to speak about the other brother, the one who did not leave home, and yet who, I venture to think, was still further away from the mind and heart of his father than the prodigal son ever got. What is the significance which the warning of the record of his action, and his father's word to him, and all that took place has for us, individually and personally, today? I. I say that the interest in this parable has mainly centred in the prodigal, whereas Christ meant to teach equally important lessons in introducing the elder brother. It would have been entirely unnecessary for Christ to introduce the elder brother and speak of the elder brother's spirit, if all he had meant to teach was the course of sinful self-will and the compassion of God, and the certainty of forgiveness to those who return to Him in penitence and in faith. No; Christ meant, I take it, to teach His people the difference between the Spirit of their Father and the spirit which they too often manifest before Him and to those whom He seeks to love and to bless. If the figure of the prodigal son is meant to convey lessons to the publican and the sinner of the Fatherliness of God, and His grace and tenderness and His willingness to receive them, surely what Christ said and He had no words of condemnation, remember, concerning the elder brother was meant to apply to those stiff, unlovely, dutiful if you will, but altogether unsympathetic and ungodlike souls the Pharisees and the scribes, who were not all insincere, but just unconsciously hypocritical, unconsciously absorbed with the externals of worship, unconsciously taken up with those things but accidental to any man's relationship to God, and the relationship of God to His people, unconsciously hard towards God and hard towards His people And Christ meant to rebuke them. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ The Unjust Steward Luke 16:2 We call this parable the Parable of the Unjust Steward i.e. a fraudulent, dishonest steward and such undoubtedly he did become; but not deliberately dishonest up to the time when his lord called him suddenly to account. He was accused to his lord that he had wasted his goods; not a purposed and continued fraud, but a long-continued faithlessness to his trust. He had forgotten that he was the trustee for his lord's possessions, and he had lived on neglecting plain duties, until at last the goods began to perish. The man, then, was guilty of being unfaithful to his trust. And it is this that gives the parable its terrible significance for us. There are not many, it is to be hoped, who, looking back upon their lives, can charge themselves with long-continued and deliberate sin against light and knowledge; but how many may there be who, looking back upon some critical moment in the past, are driven to confess: 'I have not been faithful to my Lord, or to my trust. My Lord's goods have not waxed, but waned, in my trusteeship. I have been negligent and unfaithful, and so far, therefore, a dishonest steward.' I. This, then, is the question which each of us has to ask of himself and of his own life: 'What manner of steward have I been of those things that my Lord has entrusted to me?' God has given each one of us something to do in His household. Every one of us is, in a larger or smaller degree, a steward of the Lord. Two great gifts of God, at least, are given to every one Time and Opportunity. Time that fleets so swiftly, and so often unheeded, passing by moments and days, and running up to years, bringing life to a close, is God's great trust to every one of us. And Opportunity those moments fraught with blessings and help, or hindrance and evil, to one's fellow-men, and which may become the means of increasing the Master's goods or of diminishing them; those opportunities in life that come so often unrecognised, or that are allowed to pass unheeded; this time which we waste and kill, these opportunities that we disregard and lose, are the goods of our Lord: every man has more or less of them, and will have to account for them. Time that fleets and opportunity that passes never to return these are the gifts and the stewardship of every man. II. We have to give an account, sooner or later, to our Lord and Master of how we have used these great gifts, and many another besides; but of these two surely every one of us has to give an account. Think for a moment of the many stewardships we all have from time to time given us; and how these stewardships are terminated now, at one time, one stewardship, and now, at another time, another. If a man has not kept his Lord's trust, and has to answer to Him for wasted time and wholly neglected opportunities, how awful must be his account! The best of men has some such moments in his life, when he looks back on his past life, and is forced to the question: What account can I render to my Lord of my stewardship? Thank God that our merciful Lord, more merciful than man, is the Master to judge us, not by what we have done, but by what we have striven to do. Archbishop Magee. References. XVI. 2. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 98. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 192, and vol. xli. No. 2445. Our Work Luke 16:4 I want to put before you a few thoughts not unfamiliar in one of the most familiar departments of our life our work. We are constantly face to face with the contrast which comes before us when we leave the house of God and go back to mix with the world, and to do our work; and we immediately feel its pressure. The spirit of the world makes it very difficult for us to hold that true proportion which should exist between the things which are seen and the things which are unseen. I. Saviours of Society. Now the words of my text were put by our Blessed Lord into the lips of a thoroughly worldly man, with whom we come in contact in that well-known parable the Parable of the Unjust Steward. We want to remember, do we not, that our Lord's advice to us is just this as you mingle with the world, as you come in contact with men who are living for the world, who have as their aim securing all that the world can give, caring little or nothing what may happen so long as they secure that, then He would seem to say to us, Do not judge them, do not say hard things, do not forget that they, too, have been redeemed by the Saviour of the world, but try to learn from them a lesson which will help you in your struggle for your Christian freedom, and remember that if you are as true to your aims as they are to theirs, then you will go amongst your fellow-men as saviours of society. II. An Account asked for. You and I must give an account of our stewardship; we must give an account of the way in which we have lived our life, and used our time, and our money, and our talents. Get time to think. Anticipate the account which you must give of your stewardship. I do not doubt for one moment that our hearts are stirred by the tender appeal of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; but have you let Him enter the great citadel of your will? III. Endurance to the End. We may go forth and redeem the time, we may rejoice in being able to meet these temptations which conquered us of old, and saying 'No' where we once said 'Yes'. Rise, for the day is passing. Yes; and a place in the ranks awaits us. Each has his part to play, and the past and the future are nothing in the stern face of today. And the man that endureth to the end the same shall be saved, and the great Captain of our salvation will also have His word of commendation to those who endure to the end. 'Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' Reference. XVI. 4. S. Gregory, How to Steer a Ship, p. 141. The Sense of Obligation Luke 16:5 This is a question which occurs, as is well known, in the Parable of the Unjust Steward. The one characteristic, then, which the master signals out for appreciation in the steward is his shrewdness, his foresight, his prudence. 'The lord,' i.e. the master, 'commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely' not rightly, or honourably, but prudently. I. That is the feature of his conduct, the one feature, which Jesus Christ holds up to the admiration and imitation of Christians. He says, in effect, 'Why will not My disciples learn from men of the world the everyday lesson of common sense; why will they not follow the same business-like principle in the spiritual life as in commercial life'; why should it be true now, and is it to be true for ever, that 'the children of this world are in' or, 'as regards' 'their generation wiser than the children of light?' God says to every man: 'You have only one earthly life to live. If you waste the golden days of youth, if you dissipate them in indolence or frivolity, they will never come back to you; and all that you might have been and ought to have been, you will never be.' Yet how pitiful is the thousand times repeated tale of misspent years and squandered opportunities, and hopes as disappointing as the bitter apples of the Dead Sea! II. 'The children of this world,' 'the children of light' how strange and sad is the contrast which the Lord in the parable points between them! It is as though He said: 'Look at yon man of business; his heart is set upon making a fortune; see how careful he is, how sedulous, how thrifty; he rises so early, he goes to bed so late, he eats the bread of carefulness; many a time all through the day he sits at his desk, he is the creature of industrious habit, he denies himself, it may be for many years, every needless pleasure, indulgence, or extravagance; and he gains his reward. He began life as a clerk at £1 a week, and he ends it as head of a great commercial house. But now look at the man who aspires to win heaven how easily he takes things, how little trouble he gives himself about them! The time that he spends in prayer, in the study of God's Word, in public worship what a poor fraction it is of all his life! He seems to think it is possible to saunter into heaven. But why should it be reasonable to assume that the pearl of great price is the only treasure which can be had for the mere asking, without the necessity of working for it?' III. Our Lord speaks especially of riches. Among all His words in the Gospel none perhaps are more intuitively wise than the words which He used about riches. Riches are not wrong, but they are spiritually perilous. Our Lord says in the parable, Use them well, not foolishly or selfishly, but so as to make friends by your wise generosity friends among the poor, the hungry, the necessitous, the suffering, 'that when ye fail,' i.e. when ye die, 'they may receive you into the everlasting habitations'. This is the law of the future life; but it is the law of the present life as well. IV. I cannot read the Parable of the Unjust Steward without feeling that underlying it all is the threefold relation which characterises the Church of Jesus Christ. There is the great Master, the Lord of All, who will one day summon all His servants to render their account. There are the stewards, whoever they may be, the ministers of the great Master, the intermediaries between Him and His tenants at will; it is expressly stated that the parable was addressed to the disciples. There are the tenants themselves, whose life is so uncertain, so precarious; and they are all indebted in a larger or less degree to the same great Master. To them all comes the question of my test 'How much owest thou unto my Lord?' Bishop Welldon, The Gospel in a Great City, p. 99. References. XVI. 5. E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son and other Sermons, vol. v. p. 65. XVI. 5-7. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 231. Spiritual Wisdom Luke 16:8 You remember the story, and how the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely. He could not help admiring him because he was a good business man of the day, who had done the wisest and best thing for himself. Let us apply this thought to our spiritual life. I. Our Personal Salvation. Are we sure that we are in a state of salvation? Surely we should be. If not, it is true of us that 'the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light'. II. Likeness to Christ. How far have we attained to Christ's likeness? Daily we must be getting more and more like Him, and must be opening our souls more and more to the Holy Spirit and losing our hold on the things of earth. Remember it is true that 'without holiness no man shall see the Lord,' and if we are not cultivating it, do we not incur the reproach that 'the children of this world are in their generation' wiser than we? III. Use of Talents. Are we using our talents properly, or are we intending to steal all the Gospel privileges without making any return to God? (a) Money. The time will come when God will say, 'What about your money'? That is a talent which He has given to us. (b) Influence. What a tremendous talent! Parents, are you pointing your children heavenwards? Men and women in business or in society, are you witnessing? Think of the way political parties take trouble to get others to believe with them, and then take shame for the graceless way in which we go through life and never seek to win a soul for God. If, instead of working for God, we only work for self; and if, instead of striving after holiness, if, instead of giving something to God, we keep it all for self, then remember we are living examples of the truth of these words: 'The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light'. Luke 16:8 In Essay xvi. of The Friend, Coleridge, writing in 1809, declares that the maxims of genuine expedience are little regarded by the very people who profess to obey nothing higher than expedience so much so, 'that I dare hazard the assertion that in the whole chapter of contents of European ruin, every article might be unanswerably deduced from the neglect of some maxim that had been repeatedly laid down, demonstrated, and enforced with a host of illustrations in some one or other of the works of Machiavelli, Bacon, or Harrington. It would be a melancholy but very profitable employment,' he continues, 'for some vigorous mind, intimately acquainted with the recent history of Europe, to collect the weightiest aphorisms of Machiavelli alone, and illustrate by appropriate facts the breach or observation of each, to render less mysterious the present triumph of lawless violence. The apt motto to such a work would be: * The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light.' * References. XVI. 8. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 97. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 205. R. W. Church, Village Sermons, p. 259. H. Allen, Penny Pulpit, No. 1660, p. 319. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 191. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 274. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 75. The Eternal Tents Luke 16:9 'The Eternal Tents:' This is our Lord's description of heaven; and if we would feel the force of it and catch its true interpretation, we must remember the history of ancient Israel. That history, so long, so troublous, began far back with the call of Abraham to leave his pleasant home in the land of Haran. Linked with the call was a promise, which came to him we know not how, that of his descendants God would make a great nation and give them a goodly land for their heritage. That was the beginning of Israel's national history the call of Abraham and the promise to his seed after him. And you remember how nobly he made the heroic venture of faith and, at the call of God, abandoned all that he had all that, in the worldly judgment, was worth having and set out in pursuit of a far-off hope and a transcendent ideal. He went forth with his tent and his family and his flocks and herds, and journeyed to and fro; and through the discipline of his homeless life the revelation grew ever clearer and the hope more sure. He died ere the promise was fulfilled, but he left his children a heritage of tents and flocks and herds, and a heritage more precious still a faith and an example. I. Such was the ancient history of Israel, and it was never forgotten. The Jews in after generations looked back to it with wonder and pride, and it served them as an emblem of human life. They recognised in that long and weary wandering a parable of the hungry-hearted life of the children of men. 'We are strangers before Thee,' they said, 'and sojourners, as were all our fathers'; 'Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come'. And the entrance into the Promised Land and the winning of the Holy City that prefigured to them the glad consummation when they should be gathered home to the City of God and the Father's house. And this, you observe, is the thought which underlies the curious phrase of our text 'the Eternal Tents'. Its peculiarity is that it is what is called a contradiction in terms; for, if there be one thing which less than any other can be predicated of a tent, it is that it is eternal. This is precisely what a tent is not. It is a frail and fleeting thing, pitched today and struck tomorrow, a fitting image of life's transience: 'Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent'. Yet Jesus says 'the Eternal Tents'. Had He followed the line of thought familiar to the Jewish imagination, He would have said: 'Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the Eternal City, the City which hath the foundations'. But no, He gives the phrase this odd turn and says 'into the Eternal Tents,' combining two contradictory ideas on the one hand, stability, endurance, and, on the other, un-settlement, uncertainty. II. What would He teach us by this description of heaven. I think He means, in the first place, to disabuse our minds of an idea to which they are prone. He would have us understand that, while there will be rest in heaven, it will not be the rest of inactivity. And there is another lesson in our text It was not for nothing that the Israelites endured that long ordeal of homeless wandering ere they reached their 'city of habitation'. It was their discipline in faith and courage, their preparation for the heritage which God had appointed for them. And so our earthly life, with all its unrest and weariness and disappointment, is our discipline for the service which awaits us in the City of God. David Smith, Man's Need of God, p. 165. References. XVI. 9. W. M. Sinclair, Christ and Our Times, p. 279. T. C. Fry, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 390. E. W. Attwood. Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 327. F. B. Woodward, Sermons (1st Series), p. 268. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses (2nd Series), p. 134. C. Moinet, The Great Alternative and other Sermons, p. 215. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 289. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 34; ibid. vol. ix. p. 165. XVI. 10. J. Keble. Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 283. W. Scott Page, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. p. 46. XVI. 10-12. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 83. XVI. 11, 12. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 274. XVI. 11-32. Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 105. XVI. 12. H. J. Pope, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 281. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 45. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 28. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 91. XVI. 13. C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p. 341. Luke 16:13 One inevitable characteristic of modern war is, that it is associated throughout, in all particulars, with a vast and most irregular formation of commercial enterprise. There is no incentive to Mammon-worship so remarkable as that which it affords. The political economy of war is now one of its most commanding aspects.... Even apart from the fact that war suspends, ipso facto, every rule of public thrift, and tends to sap honesty itself in the use of the public treasure for which it makes such unbounded calls, it therefore is the greatest feeder of that lust of gold which we are told is the essence of commerce, though we had hoped it was only its occasional besetting sin. W. E. Gladstone. Why, Mammon sits before a million hearths, Where God is bolted out from every house. Bailey's * Festus. * A young lady, sitting next Tennyson one evening at a dinner-party, spoke contemptuously of a certain marriage as a very penniless one. The poet rummaged in his pocket till he managed to extract a penny, which he slapped down loudly on the table at her side, crying, 'There, I give you that That is the God you worship!' Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining ore, and called it gold. Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is the living god, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue. Shelley's * Queen Mab. * Men must be the slaves either of duty or of force. Joubert. Luke 16:14 There was a laughing Devil in his sneer, That raised emotions both of rage and fear, And where his frown of hatred darkly fell, Hope withering fled, and mercy sigh'd farewell. Byron, * The Corsair. * 'I do not recollect,' says Washington Irving, after a visit to Sir Walter Scott, 'a sneer throughout his conversation, any more than there is throughout his works.' Reference. XVI. 14-18. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 183. Luke 16:15 'I often have a kind of waking dream,' Dean Church once wrote to a friend. 'Up one road the image of a man decked and adorned as if for a triumph, carried up by rejoicing and exulting friends, who praise his goodness and achievements; on the other road, turned back to back to it, there is the very same man himself, in sordid and squalid apparel, surrounded not by friends but by ministers of justice, and going on, while his friends are exulting, to his certain and perhaps awful judgment. The vision rises when I hear, not just and conscientious endeavours to make out a man's character, but when I hear the loose things that are said often in kindness and love of those beyond the grave.' References. XVI. 16. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 156. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 31; ibid. vol. x. p. 8; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 379. XVI. 16-24. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 100. XVI. 17. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 371. XVI. 17-19. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iv. p. 79. XVI. 18. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 70; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 103. XVI. 19. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 333. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 175. XVI. 19, 20. J. H. Jowett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 97. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 224. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 291. Luke 16:20 After describing the profligate luxury of the Court of Louis the Great, Thackeray (in The Four Georges, 1.) adds: 'A grander monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry? Yes!... But round all that royal splendour lies a nation enslaved and ruined; there are people robbed of their rights communities laid waste faith, justice, commerce, trampled on, and wellnigh destroyed.' Compare Professor Villari's account of the castle of Ferrara: 'That grim, quadrangular building,' with 'subterranean dungeons guarded by seven gratings from the light of day. They were full of immured victims, and the clanking of chains and groans of human beings in pain could be heard from their depths, mingling with the strains of music and ceaseless revelry going on above, the ringing of silver plate, the clatter of majolica dishes, and clinking of Venetian glass.' There is a greater army That besets us round with strife, A starving, numberless army, At all the gates of life. The poverty-stricken millions Who challenge our wine and bread, And impeach us all as traitors, Both the living and the dead. And whenever I sit at the banquet, Where the feast and song are high, Amid the mirth and the music I can hear that fearful cry. And hollow and haggard faces Look into the lighted hall, And wasted hands are extended To catch the crumbs that fall. Longfellow. Very sensitive people, who cannot overcome their sensibility, are perforce selfish in this world of pain. They must forget that there is suffering. Their pity makes them cruel. They cannot bear the sight of suffering; they must shut the door upon it. If he is a Dives, such a man must first of all insist that the police shall prevent people like Lazarus, covered with sores, from lying in plain sight at the gate. Such men must treat pain as, in these days of plumbing, we treat filth. We get the plumber and the carpenter to hide it so well that even our civilised nostrils shall not be offended. That we call modern improvement in house-building. Even so we get the police to hide suffering from us; and, when that help fails, or is inapplicable, we appeal to the natural sense of decency in the sufferers, and demand, on the ground of common courtesy, that they shall not intrude their miseries upon us. Prof. Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 99, 100. References. XVI. 19-21. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 127. XVI. 19-31. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 465; ibid. vol. viii. p. 121. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 101. XVI. 22. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 57. W. Robertson Nicoll, Ten Minute Sermons, p. 123. The Fatal Power of Inattention Luke 16:23 There is a well-known picture by Gustave Doré, which portrays this parable of the rich man and the beggar. We are shown the rich man in the midst of Oriental luxury, and at the foot of the marble steps the diseased Lazarus. So far the picture is worthy of the genius; but Doré has introduced one other feature which shows that he has misread the Saviour's story. Over the beggar an Eastern slave is bending with a scourge of twigs in his uplifted hand. He has been bidden drive Lazarus away, for his misery is as a death's head at the feast. And Doré is wrong in introducing that, for our Lord does not hint that Dives was disturbed he was not consciously and deliberately cruel; he was only totally and hopelessly indifferent. What wrought the ruin of that pleasure-lover was not inhumanity so much as inattention. The attitude of innumerable people toward the great questions of the religious life is just the inattentive attitude of the rich man to Lazarus at his gate. I. How perilous the inattentive spirit is we have only to open our eyes to see. (1) It is one of the lessons that reach us every day as we walk through the crowded streets of a great city. Readers of Marcus Aurelius will remember how he bases the art of life upon attention. (2) Again we might throw light upon the matter by considering the common laws of health. You never meet a man who hates these laws, or breaks them in a spirit of rebellion. But you meet many who are inattentive, and who constantly and recklessly neglect them. Whatever other functions pain may have, one is that it serves to fix attention. II. I wish now to say a word or two on some of the causes of this inattention. (1) Perhaps the commonest cause of all is custom. 'One good custom doth corrupt the world,' and it does so, because it lulls to sleep. It is a bad thing to grow accustomed to the wrong. (2) Another cause of inattention is a lowered vitality. When we are weary, and the flame of life is low, somehow we can neither grasp nor grip. 'I am come to give abundant life,' says Christ, and to give it here and now, and not tomorrow. Do you not see, then, how fellowship with Christ wakens a man's attention to the highest? (3) But the deepest cause of inattention is still to seek. The deepest cause of it is lack of love. Love is quick to see the need of others, and to read what is hidden from a thousand eyes, and to discern beyond the veil the things that matter; for only he who loveth, knoweth God. G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p. 174. References. XVI. 23. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 61. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 239. XVI. 23-25. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 132. Retribution Luke 16:24 I. The parable teaches, first, that if we dedicate our lives to the good things of this world, we shall forfeit the good things of the next. This is written in broad and deep lines throughout the picture, and if this is not intended as a serious truth, then the whole parable is a mischief and a snare. Earthly greatness gives no warrant of heavenly greatness. We may most truly possess the present life by living for the next, but we cannot gain a drop of cold water in the next by living for this. If we store up our good things in this life, death will make us bankrupt. This is the first solemn lesson of the parable, this is the unchanging law of righteousness. II. The lesson goes still further, and teaches that self-gratification in this life will be followed by the retribution of anguish in the next. The subtle explanation of future pain as being nothing more than the gnawings of the sinner's conscience an evasion intended to deny the direct infliction of retribution by the hand of God will certainly not satisfy the picture given in this parable. The rich man has entered into a state and into circumstances in which pain is inflicted upon him. The retribution of our sin is not left to our own conscience in this life. Why, then, should we imagine that it will receive no direct punishment in the life to come? What, then, will be the form which such retribution will take? Thank God, I do not know. It is enough to know that the God of love is a consuming fire to the ungodly. Terrible is He in righteousness. Let us, therefore, fear Him. III. The parable further teaches that the most un-honoured condition of earthly life cannot exclude from the most honourable status in the heavenly life. Poverty and affliction on earth are not a sign of God's displeasure. IV. The parable, further, emphasises the genuine continuity of this life with the next. The life beyond death will be related to the life here with as perfect continuity as our life today is related to that of yesterday. Continuity is also taught here in the form of immediateness. Jesus teaches in this parable that judgment and reward begin immediately after death. It is true that the consummation of penalty and reward cannot come till the completion of His kingdom, but the beginnings do not tarry. John Thomas, Concerning the King, p. 154. Luke 16:24 About eleven I preached at Elsham. The two persons who are the most zealous and active here are the steward and the gardener of a gentleman, whom the minister persuaded to turn them off unless they would leave 'this way'. He gave them a week to consider of it; at the end of which they calmly answered, 'Sir, we choose rather to want bread here, than to want "a drop of water" for ever'. Wesley's Journal for April, 1764. References. XVI. 24. W. J. Hills, Sermons and Addresses, p. 72. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 9. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 340. Memory Luke 16:25 You recollect, of course, that these words are put into the mouth of Father Abraham in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. I need hardly do more than recall the barest outlines of that story of a rich man, who was evidently a selfish man, certainly an unobservant man in the most charitable judgment, and obviously lived for himself and 'did' himself, as we should say today, well, and the story of a beggar who lay at his gate. Not only does it give us at least a picture of a day in their common lives, but it lifts the veil and gives a picture of the future of the two men in the eternal world the one comforted the other tormented. The one tormented, and rightly so, proffers a request to Abraham for a slight alleviation of his pains, and this is part of the answer, 'Son, remember'. I. The Sin of Inattention, not merely inattention with regard to the cry of Lazarus at the gate, but inattention to the real facts of life, the great facts of salvation, of Christ's life and death, the great fact of His Gospel call with which we have been familiar all our days, is the crying, the universal sin of today. And I deduce this, I think quite rightly, from what the Saviour said here and the confirmation of daily observation. For a man's quality is wholly determined by the things he takes notice of. 'Son, remember' that the things with which thou art most commonly familiar will be thy condemnation if they are unacted on. It may have been that there were other things which claimed this man's attention so much business to be ordered, so many reins and strings to be held in steady command that he had no surplus mind to give to that poor man's need. It certainly is so with regard to the things of Christ. There is so much competition, there is so much of the battle and of the element of warfare in business and in professional life. There is so much to do in making ends meet that actually we have no time seriously to set our hearts on to the things that belong unto our peace. But in the name of God, I pray you, 'Son, remember'. II. What a Wonderful Power Memory is! I suppose it is the strongest power and the most inexplicable of any of which you or I are either master or servant, for it is very doubtful if a man is ever master of his own memory, if he is anything but a slave to his memory memory with its subtle power of destroying time and space in a lightning flash, memory with its power of recollecting things long ago dead and buried, memory with its total disregard of the conventions, and which intrudes upon our holiest moments thoughts of sins. It is a wonderful power, the power of memory; but wonderful as it is, the Word of God leaves me in no doubt as to this that death will intensify it, that death will increase its strength. Death intensifies the power of memory, the consciousness of those things of which it is conscious now, though it would fain forget the fact. The only thing that death does is to bring out the things we try to hide, and the colours we try to paint out. This is the import of the Saviour's words in this parable, 'Son, remember'; you will never be able to do other than remember. This is what the eternal world will mean to thee. All that dreadful power of memory will increase in strength and possibility, and the eternal memory of a lifelong forgetfulness will be the worm that dies not and the fire that is not quenched. 'Son, remember.' And the Word of God makes it plain to me that memory will be the foundation of heaven's joy. For hearken, hearken to the song of the redeemed, hearken to those whose joy is made perfect in His presence. What inspires their song? Memory. 'Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood... unto Him be glory.' 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.' Yes, memory is the foundation of heaven's blessedness, and memory is the foundation of the eternal remorse of those who, like the rich man, are to reap the harvest of a life of heedless, careless, indifferent inattention. 'Son, remember.' References. XVI. 25. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 376. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 109. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 19. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 107. XVI. 26. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 155. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 518. XVI. 27-28. T. H. Ball, Persuasions, p. 249. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 65. XVI. 29-31. W. E. Barton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 179. XVI. 30. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1496, p. 105. XVI. 30-31. J. C. M. Bellew, Christ in Life: Life in Christ, p. 134. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 507. Contrasted Destinies Luke 16:31 I. Our Lord seeks to paint in this parable a series of solemn, dramatic contrasts that shall startle, if it may be, these Pharisees out of their complacent selfishness. (1) He first sketches the contrast between Dives and Lazarus in life, a contrast the more impressive because the painter does not bring his two figures together from the opposite ends of the earth, or even from east and west of the same city only. Lazarus gasping in the shadow of the gateway, and the purple drapery of Dives moving behind the blossom and leafage of the courtyard in the hall beyond, might have been seen by the passer-by from the same point of view; so it is no outburst of eccentric idealism that leads the painter to put two such figures on one canvas. (2) Christ now paints another contrast, a contrast dealing not with the things that are seen and temporal, but with the things that are unseen and eternal. The contrast is resumed beyond the grave, but the figures are transposed. The next world has its contrasts as well as this. (3) A contrast of character underlies this picture. Little is told us of the beggar beyond the contrast in character implied in the name chosen to describe him; Lazarus or 'God my helper'. The rich man's life was turned away from God, and turned towards himself; the beggar's was turned away from himself and turned towards God. II. The parable or allegory passes from the dramatic into the didactic stage. (1) It teaches that in vain are the destinies of a lost soul appealed to the court of natural affection. Those destinies cannot be reversed or modified by mere relationship to Abraham. The rich man, with the true instinct of a Pharisee, turns for help in Hades to his great ancestor Abraham. The vain confidence of the Pharisee is abroad in our own day. The creed of Universalism, which makes God a mere synthesis of our flesh and blood relations, and affirms that His infinite Fatherhood will never suffer a single human soul to finally perish, is but a modernised Pharisaism set free from tribal limitations. (2) The parable asserts that the contrasts of the hereafter are maintained by the inexorable necessities of the Divine government. 'Beside all this, there is a great gulf fixed.' The chasm that formed itself in life has been made impassable by a Divine decree. (3) The parable intimates that the permanence of the contrasted destinies in the life beyond the grave is certified by the permanence of human character. If Christ had meant to hold out the faintest hope of final restoration, He would have so turned and shaped the dialogue that it would have exhibited progress rather than retrogression in the temper of this lost spirit. (4) This parable teaches that these final contrasts in the destinies of the future life rest upon a common probation in this. It is a part of the Pharisaism of human nature to claim, as the rich man claimed, that the probation is very imperfect. But God has His answer ready in every history. God will have His method of dealing with men who have had an imperfect probation. That method is no concern of yours. You cannot claim to enter that category. At the very least, you have sufficient light for your repentance. Yet Not Persuaded Luke 16:31 I. God has done all that can be done. II. The reason for men's rejection is wholly in themselves. Faith is an act of the will, not of the understanding. Hence the sole cause of unbelief lies in the man himself. 'Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.' III. God will do no more. A. Maclaren. References. XVI. 31. Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 66. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 224. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 232. H. Windross, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 32. Archbishop Temple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 401. G. Bellett, Parochial Sermons, p. 228. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 177. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 344. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 143. J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son, pp. 15 and 30. K. C. Anderson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 332. XVII. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 114. XVII. 1. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 177. XVII. 1, 2. H. H. Almond, Sermons by a Lay Head Master, p. 193. XVII. 2. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 289; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 210. Luke 17:3 Sir James Stephen describes Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianity as 'the expostulation of a brother. Unwelcome truth is delivered with scrupulous fidelity, and yet with a tenderness which demonstrates that the monitor feels the pain he reluctantly inflicts. It is this tone of human sympathy breathing in every page which constitutes the essential charm of this book.' Luke 17:3 This is certaine: That a Man that studieth Revenge, keepes his owne Wounds greene, which otherwise would heal and do well. Bacon. He that repents is angry with himself: I need not be angry with him. Benjamin Whichcote. Reference. XVII. 3, 4. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 498. Luke 17:5 We can no more detach what we do in our lives from what we are in our souls, than we can separate heat or light from their essential principles, or expect to enjoy either in the absence of the conditions in which their existence is involved. The disciples showed they were aware of this by that remarkable answer, when enjoined by their Master to the practice of forgiveness, 'Lord, increase our faith'; we might have expected, when a moral duty difficult to the natural man was in question, the words would have been, 'Increase our charity,' but in the conviction that obedience was only practicable through a strength and virtue that did not reside in themselves, their prayer was for an increase of the faculty through which alone the Divine aid can be made available by the soul. Dora Greenwell. I persuade myself also that I have faith, though it is but so so, and might well be better. Luther. References; XVII. 5. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 134. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 32, and vol. xxii. No. 1318. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 455. The Grain of Mustard Seed Luke 17:6 I. It is not the quantity of faith, but the quality, which is important. A grain of mustard seed and a pellet of dust may appear at a distance to be much the same, but the difference between the two is immense, because the one has no life burning at the heart of it, whilst the other contains life as God has kindled it. The one thing that you need is to have faith, as small as you like, but faith which has in it the principle of life, namely, faith with God in it. The one thing that shows whether or not your faith is of the right quality is whether it is directed towards the right object, which is Jesus Christ. II. Your faith is like the tiny grain. You think you will never be able to produce a holy and useful life. But if only your soul can come into living union with the eternal God, there is nothing that He will not be able to effect by your instrumentality. There are five processes. (1) There must be contact. As long as you are apart from God, though trying to serve God in a strange anomaly, you are missing the true power of your life. (2) There must be solitude. (3) There must be death. (4) Receptivity. There is simply nothing impossible to the man who has learned the art of being a channel for God. (5) Individuality. The mustard seed produces mustard growth; the grain of wheat, wheat growth; the acorn, oak growth. George Müller lets God into his soul, and Ashley Down is covered with orphan houses. Spurgeon lets God into his soul, and you have the Tabernacle, and volumes of Sermons, and the orphan house, and Pastors' College. F. B. Meyer, The Soul's Ascent, p. 277. Luke 17:6 Faith, no larger than the tiniest mustard seed, but able to toss the mountains, as pebbles, from their foundations into the sea, is the determination to do the thing chosen to be done or to die literally to die in the trying to do it. Death is farther from most of us than we fancy, and if we would but risk all, to win or lose all, we could almost always do the deed which looks so grimly impossible. Those who have faced great physical dangers, or who have been matched by fate against overwhelming odds of anxiety and trouble, alone know what great things are to be done when men stand at bay and face the world, and fate, and life, and death, and misfortune, all banded together against them, and say in their hearts, 'We will win this fight or die'. Then, at that word, when it is spoken earnestly, in sincerity and truth, the iron will rises up and takes possession of the feeble body, the doubting soul shakes off its hesitating weakness, is drawn back upon itself like a strong bow bent double, is compressed and full of a terrible latent power, like the handful of deadly explosive which, buried in the bosom of the rock, will presently shake the mighty cliff to its roots, as no thunderbolt could shake it. F. Marion Crawford, in The Cigarette-Maker's Romance, ix. References. XVII. 6. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 119. XVII. 7-10. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 271. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2334. XVII. 8. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 283. XVII. 9, 10. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 119. Luke 17:10 Zachary Macaulay, says Sir George Trevelyan in the opening chapter of his Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 'worked strenuously and unceasingly, never amusing himself from year's end to year's end, and shrinking from any public praise or recognition as from an unlawful gratification, because he was firmly persuaded that, when all had been accomplished and endured, he was yet but an unprofitable servant, who had done that which was his duty to do. Some, perhaps, will consider such motives as old-fashioned, and such convictions as out of date; but self-abnegation, self-control, and self-knowledge that does not give to self the benefit of any doubt, are virtues which are not old-fashioned, and for which, as time goes on, the world is likely to have as much need as ever.' 'Civilisation,' writes Mr. Shorthouse in the first chapter of Sir Percival, 'civilisation pursues its beneficent march, forwarded, for the most part, by this glorious English race forwarded too, for the most part, by these little nameless wars. Three lines only in the Gazette, but some bright young life is laid down without a murmur not a vulgar life, but a life the offspring of a family, the flower and type of the human race some home is made desolate, with no thought save "we have done that which it was our duty to do". I have been told by clever men that in the days when Rome was the mistress of the world something like this was also known.' True love never thinks it has done enough. F. W. Faber. 'The dominant note of Herbert's poetry,' says Mr. S. R. Gardiner, 'is the eagerness for action, mingled with a sense of its insufficiency.' It is well to believe silently in our possibilities, but to talk critically at our actual performances.... Humility is the attitude of mind which accompanies the perception that the human perfection possible to ourselves is, after all, inadequate to the ideal perfection which the conception of it implies. After we have done all we are 'unprofitable servants,' falling far short of that ideal the fulfilment of which is imposed upon us by the law of our moral and intellectual nature. Our vision of good is broader, and our aspirations higher than our powers can reach. Hence, if we are true faithful to the spiritual aspirations which claim us, and honest in the estimate of our actions and ourselves, it must be that we see ourselves always, and even necessarily, as 'unprofitable servants,' always and necessarily lower than we aspire and feel we ought to be. Dr. Sophie Bryant. References. XVII. 10. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 167. J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 73. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. 1541. W. G. Rutherford, The Key of Knowledge, p. 247. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 120; ibid. vol. ix. p. 44; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 341. XVII. 11-19. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 127. XVII. 12-14. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1635. XVII. 14. W. H. Evans, Short Sermons for the Seasons, p. 156. The Grateful Leper Luke 17:17 I. There are few things that we feel more than ingratitude. Some of us who work and labour are very sensitive about this. We seem always to be looking for showers of recognition and appreciation to descend upon us, and we get disheartened because we do not get much thanks. If you look at the witness of our Lord Himself, He was subject to the same thing He is always a Refuge; you can find all your troubles in the heart of your Saviour. 'Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.' And this was a very bad case, an extreme case, because the disease that these men suffered from was the very worst. And then, not only was the disease such an extreme case, but the cure was absolutely complete. At a word they were made whole. When the Lord Jesus Christ cures, He cures indeed. The light of His countenance was health. To look upon His face is to live. He made them whole! If you surrender yourselves to the Saviour in all the difficulties of life, His work in the soul is always complete; He never does things by halves new hopes, new longings, new wishes, new desires, new joys, new heart. Yet out of the ten who were cleansed only one returned to thank Him. II. And now notice another thing. They all of them prayed very earnestly. They all of them said, 'Have mercy on us'. They all prayed, but only one of the ten praised. III. The only one who redeemed the occasion was a Samaritan! Does not that correct something within our souls? Deep down beyond all our religious distinctions there is humanity the touch of nature which makes all men kin. IV. And, last of all, let us just notice a few aspects of the thanksgiving. He returned and gave thanks himself in person. If you are to thank God, do it personally. Say to yourself, God has been good to me; I must thank Him. And it must come light out of the heart. You know what this man did. He turned back and threw himself down at Jesus' feet worshipping. He could not go a step farther before he had thanked God. It came from his heart. It was the expression of his soul. It was not that Jesus needed the thanks, but the man needed to thank Him. Thanksgiving to God is the need of a soul that knows God has blessed him. He turned round and fell at His feet, and thanked God. The Most Popular Sin in the World Luke 17:17 I. Ingratitude seems to be the most popular sin in the world. It is one of the worst crimes in the big black catalogue of wrong-doing. And the sin of ingratitude is the broad highway to envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, to the cowardly denials of Peter and the bloody treachery of Judas. Our Lord was called upon to taste its bitterness in a thousand ways. Between the carelessness of the lepers and the vileness of Iscariot, He suffered to the fullest from man's ingratitude. In every phase we see the same ingratitude repeated before our eyes. (1) We see it in the home. What blows has a boy struck at his mother's tender heart! What dagger-thrusts has a father received from those to whom he had given life! Perhaps this cruel ingratitude is not at heart so cruel as we think. Perhaps, that is to say, it is not conscious, deliberate, understood cruelty at all. It is lack of imagination; it is the sin of stupidity; it is sheer thoughtlessness, not sheer wickedness. Let us hope that this is true. It is bad enough then. (2) We see this ingratitude in common service, the service which, in the ordinary course of life, man renders to man in the community. A strong man says in the pride of achievement: 'Never since I was a boy have I been under obligation to any human being'. Nonsense arrant nonsense! You are under obligation to a hundred unknown lowly workers, and under obligation, too, to the greatest of mankind. We are debtor to the Greek and to the barbarian, to men of thought as well as men of action, to the highly placed as to the lowly born. II. The spirit in which ingratitude must be endured. It is not necessary to minimise the pain with which experience of ingratitude, developing treachery and hate, wrings our suffering hearts. But the ills of life must be borne. And without delivering ourselves into the custody of a silly optimism, it is good gospel and good sense to inquire where we may find the right spirit in which to face them all. And I suggest to you (1) that sometimes the one who suffers from ingratitude has not been altogether free from blame. There is a way of doing a kindness which is detestable. (2) But assuming that your kindness has been perfect with the perfection of the God who prompted it, let me urge this upon you: Do not condemn the whole world for the sins of a few. (3) Again, Why should you expect gratitude? Your reward is in the good that you have done. If you feel as though your heart was broken by the thanklessness of those whom you have helped, consider. When you live on, in service, in sacrifice, pouring your rich, conquering life into the spiritually anaemic, into the weak, the helpless, and the lost, when you do this amid failure, mortification, bafflement, you link yourself with the truest, bravest, noblest heroes of all time. C. F. Aked, The Courage of the Coward, p. 153. References. XVII. 17. S. Gregory, How to Steer a Ship, p. 97. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 42. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 144. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 37. J. B. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 288. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 206. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2960. Expository Sermons on the New Testament, p. 93. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 250. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 209. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 117. XVII. 18. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 298. XVII. 19. R. Higinbotham, Sermons, p. 136. XVII. 20. R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 196. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 88. XVII. 20, 21. C. Bradley, Faithful Teaching, p. 68. D. N. Beach, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 189. XVII. 20-23. G. Littlemore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 42. The Seat of Authority Luke 17:21 The sense of liberty, the acute consciousness of responsibility, are essential to the individual and the race; without the conviction of personal sufficiency as against circumstance our whole nature is impaired. Let us, then, remind ourselves of this spiritual sovereignty, so that we may claim and exercise it to our great advantage. We address ourselves: I. To those whose chief fight in life is with their inherited nature. (1) Let us realise distinctly and vividly what our true nature is. Our deepest nature is not animal or fiendish, but Divine; it therefore brings with it the obligation to high conduct, and competence for such conduct. 'Being then the offspring of God, we ought not....' What negatives arise out of that relationship! 'Being then the offspring of God, we ought....'What positives are implied in that relationship! (2) We so continually fail in the war with world, flesh, and devil, because the kingdom within us has fallen into anarchy. (3) The doctrine of evolution is on the side of health, rationality, and virtue. Heredity, in the deeper meaning, is not destructive but constructive. The feeblest of us, endued with the power of Christ, can triumphantly resist and overcome the motions of sin which are in our members, even when they are most entrenched and rampant. II. A word with those whose chief peril seems to lie in their untoward circumstances. (1) It is obvious that we are not physically at the mercy of the environment, as is popularly supposed. Our body is endowed with wonderful powers of resistance: it is capable of subtle adaptations, it secretes antiseptics, it sets up reactions, and remains strangely immune in tainted atmospheres. (2) In the intellectual world we see not less impressively the mastery of unfriendly environment. (3) If, then, in our physical and intellectual life we withstand inimical environments, shall we not prevail against them in our highest life? The scientist assures us that, 'without suitable conditions life could not exist'. The rose must bloom in the sun, the fern be planted in the shade, the willow spring by the watercourses. But this law of environment ceases with physical life. We see roses blushing through cold snows, ferns flourishing in fire, honeysuckle wreathing icicles, orchids in Siberia, May flowers in December: or, to drop the imagery, we find saints living the most beautiful lives in conditions which seem utterly to forbid faith, spirituality, greatness, and nobleness. The kingdom of God is within them, and they are little concerned with the temporal environment. The pressing duty is continually to strengthen the interior against the exterior. W. L. Watkinson, The Supreme Conquest, p. 189. Luke 17:21 To an inquirer, who proposed to come and visit him, William Law once wrote a modest letter of dissuasion, closing with these words: 'I have wrote very largely on the spiritual life, and he that has read and likes it has of all men the least reason to ask me any questions about, or visit me on that occasion. He understands not my writings, nor the end of them, who does not see that their whole drift is to call all Christians to a God and Christ within them as the only possible life, light, and power of all goodness they can ever have; and therefore, as much turn my readers from myself as from any other Lo here! or, lo there! I invite all people to the marriage of the Lamb, but no one to myself.' References. XVII. 21. C. S. Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 148. S. A. Brooke, Sermons, 1901-2, p. 1. R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, p. 219. D. M. Ross, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 409. E. De Pressensé, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 183. J. M. Whiton, Summer Sermons, p. 35. B. Reynolds, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiv. p. 552. Reuen Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 156. C. J. Ridgeway, The King and, His Kingdom, p. 11. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 380; ibid. vol. viii. p. 441. XVII. 22. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1323. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 193. XVII. 23. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 334. XVII. 24. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 335; ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 388. XVII. 24-37. Ibid. vol. x. p. 349. XVII. 26, 27. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, p. 82. XVII. 31. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 195. Lot's Wife Luke 17:32 This picture, etched so sharply on the Bible page, may well help to illustrate for us truths that should be burned into our minds and our memories. I. Note, first, that God saves all He can. For Lot was not saved alone, in mercy that overlooked all others beside. His wife's deliverance had been cared for too, and measures taken to secure her with the rest. One of the angels clasped her hand and drew her out of the conflagration by main force. Almost against her will she was hurried so far out of danger, and the mountain-road, with its hastening fugitives, stretched out clear before her, when, in that one glance behind, her incurably corrupt nature came out, and the stroke fell. In other words, she was nearly saved, and would have been wholly saved had that heavenly rescue-party had their will. II. Note, secondly, how men hanker after old sins. That was the fatal flaw in this instance; and how frequently it shadows lives full of promise in the Bible! Recall some of the more prominent examples. Rachel becomes the wife of Jacob, and like him engages thereby to worship the one true God; but when she leaves her home the old idols are packed away in the baggage. The Israelites acclaim Moses as leader, and promise obedience, and set out eagerly for the desert; but the Red Sea is hardly out of sight before they are weeping for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and ready to stone their deliverer. And when we cross over to the New Testament, there is the career of Demas first feeling the strange attraction of the Gospel and waiting upon St. Paul as a familiar friend, then recaptured by the old fascination and plunging back into the world. It is a weakness all too common, this craving lust for earlier self-indulgence; and it suggests that Christ spoke to every human soul when He uttered the solemn words: No man, putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. III. Lastly, note how sin can be committed in desire. At first sight, perhaps, one might suppose this woman had been dealt with very hardly; and we are tempted to say that the punishment was out of all proportion to the crime. But, if we feel that, it is because we fail to realise all that her longing glance implied. It was a clear proof that, if she could, she would have turned back to her old haunts; and that, indeed, so far as will and choice were concerned, she had turned back already. So there are instances where God cannot but take the will for the deed. H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 115. Lot's Wife Luke 17:32 There are few more solemn warnings in Holy Scripture than the warning of our text, 'Remember Lot's wife'. She was a professing follower of God. Her husband was a righteous man. It is very solemn when you remember who it is that gives to us this warning. Our Lord Jesus Christ was full of love and pity and compassion. And yet He would not have us shut our eyes to future doom, and He said, 'Remember Lot's wife'. It is very solemn when you remember the occasion upon which He gives this warning. It is very solemn when you remember to whom He gave this warning. And it is very solemn when you remember the sin against which He warns us. I. In the first place, remember that she was Lot's wife. He was a distinctly God-fearing man. She was bound to him by the closest ties, and yet when our Lord looks back into the lurid fires of Sodom and Gomorrah, He singles out this woman from the general destruction as a warning for us Christians, and He says, 'Remember Lot's wife'. You may be the husband of a saint of God, and yet you may be an outcast from the realms of glory. II. Now this woman not only was the wife of Lot, but she had great privileges. It was not only that her husband was a godly man. Her uncle was the 'friend of God'. There was not one out of ten thousand who had had such privileges as had this woman. And yet privileges do not save. And now when the day of doom comes you see her sin. III. And what is the doom? Nearly all that we know about the future punishment of those who have been long warned, and have resisted the warning, comes from the lips of Christ Himself. Jesus Christ, speaking of the hereafter, speaks of 'hell,' 'hell fire,' 'the damnation of hell,' 'eternal damnation,' 'the resurrection of damnation,' 'everlasting fire,' 'the place of torment,' 'destruction,' 'outer darkness,' 'the worm that never dies,' 'the fire that is not quenched,' 'the place of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,' 'everlasting sin'. E. A. Stuart, The New Commandment and other Sermons, vol. vii. p. 129. The words are few, and the sentence short; no one in Scripture so short. But it fareth with Sentences as with C oynes: In coines, they that in smallest compasse conteine greatest value, are best esteemed: and, in sentences, those that in fewest words comprise most matter, are most praised.... So that, we must needs be without all excuse, it being but three words and but five syllables, if we do not remember it. There are in Lot's storie,' continues Bishop Andrewes, preaching before Queen Elizabeth, 'two very notable monuments of God's judgment. The Lake of Sodome and Lot's Wife's Pillar. The one, the punishment of resolute sinne; the other of * faint virtue.' * References. XVII. 32. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 244. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 79. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 249. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st Series), p. 180. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 88. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1491. XVII. 33. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 275. J. Huntley Skrine, Sermons to Pastors and Masters, p. 118. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 278. XVII. 36, 37. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 135. Luke 17:37 This is the guiding text of Bishop King's 'Meditations on the Seven Last Words'. He appeals to 'the eagle-spirited'....'All who are striving to strengthen their spiritual sight; all who have been striving this Lent and through the past year to keep off the film of sin all such will naturally come and gather round the cross today.'... 'There was a battlefield indeed! it was the last great assault all the power of the enemy was there. The Prince of this world and the Lord of glory fought upon the Cross.' 'Within the man invisibly was God; the Lamb of God was also the Rock of Ages, and the jaw-bone of the lion broke.' Let us try, those who would be truly eagle-spirited, those who really desire the higher spirit of St. John, to see the body of our Lord as St. John speaks of Him when he says, 'The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory'. We saw, as it were, the tabernacle of His flesh full of grace and truth. In point of fact, pure-hearted people have the reward which our Saviour promised, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'. And pure-hearted people who become eagle-spirited, keep around the Cross, as eagles in the roughest and most stormy weather move with a kind of royal independence and power. So the more eagle-spirited, and those of the deepest spiritual sight, would keep round the suffering Body of Christ, and are not merely content to see the outward things, but they see Him, in spite of suffering, much more as He is. They see more of the Divine nature. References. XVII. 37. Archbishop Magee, The Gospel and the Age, p. 223. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 12. T. G. Bonney, Death and Life in Nations and Men, p. 1. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 232. Luke 18:1 That saying with others did encourage one to prayer. Then the Tempter again laid at me very sore, suggesting That neither the Mercy of God, nor yet the Blood of Christ did at all concern me, nor could they help me for my sin; therefore it was but vain to pray. Yet, thought I, I will pray. But, said the Tempter, your sin is unpardonable. Well, said I, I will pray. It is to no boot, said he. Yet, said I, I will pray. ... So I went to prayer to God.... And as I was thus before the Lord, that Scripture fastened on my heart, O man great is thy faith, even as if one had clapped me on the back, as I was on my knees before God. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, sees. 200, 201. References. XVIII. 1. J. Learmount, British Congregationalist, 25th July, 1907, p. 82. S. Bentley, Sermons on Prayer, p. 14. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 195. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 141. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2519. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 293. XVIII. 1-5. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 161. XVIII. 1-8. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 179. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 381. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 856. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 306. XVIII. 1, 9. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 117. XVIII. 1-14. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 131. XVIII. 3. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp. 376 and 385. The Doctrine of Delays Luke 18:4 The Divine delay meets us everywhere and in every sphere; there is scarce one heart but has been torn and tried by it. Now in this matter of delay it seems to me that not a few of God's people are still children. They think that God has some quarrel with them personally. They forget that the problem is as old as time. Delay tends to become more marked the higher you rise in the Creator's purposes. The greater and richer the blessing that we pray for, the more must we reckon on the delays of God. I. We should not forget what I might call the moral training of delay. Did we get everything we craved for in the very hour of asking it, I think it would be a long farewell to manhood. Work reveals character, but so does waiting. Waiting shows the baby or the man. We need to be tested to prove if we be worthy just to receive and use the thing we crave. So it often is that God delays, and will not answer us, and keeps us waiting. It is not in scorn, but in the wisest love that He will not for a while. II. Then it is very helpful to remember that Divine delay does not mean inactivity. There have been men of genius who could only work irregularly; for long periods they seemed to do nothing at all. Then suddenly, and as if by inspiration, their powers took fire and they wrought at a white heat. You may be sure of it that the periods in between were not so idle as the world considered them. By thought, by reading, by communion with glad nature, half-un-consciously they were preparing for their work. As it is with men of genius, so with God, only in loftier and nobler ways. His delays are not the delays of inactivity. They are the delays of preparation. It takes a million of years to harden the ruby, says the poet, yet through all the years the hardening goes on. It takes a century for the sea to wear away one cliff, yet every night when we sleep the breakers dash on it. So when we pray and strive and nothing happens, till we are tempted to say, 'God does not know, God does not care,' who can tell but that, behind the veil, infinite love may be toiling like the sea to give us in the full time our heart's desire. Do not lose heart at the delays of God. G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p. 158. References. XVIII. 6. T. G. McCormick, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xvi. p. 10. XVIII. 6, 7. J. H. Jeilett, The Elder Son, p. 68. Luke 18:7 How long, O Lord! Not forever; no. All anarchy, all evil, injustice, is by the nature of it, dragon's teeth; suicidal, and cannot endure.' Carlyle. Reference. XVIII. 7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2836. Faith Luke 18:8 It is obvious that if He does not find faith He will find nothing. Nothing is more striking about our Lord Jesus Christ than this, that while He preached and hoped the best, He was never afraid to face the worst. You can hardly imagine a greater contrast than the magnificent hopefulness of the declaration, 'Shall the Lord avenge His own elect? I tell you He will avenge them speedily' with the sadness with which, as He looked down the ages, He said, 'Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?' It makes us ask two questions: First, what is this faith on which everything depends, on which the success or failure of Jesus Christ's mission depends? and secondly, would He find that faith if He came today? I. What is faith? I suppose that on no subject in the world are there greater misconceptions than on the nature and character of faith. There are some who think, and honestly think, that faith is mere credulity. Let us face, then, this common idea, this deadly accusation. And I will have you notice that the Bible attaches the most tremendous importance to our reason. The first thing, therefore, to get rid of, if we are to see our way through this accusation against our faith, is the idea that God and religion and the Church and the Bible do not welcome the intellects of us all. Bring your reason to the faith. From long experience with doubters, I find that they often doubt, because they do not think enough, and not because they think too much. Then notice this that conversely, just as religion recognises the intellect, so science and the study of nature demand faith. The great mistake which so many of us make is to imagine that we consist solely of our analytical reason. What we have to bring to the help of our intellect is our imagination that Divine power which sees great things and grasps them. And with your imagination bring your conscience. Then notice this: that just as the great discoveries in nature, after they have been conceived by the imagination, are perpetually tested by experience, so we have the mighty witness of experience to the spiritual verieties which we believe. (1) Is faith opposed to practical work? True faith, the faith which works by love, has such an instantaneous effect upon action, that you can only compare it to the flash and report of a firearm. (2) Well, then, what does faith come out to be? If faith is the energising, active, brave, strong angel which bears up the universe, if faith is the lever which moves the world, then surely it becomes a most searching question, 'When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?' II. Would He find that faith if He came today? It would be possible to make out the most appalling picture that Christ could find no faith if He came today. But on the other side, there is a brighter point of view. Every man who is not ashamed of his faith where he works, every woman who bears a brave witness in her drawing-room or in her cottage, every boy who stands by his faith at school, all are helping to make it possible that when Jesus Christ comes He shall find faith on the earth. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 1. Faith on the Earth Luke 18:8 A question like this always carries the strongest negative. It is simply a strong and impassioned way of denying a thing which is asked 'The Son of Man shall not find faith on the earth'. 'Not find faith on the earth?' What, nowhere? Shall there be no faithful ones among 'the quick,' that shall be waiting and looking for the Second Advent? Thank God, He always has His own. But our Saviour's words of indignant wonder too clearly tell us that 'faith' will not characterise the world in the latter days. I. The Decay of Faith. These words of our Lord are becoming every day something more than prophecy. We are probably living almost, if not quite, in their fulfilment. When Christ comes, what He will look for is 'faith'. That inference is clear; for what a man does not find must be that for which he was searching. Therefore, when Christ returns to our world in His glory, His eye will range over it in a moment to scan and test its 'faith'. Can we wonder at this? Let us look at facts. I believe that I am speaking the opinion of all who are the most conversant with the state of Christendom, when I state that faith is greatly on the decrease. And the result of all is an awful breadth of spiritual wilderness. II. The Causes of the Decay. If I venture for a moment to look into the reasons of these things, perhaps I might particularise the following: (a) Preference for the visible. It is always in the indolent and grosser nature of man to prefer the present and the visible to the future and the unseen. The heart gravitates to practical materialism as a stone gravitates to the ground. It is always a special act to make a man feel the invisible, live in the invisible. For in fact, all faith is miracle. (b) The advance of Science. And days of great science, such as these, are always likely to be days of proportionate unbelief, because the power of the habit of finding out more and more natural causes is calculated, unless a man be a religious man, to make him rest in the cause he sees, and not to go on to that higher cause of which all the causes in this world are, after all, only effects. (c) Familiarity with Divine Things. And familiarity, too, with Divine things, which is a particular characteristic of our age, has in itself a tendency to sap the reverence which is at the root of all faith. (d) The selfishness of the age. But still more, the character of the age we live in is a rushing selfishness. The race for money is tremendous; men are grown intensely secular; the facilities are increased, and with them the covetousness. You are living under higher and higher pressure, and everything goes into extremes; all live fast. And the competition of business is overwhelming, and the excitement of fashion intoxicating. How can 'faith,' which breathes in the shade of prayer and meditation, live in such an atmosphere as this? III. How does it Stand with our Faith. Now, if these things are so, if it be a fact that 'faith' is getting rarer and rarer, is not it very important to each one of us to determine how it stands with our faith? Let me just throw out one or two suggestions to you about faith. 'Faith' is a moral grace, and not an intellectual gift. It lives among the affections; its seat is the heart. A soft and tender conscience is the cradle of faith; and it will live and die according to the life you lead. If you would have 'faith,' you must settle with yourself the authority, the supremacy, and the sufficiency of the Bible. All truth must be an uncertainty if you have no standing-ground. Therefore, establish to your own mind the Divine origin, the universal application, and the ultimate appeal of the Scriptures. Then, when you have done that, you will be able to deal with promises. Feed upon promises. Take care that you are a man of meditative habit There cannot be faith without daily, calm, quiet seasons of thought. But, above all, have the eye upward. All faith, and every stage of it, is a direct answer to prayer. Luke 18:8 Show me a Stoic, if you can. Show me a man whose life is moulded on the doctrines he professes. Show me a man who is sick and happy, in peril and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, in disgrace and happy. Show me such an one; for, by God, I fain would see a Stoic. You cannot? Well, show me at least one who is shaping for a Stoic. Do me this kindness. Grudge not an old man a sight he has yet failed to see. Do you think you need to show me the Zeus or the Athena of Phidias, all ivory and gold? Nay, let any of you show me but a soul of man ready to think as God thinks, refusing to blame God or man, ready not to be disappointed about anything, not to think himself an injured party, not to be angry or envious or jealous, and let me say it outright desirous of becoming Divine himself, and in this poor, mortal body thinking of his fellowship with God. Show me such a man. Nay, you cannot. Epictetus, Diss., 2:19. That which caused bur Saviour the keenest suffering was not so much the thought of the torment he was to endure, as the thought that these torments would be of no avail for a multitude of sinners; for all those who set themselves against their redemption, or who do not care for it. Eugénie de Guérin. 'I do not conceive,' writes F. W. Robertson to a friend, 'that this passage even touches the question whether the human race will advance or deteriorate, whether religion will be spread universally or be extinct at Christ's coming; but another question altogether, for "faith" here means not faith generally, but faith with a special reference a reference to the redress spoken of: not to the Christian religion, but to the Christian tendency to despond when things look dark.' References. XVIII. 8. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 349. T. Arnold, Christian Life : Its Ropes, p. 15. Archbishop Magee, Sermons at Bath, p. 300. A. Whyte, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 264. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 207. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 88. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 121. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1963. H. Scott Holland, Church Times, 5th Feb. 1909. The Pharisee and the Publican Luke 18:9-10 The lessons taught by this parable are many. Its main lesson, no doubt, is the warning it conveys against spiritual pride, and the encouragement it gives to humility. But there is much beside this. I. Consider in what the prayer of the Pharisee differed from that of the Publican. (1) In reality it was no prayer whatever. Still, it might have been in one sense no prayer, and yet acceptable to God. For instance, it might have been an act of praise, which is the highest form of prayer (Psalms 50:14 ; Sir 35:6-7 ). And, indeed, it was an act of praise, but it was an act of self-praise. It was an act of thanksgiving, but he thanked God that he was 'not as other men are'. (2) Where were these two men? In the Temple. For what object? To pray. In Whose presence? In God's. They both acknowledged this in their prayer. But the one says, 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are,' and the other, 'God be merciful to me a sinner'. The Pharisee singles out the poor Publican, and his mind fastens upon him. His mind fed upon pride, and there was his food. He seizes upon it, devours and assimilates it, and is satisfied. Yes, and 'full' (1 Cor. iv. 8) though he thought himself to be, he would have to go 'empty away' (St. Luke i. 53). (3) A sense of sin never entered this Pharisee's mind. He did not pray to God to forgive him what he was, but he thanked God for what he was not (4) The prayer of the Pharisee may be briefly summed up thus: He gave thanks without being grateful. He asked for no grace, and received none. He went away justified, but only in his own sight. His prayer was weighted with pride, and it fell to the earth, whence it came; or, if it went up at all, it went up as a witness against him; it was resisted of God; it drew no grace from Him. II. Let us turn to the Publican. It matters little what he had been. His trade, often marked by oppression and extortion, was held in abhorrence by the Jews; he had been looked upon not merely as an apostate from his religion, but also as an official in the pay of a foreign Power. Whether he was better or worse than his class matters not much. One thing we know he stood in the Temple in the character of a humble praying penitent. The Pharisee came in righteous in his own eyes, and wise in his own conceit; and so he goes out. He passes the Publican with the same look of scorn, little dreaming of the change in him. How startled he would be if he but knew what their relative position was in the eyes of the All-seeing God. 'This man' i.e. the Publican says our Lord, 'went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.' J. B. Wilkinson, * Instructions on the Parables. * The Prayer of the Scorned Luke 18:9-14 The last was first; the farthest away was nearest God. No Scripture portraits are more to the life than those of the Pharisee and the publican. Their anonymous names have entered into our common speech, and in the market-place, as in the pulpit, when men speak of two types always appearing, they do it in the terms of this parable. I. An enduring instinct overthrows for a time an artificial distinction. In the hunger for God men come together. II. Where separation has least justification, there the folly of man creates it. To the entrance of the temple and no farther on one path. Where separation has least sanction in truth and experience it begins. The kind of praying that sets you farther from your neighbour can be no true approach to God. III. The separation is accepted, but the order reversed. The foremost come out least in the sight of God, and last in those gifts God gives those who truly seek. (1) The spirit of the Pharisee offers the most effective obstacle to man's approach to God. (2) The spirit of the Pharisee offers the most effective obstacle to God's approach to man. (3) The root of it is a shallow thought of God. T. Yates, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxii. p. 76. References. XVIII. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 446. XVIII. 9-14. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Beading (2nd Series), p. 138. G. T. Newton, Preacher's Magazine, vol. viii. p. 367. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 465; ibid. vol. viii. p. 119. XVIII. 10. T. H. Ball, Persuasions, p. 292. J. C. M. Bellew, Five Occasional Sermons, p. 43. Fr. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 136. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2395. Luke 18:11 You have no pity; you have no sense of your own imperfections and your own sins. It is a sin to be hard: it is not fitting for a mortal for a Christian. You are nothing but a Pharisee. You thank God for nothing but your own virtues you think they are great enough to win you everything else.' Maggie Tulliver to her brother, in * The Mill on the Floss. * References. XVIII. 11. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 406. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 91. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 114. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 221. XVIII. 11-13. J. Wright, The Guarded Gate, p. 41. XVIII. 12. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 348. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 262. The Publican's Prayer Luke 18:13 The burden of this man's cry is mercy, and deeper still he begs for propitiation, that the wrath of God excited by his sins may be appeased. Hence it is the cry of one who has begun to realise the true nature of sin. The knowledge of sin, in its full malignity and horror, is a true step in repentance. The sense of sin, we are sometimes told, is absent largely from this generation; if so, it is a serious thing, for it means the negation of all progress and the absence of all excellence. II. The cry of the publican is the cry of the soul terrified by the sense of impending punishment. There are two especial things connected with sin which drive the sinner back on the mercy of God and make him crave for His help; the one is the powerlessness to arrest the consequences of sin, the other is the threatened loss of that to which every man passionately clings his own liberty. W. C. E. Newbolt, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiv. p. 620. Luke 18:13 Prayer, said Geiler of Kaysersberg, is asking from God. He recommended as model prayers, 'Domine propitius esto mihi peccatori' (Luke 18:13 ), the Psalm 'Miserere mei Deus,' and the Pater. Luke 18:13 Dr. Eugene Stock tells us that Bishop Daniel Wilson of Calcutta directed in his will that on a tablet to his memory in the Cathedral should be engraven the words in Greek as so much more emphatic than the English: ' Ο θεὸς ἱλάσθητί μοι τῷ ἀμαρτωλ ῷ 'God be propitiated to me the sinner'. References. XVIII. 13. H. Woodcock, Sermon Outlines (1st Series), p. 117. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 89. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 384. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 216; vol. xxxiii. No. 1949. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 441. The Desire for Satisfaction Luke 18:14 If we look at the parable with open minds, it draws a contrast between self-satisfaction and self-dissatisfaction in the spiritual life, and teaches that dissatisfaction is the more excellent way. I. There is an inevitable desire amongst men for self-satisfaction, and they desire a system of life which promises them this source of gratification. The longing to be able to say with a good conscience, 'I have done all that was my duty to do,' has led to many attempts to define and regulate the sphere of duty. (1) The first evil result which follows from the pursuit of self-satisfaction in the spiritual life is that it cuts a man off from half of the lessons whereby God would train his soul in holiness. It cuts him off from that large sympathy with all men, which is the special work of our great Master's life on earth. The man who deliberately makes a division in his own mind between himself and those who hold with him on the one side, and all other men on the other side, is certainly making his own life poorer, and is losing precious opportunities. (2) But further than this, self-satisfaction is destructive to the desire for progress. This, I think, is the real head and front of the Pharisee's offending. His religion distinctly led him to the performance of his moral duties, and made him a worthy member of civil society. But we feel that, when he had reached the point of thanking God that he was not as other men are, he had little chance of further growth. This is the danger of self-satisfaction; it is destructive of effort, and without continued effort it is difficult to keep the level already gained. We know that in science, in literature, and in art, it is fatal to rest contented, and that a Divine discontent is the next precious gift of heaven to the man of genius. Every one is bound to pursue knowledge up to the limit of his capacity and opportunity; and every one is equally bound to develop, to the best of his power, his moral and religious sense. To rest satisfied with a decent average is to prepare the way for a general decline. II. The publican sought for no satisfaction, yet it came of itself. Peace came to him, though he sought it not. How came it, from so unpromising a beginning? The answer is, that instead of the approval of self-satisfaction, he received the joy of pardon, and with pardon a renewal of hope and strength. Now, it has been urged that the Christian teaching about forgiveness is immoral and anti-social; it weakens the sense of responsibility, and hides from a man the inevitable that a wrong done cannot be undone, a truth which is the real deterrent from vice. A great deal might be said on this point; I am only concerned to show that the desire for pardon is the result of a sense of failure, and that a sense of failure is inseparable from any worthy appreciation of the task undertaken. Bishop Creighton, The Heritage of the Spirit, p. 89. Luke 18:14 'The mystic,' says Mr. Arthur Symons, 'knows well that it is not always the soul of the drunkard or the blasphemer which is farthest from the eternal beauty.' References. XVIII. 14. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 267. Bishop Bickersteth, Sermons, p. 168. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 355. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2687. Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 85; ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 249. XVIII. 15. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p. 27. XVIII. 15-30. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 138. XVIII. 16. R, J. Campbell, The Restored Innocence, p. 1. XVIII. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1439. J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 101. Luke 18:18 How strange it is that such a question should be so put! How rare are the occasions on which two people approach one another so nearly! Most of us pass days, weeks, months, years, in intercourse with one another, and nothing which ever remotely concerns the soul is ever mentioned. Is it that we do not care? Mainly that, and partly because we foolishly hang back from any conversation on what it is most important we should reveal, so that others may help us. Whenever you feel any promptings to speak of the soul or to make any inquiries on its behalf, remember it is a sacred duty not to suppress them. Mark Rutherford, in * Catherine Furze. * Reference. XVIII. 18, 19. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 382. Luke 18:19 In our own experience it has been no uncommon thing, I suppose, when grave and difficult matters have been in question, and we have been speaking of them with the looseness and carelessness of youth carelessness, alas! of which old age does not always cure us when we have talked too fast, and were committing ourselves to more than we could make good to find ourselves checked and as it were pulled up, by those wiser and more thoughtful than ourselves, for the confusions of our language, and the 'shortness' and shallowness of our thoughts. It was the case here. R. W. Church. References. XVIII. 19. R. J. Campbell, A Faith for Today, p. 53; ibid., Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 321. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 88; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 175. XVIII. 21, 22. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 261. XVIII. 22. H. R. Gamble, The Ten Virgins, p. 103. Luke 18:23 Is it a truth, that if we are great owners of money, we are so swoln by a force not native to us, as to be precipitated into acts the downright contrary of our tastes? George Meredith. Luke 18:29 When Wesley began his ministry at Savannah, it happened that 'in the second lesson (Luke xviii.) was our Lord's prediction of the treatment which he himself (and, consequently his followers) was to meet with from the world. "Verily, I say unto you, there is no man hath left house, or friends, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." Yet, notwithstanding these declarations of our Lord notwithstanding my own repeated experience notwithstanding the experience of all the sincere followers of Christ whom I have ever talked with, read, or heard of; nay, and the reason of the thing convincing to a demonstration that all who love not the light must hate him who is continually labouring to pour it upon them; I do here bear witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding into the church, the deep attention with which they received the word, and the seriousness that afterwards sat on all their faces; I could scarce refrain from giving the lie to experience and reason and Scripture all together. 'I could hardly believe that the greater, far the greater part of this attentive, serious people, would hereafter trample underfoot that word, and say all manner of evil falsely of him that spake it.' References. XVIII. 31. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 98. H. Alford, Sermons and Christian Doctrine, p. 166. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 49. XVIII. 31-33. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 223. XVIII. 31-34. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Beading, p. 159. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 418. XVIII. 34. J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p. 1. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 98. H. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 380. Spiritual Sight Luke 18:34 * ; Luke 18:42 * This passage of Scripture is divided into two distinct parts the one about the Twelve, the other about blind Bartimæus (see Mark 10:46 ); but together they illustrate the important subject of spiritual sight. And what more appropriate subject than this for us on this day, the festival of St. Mark, who by his Gospel has done so much for the illumination of the Church? Why was it that the Twelve could not understand anything concerning Christ as a suffering Saviour? They were spiritually blind. Why was it that the blind man recognised Jesus as the Son of David? He had spiritual sight. Notice: I. The Twelve. (Mark 3:14-19 ). They were unlearned men (Acts 4:13 ) and of obscure station (Matthew 4:18 ); but they had all the advantage of seeing and hearing what Christ did and said (Matthew 13:16-17 ; Acts 1:3 ). They had a certain knowledge of the Scriptures and of Christ (John 1:45 ). They acknowledged Jesus to be the Christ (Matthew 16:13-16 ). Why, then, did they not understand about His sufferings and death? What did Scripture say? (Isaiah 53 .; Micah 5:1 ; Zechariah 13:6 ). They needed to be taught by the Holy Spirit whom Christ was to send. (See Luke 24:25-27 ; Luke 24:44-48 ). Christ gave them the Spirit (John 20:22 ). And what was the result? (Acts 1:16-20 ). What understanding after Pentecost' (Acts 2:25-36 ; Acts 2:18-22 , &c). II. The Blind Man. He was unable to see what Christ did, and so poor that he could not provide himself with assistance (Revelation 3:17-18 ). The multitude tell him that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by (John 1:46 ; John 7:52 ). Why does he persist in crying 'Jesus thou son of David? This was a title of the Messiah (Matthew 21:9 ). It had been promised to David that the Christ should be of his seed (Psalms 132:11 ; 1 Chronicles 16:11-15 ). This poor blind man was clearly taught to see that Jesus was the Messiah, and so his Saviour (Psalms 27:1 ). He saw Him with the eye of faith, though deprived of natural sight (John 20:29 ). He expresses his desire (ver. 41; Jeremiah 33:3 ). His prayer is more than answered (ver. 42; John 15:7 ). His sight is restored (ver. 43; Psalms 30:2 ). Let each of us who knows his spiritual blindness make the prayer of Bartimæus his own: 'Lord, that I may receive my sight'. A Blind Beggar Luke 18:35 I. Hebe is a sight to move our pity. Blind and begging, either were bad enough, but sad is it indeed for him who carries a double burden, of darkness and of want. And nigh unto Jericho, too. 'The city of fragrance, the city of roses, the city of palm-trees, the paradise of God,' as one has called it. In this blaze of light and beauty sits a blind beggar! Why does God let there be any blind beggars? He is kind. He is almighty. Why is there any want and sorrow. Well, let us stand beside him for a while, and we may come to see that, as in everything else, there are two sides to this matter of blind beggars. Here comes a man anxious and careworn, counting up his gains, and fretting within himself that he made no more by his last venture. 'Listen to the birds,' says the blind man, 'they do sing sweetly; I love to hear them. And how the scent of roses fills the air today!' But turn to the merchant again. He is looking at nothing but the ground, and without so much as seeing that. Pity the poor blind indeed! Which is the blind man, the beggar by the wayside, or the man who has eyes and sees not, and ears but hears not, and a nose has he but he smells not. 'Oh, he is rich,' you say. No, no, he is the poor man. Pity him. Now, startling the business man in the midst of his fretting, comes the voice of the blind. 'Poor fellow,' he mutters to himself, 'here I have been worrying about a bad debt; and after all I have enough left and to spare and he stops to give the blind beggar an alms. 'Well, it is a mercy to have one's eyes,' he says, as he goes on his way, 'how much I have to be thankful for!' And presently he looks up, 'Really what a beautiful day it is! And these birds, how they do sing! Well, well, that is music. And yes, really the air is wonderfully sweet and fragrant with the flowers.' Oh, wonderful blind beggar, thou hast opened a blind man's eyes to his mercies, and unstopped his ears to God's music, and given to him the faculty to smell the sweetness of God's earth. Want and woe, suffering and sorrow are God's angels of mercy to us to us who think ourselves rich and increased in goods and in need of nothing. II. We linger on the scene to find a stimulus and guide for our faith. Suddenly there comes the murmur of a crowd, the hum of many voices. 'What is it?' asks the blind man of one and another. At last he finds somebody who stays to reply: 'The great Prophet of Nazareth passeth by'. At once his soul is thrilled with eagerness. Suddenly bursts a cry: 'Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me!' Then come the hindrances. But Jesus stops and bids them bring the beggar, 'What wilt thou that I do for thee?' Instantly the blind man cried; 'Lord, that I might receive my sight'. At once his eyes were opened. Jesus is a great physician. No case is too far gone for Him. M. G. Pearse, Naaman the Syrian and other Sermons, p. 167. References. XVIII. 35. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. i. p. 129. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 173. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 192. XVIII. 35-43. T. Davies, Sermonic Studies, p. 129. XVIII. 37. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 906. XVIII. 38. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 74. XVIII. 39. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 178. XVIII. 40. J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (4th Series), p. 18. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 128. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 454. XVIII. 40, 41. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 144. On the Threshold of Lent Luke 18:41 This passage is a very familiar one to most of us. It is one which I have no doubt many of us have pictured to ourselves again and again, one of those scenes in the Gospel which we seem able to imagine more vividly than others. And it is a most pathetic story; this of the poor blind man, in his poverty and blindness, sitting by the wayside, calling out so eagerly to our Lord. I. I want you to notice first that eager desire of poor blind Bartimæus. It is difficult for us, to whom God has given the gift of sight, to realise what blindness must mean; to live in a world of darkness with no sunlight, no sense of form or colour, not to see the faces of our friends, or the wonderful sights of nature, and to be so helpless as the blind often necessarily are. Who can wonder that he had so eager a desire for help, or that he was so prompt? This was perhaps his one chance. He had heard what the great Prophet had done for others. How can he let this chance pass by? And so he calls out, 'Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me'. But the earnestness of his desire is sharply tested. Everything that the crowd can do to discourage it they do. The caravan of people of the pilgrims going up to Passover, as is usual in a crowd, is excited, selfish, wrapped up in its own interests and very likely misunderstanding him, thinks that he is begging for alms. And so the people rebuke him that he should hold his peace. They were quite out of sympathy with him. 'But he cried so much the more.' It is a very strong word which is translated 'cried' 'he screamed in eagerness so much the more, "Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me."' You see, his eager desire stood the test. He did not mind being conspicuous. He did not mind drawing attention to himself, or being tiresome, and hindering the people who wanted to push on. And then Jesus stood and commanded him to be called, because 'He is more ready to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give more than we desire or deserve'. 'Receive thy sight,' He said, 'thy faith hath made thee whole.' So then let us notice in this story which has such deep meanings in it, if only we would ponder them the magnetic power of a strong desire, of a strong, living faith. II. And then let us think of the question which our Lord asked of him, and the answer that he gave, 'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' 'Lord, that I may receive my sight.' We wonder why our Lord should have asked him. The need must have been perfectly obvious to our Lord: of course He knew why the man called to Him. Let us ever recollect that in prayer our object is not to give information to God. 'Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him.' But it is His way to give His best gifts to those who pray. He loves to see His children at His knees. He wants us to feel our utter dependence upon Him; and so He willed that this poor man should express in words his needs. 'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' 'Lord, that I may receive my sight.' It is because of this lack of realising and grasping the unseen that our enthusiasm is so little and our power to help other people so weak. If only we could say, like St. John in his old age, 'That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you'. People will say to us, as our Lord said to Pilate, 'Sayest thou this thing of thyself all this that you say about your religion, or about religious subjects or did others tell it thee of Me?' Did we get it out of books? Did we get it secondhand? Or, have we made it our own experimentally? Have we tried to work it into our very innermost selves and to live by it? Well might we say, each one of us, 'Lord, that I may receive my sight as I go through this Lent'. We might make St Augustine's prayer it is a very easy one to remember our own, 'I would know Thee, I would know myself. III. Then lastly, the sequel of it all. 'Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight, thy faith hath made thee whole, and immediately he received his sight and followed Him.' 'Immediately!' I have known many cases, and I doubt not you have, where this clearness of vision has come quite suddenly to a man and roused him out of a careless, or unbelieving, or sinful life. But it is not always so. It. may come quite gradually. To St. Paul the light came with one great flash on the way to Damascus. I suppose it had been coming for a long time before. To the other Apostles, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ came slowly and gradually. We can trace it coming as we read the Gospels. Whichever it is, whether it comes to us at once, or whether it comes to us gradually, the result will be the same 'He followed Him' it is quite practical. If we really believe in the things of the unseen world, if we really believe in the Incarnate Son of God, if we really believe in prayer and Sacraments, we shall be called by some of our friends visionaries. We shall be told that we are unreal. And there is such a thing as unreality. There is mysticism which may be perfectly unreal. But let us remember that a true mysticism and a true power of seeing the unseen lies at the heart of the deepest and best religion. We must be visionaries, yes, and see visions. Not, I suppose, anything such as the saints have seen, not what we ordinarily call visions; but see something though very dimly, of the true light of God shining into our hearts. And we must follow it. This insight must always be translated into action. The two things may seem far apart. It may seem strange that the sculptor or the architect can translate his idea into solid stone so cold and hard and unresponsive; but that is his work. And it is our work to translate what God teaches us in to the practical reality of daily life. W. B. Trevelyan, Church Times, 26th Feb. 1909. References. XVIII. 42. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 191. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1162. Charles Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxviii. p. 161. XIX. 1. Joseph Parker, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 73. Mark Guy Pearse, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 33. XIX. 1-10. B. J. Snell, Sermons on Immortality, p. 149. S. Chisholm, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 322. Zaccheus: The Advantage of Disadvantages Luke 19:2-3 It was in Jericho a place that had a bad name and has, I believe to this day. Of all men in the city that were spoken against and detested by every citizen of Jericho, probably Zaccheus stood first. To be a publican was bad enough. To be the chief of the publicans was worse still. And to have got rich at it completed the offence. The publican was the representative of foreign power that these proud people could not but detest the collector of taxes which were spent in their own subjection to heathen Rome. We do not know much about Zaccheus, but every word graphically sets forth his character. I. The first thing I see in the man is the advantage of disadvantage. He is short of stature. But do you see how he makes up in energy and determination for what he lacks in size? He ran before. He climbed up into the tree. And when Jesus calls him he made haste and came down and received Him joyfully. Notice how he turns his disadvantages to such good account. He climbs up into a tree, and then he sees over everybody's head. And look at the advantage of his disadvantage here too. Because he had such a bad name, it does not matter what he did. Great are the advantages of disadvantages. Are not the world's great men most often those who have had to overcome all kinds of disadvantages? It was the overcoming of the disadvantages that was the beginning of their greatness. There is always a tree waiting for Zaccheus always the advantage to balance the disadvantage somewhere and somehow. We are all of us short in something. II. Look at what others saw in Zaccheus, and what Jesus saw. Others saw the publican the coarse and common publican. There are thousands today in his place. It is the doubt and scorn of other people that make it so hard to be good; the Herods who, with cruel contempt and breath of bitterness, do slay the better life within men. But let us see what Jesus sees. His eyes pass over the sea of faces until they rest upon this man. The blessed Master looked, and saw it all the love that lay beneath, the longings unfulfilled, the sorrow that seemed to look out as if from prison bars. This is the glory of Jesus Christ. This is the Gospel. By kindly recognition of the good within us He transforms us. M. G. Pearse, Naaman the Syrian and other Sermons, p. 78. Luke 19:2 * ; Luke 19:8 * A party of Parisians were amusing each other by telling robber stories. Presently Voltaire, who had been listening quietly, said, 'I can tell a robber story better than any of yours'. The whole room immediately became silent and listened to the greatest personage in the French literature of the eighteenth century. Voltaire, after clearing his throat, began as follows: 'Once on a time there was a Farmer General'. Then he was silent. Presently all began to cry out: 'Why do you stop? Go on. Tell us the story.' 'I have told the story,' said Voltaire; 'do you not see that my statement implies the greatest robber story in history?' A. D. White, Seven Great Statesmen, p. * 220. * References. XIX. 3. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 8. XIX. 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No. 73, and vol. xlvii. No. 2755. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 151. XIX. 6. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2701. XIX. 7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1319. W. T. Fullerton, Christ and Men, p. 14. Luke 19:8 Describing the effect of Savonarola's preaching upon Florence, Professor Villari observes: 'The aspect of the city was completely changed. The women threw aside their jewels ana finery, dressed plainly, bore themselves demurely; licentious young Florentines were transformed, as if by magic, into sober, religious men; pious hymns took the place of Lorenzo's Carnival songs. All prayed fervently, flocked to the churches, and gave largely to the poor. Most wonderful of all, bankers and tradesmen were impelled by scruples of conscience to restore ill-gotten gains, amounting to many thousand florins.' References. XIX. 9. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 319. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 117. John Watson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 401. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2665. The Best Seeker Luke 19:10 In Carlyle's remorseful and tender tribute to his wife we read: 'In childhood she used to be sent to seek when things fell lost; the best seeker of us all, her father would say or look as she thought; for me also she sought everything with such success as I never saw elsewhere'. I. This is a tribute unique so far as we remember, but when one comes to think there must be many households where one is recognised as the best seeker, and is thereby endeared. The best seeker is not merely the most earnest seeker, but the most successful. What is needed for a good seeker? Mind, for one thing. Carlyle speaks of his wife's sense and wisdom, of her intellect shining luminous in every direction, the highest and the lowest. He pays tribute to her just discernment and her swiftness of decision. It is not easy to draw a sharp line between the mind and the heart. The one acts with the other, and neither by itself suffices. For the true seeker there must be sympathy with the loser. It is this sympathy that gives the key to much that may have happened, and that prompts the continuance of search after long and frequent discouragements. For the great sovereign quests of life there are needed patience and sacrifice. The two cannot be severed. Where patience passes into sacrifice we cannot tell. As a rule the union is very quickly accomplished, and the track of search very soon becomes the high road of suffering, and perhaps even the track of blood. II. The best seeker of all is the Son of man, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost. It was for the love of His Father and for the love of souls that He sought us, that He is seeking us still. In the ancient mystical interpretation the words, 'She considereth a field and buyeth it,' are applied to the Church and to the Church as the imitator of her Lord. The field is the world, and the Lord considered the field. He considered it at the end of the sixth day of creation, when He saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. He considered the field in its day of grief and ruin, and when the fullness of time was come He lifted up His feet to the long desolations. He considered the field with its great host of poor, needy, wandering souls from the top of an exceeding high mountain when in the hour of His temptation He saw all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. He considered the field from the mountain that is exalted above the hills, from the watch-tower of His Cross. He considered the field and He bought it when He said, 'It is finished,' and bowed His head and gave up the ghost. He bought the field with His blood on the far-off evening of a far-off day, one day known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but of which it came to pass that at evening time there was light. He is seeking as He sought in the day of His flesh, pursuing the wanderer with unwearied love, with prayers, with tears, with entreaty through the long reach that comes to an end only when He finds. He is seeking and He cannot cease. He is seeking as the shepherd seeks for his lost sheep, with eyes like the eyes of eagles and ears attent to catch the faintest sound. He goes on seeking years and years and years that He may find at last. III. The best minister is the best seeker not the most eloquent preacher, not the profoundest scholar or thinker, not the conspicuous leader of men, but the humble, patient, resolute, prayerful seeker of souls. There are aspects of the Christian life and of the Christian ministry which are dark enough. We have received this ministry and we have received this mercy, and the result of it all is only that we faint not The greatest gifts bestowed by God and man take us no farther than that. We take to ourselves the whole armour of God, not to crush our enemies in a completed triumph, but simply to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand, that is, merely to hold our own. Or, to put it in another way, we have done our part in this poor life if at the end we are still seeking souls, if we have sought them in spite of infirmity and temptation and disappointment, for we shall know at the end what Christ has known all through, that to find a soul is to find a pearl of great price. W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, p. 29. Seeking the Lost Luke 19:10 I. Consider that word lost that word that was so often on the lips of Jesus. (1) I am impressed by this; that this is the very word that is used of the state of the unsaved beyond the grave. It is not at death that the lost begin to be lost. Death does not start the ruin; death but shows it (2) The word, too, conveys another suggestion; it is that one may be lost and never know it. The gods have feet of wool, and all that is Divine in us departs not noisily, but with a muffled tread. (3) According to the teaching of Jesus a man may be lost through thoughtlessness. II. I wish to try to illuminate that thought of seeking. (1) And first will you note that it is not find the lost? Our Lord was consummately careful in His choice of words. To save is something far grander than to find. It is the whole coronet of which finding is one diamond. (2) We shall never understand our life till we view its experiences as part of this heavenly seeking. As philosophers would say, there is much that is unintelligible until we place it all under this category. III. Note the title of the seeker. It is one of the names that Christ loved to apply to Himself the Son of man is come to seek and to save. What does that title mean? (1) If He is the Son of man, then we may be sure He perfectly knows man's ways. (2) Then it tells us that if the Son of man be the seeker we are called into the fellowship of perfect manhood. G. H. Morrison, The Scottish Review, vol. l No. 16, p. 866. Lost Property Luke 19:10 'To seek and to save!' Quest and conquest! 'To seek;' the long, long, tireless pursuit! 'To save;' the restoration, the convalescence, the perfect health! Any precious thing which is lost He came 'to seek and to save'. There are lost pieces of silver as well as lost children, and it is in the grace of our Lord to restore them. Let us look about in our common sphere for suggestions of common losses which mar and impoverish the Christian life. I. 'He has lost his early ideals!' And I will dare to put side by side with this familiar expression the words of our Lord: 'The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost'. He is come to recover lost ideals. Now, what is an ideal? Interpreted literally, the word signifies something seen. It is something seen in idea, before it has been realised in practice. The ideal which I hold of myself is just a vision of myself perfected. Now two things may happen to an early ideal. On the one hand, we may cheapen it. Or, in the second place, our eyes may become so dim that we cease to see the ideal. Now 'the Son of man is come to seek and to save' that lost ideal. II. 'He has lost his enthusiasm.' We all know the man. But the passion began to abate. It is not that he has given up work altogether, but that it is done grudgingly and with creeping reluctance. He has lost his enthusiasm. And again, let me bring in the evangel. 'The Son of man is come to seek and to save' lost enthusiasms. III. 'He has lost hope.' Yes, that is a frequent loss in life! And again I bring in the gospel of the word: 'The Son of man is come to seek and to save' lost hope. The only remedy for despondency is closer intimacy with the Christ. 'We have good hope through grace.' IV. And lastly, let me mention the loss of Christian joy. And mark the peril of it, for 'the joy of the Lord is our strength,' and if our joy is impoverished our strength will be reduced. So here is a valuable bit of lost property! 'The Son of man is come to seek and to save' lost spiritual joy. There is a wonderful allegory by Nathanael Hawthorne, called 'The Intelligence Office'. Everybody who has lost anything makes inquiry at its door. A woman in her wedded life comes to ask about the lost affections of her courtship! An old man comes in quest of the lost and wasted hours of his youth! I know another office in which the Lord of Glory sits. If I have lost anything of infinite value it is well for me to inquire at His door. He knows all about it, and He can tell me where and how to find it. There is no lost property office like the dwelling-place of the Saviour. 'Seek and ye shall find.' J. H. Jowett, The British Congregationalist, 26th March, 1908, p. 300. What the Son of Man Comes for Luke 19:10 I. Let us remember that Jesus Christ does not delight in the dark side of things. Never was there in this world One so quick to see the side of men and women, and never One so ready to set Himself on that side. 'There is no place where earth's failings have such kindly judgment given' as in the heart of our Blessed Saviour. Yet from the lips of Jesus comes this word * lost, lost. * II. And yet again let us remember that there is none to whom our condition means so much as to Him who comes to remedy it. The Holy One of Israel is nailed to the Cross, the despised and rejected of men, that He might redeem us from the curse of the law. 'The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.' III. If the Son of man is come for this then His whole concern is about the lost For the lost all the wisdom and goodness of God are at work devising means for their salvation. For the lost the glorious Son of God has come forth with His salvation. The very angels gather at the battlements waiting to break into joy in the presence of God over one sinner that repenteth. IV. If the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost, then shall He come prepared to do for us all that is needful. V. And then if He is come to seek and to save the lost He must * go on saving us. * M. G. Pearse, The Preacher's Magazine, vol. xi. p. 496. References. XIX. 10. Reuen Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 120. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 430. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 316. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 209. Spurgeon, Sermons , vol. iv. No. 204; vol. xix. No. 1100; vol. xlvii. No. 2756, and vol. liii. No. 3050. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 201; ibid. vol. iii. p. 25. W. L. Watkinson, The Fatal Barter, p. 161. XIX. 11. George Jones, Report of the Westminster Bible Conference at Mundesley, 1910, p. 319. T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates, p. 103. XIX. 12, 13. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 377. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1960. XIX. 12-27. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 120. XIX. 13. H. Allen, Penny Pulpit, No. 1626, p. 57. A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, p. 180. XIX. 14. J. G. Adderley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 141. XIX. 15. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays after Trinity, p. 463. A. Pott, Oxford Lent Sermons, 1868, p. 87. XIX. 16. T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates, p. 71. The Trading Servants Luke 19:16 * ; Luke 19:18 * I. Notice the small capital that the servants receive to trade with. It was a pound apiece, which, numismatic authorities tell us, is somewhat about the same value as some £6 odd of English money; though, of course, the purchasing power would be considerably greater. A small amount, and an equal amount to every servant these are the two salient points of this parable. There are two sorts of gifts. In one, all Christian men are alike; in another, they differ. The rich man and the poor have one thing alike the message of salvation which we call the Gospel of the blessed Lord. That is the 'pound'. There are considerations that flow from that thought (1) The apparent smallness of the gift (2) The purpose for which the pound is given. The servants had to live on it themselves, no doubt. So have we. They had to trade with it. So have we. There are two ways in which this trading is to be done by us. (1) The honest application of the principles and powers of the Gospel to the moulding of our own characters, and the making us better, purer, gentler, more heavenly-minded, and more Christlike. (2) Telling it to others. II. Observe the varying profits of the trading. (1) Christian people do not all stand on the same level in regard to the use they have made of, and the benefits they have derived from, the one equal gift which was bestowed upon them. Let us distinctly understand what sort of differences these are which our Lord signalises here. Let me clear away a mistake which may interfere with the true lessons of this parable, that the differences in question are the superficial ones in apparent results which follow from difference of endowments, or from difference of influential position. Every man that co-operates in a great work with equal diligence and devotion has an equal place in His eyes. The soldier that clapped Luther on the back as he was going into the Diet of Worms, and said, 'You have a bigger fight to fight than we ever had; cheer up, little monk,' stands on the same level as the great reformer, if what he did was done from the same motive and with as full consecration of himself. (2) All who trade make profits. III. The final declaration of profits. There are two points in reference to this final declaration of profits suggested here. (1) All the profit is ascribed to the capital. (2) The exact knowledge of the precise results of a life, which is possessed at last. 'Every one of us shall give an account of himself to God'; and, like a man in the Bankruptcy Court, we shall have to explain our books, and go into all our transactions. We are working in the dark today. Our work will be seen as it is, in the light The coral reef rises in the ocean and the creatures that made it do not see it. The ocean will be drained away, and the reef will stand up sheer and distinct. A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 59. References. XIX. 16, 18. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Scripture St. Luke, p. 163. XIX. 16-19. A. Rowland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 150. The Rewards of the Trading Servants Luke 19:17 * ; Luke 19:19 * The relation between the parable of the pounds and the other of the talents has often been misunderstood, and is very noteworthy. They are not two editions of one parable variously manipulated by the Evangelists, but they are two parables presenting two kindred and yet diverse aspects of one truth. They are neither identical, as some have supposed, nor contradictory, as others have imagined; but they are complementary. The lesson of the parable of the talents is that, however unequal are our endowments, there may be as much diligence shown in the use of the smallest as in the greatest, and where that is the case, the man with the small endowments will stand on the same level of recompense as the man with the large. This parable comes in to complete the thoughts. The lesson of this parable is that unequal faithfulness in the use of the same opportunities results in unequal retribution and reward. I. Note the solemn view of this present life that underlies the whole. All our present life here is a stewardship, which in its nature is preparatory to larger work yonder. And that is the point of view from which alone it is right to look at, and possible to understand, this else unintelligible and bewildering life on earth. All here is apprenticeship, and the issues of today are recorded in eternity. Here we prepare, yonder we achieve. II. Note the consequent littleness and greatness of this present. The greatness of the future makes the present little, but the little present is great, because its littleness is the parent of the great future. The only thing that gives real greatness and sublimity to our mortal life is its being the vestibule to another. III. Notice the future form of activity prepared for by faithful trading. (1) Faithfulness here prepares for participation in Christ's authority hereafter. The authority over the ten cities is the capacity and opportunity of serving and helping every citizen in them all. (2) However close and direct the dependence on, and the communion with, Jesus Christ, the King of all his servants, in that future state is, it shall not be so close and direct as to exclude room for the exercise of brotherly sympathy and brotherly aid. There, as here, we shall help one another to have Him more fully, and to understand Him more perfectly. We have to take this great conception of the future as being one that implies largely increased and ennobled activity. IV. Our texts remind us of the variety in recompense which corresponds to diversity in faithfulness. A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 70. References. XIX. 17, 19. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 173. XIX. 20. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. iv. p. 270. XIX. 21. H. S. Holland, Old and New, p. 3. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 375. XIX. 22. C. G. Finney, Penny Pulpit, No. 1670, p. 399. Luke 19:26 Both good and evil tend to fructify, each in its own kind, good producing good, and evil, evil. It is one of nature's general rules, and part of her habitual injustice, that 'to him that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath'. The ordinary and predominant tendency of good is towards more good. Health, strength, wealth, knowledge, virtue, are not only good in themselves, but facilitate and promote the acquisition of good, both of the same and of other kinds. The person who can learn easily is he who already knows much; it is the strong and not the sickly person who can do everything which next conduces to health; those who find it easy to gain money are not the poor, but the rich. From John Stuart Mill's * Essay upon Nature. * Reference. XIX. 26. M. G. Glazebrook, Prospice, p. 11 The Value of a Pageant (Palm Sunday) Luke 19:28-48 This story of a pageant breaks into the history of the passion with almost ludicrous incongruity. So much has this been felt, that otherwise trustworthy commentators have been tempted to allegorise the details of it, making the ass stand for the old theocracy and the foal for the young Church. But the Bible remains interesting and alive in spite of its interpreters. The foal is there simply as a beast to ride on: the ass is there, not because it stood for the old theocracy, but because it was the mother of the foal. In itself the whole story is, as it appears, trivial. It is a great truth expressed in a very little way. There are two notes of that journey to Jerusalem the kingdom of God and the imminent cross, Royalty and Death. Both of these were clearly present to the mind of Jesus, as the two parts of a deliberate and colossal scheme for the mastery of the world. This sense of mastery is everywhere apparent. The tone of Jesus' speech is changed from request to command, from avoidance of enemies to open challenge; and every word and action indicates a complete mastery of the situation. But the striking thing is that He should have changed not only His tone, but His outward policy also. He had always been particularly averse to the spectacular, and on more than one occasion had refused and avoided pageants. Why does He now consent to one? It was a concession to human nature as that was displayed around Him then. I. Then, for the first time, such a concession was safe. His task had been to insist upon the kingdom, and yet to avoid all attempts to make Him King. For over two years He had managed the populace as a skilful rider manages a restive horse, now drawing, and now slackening rein. Thus He had kept a bloody revolution at arm's length. But now at last there was no danger of such a revolution. There was, indeed, no time for it, for His death was distant but a week, and He must have known it. II. And there was a certain value in such a pageant, however distasteful it might be to Him. It was certain to impress the imagination of His disciples, who were simple enough to set much store by such exhibitions. It painted for them an impressive picture, which would afterwards illuminate their faith in the royalty of Jesus; and in the same way it might conceivably impress outsiders, rendering them more ready for the subsequent call of the Gospel, and inclining them to accept it. So then we have this strange combination of the great with the small, the eternal with the fleeting. III. Royalty and death are still before the world, in the great and eternal tragedy of the Cross. Royalty and death are in the heart of Christ, and we are called upon to reckon with that dread purpose of His, each of us for ourselves. The show will pass and be forgotten, but how do we stand in respect of mastery over self and the world and sin? What share have we in the royal victory of the Cross? John Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p. 84. References. XIX. 29. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 124; ibid. vol. xi. p. 172. XIX. 37, 38. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 1. XIX. 37-40. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 678. XIX. 37-48. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 183. Luke 19:40 'It was not an age of particular earnestness, that Hume and Walpole age,' says Forster, in his biography of Goldsmith. 'But no one can be in earnest himself without in some degree affecting others. "I remember a passage in the Vicar of Wakefield," said Johnson, a few years after its author's death, "which Goldsmith was afterwards fool enough to expunge. I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing." The words were little, since the feeling was retained; for the very basis of the little tale was a sincerity and zeal for many things.' Reference. XIX. 40. R. Bruce Taylor, Scottish Review, vol. iii. pp. 387, 441. Christ and City Life Luke 19:41 I. There is always something heart-moving in the sight of a multitude of men. The Persian Xerxes shed tears as he watched the interminable ranks march past him on the way to Greece. The iron Napoleon once melted as he reviewed the vast army which followed him to the Russian campaign. And when the proudest, sternest, and most unfeeling hearts have shown emotion, what should we expect from the pitiful Son of God? Whenever He saw the multitude, and especially the city multitude, He was moved with compassion. It was the sadness of the city that affected Him. To every profoundly religious and philanthropic nature, the sadness of city life is more impressive than its splendour. No tender-hearted man who has seen the hidden darkness of city life can again for some time fling himself careless and heedless into its joys. II. The pathos of city life is in the enormous contrasts of human sorts and conditions which it presents. In the village and the country they are not so sharp and startling; there, wealth is always near enough to poverty to be reminded of its duties; the mansion and the cottage are in closer touch; and kindly nature, with its gardens and flowers and sweet air, breathes some alleviation into the dreariest lives, gives health and brightness to the children's faces, and saves humanity from its deepest degradations. But in cities and towns just in proportion to their size and density of population are the extremes of opulence and destitution, of splendour and squalor, most glaring. Amid all the culture and splendour of wealth, there are women in garrets wearing their very flesh to bone, and children who have rarely or never seen green fields and growing flowers, and men gnawing their souls away with the bitings of a hungry discontent; and nightly by the river on which float the great argosies of commerce, desperate beings walk shiveringly, ready to fling themselves to the cold swift bourne of self-forgetfulness,' anywhere, anywhere out of the world'. III. Our national life is becoming more and more city life. From all sides they are crowding, from hamlet to village, from village to town, from town to city from the quiet country house and the cottar's fireside with its prayers, to the giddy whirl of the great multitude with its excitements and its sins, with its palaces in the suburbs and its sleeping dens in the slums, with its gorgeous possibilities and its actualities of shame. The stream of country life is ever flowing cityward, to join some river of God or be lost in the sewers. For in the city are the noblest lives as well as the meanest, and the highest is there and the lowest, and Christianity has there its bravest witnesses as the world has its most devilish votaries, and martyrs and saints win their crowns amid the smoke and crush more surely than in the hermitage; and the city is the place where philanthropy and brotherly love and imperial charity do their holiest and grandest works. City life proves the power of Christ and the faith of His devoted servants more effectually than any other life can; but it shows also all the degradation and ultimate possibilities of ruin of which human nature is capable. The Church feels more of the beating of His heart; His breath is on our spirits; His pities are filling us with tenderness; His compassion for the multitude is laying hold of our sympathies. We are looking on the poor and wretched through those tearful eyes of His; the Churches are throbbing with saving activities, and every man knows that he has no part in Christ whatever if he dares to ask himself the atheistic question, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' In this is the hope of city life. J. G. Greenhough, The Cross in Modern Life, p. 41. The Self-doomed City Luke 19:41 It is a very significant fact that some of the very causes of the decline and fall of Jerusalem are still existent in Britain, and are real sources of peril to our great cities and towns. Let us enumerate them for our own warnings. I. Formalism was rife in Jerusalem, and, alas! it is rife in our great cities today. The Pharisees were the most consummate formalists which the world had ever seen. The Ceremonialist whose religion is a decorated skeleton a mere agglomeration of inanities does more to demoralise a city than ten righteous men can do to elevate it. II. Scepticism was rife in Jerusalem, and, alas! it is rife in our great cities today. With honest doubt we have strong sympathy, for in it there is more genuine faith than in many an ornate creed. But there is another kind of doubt abroad which is not at all honest. It is the offspring of intellectual pride, with more pride than intellect in it. Such doubt deserves no quarter. III. Ingratitude for precious privileges was rife in Jerusalem, and, alas! it is rife in our great cities today. Our great English cities are the 'Jerusalems' of today. What a host of splendid prophets have been set to instruct them! IV. Mammonism was rife in Jerusalem, and, alas! it is rife in our great cities today. Many men kill themselves in trying to grasp superfluous wealth, which they leave behind to destroy their own children. V. Poverty and consequent disaffection were rife in Jerusalem, and, alas! they are rife in our great cities today. There must be a great maladjustment of social forces somewhere, for in every city we find a modern Vale of Hinnom, and hear the deep-throated wail of the needy. VI. Social impurity was rife in Jerusalem, and, alas! it is rife in our great cities today. Flagitious lust is not yet dead. We are full of the 'fury of the Lord' against this frightful evil. Each of us is personally and vitally related to the public weal, and we must bring the religious spirit into all our collective action. The best protection against impurity is to preoccupy the mind with a nobler guest, whose name is Jesus. VII. Intemperance was known in Jerusalem; but it is terribly rife in our own cities. The drink destroys more souls in England in one year than all its pulpits are instrumental in saving. Thank heaven, the general movement of the ages is upward and Godward. As George Meredith asks: 'Who can seriously think, and not think hopefully? ' J. Ossian Davies, The Dayspring from, on High, p. 186. The Meaning of the Tears Luke 19:41 The incident is a revelation. The tears are luminous with the passion of the Divine heart. I. The philanthropy of Christ. It is clear from the teaching and the miracles of Jesus, that He loved man as man, independently of creed or class or colour. Does not that make the ethic of the evangel superior to the ethic of any other religion? Paganism taught patriotism, but not philanthropy. The tears of Jesus on Olivet were only the spray of the tidal feeling that surged within Him for mankind. It was his work not to depreciate patriotism, but to charge it with a new content the passion of His own love so that it grew to philanthropy. Exclusiveness is the deadly foe of philanthropy. 'Splendid isolation' is the death of humanitarian instinct. We must beware of that colourless philanthropy which, while professing the desire to help men, is, in its aristocratic exclusiveness, devoid of practical sympathy. II. The humanity of the Father. 'He wept.' The tears of Jesus crystallised the humanity of the Father. God is no longer a cold abstraction, but a presence, warm and tender. Jesus in tears shows Him not only in His imperial majesty, but in His tender humanity. It is not too much to say that in our fuller recovery of Christ we have rediscovered God. To the august conceptions of the eternal sovereignty and awful holiness we have added the finest human qualities, the tender pity and sweet gentleness and tearful sympathy of Jesus; and so we have found our Father in the Son. The truth has many applications; but the most precious is that it brings God so near to us. It is a truth full of consolation because it is full of compassion. You are often lonely and despondent, the colour of life is grey, and you walk among the graves of dead hopes; but should you in the tears of Jesus see the humanity of God, light will shine through the gloom and brighten into glory. I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it. J. Oates, The Sorrow of God, p. 158. The Tears of Jesus Luke 19:41 I. The sight of the city. He thought of its punishment, but He rather wept because of its crimes. The evil filled His soul rather than the good. It is no proof of want of love for one's country when one sees clearly its faults and sins. The material well-being of a city is of less consequence than the moral and spiritual condition. II. The tears over the city. He beheld evil as none of us can, and He mourned over it as none of us do. The sight of the city with its sin and squalor should excite in us profound sorrow. (1) This state of feeling can only be preserved by constant recurrence to God's ideal for man keeping clear before us what man was meant to be. (2) By drinking in the Spirit of Christ Jesus. III. The remedy for the ills of the city. (1) The Gospel of Christ in its manifold application and that Gospel proclaimed by those who Know it. This is the work of every Christian. (2) At the basis of all our work must be the sorrow. (3) We are put in trust of the Gospel. Such work is commended by every consideration, (a) True patriotism. (b) Self-interest, (c) One's own religious well-being. A. Maclaren. Luke 19:41 This was the text of the last sermon Kingsley ever preached. He closed with the words, 'Let us say in utter faith, Gome as Thou seest best but in whatsoever way Thou comest even so come, Lord Jesus'. As soon as the Abbey service was over, he came home much exhausted, and went straight up to his wife's room. 'And now my work here is done, thank God!... and I finished with your favourite text.' We can place no limits to the ascendency which may be exercised by the mere intellect of some epoch-making man. But we may safely prophesy that no one will ever uplift his fellow-men from within, or leave a name which draws tears of reverence from generations yet unborn, who has not himself, as it were, wept over Jerusalem, and felt a stirring kinship with even the outcast of mankind. F. W. H. Myers. References. XIX. 41. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi. No. 1570. E. A. Stuart, The New Commandment and other Sermons, vol. vii. p. 201. W. J. Brock, Sermons, p. 185. W. P. Balfern, Glimpses of Jesus, p. 133. A. Ainger, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 214. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 134. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches (2nd Series), p. 120. A. Coote, Twelve Sermons, p. 64. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt i. p. 353. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 199. XIX. 41, 42. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 357. W. Moore Ede, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 332. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on some Words of Christ, p. 238. G. Bellett, Parochial Sermons, p. 139. Bishop Bickersteth, Sermons, p. 271. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 19. XIX. 41-44. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p. 80. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 440. Peace Luke 19:42 Peace: what it is not and what it is. It is not in the Gospel mere rest, or mere quiet, or mere solitude. It is something infinitely more. It is harmony, concord, agreement, love. 'Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three 'in an inevitable harmony. This is peace. Peace is not mere compromise of good with evil, but the redemption of evil into good. This is peace and harmony, and when that prevails God is visiting His people. But though the end of reconciliation is peace, the process is war. I. The Sanctuary of the Human Heart. If the elements are antagonistic, there must be war until the supremacy of God prevails. The Prince of Peace found in earth struggle and conflict, and finally was crucified, dead and buried. There could be no peace when He faced evil. Therefore He saith, 'I came not to send peace but a sword'. Peace in earth, yes, as the ultimate ideal, but not as the process by which we reach it. There can be no harmony or peace, in the Gospel sense, in a rebellious and wicked world, but only conflict for the children of God. Peace is no mere repose or quiet of the soul, but the consummation of its activities for good. II. The Conflict of Religion and Science. Or, again, is it religion or science which are in conflict in discord? They are peacemakers who by the ministry of reconciliation have been during this half-century leading both religion and science to the sense of that deep unity of God, where there is indeed diversity of operations, but the same spirit. Why already, indeed, we marvel as we look back on half a generation, at the shallow philosophy which imagined on either side that God can be isolated from the world that He has made, and that science can discover anything at all finally irreconcilable with the wisdom and goodness of Him. III. The Greater Life of Nations. The Gospel for today tells us in thrilling words what is the law that Christ proclaimed over Jerusalem in His time. In a nation's life, as in a man's, the things that belong to peace are all essential judgment, mercy, faith. Peace does not mean to a people any more than an individual mere repose and quiet, sloth and ease, but rather the crown or consummation of just and holy living. Peacemakers are they who strive that our laws shall be just, humane, effective, who have mourned in many a land and clime over the inhumanities of commerce and the cruelties of wars. Peacemakers are they who labour to preserve the comity of nations in our time, and abhor as a deadly sin, greater perhaps than any other, the inflaming of passions of nations against one another for purposes of greed, or picking a quarrel for the sake of pride. Above all, blessed are the peacemakers who, in the complex relationships of social life, labour for the Kingdom of God, and oppose evil with a pure and determined spirit. Reference. XIX. 42. J. T. Stannard, The Divine Humanity, p. 86. Christ's Apocalyptic Outlook Luke 19:42-44 The outlook upon life which our Lord authorises with His own personal sanction is apocalyptic. That is the mode of interpreting it to which we stand committed by our New Testament And by that long word we mean that this present world with which we are familiar looks towards a great reversal, a tremendous moment in which all its works will be put to sudden and searching proof by the fire of judgment; and all that cannot endure the sifting flames will shrivel up, and only the deep, unshaken foundations will abide the storm. We live here in view of that day. We know that this present situation holds in it no ultimate value of its own. It is preparatory; it is disciplinary; it is probational. It is not the end. It is not the final condition of humanity. It has within it the seeds of what will endure; but it has also much that will be reversed; much that will be purged; much that will then suffer condemnation; much that will be burned up as rubbish in the flames. Mountains as they now stand will be thrown down, valleys as we now deem them will be filled up. A new measure will be applied, a new estimate will decide. The final judgment on the real worth of things is not yet in effective action, and when it arrives we shall be surprised at what it declares. I. This is the typical Christian life. It is apocalyptic, and, moreover, this ultimate apocalypse, this final cataclysm, the last judgment, is for ever throwing out anticipations of its coming, omens of its approach. Even now human life falls under the apocalyptic category. That is, it works by great 'days of visitation'. II. And to the apocalyptic eye the intervals of hidden development and secret accumulation, however prolonged and however wearisome, will drop out of the scene in which their work is summarised. They will disappear out of the reckoning. For all their real inner significance will be disclosed in a single abrupt flash of manifestation in that day which sets their gathered forces free. There, in that flaring release of pent-up energy, the whole secret breaks out. That which had been uttered in secret is shouted on the housetops. The end to which everything led is revealed in thunder. And in a moment we can discern who have contributed to the pre-ordained issue; and who have hindered its pressure and fought against its arrival. The books are open. The judgment is set. There are the sheep, and there stand the goats. The line of cleavage runs swift and sharp as a lightning-flash between them. And, as the intervals drop away out of sight, the sequent several days by which the last judgment has given ominous signals of its ultimate verdict stand out alone, in one raised series of kindred acts; or fuse and melt into one day that is forever coming nearer and nearer. III. The larger and longer our horizons, the more apocalyptic becomes our estimate of life. And our Lord, therefore, with His eyes set on the end of all things, with His spiritual judgment at work on the level of eternal issues, naturally found His medium in apocalyptic imagery. But, alas! how far away this method of judging things seems from us to whom these wide horizons are so unfamiliar, and who cannot range over these immense spaces! We are closely pressed down under the weight of the immediate present. Thick and close the mob of facts throng round us. We are their prisoners and their prey. The immediate intervals, the urgent needs, the binding necessities of the passing hour, absorb our attention and exhaust our energy. We cannot break loose from the ring of circumstance. We cannot overlook the things that swarm and clutch and occupy. How are we to take in these wide perspectives? We cannot see the wood for the trees. I remember meeting a man who had been right through the siege of Paris in 1870, just when we were still under the thrill of that stupendous event. We clustered around him athirst for his experiences, and then it appeared that he had not kept a note or a diary. It had never struck him at the time that it might be worth while to make a record, or that in after days people would be interested to hear what he had gone through. Yet that siege certainly was a day of judgment. It was apocalyptic. And this mood of his may so easily be characteristic of us. Can it be that even now we may be among those who, according to our Lord's haunting phrase, eat and drink, and marry and are given in marriage, while all the time the trumpets are set to the lips of the great angels who proclaim the coming day of the Lord; and already the first terrible blasts have been blown that tell of a signal of doom? H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxvii. p. 33 (see also The Church Times for Jan. 14, 1910). Visitation Luke 19:44 Jerusalem, the chosen city of God, knew not the time of her visitation; did not understand what was going on, what she was called to do, when her Lord came with mercy and judgment to try her heart. The hope of Israel, the long-promised Saviour, had actually come, and Israel would not know, would not receive Him. It was the sad prospect of ruin which made the Lord weep when He beheld the highly favoured city. 'If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace.' Thou the nation whom God had chosen, enlightened, and blessed, above all other people; 'in this thy day' when the Son of God brought His message of salvation in His own Person; if thou after all thy former sins, hadst only known how near thou wert to peace and glory, in this the greatest of all thy chances; 'if thou hadst but known.' But Jerusalem would not know her hour of mercy and acceptance. It passed away, it was too late now; and the Lord saw, and wept as He saw, that it was gone. I. Not to know the time of our visitation means not to know when God is giving us opportunities of good; not to feel the blessings He is putting within our reach; not to see when the time comes, which is specially meant to suit our needs, and to open the door to peace and mercy. There is one sort of visitation from God which many of us are going through now. We are leading quiet, peaceful lives, with little apparently to disturb us; no great sorrow, fear, or disadvantage to struggle with, no great care to weigh us down. And in this kind of life we go on from year to year. I can well imagine people being almost frightened sometimes at the unbroken peace of their lives; thinking that something dreadful must be coming to make up for the long immunity from trouble and pain. But this is faithless fear. God does not deal with us in this way. He does not make a certain amount of evil weigh against and balance a certain amount of good. He gives good and evil by a different rule. Let us enjoy the blessings which He gives us our quiet days, our health and peaceful homes; and let us hope on in the mercy which has been with us so long. II. But there are two things to be remembered, which we are apt to forget: (1) Without superstitiously vexing ourselves with the dread alluded to already, yet it is true that all this quiet cannot go on for ever that we must expect sooner or later some of the trials of life. (2) This freedom from the burdens of sorrow and pain is a time of visitation, a time when God is visiting us visiting us by many a blessing, as truly as He is visiting and searching others by His chastisements and judgments. In this time of peace and regular work, of quiet days and nights of refreshing sleep, He is preparing, He is testing us, He is giving us time, ample time, to fit ourselves to meet the harsher and heavier ways of His Providence; He is seeing what is in us whether so much mercy will draw our hearts to Him; strengthen our purposes and efforts after goodness; whether we can be made better, as He would have all men better, if it were possible, by giving us the desire of our hearts, and keeping us in safety from the evil we are afraid of. Now, in this time of peace, is the time to fit ourselves to meet trouble, to arm our souls with that faith and trust in God which will alone help us to weather the storm. It is those who have learned beforehand to believe in God who are able to put forth their belief when the moment comes when it is wanted. See, then, that you do not miss recognising, as it passes over you, the time of your visitation. R. W. Church, * Village Sermons. * References. XIX. 44. W. Friend, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 196. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 35. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, pp. 253 and 268. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, pt. i. p. 333. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 82. T. G. Bonney, Death and Life in Nations and Man, p. 1. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 291. XIX. 45-46. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on some Words of Christ, p. 284. XIX. 45-47. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, pp. 39, 48 and 55. XIX. 48. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 89. By What Authority? Luke 20:2 I. The Principle of Reservation. God reserves to Himself the right to restrain when He sees fit that full manifestation of Himself which some men nevertheless demand of Him. There are some men, some women, in whose heart there has frequently risen up something of this resentment: 'Why must I live in a state of imperfect knowledge, which is the result of a limited revelation?' And this incomplete manifestation of Himself by God for so I may call it has been felt, even where there was far too much reverence and fear, too much humility to resent the limitation of the revelation given. It is well that we should look this fact plainly in the face. It was not only unto the Scribes and the Pharisees, and the idle gaping crowd that our Lord acted upon this principle of reservation when He was here on earth, it was so with His own disciples. How plainly do their words and actions convey to us the idea of men who knew that they lay under a sense of mystery that they could not fathom! How is the great central mystery of the Incarnation, for example, ever present in His teaching, and yet who shall deny that it is ever shrouded? How guardedly He speaks of the new birth by water and the Word; how mysteriously in the Blessed Sacrament of His own Blood and Body! It is enough for them to be told that, 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God'. It was enough for them to be taught that they must do this, and 'except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you'. II. The Revelation Sufficient And yet shall we dare to say that the teaching which God in His mercy has vouchsafed to us, and the revelation that He has given to us, is insufficient? How much evidence of authority had He already given to those very Scribes and Pharisees! Sick persons had been wonderfully cured, the poor shrinking lepers had been made clean, sweet light had streamed into sightless eyeballs. Only a few days before, a crowd of those Jews had seen Lazarus come forth from his tomb. Those who asked Him this very question as to His authority had never denied these facts they had never dared to deny them. Yet you know what they had done they had hardened their hearts and shut their eyes against them. It was possible for them to know long ere this by Whose authority He did these things. So for us it is possible to know, and to know with great certainty too, of Christ and His authority, to know Him on His cross dying for our sins, and to know Him awakening within our own individual hearts a sense of guilt, to know Him sending us individually the blessed message of forgiveness, to know Him as He deigns to hold communion with our reconciled spirits. The struggle may be hard, but the victory is sure. III. Conditions on which Knowledge Is Attainable. There are conditions on which this knowledge is attainable. (a) Purity of heart. If you would believe in God, said even such a one as Rousseau if you would believe in God, live in such a manner that it is necessary for you that He exist. (b) Obedience. There are men who question authority because they mean to obey no will but their own. There are times when a spirit of independence seems to rise in a nation or in a community, as there are times when in an individual the imagination dreams of a mistaken freedom and questions authority, when men demand to know the authority which bids them to be self-restrained, but nevertheless mean to yield obedience to none. Or, short of this, there are others whose demand for authority is simply a demand of idle curiosity. It has been well said that there is boundless danger in all inquiry which is merely curious! It is to such our Lord answers, and will ever answer, 'Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things'. When men ask questions of Almighty God by the answer to which they never mean to rule their lives, let them not think that to them any sign will be given. The will must be set to do the will of God before the intellect can act with discernment on spiritual truth. (c) Earnestness. A life of trifling here is not the life of those who are enlightened by their God. God must be really sought if God is to be truly found. It may be difficult to say why the eyes of some are so strangely holden that they cannot find Him. I know nothing more perplexing than to watch and see, and sometimes be made participator in, the doubts and difficulties of unbelief. It is not difficult to see why they are not permitted to pierce within the veil or to find the hidden presence of their God. For 'the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, the violent take it by force'. A life of earnest seeking is a life of finding, but God's truth is too sacred a thing to be expounded to superficial worldliness. Let me add this one word more. There are others tried by intellectual difficulties, yet athirst for the living God and for a fuller revelation to their souls. The time of granting this revelation rests with Him, and to them that revelation will be given. The answer to their cry will come; they shall know the doctrine whether it be of God; He will tell them by what authority He does these things. References. XX. 9-16. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 20. XX. 9-19. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 284. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 190. XX. 13. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 15. XX. 16. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 214. The Stone That Grinds to Powder Luke 20:18 I. As far as regards things and laws which are on the same plane as those referred to in this parable, most people know that we cannot do as we like; that if we act in harmony with rational convictions it will go well with us; that if we pay no heed to them we shall suffer. In thousands of cases, too, men spontaneously, unhesitatingly conform to nature and its laws. II. When it is a question of men's own bodies the principle I am referring to has, however, far less influence and control than when it is a question of our relations to the external world; though even there a great improvement has taken place. III. As we approach the sphere of mind, of spirit, we discover that this idea of reality and law has less and less control over men's thoughts and conduct. IV. But let us now deal more directly with the words of Christ Himself in the light of these general truths. 'Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.' (1) The first point we need to press upon ourselves is the reality of Jesus Christ: I mean, of course, His present reality: His present reality for us. (2) The next point that arises out of the text is that Christ is a reality with which every man has to reckon. (3) A third point is, that if you stumble at Christ, if you neglect His claims, if you treat Him as if He did not exist, you inflict serious injury on yourselves. (4) Still further, to enter into positive conflict with Christ is to ensure our own utter ruin. 'On whom that stone shall fall, it shall grind him to powder' stronger language could scarcely be used to describe the effect of a deadly encounter with Jesus Christ D. W. Simon, Twice Born and other Sermons, p. 166. References. XX. 20. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 267. XX. 22. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 392. Luke 20:23 It appears to us a ridiculous prudery to say that a moral teacher is bound to discuss casuistry with a set of political spies; and that, if the question be only well-chosen and real, he is to be unaffected by the malicious purpose of the questioners.... When people ask what they do not want to know, it is not merely a silly softness, but an irreverence to truth itself, to produce it to be spit upon or abused to crime. As to the particular mode in which Jesus parried the question of his enemies, nothing, we think, could be more admirable.... The retreat of Jesus from the casuistry of faction to the permanent relations of the soul, his hint that, amid the changing pressures and coercions of the world, an imperishable realm remains open for human fidelity and Divine communion, we cannot but regard as not only an acute escape from artifice, and a wise check to zealotry, but in the highest degree dignified, beautiful, and profound. Martineau. References. XX. 23. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 362. XX. 24. A Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, p. 59. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 195. XX. 34, 35. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 31. XX. 35. J. M. Whiton, Beyond the Shadow, p. 81. J. B. Brown, Aide to the Development of the Divine Life, No. 10. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 108. XX. 36. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 416. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 113. The Resurrection of the Body Luke 20:37-38 J. H. Newman writes in his sermon entitled 'The Resurrection of the Body': Our Blessed Lord seems to tell us that in some sense or other Abraham's body might be considered still alive as a pledge of his resurrection, though it was dead in the common sense in which we apply the word. His announcement is, Abraham shall rise from the dead, because in truth he is still alive. He cannot in the end be held under the power of the grave, more than a sleeping man can be kept from waking. Abraham is still alive in the dust, though not risen thence. He is alive because all God's saints live to Him, though they seem to perish.... His angels, surely, guard the bodies of His servants; Michael, the Archangel, thinking it no unworthy task to preserve them from the powers of evil. References. XX. 37, 38. J. N. Bennie, The Eternal Life, p. 209. Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1863. XX. 38. Basil Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 328. Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, ibid. vol. lxx. p. 232. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 302. XX. 45-47. Ibid. vol. iv. p. 263. XXI. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 71. XXI. 1-3. T. Sadler, Sermons for Children, p. 55. XXI. 1-4. J. M. Bennie, The Eternal Life, p. 118. XXI. 1-6. R. Allen, The Words of Christ, p. 299. The Presence of Christ (For Advent) Luke 21:5-6 This discourse of our Lord is one of the most difficult for us to follow and apply, and yet it has made a vivid impression on the imagination of the world. Our Advent hymns and services are full of reminiscences of it, while, like so much else in Holy Scripture, it has suffered from an irreverent literalism which has at times imposed too great a strain on the imagination until faith has closed her wings and dropped heavily to the earth. The Day of Judgment, even more than the judgment of individual souls, seems to have struck into the background of the articles of faith until 'we believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge' has come to be a statement which all Christians pronounce and few Christians believe. Yet the season of Advent was set apart, among other purposes, to keep this great fact before us as a living motive and guide of conduct. It may be worth while therefore to try reverently to gather what was in our Lord's mind when He spoke what was transitory, what was permanent. It is impossible to leave on one side a matter of such vital importance as the final destiny of the world, and the promised presence or coming of Christ. We notice at once these two things. I. The Transitory and the Permanent. First that, as, in an exhibition of dissolving views, one scene melts imperceptibly into another so that at a given time we hardly know what is before us, so here a great deal of our Lord's words refer to an immediate, local catastrophe of tremendous importance to His hearers the fall of Jerusalem. And then His words dissolve, melt almost imperceptibly into another scene the end of the world, His own second coming, and the dread phenomena which will precede and accompany it the one event being connected with the other as that which symbolises with that which is symbolised. II. The Coming of Christ. Secondly, we must remember and realise that there are certain images in Holy Scripture which cannot be reproduced pictorially, nor represented in human language. Our Blessed Lord Himself seems to say that a full knowledge of what is meant by the Day of Judgment and when it will be is impossible to the human understanding. 'Of that clay and of that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'... But there is a blight side to final judgment. We are apt to forget this. In spite of the imagery of flame and earthquake, of wrath on sinners, of shame and endless doom, the idea which most strongly impressed itself on the early Church was the presence of Christ, the victory of Christ, the coming and permanent reign of Christ. III. The Presence of Christ. His presence! It is what they so longed to see. How impatient they were for it, how they hurried forward in imagination the slow winding up of the ages. 'O thou enemy,' they would say, 'destructions are come to a perpetual end' and Christ is coming. His will be a great Presence. In the dark days of the Catacombs where they found Him in the mystic Eucharistic Presence on the altar which covered the bones of some friend or some earlier martyr who had laid down his life for Christ, the presence was a hurried and a fleeting one, to be followed too often by dark days of persecution and anguish. It was so difficult for them to keep Christ's presence with them in its living beauty. We too know how difficult it is to retain the presence of Christ. The presence of Christ always and everywhere in a time when there should be neither day nor night, but one day this was the conception that swallowed up all others in the loving hearts of the Christians as they talked of the coming of Christ which was promised. This is a side of the Judgment Day of which we think too little, one which surely has power to diminish much of our fear. IV. What has the Presence been to us? As we look back over life we each of us can see what the presence, the coming, of Christ has been to us. 'Thy song shall be of mercy and judgment.' Life has had its destructions. God has cast down for us those false ideals which once threatened to divert our energies and spoil our prospects. Life has had its catastrophes. The wood, the hay, the stubble, yea, even the precious stones as we thought them, all that was worthless, is gone. Nature herself inflicts on us her destruction; as life advances and old age approaches one thing after another falls away from us bodily health, mental vigour, power of leadership, power of vigorous work. God nips off those things that we valued youth, health, strength and vigour in order to develop the life of saintliness, the life of union with Himself. If you would meet your Judge with trembling hope, if you would rejoice in His presence with exceeding great joy, go and tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King; go and proclaim the paradox of welcome: 'Let the floods clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful together before the Lord, for He cometh to judge the earth'. Luke 21:8 To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what paces are to a horse. Pascal. References. XXI. 8. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 404. XXI. 10. Ibid. vol. v. p. 136. XXI. 13. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 458. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 312. The Tyranny of Time Luke 21:19 I. It is easy to become impatient in regard to the development of our own character. Yet it is unreasonable to lose hope and courage. We often lose heart by comparing our present selves with our moral and spiritual history of yesterday. How impossible to gauge moral movement! If we are living rightly, the deepest changes are being silently wrought in the depths of our nature, and the faintest of these is a cause for infinite gratitude. No impatience will accelerate the unfolding of flower or soul, lit can only retard. Nor let us be impatient with the circumstances which discipline character; God knows best how long the gold ought to remain in the furnace, how long the jewel must suffer the grinding of the wheel. II. We become weary waiting for the renewal of the world. Yet the kingdom of God is coming, however deeply sometimes its development may be veiled. 'What is to last for ever takes a long time to grow.' We must be struck with the spirit of patience displayed everywhere in the New Testament. Nothing is more wonderful than the serenity of our Lord in the prosecution of His great mission. The same spirit of tranquil confidence animated the apostles. Because they exulted in glorious power they were patient and long-suffering. III. In these days of feverishness and haste our eye is too much on the clock. Rae, writing of 'The White Sea Peninsula,' alleges that in all the hundreds of Russian peasants' huts, cottages, and houses that he visited every one had a clock, yet he saw only one going. Wise people! It is well to remember that we are children of time; but the agitation and tension of watching the clock are not good for us in any sense, least of all in relation to spiritual things. When the Duke of Wellington saw a painting of Waterloo which represented him sitting on horse-back with a watch in his hand anxiously scanning the hour, the great soldier ridiculed the picture, declared the posture false, and told the artist to paint the watch out. No battle is won with a watch in our palm. The victory over our own nature, the victory that overcometh the world, are gained in patient faith and endeavour. The victory of Christ, and the setting up of His kingdom over all the earth, will be achieved, not as against time, but in quietness and confidence. W. L. Watkinson, The Ashes of Roses, p. 31. Patient Perseverance Luke 21:19 I. The Christian life has ever to be maintained in the face of opposition. 1. There is our own evil. 2. There are the direct temptations to defection. 3. There is always a world of unsympathising men, varying in every age. 4. There are the sorrows and trials to which all are exposed. II. That opposition can only be met by patient perseverance. III. That patient perseverance wins for us ourselves. A. Maclaren. Winning and Saving Souls Luke 21:19 When Christ spoke of losing the soul, He did not primarily refer to the loss of heaven by-and-by. I. What is it to lose a soul? When a soul is dissipated before the body decays, when man's worldly interests destroy his capacity for truth and honour, chivalry and love, when sin exhausts his force as weeds do the soil, then a man is losing soul. We speak of saving the soul alive. What is the soul but a man's true, complete self, the sum total of all the higher faculties; and what is the life of the soul but true faith, hope, love, graciousness, generosity, joy? Not to have them, though you sin the whole world, is to lose your soul. These are the qualities which link you to God and make you a member of His family; without them your soul is null and void. II. There is a hint in this text of Christ's, that you and I have to co-operate with the Creator in making our own souls. We were born with potentialities. We have to train our faculties, to develop our powers, to win our souls. God may, for aught I know, have made angels in the same instantaneous way in which He called light into being; but only the discipline of life can make human souls God working in us; we working in God. Live with all the soul you have. B. J. Snell, The All-Enfolding Love, p. 17. Winning the Soul Luke 21:19 It is a pity that our translation runs here as it does: it conceals the point of the original entirely. What our Lord says is, as the Revised Version has it, 'in your patience (or endurance) ye shall win your souls'. The text is not a precept, but a promise. It does not send men to a duty, but assures them of a reward. I. One is struck here with the fact, to begin with, that Christ takes for granted that these men have their souls yet to win. By means of your patience or endurance, He says, ye shall win them. And yet they had followed Him for some three years now. Could it be, we ask, that the twelve men were in some sense soulless still? If any of us find this a hard saying, probably that is because we forget one thing. We forget the immense distance that lay between Him and them. While He moves about among them He is living nevertheless, in a larger, loftier region into which they cannot enter because of their unbelief in other words because they have no soul. The soul, then, in this sense, is another name for the faculty of faith. It is the key to the spiritual world. II. It follows then we may note it in the second place that the acquiring of a soul is a progressive affair. As much indeed is directly stated in the text: 'In your patience that is, in your trying, suffering life in the course of it and by means of it ye shall come to possess your souls'. Let no one, then, suppose that the gaining of the soul is a thing to be effected once for all. We are born into the Kingdom not men but babes. There is just one purpose that runs through all our history like a shining thread, binding its various elements and experiences into a unity: it is the purpose of God to make us alive to Himself and to righteousness, to make us partakers of a Divine nature, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. We have just one opportunity of having His saving will fulfilled in us of winning a soul to ourselves but it is a lifelong opportunity. III. Not only is the soul an imperfect and growing thing, but our possession of it is imperfect too. If the one has to develop so has the other also. 'In your patience,' He says, 'Ye shall possess that is, more and more ye shall come to possess your souls.' Now is not this true? The soul is not like a clod or a stone which, once you have taken it in your hands, you can hold fast. It is a far more volatile possession than that. What is the reason of the sad variations which pass across our lives so often? It is, of course, that the soul within us is so variable. God does not mean this intermittent life for His children, and there should be getting to be always less of it. A. Martin, Winning the Soul, p. 3. Luke 21:19 Faith and Sanctity are indeed not very frequent; but yet they are not miracles, but brought to pass by education, discipline, correction, and other naturall wayes, by which God worketh them in his elect, at such times as he thinketh fit. Hobbes, * Leviathan. * References. XXI. 19. John Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 212. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. ii. p. 305. F. Lynch, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 86. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 186; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 399. Luke 21:20 Alas! for the proud time when I planned, when I had present to my mind, the materials as well as the scheme of the Hymn entitled Spirit, Sun, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Man, and the Epic poem on what still appears to me the only fit subject remaining for an Epic poem Jerusalem besieged and destroyed by Titus. Coleridge's * Letters. * 'We do not enough realise the utterly unpatriotic aspect which the attitude of Christ must have taken in the eyes of such of His countrymen as had entered into this compromise between political and religious ends,' writes Miss Wedgwood in her Message of Israel. 'His agonised reference to the coming struggle with Rome shows how misleading was this aspect. But it was inevitable. At great political crises he who opposes the patriots is not so likely to be considered their worst foe, as he who ignores them. It was not that our Lord preached submission to Rome, though no doubt the decision as to the tribute money was capable of being represented in that light it was that He roused a spirit which moved in another plane than that of resistance or submission to imperial power. He created a weapon (it would seem) and withheld it from the service of the State. It will be found, in general, that no other treason is felt so deadly as this. References. XXI. 20-36. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 204. XXI. 22. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 402. XXI. 24. A. Mackennel, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 168. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p. 67. Luke 21:25 Probably the last great historical event which in any European state has externally assumed a religious almost an ecclesiastical form is nearly the only event familiar to most of us in Russian history, namely, the expulsion of the French from Moscow.... The services of Christmas Day are almost obscured by those which celebrate the retreat of the invaders on that same day, the 25th of December 1812, from the Russian soil; the last of that succession of national thanksgivings, which begin with the victory of the Don and the flight of Tamerlane, and end with the victory of the Beresina and the flight of Napoleon. 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' This is the lesson appointed for the services of that day. 'There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity. Look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.' Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church, pp. 277, 278. References. XXI. 25, 26. O. Heagle, That Blessed Hope, p. 78. XXI. 27. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 193. XXI. 27, 32. W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 187. Law and Love Luke 21:28 Consider two subjects suggested by our Lord's words: (1) The seriousness of life; (2) the survival of the spiritual. I. The seriousness of life. Many most of us live on the surface of things. Life in these modern days has been made so secure that we have forgotten danger. And yet we are often reminded amid what forces we move. Fires, earthquakes, pestilence lie slumbering around. The laws of nature are unalterable; where cause is, effect must follow. In the spiritual as in the natural world cause and effect are tied together. Seriousness is not gloom. It has been well said that only the serious know the meaning of joy. II. The survival of the spiritual. Material things are constantly showing themselves to be transient. But the spiritual things the unseen bonds which bind man to man and men to God remain. God speaks in power. It may be the hour of our redemption from the blind pursuit of material things. Those who look up listen and want to have love. S. A. Barnett, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xvi. p. 48. Luke 21:28 The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas! the New appeal's not in its stead; the Time is still in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations, and amid the sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness and long watching till it be morning. The voice even of the faithful can but exclaim: 'As yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night: birds of darkness are on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead walk, the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn!' So Carlyle, in the 'Characteristics' essay, in which he subsequently adds: 'Deep and sad as is our feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful Night; equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that the Morning also will not fail. Nay, already, as we look around, streaks of a dayspring are in the east; it is dawning; when the time shall be fulfilled, it will be day.' Earth we have, and all its produce (moving from the first appearance, and the hope with infants' eyes, through the bloom of beauty's promise, to the rich and bright fulfilment, and the falling back to rest); sea we have (with all its wonder shed on eyes, and ears, and heart; and the thought of something more) but without the sky to look at, what would earth and sea and even our own selves be to us? Do we look at earth with hope? Yes, for victuals only. Do we look at sea for hope? Yes, that we may escape it. At the sky above (though questioned with the doubts of sunshine, or scattered with uncertain stars), at the sky alone we look, with pure hope and with memory. R. D. Blackmore, in * Lorna Doone. * References. XXI. 28. C. Bradley, Faithful Teaching, p. 69. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 300. XXI. 28-31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2496. Luke 21:33 The new commandment to love one another; the recognition that the greatest are those who serve, not who are served by, others; the reverence for the weak and humble, which is the foundation of chivalry, they, and not the strong, being pointed out as having the first place in God's regard, and the first claim on their fellow-men; the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan; that of 'He who is without sin, let him throw the first stone'; the precept of doing as we would be done by; and such other noble moralities as are to be found, mixed with some poetical exaggerations, and some maxims of which it is difficult to ascertain the precise object; in the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth: these are surely in sufficient harmony with the intellect and feelings of every good man or woman to be in no danger of being let go, after having been once acknowledged as the creed of the best and foremost portion of our species. There will be, as there have been, shortcomings enough for a long time to come in acting on them; but that they should be forgotten, or cease to be operative on the human conscience, while human beings remain civilised or cultivated, may be pronounced, once for all, impossible. John Stuart Mill. References. XXI. 33 Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2636. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 20. J. Jones, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 224. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 15. R. Allen, The Words of Christ, p. 1. T. D. Barlow, Rays from the Sun of Righteousness, p. 88. J. C. M. Bellew, Christ in Life: Life in Christ, p. 194. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading (2nd Series), p. 1. Luke 21:34 Here is the fear: 'Lest at any time' the day shall come upon us when we are not prepared for it, which at some time will come upon us most certainly: 'lest at any time' the cry shall be made 'behold the Bridegroom cometh,' go ye out to meet Him, and we shall find that our lamps are gone out; 'lest at any time' we shall be hurried into the presence of the king and not have had time to put on the wedding garment. I. 'Lest at any time.' But what then? What are we to do? What comes before this? Hear our Lord's words. 'Take heed to yourselves.' That is to be our great business, continually to watch, perpetually to take care. And it is 'Take heed to yourselves '. No one can do it for us, we must set about it for ourselves. II. Is it very wearisome to watch? So it is. But better to be weary with watching than to be drowsy and to be lost. Hear a little story. Some English sailors went on expedition into a cold, frozen country, where the frost is bitter beyond any that we have here. A doctor was with them, who said, 'I am used to this. You are not. Let me tell you one thing. Probably one or more of you will be sleepy with cold and will ask to lie down. If any man lies down to sleep, he will never wake again in this world. It is the first sign of being frozen to death. The rest of you must push him on, drive him on, goad him on, if it be necessary; but, as you value his life, do not let him lie down.' Well, they went on; and who should be the first that complained of sleepiness but the doctor himself! 'Let me lie down only for two minutes,' he said, 'I shall be rested directly only a few minutes' sleep and I shall be refreshed.' 'No, no,' they cried, 'you yourself told us of the danger; we will not allow it; we will prick you on with our swords, if it be necessary, but lie down you shall not' They went on, and the doctor lived to thank them for remembering his words. So it is with us; if we lie down, that is, if we are careless and take our ease in this world, we are lost; 'therefore, let us not sleep, as do others, but let us watch and be sober'. III. 'Lest at any time.' But there is a world where we shall have no cause to say this. There can be no 'lest at any time' in heaven. There, danger is over. 'There,' as the prophet says, 'we may lie down and none shall make us afraid.' There need be no watching there. The sheep there are in a fold, into which none can come to do them harm. J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 108. Luke 21:34 'Observance, loyal concurrence in some high purpose for him, patient waiting on the hand one might miss in the darkness, with the gift or gifts therein of which he had the presentiment, and upon the due acceptance of which the true fortune of life would turn; these,' says Mr. Pater, in his romance of Gaston de Latour, 'were the hereditary traits awake in Gaston, as he lay awake in the absolute, moonlit stillness.' Luke 21:34 The fighter for conquering is the one who can last and has the open brain; and there you have a point against alcohol. George Meredith. I hear the voice of my God commanding, Let not your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness. Drunkenness is far from me; Thou wilt have mercy, that it come not near me. But full feeding sometimes creepeth on Thy servant: Thou wilt have mercy, that it may be far from me. Augustine. References. XXI. 34. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 275; ibid. vol. vii. p. 109. XXI. 34-36. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 74. Luke 21:36 The command of the New Testament, Watch that ye may be counted worthy to stand before the Son of man, put into other words, what is it? It is this: 'So live, as to be worthy of that high and true ideal of man and of man's life, which shall be at last victorious.' All the future is there. Matthew Arnold. References. XXI. 36. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 77. XXI. 37. J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p. 11. XXI. 37, 38. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 225; ibid. (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 172. XXI. 38. Ibid. p. 171. XXI. 41. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 312. XXI. 45, 46. J. Keble, Sermons far the Holy Week, p. 46. XXII. 3. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 437. XXII. 4. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 105. XXII. 5. Ibid. vol. i. p. 195. XXII. 7-20. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 211. XXII. 11. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 141. XXII. 14. J. Bannerman, Sermons, p. 153. XXII. 14-30. F. B. Meyer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 382. Sacramental Thoughts Luke 22:15 It seems almost unjust to these words to speak them loudly. Oh, that we had the power to whisper into the most distant, ear without raising the voice at all! There are far-reaching whispers. The Holy Spirit may now take up our poor weakness and whisper to each listening soul this mournful but most thrilling text. We cannot get rid of the blood-shedding, because it was Jesus Himself who told us about the blood, and His own blood, and why it was shed, and for whom it was shed. That is the simple scene. I. Let us notice, first, that it was all of Christ's own suggestion. The disciples suggested nothing they were wise. Who would offer suggestions to the Eternal? It was Christ that said, Let us make a bigger and greater passover than the one that has been celebrated outside, let us have an inner and spiritual passover, let us get at the reality and the true music of the passover historic, let us dwell in the secret places of the tabernacles of the Most High. Everything is of Christ's suggestion, if we could but hold ourselves and not deafen ourselves with our own noises. The morning is a sacrament, and the evening star, and all growing things, and all things beautiful and living. Oh, how they do err, with such strange obliquity amounting almost to criminality, who have made this dear table now standing before us into something of a priestly kind! I love the white cloth. It has a symbolic meaning, and I love the redness of the cup, because it does suggest the redness of blood; the bread is the staff of life Oh, give it to me, and let me eat it as my Lord's body! This was not an afterthought; this is not an anecdote in a history of surprises: the tree out of which the sacramental board was cut was growing before the forests were planted. This is the voice of eternity; this is the vision of things ineffable. II. Then notice that all this was done in anticipation of the death. I repeat, this is not the general order. It was, however, Christ's order, and that is enough for us. Have we seen the picture in its vivid and impressive reality? Here is a Man celebrating his own death, doing something on the way to the final excruciating agony. Christ established a great preventive ministry, a great ministry that outran events and waited for them. He gave His followers bread lest they should faint by the way. III. Now my Lord speaks a word which is seldom quoted, and which ought to rule the administration of the whole feast, when we come together in one place for one purpose. What said He? 'Take this, and divide it among- yourselves. Was He ever so simple, was He ever so little mechanical? This was a mutual feast, a mutual covenant-making. Take this cup, take this bread, and divide it among yourselves, and you will find, what I showed you a little while ago, that you can never give the bread all away, and you can never empty the chalice. Such simple things the Lord gave us. He said in reality, If you want to outdress Solomon cover yourselves with lilies no, take one white-faced lily, and Solomon will be ashamed of his finery, if it be a question of competition, rivalry, and social envy. And now He says, the supper being ended, 'This is My body, and My blood'. There are people who wish to understand it. It never can be understood; no man can enter the kingdom of heaven by understanding it. He may think he has some initial notion of the meaning, and he will feel a strange warming of the heart, quite a glow in the innermost places of the soul, but he can never tell it in words; and yet some people have taken brush and paint and colour and have written what they believe, they have detailed their faith into a catalogue. Believest thou? The act is one, thrilling, consummating, self-attesting. God answers by fire. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vi. p. 136. References. XXII. 15. H. D. M. Spence, Voices and Silences, p. 235. J. Keble, Miscellaneous Sermons, p. 498. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 90; ibid. vol. x. p. 250. Christ Giving Thanks At the Supper Table Luke 22:17 Let us remember how Jesus came to be engaged at this time as He was. The occasion of His instituting the rite which was to keep His memory fresh in the hearts of His followers was the observance of the most sacred of Jewish usages. No service outside the Temple ritual was so full or detailed as this; and amongst that little company, as in all the homes of the city that night, the unleavened cakes had been broken, the bitter herbs partaken of, and the cups raised, the prayers offered, and the Hallel sung, as had been done at the same annual season from time immemorial. But of all this we have here scarcely a trace. In the view of the writers of the Gospels all that had passed away, had been overlaid and obliterated by more sacred associations still. Nevertheless and the more just on this account it is needful to remember that the new was attached to the old, was its lineal descendant, and inherited various of its features. I. Thus with regard to this giving of thanks; it appears in our Christian Sacrament, but it was a feature of the earlier ordinance also. At a certain point, towards the close of the ceremony, the cup was raised, and what was of the nature of a grace before meat was said in acknowledgment of the bounty of the Giver of all good. So that we have the example of Jesus Christ for what is amongst the most ordinary of the religious acts of our lives. It is characteristic of true religion not to ignore the Divine aspect of common things, but to seize upon it, and to dwell with relish upon their spiritual significance. II. The ordinance He and the rest were engaged in celebrating was commemorative of the past, of those great events and experiences in which the history of the Chosen People had had its origin, and the entire ritual was full of reminiscences of these things. We are free to say that, besides what we have pointed out, that thanksgiving included a devout and adoring acknowledgment of the purpose of God's grace towards His people, which in these early days had been embodied in so express a deliverance from outward oppression, and which was waiting a fuller accomplishment on a more wonderful scale and after a more wonderful manner still. III. And further I cannot but think that there was included in this act of praise something in respect of which He drew from His own heart alone. It does not do justice to the Spirit of Jesus to say that notwithstanding His own suffering share in it He rejoiced that the Father's will was being brought to fulfilment. It was not in spite of the part He was to play in it that He rejoiced, but in a certain strange way because of it. For this also He gave thanks: 'I delight to do Thy will, O My God: Thy law is within My heart.' A. Martin, Winning the Soul, p. 299. Reference. XXII. 17-20. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 243. The Demand of Christ Luke 22:19 I. Notice Christ's longing to live in our memory. Love cannot bear to be forgotten. The heart would fain be solaced ere it ceases to beat by the assurance that its dear ones will turn with pensive pleasure to the pale shadow of the days that are no more. II. Notice too Christ's lofty consciousness of His place in the world's history. He speaks not to a generation but to all time and all the world, and claims their remembrance. III. Notice Christ witnessing to His death as the centre point of His work. IV. Notice Christ's requirement of personal attachment to Him as true religion. He demands loving remembrance. He has remembered us, and shall we forget Him; He has given us everything, He asks only for our love; He has poured out His blood and He beseeches us that we despise it not. How blessed are they to whom the memory is full of Jesus! A. Maclaren. Luke 22:19 Carlyle, summing up the theatrical displays of the French Revolutionaries at Lyons and elsewhere ( French Revolution, vol. ii. bk. i. ix.), reflects: 'How true also, once more, that no man or Nation of men, conscious of doing a great thing, was ever, in that thing, doing other than a small one! O Champ-de-Mars Federation, with three hundred drummers, twelve hundred wind-musicians, and artillery planted on height after height to boom the tidings of it all over France, in few minutes! Could no Atheist-Naigeon contrive to discern, eighteen centuries off, those Thirteen most poor mean-dressed men, at frugal Supper, in a mean Jewish dwelling, with no symbol but hearts god-initiated into the "Divine depth of Sorrow," and a Do this in remembrance of Me; and so cease that small difficult crowing of his, if he were not doomed to it?' References. XXII. 19. E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 253. H. Bell, Sermons on Holy Communion, p. 1. C. Stanford, The Evening of Our Lord's Ministry, p. 52. E. S. Talbot, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 342. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2038. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 120. XXII. 19, 20. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 465. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. pp. 70, 77; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 379. XXII. 20. A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, p. 180. The Hidden Life (For St. Bartholomew's Day) Luke 22:24 We know almost nothing of St. Bartholomew. His saintly life was hidden in the knowledge of his Lord, and we may believe that he was content to have it so. There was a time when he was found disputing with the others which of them was the greatest a sin which he would have looked back upon with shame and sorrow. What though our life is unknown amongst men, if it is hidden with Christ in God? I. Temptation to become Notorious. Yet our conscience tells us that perhaps this temptation to have our name known, to have our good works applauded before the public, is a temptation that is very real. Over how many of our churches, and our gatherings of Church workers; over how many of our guilds and societies, where Christians meet together, is there not good reason to say, 'And there was also a strife among them which of them should be accounted greatest?' We are so human. Yet if our work is done because we wish to stand well with our clergy, or because it brings us into a certain prominence, or because we seek praise from human lips, then it is time for us to stop and consider our position. II. Is our Life hid with Christ in God? Are we content to let the world go by? If so, happy indeed are we. When we are quite alone and no human eye can see or lip can praise, we do sometimes fall down and pray long and pray earnestly. A life hid with Christ in God, that is grander than anything that the world can give. So St. Bartholomew found it, and so may we. What Unites to Christ? Luke 22:24 I. Faith and Love to Jesus, not knowledge nor perfectness, unite us to Him. II. The faith which unites us with Christ may co-exist with much imperfection. III. Notice the Lord's demeanour as the exhibition of the principle that Christ bears with and cleanses those who love Him. IV. Partial faith will go on to perfection. A. Maclaren. References. XXII. 24. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 236. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 129. XXII. 24, 25. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 296. XXII. 24-37. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 217. XXII. 25. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 84. XXII. 25, 26. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p. 219. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 224. XXII. 27. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Under the Dome, p. 99. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 319. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp. 64 and 70. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2514. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 25; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 105. XXII. 28. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 231. XXII. 28-30. F. B. Meyer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 72. XXII. 29. J. Eames, Sermons to Boys and Girls, p. 75. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 355. XXII. 29, 30. Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 129. XXII. 30. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 279. Luke 22:31 Now, about a week or fortnight after this, I was much followed by this Scripture, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you. And sometimes it would sound so loud within me, yea, and as it were call so strongly after me, that once above all the rest, I turned my head over my shoulder, thinking verily that some man had, behind me, called me: being at a great distance, methought he called so loud. It came, as I have thought since, to have stirred me up to prayer and to watchfulness; it came to acquaint me that a cloud and storm was coming down upon me; but I understood it not. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, sec. 93. References. XXII. 31. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 289. E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son, and other Sermons, p. 161. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 238. Strengthen the Brethren Luke 22:31-32 It is, I suppose, hardly possible to imagine a greater contrast in history than the two scenes presented to our minds as these words are read out as our text to-night. Our Lord Jesus Christ and His little band of disciples met together in a small province of the Roman Empire, insignificant, unknown, on the brink of a dread, mysterious separation; and, on the other hand, the enthusiastic band of Church workers gathered together from all parts of this great diocese, in a cathedral planted in the very heart of the busiest city of the world, members of a Church which bears not only the name of national, but which represents in a very real sense the witness, the fortunes, and the characteristics of the widespread and progressive Anglo-Saxon race; a body of Church-workers who, with a long history and deep spiritual experience behind them, are in no dread of separation from their Lord, but rejoice in permanent communion with Him in prayer, in worship, in sacrament. And yet, though that is true, as we read our Lord's words to St. Peter, perhaps for the thousandth time, how fresh and vivid they seem, how true they are for all time. I. What is life, as we have known it so far, but a sifting by the enemy? The Tempter desires to have us. He tries every ingenious device to induce the enlisted soldier to depart from his allegiance. What a discipline it is, this sifting that we receive from the hands of the enemy! How good for us! How impossible it is to be a hypocrite, especially, I imagine, in the struggle of this great city! We find out whether our faith will stand attack, whether our lives will bear inspection at close quarters. We cannot be too thankful for the enemy. He makes it impossible for us to live in a fool's paradise. We cannot, for instance, when He is dealing freely with us, imagine that we are really Christians if we are not working desperately hard for Christ. II. There is a good side to having to fight for your Christianity. But the real danger is lest our faith should fail. Our Blessed Lord knew that would be the danger with St. Peter: twelve ignorant and unlearned men against Greek philosophy, the Jewish hierarchy, and the Roman Empire. And that is the danger with us. The problems are so vast, they are so complicated. If things are better in one way they get worse in another. There are so many contradictory remedies; there are such divisions, alas! even amongst Christians. There are voices, insistent voices, which say, 'Your Christian remedy has been tried and it is a failure'. There are men who prophesy new worlds for old; and, so far as I can make out, the new are more heartless, more dismal, and more forlorn a great deal than the old. Men feel the pressure of these tremendous tasks more perhaps in South London than anywhere else. Nowhere is it more necessary to call up to memory our Lord's words, 'I have prayed for thee, I have made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not'. The personal Christ, with His individual call and His prayer for each one of us that is our only hope now as then. III. And then we read that our Lord turned from the individual life, its call, its conflict, its discipline, its faith, to the place of the individual in the corporate life. There is nothing, surely, which so stamps the teaching of our Lord as Divine as the natural, confident way in which He is always able to turn from one side of the truth to the other, giving its full weight to both, and holding both in due proportion. The best of His followers, alas! except on very rare occasions, did not get further than exaggerating the one side of the truth to the depreciation of the other. Here we have in one verse the most distinctive singling out of the apostle, the leader, the one man, the one soul, and then the placing it the polished, chiselled, shining jewel in its setting in the diadem: the disciplined, the trained worker in his place in the Church. And do thou, when once thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren, stablish thy brethren, place them on firm ground. L. H. Burrows (Bishop of Lewes), Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxviii. p. 317. References. XXII. 31, 32. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. i. p. 389. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 114. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 181. C. Bradley, The Christian Life, p. 410. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 204 XXII. 31-34. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 1. Luke 22:32 Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their mistake. George Eliot. When thou art converted [or hast turned, R.V.], strengthen thy brethren. But first, * the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. * Pascal. References. XXII. 32. A. Shepherd, The Gospel and Social Questions, p. 147. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 296. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 233. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 92. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2035, and vol. xlv. No. 2620. A. Maclaren. Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 240. Luke 22:34 You know the Liar; you must have seen him diminishing, until he has become a face without features, withdrawn to humanity's preliminary sketch (some half-dozen frayed threads of woeful outline on our original tapestry-web); and he who did the easiest of things, he must from such time sweat in being the prodigy of inventive nimbleness, up to the day when he propitiates Truth by telling it again. George Meredith. References. XXII. 34. Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p. 471. XXII. 35. Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p. 979. XXII. 35, 36. Newman Smyth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 283. XXII. 36. C. S. Home, London Signal, No. 36, p. 1. XXII. 37. John Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p. 75. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 369. XXII. 39, 40. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 114. XXII. 39-46. J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p. 177. XXII. 39-53. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 247. Luke 22:40 Truly this thing is to this day of such weight and awe upon me, that I dare not, when I come before the Lord, go off my knees until I entreat Him for help and mercy against the temptations that are to come. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, sec. 239. References. XXII. 41-43. R. Higinbotham, Sermons, p. 149. XXII. 41-44. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p. 83. Luke 22:42 My man, dare to look up to God and say: Deal with me henceforth as Thou wilt. I am of Thy mind. I am Thine. I refuse nothing that pleases Thee. Lead me where Thou wilt. Epictetus, Diss. 11. 16. In one of Harriet Martineau's tales a mother says to her son: 'They soon had a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel the pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in their hearts'. References. XXII. 42. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 525. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 204. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 120. XXII. 43. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2769. XXII. 43, 44. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. pp. 405, 421. Luke 22:44 Labour, wide as Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroines, Martyrdoms up to that 'agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called divine! Carlyle, * Past and Present. * References. XXII. 44. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 184. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 195. J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son, p. 153. H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation, p. 198. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 493 and vol. xx. No. 1199. Luke 22:45 In his funeral sermon for Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury, Jeremy Taylor used these words: 'As the Apostles in the vespers of Christ's passion, so he, in the eve of his own dissolution, was heavy not to sleep, but heavy unto death; and looked for the last warning, which seized on him in the midst of business; and though it was sudden, yet it could not be unexpected or unprovided by surprise, and therefore could be no other than that εὐθανασία , which Augustus used to wish unto himself, a civil and well-natured death, without the amazement of troublesome circumstances, or the great cracks of a falling house, or the convulsions of impatience.' References. XXII. 45. G. Matheson, Scottish Review, vol. ii. p. 384. XXII. 46. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 431. XXII. 47. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 227. XXII. 47-48. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. pp. 163 and 174. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 494. Luke 22:48 Hypocrisy, the deadly crime which, like Judas, kisses Hell at the lips of Redemption. Coleridge. References. XXII. 48. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 199. C. Bosanquet, The Consoler and the Sufferer, p. 146. Luke 22:49 Saint Peter asked permission to strike Malchus, and struck before having the answer; Jesus Christ answered afterwards. Pascal. Reference. XXII. 49. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 73. Luke 22:50 If the sword turns preacher, and dictates propositions by empire instead of arguments, and engraves them in men's hearts with a poniard, it must needs be unsafe to try the spirits, to try all things, to make inquiry.... This is inordination of zeal; for Christ, by reproving St. Peter drawing his sword even in the cause of Christ, for his sacred and yet injured person, teaches us not to use the sword, though in the cause of God, or for God Himself. Jeremy Taylor. Reference. XXII. 51. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 114. A Transient Hour Luke 22:53 Their hour appropriate for their deeds: the hour in which they had it all their own way. But even in the very expression there lies concealed the ideas: I. Of their apparent triumph being permitted them by Divine decree. II. Of the brevity of their triumph. The hour seems to be yours. But tomorrow is mine. III. The transiency of the antagonistic forces that resist Christ. A. Maclaren. References. XXII. 53. H. H. Almond, Sermons by a Lay Head Master, p. 253. Expositor (5th Series) vol. v. p. 106. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 254. Peter's Denial Luke 22:54-62 Why does Christ turn as they lead Him to the guardroom, and gaze into the lights and shadows of the court? 'And the Lord turned and looked on Peter.' For one brief instant their eyes met. And if ever, since man was man, there was life in a look, there was life for Peter in that look of Jesus. I. For in the first place it brought back all the past The Lord looked and Peter remembered. There are some hours when we forget everything. There are seasons of crisis, there are times of panic, when all that a man has won seems to be blotted out, and he descends to the level of the beasts again. So all the past was swept from Peter's memory as he went headlong downward to the mire. But sometimes in a shipwreck when men are panic-stricken, the touch of a hand will bring them to themselves. And sometimes in a fire, when women are beside themselves, the cry of a child will quiet them again. So Peter, panic-stricken and beside himself, had one look from Christ, and it brought back all the past to him. II. But there was more than memory in that look of Jesus. It was a look of unutterable tenderness. There come some moments in the education of the soul when the strongest power in heaven or earth is tenderness. A harsh word and the spring clicks the heart is shut. A gentle word and heaven is in the eyes. The Lord turned with never a chiding word and looked on Peter, and the look was so full of pity and of yearning, so full of pain and yet so full of hope, that it broke Peter's heart, and breaking, saved it, and like a summer tempest came his tears. III. And that look in the High Priest's court was the last look that Peter had from Jesus before Calvary. They never met again before the cross. When Jesus was crucified, Peter was not there. But on the third day, when Jesus rose, do you remember His commission to the angels? 'Go, tell the disciples and Peter that He is risen from the dead.' Tell the disciples and Peter then Christ's first thought on rising was of Peter. And who can tell what hopes went thrilling in the heart of Peter as he heard of the Lord's singling out of him. Then came that memorable morning by the Sea of Galilee, and the thrice-repeated question, Lovest thou Me? And Peter found how full was Christ's forgiveness when Christ commanded him to feed His sheep. G. H. Morrison, Eden and Gethsemane, p. 93. References. XXII. 54-62. G. Jackson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 284. XXII. 54-71. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 264. XXII. 60-62. W. Brock, Repentance, False and True, p. 32. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2034. Simon Peter Luke 22:61 It is very easy to underrate the character of Simon Peter; it is very easy for us to adopt a superior kind of air, and criticise him as if we should have done so very much better in his place. I. Let us first then look at his virtues. What did Jesus have in Peter which made Him undoubtedly love him very much, trust him very much, and allow him constantly to be the leader and spokesman of the rest? (1) He had first a man of undoubted personal loyalty. (2) He had in him a friend of undoubted courage. (3) Jesus had in this friend of His a quick and apt pupil. II. Are we quite sure, before we go on to think of Peter's faults, that we have his virtues? (1) Have we got that touching sense of personal devotion? (2) Or, again, take his courage. (3) Or, again, are we apt pupils? III. Face the sad question why a man who had all this could have failed as Peter did at the crucial point. (1) First, no doubt, from his besetting sin of self-confidence. (2) And side by side with that, as always happens, went his dread of adverse criticism. (3) And so, from his self-confidence, the brave man became a coward. IV. Now, the advantage of Peter's story is that it preaches itself. (1) Few of us have to look far for the fault of egotism. What is the figure which rises most often before the horizon of your mind? Is it not the image of yourself, rich, or famous, or universally popular? (2) Does not this same self-love often make us very sensitive as to what people say? (3) It unfits us to stand alone. V. But there is just time to look for our comfort at the beautiful finish of the story. Notice (1) How humbly he answers back when Christ in His mercy gave him his second trust: 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?' He asserts nothing, boasts nothing: he uses the less strong word for love in his reply than his Lord had used, 'Thou knowest that I love Thee'. (2) Notice the power he became when he was trained at last to trust to the Holy Spirit and not to himself. (3) Notice the unflinching courage with which he went alone to death. It gives us a hope that it is not too late for any of us to pass from egotistical, weak, and undecided disciples into humble and decided men of God. Bishop Winnington- Ingram, Christ and His Friends, p. 39. The Look of Christ (For St. Peter's Day) Luke 22:61 With that look St. Peter's penitence begins. It was not with him a first repentance. It was restoration; a recovery from a fall. 'Conversion' certainly it was, for Christ calls it so 'When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren'. But conversion in the sense in which we all want to be converted every day of our lives a turning round; a coming back from a wandering and a separation. I. It was the Penitence of a Fallen Believer. The 'cock' had just 'crowed twice,' and St. Peter, according to tradition, had just denied his Master three times. St. Peter's fall had been very gradual. First, as always, came the pride of self-confidence a feeling of superiority to other men: 'Though all men be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended'. 'Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee.' And with it there was the putting aside of a kind and needful warning. Then came the rashness of undisciplined zeal. And then the reaction, the reaction which always comes at the dread of cowardice. Then the running into danger with unguarded and indolent mind. Then the fear of man. Then the hasty speech. Then the climax and the wretched baseness, thrice repeated, though each time more reckless and more violent and unfaithful to Him to whom he owed every joy and every hope of his soul. Then cursing and swearing! And then treachery and lies! Oh, how deep the precipices of our grandest heights! How tremendous the temptations of saints! How mean the defeats of the bravest heroes! How awful the sins of Christians! See St. Peter at that moment. He stood in the presence of his outraged Master and his insulted Friend, a dastard at heart, a traitor before men to his Master's cause: 'And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter'. II. What a Delicate and Sensitive Thing is Memory! We all have found that a touch will awaken it. A breath, an accent, a flower, a scene. And it is one of the best offices of the Holy Spirit to stir up and strengthen memory. Where would many of our holiest memories be but for this? And is it not very often He who gives the power to those little things to wake the sleeping memories? No wonder that the eye of Jesus woke the half-slumbering affection of the disciple whom Satan had too truly as Jesus told him 'sifted as wheat'. I say half-slumbering never quite asleep! Had it altogether slept, had love ceased in that heart, how would he have known that Jesus was looking? Would his eye have met his Master's eye? Oh, strange fascination! St. Peter, in the depths of his sin, was looking at Jesus! That 'look' was enough. It was all-eloquent, needing nor word, nor act, it went straight to St. Peter's soul. The past all lived again, and, in sad contrast, the bad, the bitter present. 'And he went out' Was it that he could not trust himself another moment in that place? Was it to seek for John? Was it that there were feelings too deep and sacred for public gaze? Was it to pray? 'Peter went out, and wept bitterly.' III. Another Scene. St. Peter is once more restored. Christ, for the first time, alluded to his fall. But how delicate, with what a touch of sadness, with what a gush of affection, with what faithfulness to the sin, going to its very root: 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?' There is the point. Have you shown your love? Was it so superior? Was it real? Would you now say, 'Though all men should be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended?' Every word told, and every word did its intended work. There were no more comparisons. There is a manifest modesty. And there is the testimony of a clear conscience, a love simple and sincere. 'Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.' IV. How well St. Peter Fulfilled the High Trust Committed to Him how he fed Christ's lambs; how he tended the flock; how characteristically he 'strengthened his brethren'; how he endured the confinement and the shame assigned to him; how he bore himself in persecution, even to the death; how, if tradition is true, feeling himself unworthy even to follow his Master's dying, he begged to be crucified on an inverted cross; how patient, how self-restrained, how calm in energy, how holy, how bold, how honoured, and yet how humble Peter was; how he uses all his experience of sin and pardon and sorrow and comfort for others' good, and how he always magnified his dear Master only, let the Acts of the Apostles, let his own most strengthening, feeding epistles, let early Church history testify. There never was such an instance, so teaching, so comforting to any of us, how a besetting sin may all turn to grace; how what was wrong in nature may by Divine power be all sanctified to the greater usefulness and the higher attainment in the Christian life. But he owed it all, where we must owe it all, to the marvellous way in which Christ acts with penitents; to His jealous care of His own fallen ones; to His unwearied patience and His unswerving faithfulness. The Lord's Look Luke 22:61 I. The Lord's Look. Has there ever been a painter who had genius enough it would have to be genius direct from heaven to paint the look that Christ cast upon St. Peter? There would be, at least, three things in that look sorrow, love, and encouragement. Sorrow that St. Peter, after his promise 'I am ready to go with Thee both to prison and to death,' should prove so sorry a coward. And love a love so great, so strong, that it cannot be quenched even by a denial such as this. And encouragement 'I have prayed for thee'. Has there ever been a poet the man who is supposed to know most about the human heart who could write down on paper what St. Peter must have felt when the Lord turned and looked upon him? II. The Denial. Now what is the use of a story like this? You say, if I had been in St. Peter's place I should not have acted as he did. But you are not in St. Peter's place: you are here. St. Peter denied Christ. Do we ever deny Christ today? Every time we do Christ turns and looks upon us. On the first Good Friday, Pontius Pilate asked the question: 'Which do you choose, Jesus or Barabbas'. Which do you choose today? It is no good just saying you choose Christ. It is so easy to say it. There were men who called out one day, 'Hosannah! Hosannah!' and a few days after, just as cheerily cried, 'Crucify Him! Crucify Him!' With all of us who make the chief aim of our life other than this trying to become perfect like God it is a choosing of Barabbas, it is a denying of Christ. That same Christ turns and looks upon us as He looked upon Peter of old. III. The Right Choice. If we only all chose Christ, what a bringing down of that great city the Holy Jerusalem out of heaven there would be! And when we do so choose Him, the Lord turns and looks upon us; but the look is altered. It is no longer a sad one; it is a glad one. We say we love Christ. Do we not want to make Him glad? And so, when the great question is put to us and it is always being put, every day 'Are you this man's disciple?' we will turn a deaf ear to our passions which urge us to deny the Master, and range ourselves bravely on the side of Christ, calling upon our great Elder Brother to help us to make our lives worthy of the children of the Father which is in heaven. References. XXII. 61. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, pp. 270 and 281. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 270. Penitence Luke 22:61-62 We find here four outstanding characteristics of the state of penitence: I. It is a Divine thing. It began with God. Peter did not turn. But 'the Lord turned and looked upon Peter'. Now the result of this distinction is this: that there are two kinds of sorrow for sin. And these are different in their origin, in their religious value, and in their influence on our life. (1) The commoner kind is when a man does wrong, and, in the ordinary sense of the word, is sorry that he has done it. But it is no true sorrow for sin. It is sorrow that we were weak enough to sin. (2) Contrast with such a penitence the publican's prayer of penitence in the temple. It was no chagrin nor wounded pride with him. The difference between the publican's penitence and the first-named sorrow is just the difference between the Divine and the human. The one is God turning and looking upon man, the other is man turning and looking upon himself. II. But now, secondly, we come to the sensitiveness of penitence. There is nothing more sensitive in all the world than a human soul which has once been quickened into its delicate life by the touch of the Divine. Men seldom estimate aright the exquisite beauty and tenderness of a sinner's heart. There is a text in the Psalms which uses the strange expression, the gentleness of God. Coarse treatment never wins souls. Here, then, are two great lessons the gentleness of God, and the gentleness of the soul the one as Divine a marvel as the other. III. We learn from Peter's recovery that spiritual experience is intense. Peter wept bitterly. And this short sentence for ever settles the question of emotion in religion. Every sin that was ever done demands a bitter penitence. And if there is little emotion in a man's religion, it is because there is little introspection. Religion without emotion is religion without reflection. IV. l'enitence is a lonely thing. Peter went out. Men know two kinds of loneliness, it has been said a loneliness of space and a loneliness of spirit. Peter's was loneliness of spirit. But what gave the beauty to Peter's loneliness was this that he took God's time to be alone. Peter's penitence was not only an intense thing and a lonely thing, it was an immediate thing. When God speaks He speaks so loud that all the voices of the world seem dumb. And yet when God speaks He speaks so softly that no one hears the whisper but yourself. Henry Drummond, The Ideal Life and other Addresses, p. 201. Luke 22:62 A great captain profits, we are told, by the mistakes of his enemy; he is yet greater who can profit fearlessly by his own. From Lady Dilke, * The Book of the Spiritual Life. * References. XXII. 61, 62. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 137. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 39. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2771. XXII. 63. H. H. Almond, Sermons by a Lay Head Master, p. 253. XXII. 63-65. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2825. Luke 22:65 Excepting in one word, the betrayal of Jesus, the defection of Peter, the examination before Pilate and Herod, and the crucifixion, are recorded, as Spedding notices, without any vituperation. The excepted word, not named by Spedding, is 'blasphemously' (Luke 22:65 ). Even this word disappears in the Revised Version, where the Greek is translated 'reviling Him'. Mark Rutherford. References. XXIII. 1-12. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 279. XXIII. 2. W. P. Balfern, Lessons from Jesus, p. 202. With Me in Paradise Luke 23:3 We have heard the first word of peace: the priestly intercession for the transgressors. Now we listen to the comfortable word that the Son of man addresses to one who truly turns to Him. There is a natural sequence: first the sinner, then the penitent The prayer of Christ is no sooner uttered than it begins to be answered. The firstfruits of the cross is the malefactor who hangs by Jesus' side. And the robber receives a message of peace. Christ's gift to him is the entire absolution of the penitent, the assurance of a speedy entrance into the Paradise of God, the pledge of fellowship in the joy of his Lord. The answer is the saving utterance of royal favour, of priestly power, of Divine peace: 'Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. It is absolution certain, immediate, complete. I. It is certain. 'Verily I say unto thee,' 'Amen, I say'. The words are familiar, to all readers of the Gospels, as Christ's accustomed phrase in declaring a truth of peculiar significance. The promise made to the dying thief is a revelation of the state of the blessed dead, for whose absolute reality Christ pledges His honour, His character, His truth. It is no statement of opinion, no expression of probability, no protestation of moral certainty that is here involved. 'Amen, I say,' is the ipse dixit of one who claims to know. In the awful moments, when amid the agonies of the cross the sands of life were fast running out, is it possible to account for the calm assurance of the meek, the gentle, the patient Son of man, as He not only accepts the homage of His fellow-sufferer, but accords to him a place of light and refreshment in the unseen world, if this word be not spoken out of that serene life of the Eternal, where there are no shadows? Let us thank God for the Amen of Calvary. 'Verily, verily I say unto you,' is not the teacher's trick of phrase, the unconscious exaggeration of the controversialist, the eager emphasis with which the preacher's enthusiasm marks his words. Such eloquence deserts the sufferer in the day of agony and the hour of death. It is the peace of an eternal certainty that breathes in the unfaltering pledge. 'Amen, I say unto thee.' II. The absolution is immediate. The robber had recognised the Messiah in the dying Jesus. But it was a far, indefinite future to which he looked forward. His was not the 'sure and certain hope' of the Christian. For the present all is over: a few hours and the curtain of night will cover up this earthly scene. And then ah, what? The terrors of death and judgment and, it may be far, far off, the coming of the kingdom. If only then, whensoever that kingdom come, the Messiah will not forget him! 'Remember me when thou comest in Thy kingdom.' 'And Jesus said unto him, Verily 1 say unto thee, Today.' Life is not the possibility of the remote future; forgiveness is an actual fact; salvation is a present power. 'He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life.' That is the law of absolution. 'Thy sins are forgiven.' 'To-day shalt thou be with Me.' III. The absolution is complete. 'With Me' full communion; 'in Paradise' eternal rest. J. G. Simpson, C hristus Crucifixus, p. 256. References. XXIII. 4. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 571. XXIII. 6-12. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p. 108. Herod the Tetrarch Luke 23:7-8 The student of the artless and strangely passionless story of the cross notices many marvellous things which escape the less observant reader. One of them is this. All the actors in the drama of the Gospel history seem to be compelled, as by an inexorable fate, to appear on the stage in the last scene of all. Sadducees and Pharisees, governors and priests, disciples who were loyal to Him and disciples who were base, men who loved Him secretly, and women whom nothing daunted all pass into His light, and in the passing receive their judgment. Here is Herod, who belonged to Galilee, who scorned Judæa, and detested the Jews, who was at enmity with Pilate, and yet 'he also was at Jerusalem at that time'. And here is Herod who had never seen Jesus, though with a vulgar curiosity he had often desired to see Him, who has had little to do with Jesus, though he had played his part in the Gospel story, and yet because Pilate, with the astuteness of the trained lawyer, saw his way of escape from being the judge of Jesus, under the plea that He 'belonged to Herod's jurisdiction,' Herod also is brought face to face with Jesus. He stands for only one half-hour in Christ's presence, but as he stands we see into his very soul. It is not the deaf conjunction of the writer of fiction not the artifice of discerning literature. It is the finger of God. I. Herod Antipas was one of the many sons of Herod the Great. That Herod was the man who murdered his wife who had sacrificed everything for him, and his two sons, who faithfully served him, and in his closing days lived in an atmosphere of jealous and vengeful blood-thirstiness. The massacre of the few innocents at Bethlehem was only a detail in a career of ruthless butchery. He was a man who could pretend to any religion, or make the more truthful profession of having none, as it best suited his purpose. But he professed the Jewish faith, and his children were trained in Hebrew learning. The Herodians were the party in the State who were willing to accept him as the promised King of Israel. Without committing ourselves to any confident conclusions as to the complex laws of heredity, we may allow that young Herod was not born in a saintly succession. Certainly he was weighted by tendencies in his blood, which would have made a holy life a sore struggle through all his years. Yet he reached manhood devoid of the tiger cruelty of his father; perhaps, by a natural reaction, revolting from it; open to suggestions of better things; at times moved by a dim vision of good. He was a type of young manhood very common among us. The hour of determination came to this young worldling as it comes to all. He had to accept his poor share of his father's dominions with unconcealed chagrin, as such a youth among us accepts the scanty provision of his father's will, but he had administered the affairs of Galilee with only the usual Oriental oppression. He married most suitably, and began to court the favour of Rome, building Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee as his capital. But in an evil hour his eyes fell upon his brother Philip's wife, Herodias. It was because this man had a burdened conscience that the religious revival, which was beating in so many young hearts in Galilee, became a thing of deep interest to him. It was because he had his uneasy spirit that he sought the companionship of so unlikely a court preacher as John. It was because he had his wounded spirit that he observed him, and did many things gladly, that he might get an anodyne for his pain. II. From a story like this, not only lessons of arresting import, but great spiritual truths shine in upon mind and heart. One truth and its lesson would I urge. It is this: that the moment of decision for Christ may be one in which no word of Him, no thought of Him, and not even His name shall be consciously in your mind. Herod Antipas never saw the face of Jesus until that last fruitless half-hour. Herod Antipas never heard His voice. Herod Antipas never had Christ preached to Him. No! but in the hour when he trifled with his convictions, in the hour when he chose to keep his braggart oath to Salome, the dancing-girl, in the hour when he made the decision which had its awful consequences he decided against Christ. He made that decision which ranked him with the men of pride and lust and murder, and when he comes into Christ's presence, the hall-mark of hell is on his face. The decision which determined his fate was made years before he saw the face of Jesus. It was too late then, Christ had no word for him. W. M. Clow, The Day of the Gross, p. 43. References. XXIII. 7. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 133. XXIII. 7-11. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 119. XXIII. 8. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, The Men who Crucify Christ, p. 29. XXIII. 8, 9. Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 171. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1645. Looking for the Wrong Thing Luke 23:8-11 Man is always fond of conjuring and frivolity and entertainment. He divides the word into many different meanings, parts of meanings and applications, but it all comes to the same thing, that man likes to see something, or kill something, or be amused by something, or be entertained in any way, the less costly the better. I. The case before us is that of Herod. When Pilate knew that Jesus Christ belonged to Herod's jurisdiction he was right glad of it, an immense burden of responsibility was taken off his shoulders. Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, who happened to be at Jerusalem at that time. Never was weary man more glad of unexpected rest than Pilate was when he heard that this illustrious but mysterious Prisoner belonged to some other man's jurisdiction. When Herod saw Jesus he was exceeding glad; it was in very deed the thing he had been waiting for day after day. Kings and rulers cannot rush into the streets to see all the irregular and eccentric characters which perplex the mind of the general populace; so they must have shows by command, and opportunities created by sovereign fiat or by personal charge. When Herod heard that Jesus Christ was actually in the house, he was not only glad, he was exceeding glad; for he was desirous to see Him of a long time, because he had heard many things of Him; he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him. A miracle all to oneself, a miracle at home, a domestic festival, an opportunity of seeing the Conjurer close at hand, and watching the cunning manipulation, tracing the action of every finger and marking well the expression of the eyes. This was Herod's opportunity. We all have that opportunity according to our varying conception of the term. When Herod saw Jesus he was exceeding glad. It is awful to think that a man may be interested in religion, and yet may be irreligious. There is an irreligious religion; there is an interest in piety which is impious. II. Jesus does not accept the glittering opportunity, He declines it; He walks on higher levels, He breathes a purer air. But surely Herod was a man worth placating? No. A man? an insect, a worm. In relation to the eternal God there is no man worth placating in the common vulgar sense of that term. The only man with whom Jesus Christ will speak is the man of a broken heart; a broken and a contrite spirit He will not despise. He who thinks he can do Christ a favour, in the sense of conferring a patronage, has not begun to understand even the outline of the infinite character of the Son of God. III. We get from Christ just what we bring to Him. If we bring a humble heart to Christ we receive a blessing; if we come behind Him and touch Him with the fingers of faith, then the wound is stanched and our youth is renewed. If we come saying, Lord, I am blind and poor and ignorant, what wouldst Thou have me do? teach me Thy will, O God, and give me grace and strength to obey it all; then Jesus Christ will hold the sun standing still, and the moon shall not depart from Ajalon till the great largess of His heart be poured out upon such suppliant penitence and sincerity. The proud He sendeth empty away. He has no message to pride. The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost; this Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them. He that is whole needeth not a physician, but he that is sick. Jesus Christ cured the sick, but He never cured a painted wound. The Son of man came to the sick, the afflicted, the sore of heart, but the proud, the respectable, the self-sufficing He sendeth empty away, and after them a wind of contempt. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 61. References. XXIII. 9. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 286. XXIII. 11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2051. W. H. Evans, Short Sermons for the Seasons, p. 67. J. Watson, The Inspiration of our Faith, p. 108. XXIII. 13-26. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 296. Luke 23:18 A passionate mob, with its unearthly admixture of laughter with fury, of vacancy with deadly concentration, is as terrible as some uncouth antediluvian, or the unfamiliar monsters of the sea, or one of the giant plants that make men shudder with mysterious fear. John Morley, Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 22. Thou shalt honour the right man, and not honour the wrong, under penalties of an alarming nature. Honour Barabbas, the Robber, thou shalt sell old clothes through the cities of the world: shalt accumulate sordid moneys, with a curse on every coin of them, and be spit upon for eighteen centuries. Carlyle. References. XXIII. 20, 21. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 70. XXIII. 20-25. C. Stanford, The Evening of our Lord's Ministry, p. 289. XXIII. 21. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Beading, p. 157. The Prevailing Voice Luke 23:23 Every man is, like Pilate, consciously or unconsciously shaping life and quality and destiny by obedience to some voice or other, and the far-reaching test to which each honest soul must apply himself is as to which voice really prevails in his life. To which does he give most diligent heed, and of which is he most afraid when the call to resistance is upon him? I. For there are clamant voices all round about us, keyed to many notes and loud in their call. Passion, pride, imagination, ambition are all appealed to in turn with varying degrees of strength, and it is a fact of experience that the voice to which obedience is given grows stronger, while simultaneously the remonstrating voice of conscience grows weaker and feebler. There is the voice of sin, too, that voice which speaks in solitariness, and appeals for that which conscience as instantly condemns. Its call is to a reckless disregard of consequence, and its influence is like that of some sensuous music which hypnotises the senses and makes the hearer an unresisting victim. Like the tiger which has tasted blood and is never again satisfied without it, so sin is relentless in its demands. It constantly cries out concerning Christ, 'Let Him be crucified,' and the man who yields, and allows its voice to prevail over his judgment, his conscience, and his heart, is lost indeed. II. In contest with all these voices seeking the attention and obedience of our hearts there ever sounds the voice of God, speaking in gentle insistence by Jesus Christ, 'Come' 'Follow' 'Abide'. His voice comes in differing ways and by various media, but is seldom unrecognised by the heart or unattested by the conscience. It sounds in sorrow's muffled peal as in the clash of joy-bells, and rings out in the darkness and in the sunlight alike. The fact that it has so often been unheeded, and that other voices have prevailed over it, never serves to change its entreaty or weaken its emphasis. And blessed is the man of whom it may be said with truth that 'His voice prevailed'. For this is indeed the record of eternal life, when one can say with the conviction borne of an indubitable experience, 'I heard the voice, I came to Jesus.' J. Stuart Holden, The Pre-Eminent Lord, p. 11. Reference. XXIII. 24. W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 287. Luke 23:26 Canon Carus tells how this verse proved a finger of light once to Simeon of Cambridge. 'At an early period of his ministry, and when he was suffering severe opposition, he was in much doubt whether it was his duty to remain in Cambridge.... He opened his little Greek Testament, as he thought and intended, in the Epistles, and, finding the book upside down, he discovered he was in the Gospels, and his finger on Luke xxiii. 26, "They laid hold on one Simon (Simeon), and on him they laid the cross," etc. "Then," said Mr. Simeon, "lay it on me, Lord, and I will bear it for Thy sake to the end of my life; and henceforth I bound persecution as a wreath of glory round my brow."' The incident is used also by Mr. Shorthouse in the second chapter of * Sir Percival. * References. XXIII. 26. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon-Sketches, p. 145. H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 242. The Women of Jerusalem Luke 23:27 The evangelist feels that these women are typical of universal womanhood, and that the act and words of Jesus reveal His mind. And so we find three things impressed upon us as we ponder the story. First, the moral and spiritual appeal Jesus makes to womanhood; second, His compassion for womanhood; and third, His message to womanhood. Let us take these in order. I. The Moral and Spiritual Appeal Jesus makes to Womanhood. It is a commonplace we should never be weary in repeating and rejoicing over, that between Jesus and women there was an instant and elective sympathy. Thrice only did any word of strong chiding fall from His lips upon a woman's ears. He hushed Mary's too eager prompting at the marriage feast; He reproached Martha for her needless worry for His comfort; and He rebuked the woman who was guilty of indelicate word and offensive cant when she cried, 'Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked'. But for the women who crowd the Gospel story He has, as a rule, no words but words of peace, and no deed but deeds of grace. The Gospel of Luke the Gospel of the human and domestic affections is more apt and eager to mark this innate sympathy than any other. As long as Jesus walks among the golden candlesticks, as long as He sits down among His worshipping people and makes the place of His feet glorious, as long as He is to be seen, in the visions of the sanctuary, walking in His ineffable holiness and speaking with His voice of pity as He passes to His cross, so long will women respond to His moral and spiritual appeal, and, wiser than the learned, proclaim Him Lord. II. His Compassion for Womanhood. Jesus did not disdain these women's tears. They were a solace in His loneliness and sorrow. But He could not suffer them to misinterpret His mind to the dull-minded mob. He was going to His cross in the high elation of His sinlessness, of His unfaltering faith, of His consecration, and of His spiritual desire for men. It is a needless sorrow to overmuch lament the wounds by which the hero wins his triumph, or to mark the way of victorious sacrifice by tears. 'Weep not for Me,' He calls, as He hushes the outburst of wailing. 'Behold the days are coming,' said Jesus to these daughters of Jerusalem. It may be they could as little understand His prophecy as could any of the blind Sadducees who chafed at this interruption in the progress to the cross. But He spoke through them to all generations, and proclaimed His Divine compassion for womanhood in all days that are to come. When a complex civilisation has gathered men and women into its overgrown cities, and compelled its toilers to work in close and dusty factories, at unwholesome trades, and among poisonous materials, has housed them in long lines of mean streets, and set them to eke out existence on a scanty wage, it is the women and children who faint and die under the travail. Who can walk the streets, who can listen to the sad histories of family life, who can witness the stern and losing battle with adverse circumstances, with its haunting fear of miserable poverty; who has ever had revealed to him vexed and disappointed hearts of loving women, who must both work and weep, and not catch the sob in the words of Jesus as He saw these sights down all the centuries, and cries, 'Weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children'. III. His Message to Womanhood. Jesus had more than this sad prophecy of compassion for these daughters of Jerusalem. He had a message to give to their terrified and trembling hearts. With His unfailing grace He sets it in a familiar proverb, dear as all proverbs are to simple, untutored minds, and so easily remembered, that in the days to come it echoed in their ears: 'For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?' It is the last message of Jesus, for with these words He ceased His public ministry, and it is a message to womanhood. The message here is an appeal for prayerfulness, for loyalty to righteousness, for a large-minded and patient charity. Nothing could save Jerusalem now, but if its women will abide in prayer, if they will be loyal to truth and to purity, if they will busy their hands in the holy service of the sick and the poor, they and theirs shall be remembered when the anger of the Lord is kindled against Jerusalem. That is the ruling note of Christ's message to womanhood. It is not her part to determine the policy of the State, or to sit in the councils of the Church, or to take service in the field, or to join the ranks of the captains of industry. Some few may fill high posts in public life, but they must ever remain few. But it is the woman's part to do something higher, holier, more potent still. It is given to her to see the vision of the green tree and the dry, and by her devoutness and faith, her unflinching allegiance to holiness, and her loving service in home and hospital, and school and street, to redeem the cities from their sin, and turn the thoughts of men to God. W. M. Clow, The Day of the Gross, p. 171. The Revealing Cross Luke 23:27-31 I. The cross is not to excite mere compassion for Him. II. Let the cross of Christ prophesy judgment. 1. As a human act dragging after it retribution. 2. As a Divine procedure exhibiting God's displeasure against sin. Learn at the cross the goodness and severity of God. III. Let the cross reveal sin. 3. As revealing judgment, so making the evil more conspicuous. 4. As an act which is the measure of what sin may arrive at. 5. As an act the guilt of which belongs to us all. IV. Let the cross preach repentance. A. Maclaren. Reference. XXIII. 27-31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1320. Luke 23:28 Ruskin, in the second of his Lectures on Art (secs. 56-58), takes this as the text of a vehement warning against the morbid instinct, fostered by some phases of art, which leads people to lament Christ's past sufferings instead of preventing the present woes of men. 'Try to conceive,' he cries, 'the quantity of time and of excited and thrilling emotion, which have been wasted by the tender and delicate women of Christendom during these last six hundred years, in thus picturing to themselves, under the influence of such imagery, the bodily pain, long since passed, of One Person.... And then try to estimate what might have been the better result, for the righteousness and felicity of mankind, if these same women had been taught the deep meaning of the last words that were ever spoken by their Master to those who had ministered to Him of their substance: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children". If they had been but taught to measure with their pitiful thoughts, the tortures of battlefields the slowly consuming plagues of death in the starving children, and wasted age, of the innumerable desolate those battles left; nay, in our own life of peace, the agony of unnurtured, untaught, unhelped creatures, awaking at the grave's edge to know how they should have lived; and the worse pain of those whose existence, not the ceasing of it, is death.' Such, he adds, is one fatal effect of the ministry of mediaeval art to religion, promoting, as it does, the tendency to serve with the best of our hearts and minds, some dear or sad fantasy which we have made for ourselves, while we disobey the present call of the Master, who is not dead, and who is not now fainting under His cross, but requires us to take up ours. References. XXIII. 28. J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 25. XXIII. 28-31. C. Bosanquet, The Consoler and the Sufferer, p. 253. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 27. XXIII. 30. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 214. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 87. XXIII. 31. D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p. 370. XXIII. 31. A. T. Robertson, Epochs in the Life of Jesus, p. 145. XXIII. 32. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 163. XXIII. 33, 34. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxvii. p. 209. XXIII. 33. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 209. C. D. Bell, Hills that Bring Peace, p. 313. R. J. Wardell, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 317. XXIII. 33-46. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 301. Father, Forgive Them; for They Know Not What They Do Luke 23:34 Let us consider our Divine Master. He carried His Cross unselfishly for others, and thinking of others; but this word is more than unselfish; it is a word of active love. 'Father, forgive them.' This is certainly a first lesson, and we should learn a lesson of love. It is the first, and it is indeed the last; it runs through all. When the thorns pierced His brow, when the nails pierced His hands and His feet, when the spear pierced His side these were but so many openings through which the one fountain of His Love might flow. I. 'Father, forgive them.' Have you any grudge against anybody? If so today forgive. Do you think that you have been over-reached in business, and feel altogether that you have had a hard life of it, that people have not treated you well? Think today: have you been treated as badly as your Lord? It should be enough for the servant to be as His Master, but look up at Him today, look at His life, and see the end, and meditate on His words of unselfish, loving forgiveness. II. To this prayer of unselfish pardoning love He added a most powerful but awfully suggestive reason 'for they know not what they do'. What words are these! What a true confession of our ignorance of the injury of sin! They tell us, nay, He tells us by them, that we do not know what harm we are doing when we sin. He tells us this, seeing the full view of sin from the Tree of the Cross. When the Jews nailed Jesus to the cross they were crucifying the Lord of Glory; when we sin we grieve the Spirit we persecute Jesus, we deal with His members, we sin against God: this is what the Crucifixion brings out. Just as when you have been throwing with a stick at apples, and the stick is caught and hangs in the branches, and you cannot get it down, it must remain as a witness against you of your sin. So when we sin on earth we do not see the limit of our sins they pass beyond our reach, they go higher than we meant, we cannot get them back they make, as it were, a mark in heaven too high for us to rub out. But today, children, Jesus Christ has climbed the tree for us: He knows the mystery of sin; He can reach to heaven from the cross; He can and will throw down all the witnesses of our early faults; He can and will rub out the writing against us, though it were written too high for us to reach. Bishop Edward King, * Meditations on the Last Seven Words. * Father, Forgive Them Luke 23:34 'Father.' In that word, uttered with the entire surrender of a perfect correspondence of understanding, affection, will, between the mind of Jesus and the heart of Him from whom He came forth and to whom He goes, lies the secret of the peace of Calvary. It is the first thought of the Redeemer when He is lifted upon the cross; it is the last thought with which He bows His head. Within its large embrace are gathered all the activities of the Crucified the intercession for sinners, the absolution of the penitent, the ministry to the faithful, the spiritual combat, the bodily pains, the finished work. That dear Name thus twice repeated is the great bracket which holds together the series of the seven words. When the eye rests upon the Almighty Father sitting upon the circle of the earth, upholding the whole sum of existence within the everlasting arms, complete beyond all incompleteness, perfect above all imperfection, then for us love is the abiding background of the universe, and ours is God's peace. 'For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princedoms, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.' 'Who shall separate? 'It was the consciousness of a union which no power could break, of a bond which no force could sever, that breathed in the first word that fell from the lips of the Divine Sufferer. I. Father, forgive. The prayer implies forgiveness on the part of Him who prayed. He works, He dies, He forgives. Surely it needs a clearer faith than the vague perception of a possible brotherhood of men to justify this uttermost surrender! Great sacrifices of time, of opportunity, of life, may be made in the promotion of a high ideal. But the love which forgives the malice that has brought ruin upon the highest ideal, and shattered the noblest work the world has ever seen, witnesses to the presence of a peace of mind which knows that failure only seems to be defeat. Cease to believe in the final triumph of goodness, justice, and truth, and you have ceased to love. Cease to hope in the possibility of repentance in the lives of men, and you leave no place for the spirit that forgives. But Christ can say, 'Father, forgive'. There is the unbroken fellowship with God, which is the one true end of human life. When a man feels that he cannot forgive, his peace is gone; but it is not the malice of his enemies that has robbed him, it is the loss of the vision of the Divine Fatherhood. II. Father, forgive them. The intercession of God's Priest was offered for His enemies not those only, or chiefly, who drove in the nails, but all. 'When we were enemies, we were reconciled.' That cross has no meaning as a universal atonement, if the words of St. Paul are not true. 'We were enemies.' Our position in the Church implies this fact; each sacrament whereof we are partakers is the witness to it. We have been 'brought nigh by the blood of Christ'. The cross is first the intercession of the Son of man on behalf of all. 'Father, forgive them.' J. G. Simpson, Christus Crucfixus, p. 269. The Seven Words From the Cross Luke 23:34 I. If ever God's cause seemed lost in this world, it was at the moment when the cross of Jesus was uplifted; and yet that is the very moment when the Eternal Son lifts up His voice in prayer to God prayer trustful, prayer persevering, prayer selfless. (1) A trustful prayer; though God seemed to be so far distant, yet Jesus names the dear Name of Father 'Father, forgive them'. (2) A prayer persevering, for we might have thought that at such a moment as that the very power of prayer was lost in agonising pain, with no sort of privacy but the hard bed of the cross, with the noise of blasphemies and insults in His ears. How ashamed we ought to be of the excuses that we make for ourselves when we do not feel inclined to pray! We say that we have not privacy enough. But Jesus, in spite of every difficulty, perseveres in prayer. (3) And then it is prayer selfless; it is a prayer for His enemies. II. By this wondrous prayer, uttered at such a moment, Jesus is the helper of them that doubt You find it hard to believe in the Providence, in the overruling care of God. You see the failure of good causes, you think of the unassuaged wrongs and miseries of the poor and suffering, and you think that God has forsaken the world. But Jesus would have us in the first instance not confuse imagination with knowledge. We know from the Holy Gospel that God does care for every one of His creatures, but we cannot imagine the way in which His Providence acts over so vast a surface. Just as in science we know many things which we cannot imagine, chemical transformations which we cannot picture to ourselves, so it is with the doctrine of the Providence of God, which, though we cannot imagine, we know, we believe. And then, we must remember not to attempt a generalisation of God's children. This world in which we live is not wholly given over to the powers of the enemy. Everywhere God has His own children. We must never give way to that faithless thought that God has forsaken the world or that He has left Himself without witness. And then, again, we should always remember that much of the apparent forgetfulness of God which distresses, much of the sin and neglect that vexes our souls, is, after all, due to ignorance. 'They know not what they do.' We can put ourselves by the side of Jesus Christ, and thank and bless His gracious Name that He has brought us relief in one of the most painful and fundamental doubts that can shake the soul. References. XXIII. 34. W. Robertson Nicoll, The Seven Words from the Gross, p. 3. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. No. 897, and vol. xxxviii. No. 2263. W. Butterworth, A Book of Lay Sermons, p. 59. A. G. Mortimer, The Chief Virtues of Man, p. 15. J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p. 247. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 571. Bishop Alexander, Verbum Crucis, p. 31. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 187. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons (2nd Series), p. 137. G. S. Barrett, The Seven Words from the Cross, p. 7. W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 303. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 100. Len. G. Broughton, The Prayers of Jesus, p. 169. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 106; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 332. A. G. Mortimer, In the Light of the Cross, p. 13. XXIII. 35. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, p. 279. Luke 23:36 'I implore you,' F. W. Robertson writes to a friend, 'do not try morphine, ever; no, not once.... Remember what Maria Theresa said when she began to dose in dying, "I want to meet my God awake"; remember that He refused the medicated opiate on the cross. Meet misery awake.' References. XXIII. 39-43. J. Iverach, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 396. E. Bersier, Sermons in Paris, p. 1. J. M. Bleckley, The Christian Armour, p. 57. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 174. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 132. Expositor, 5 th Series, vol. iii. p. 215. XXIII. 39-44. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 18. XXIII. 39, 45. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxvii. p. 210. XXIII. 40, 41. E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son, and other Sermons, vol. v. p. 185. XXIII. 40-42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1881. XXIII. 41. C. S. Home, The Soul's Awakening, p. 107. J. Keble, Sermons for Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 31. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 125. M. G. Glazebrook, Prospice, p. 1. Christ Remembering Penitents Luke 23:42 Of all our Lord's seven last words, none is fuller of comfort than that which He spake to the penitent thief. And certainly the faith of this thief was greater than any other faith of which we read, either in the Bible or in the history of the Church, to this time. The faith which enabled the martyrs to triumph over agony, to yield themselves to wild beasts, to stand without shrinking in the flames, to be filled with joy on the rack, to be stoned, sawn asunder, destitute, afflicted, tormented, that faith I may say it boldly, cannot be compared to the wonderful power of the grace of God then shown in the dying thief. He speaks of a kingdom, and a kingdom into which the seeming malefactor at His side was about to enter, and in which He Himself hoped to be remembered, was there ever so it must have seemed to the Jews such madness? 'Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.' When Thou comest. Why, there is not one of us who, to an earthly eye, has not a better hope of a kingdom than our Lord then had. When Thou comest? Surely to have said, If Thou comest, If Thou be the Son of God, would have been astonishing faith. But now, to make no doubt, to take the thing for granted, to have no kind of reasoning about it, but to make a prayer upon it, this truly is the greatest miracle of grace that ever was, and probably that ever will be. David says, 'Thy Word is tried to the uttermost, and Thy servant loveth it'. Now our Lord's Word had been, 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out'. This prayer of the thief was indeed a trial of its truth to the uttermost. He came to our Lord, and he was not cast out. I. He prays to be remembered. That were much. Many who promise in misery forget their promise in happiness. 'Think of me,' says Joseph in prison to the butler, 'when it shall be well with thee; and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house.' And what follows? 'Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph but forgat him.' But our Lord, of whom this chief butler was but a type (for He trod the wine-press alone, He giveth that wine that truly maketh glad the heart of man, His own precious blood), our Lord promises far more than this. 'Remember me,' is the prayer of the thief; 'thou shalt be with Me in Paradise,' is the answer of the Saviour. He that has pronounced a blessing on them who shall take in the stranger, took in this stranger into no worse a house than His own. II. And then as to the time. All that was asked was, 'When Thou comest into Thy Kingdom': whenever that might be: years to come, perhaps hundreds of years to come; and Christ answers him 'To-day'. III. 'Thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' It is the first faint view of 'the land that is very far off'. It is like a distant sight of a lovely country. We are not there yet; we hardly know whether we may ever hope to be there at all; but we know that there is such a land. I was once in a ship voyaging to an island not far from the west of Africa. We had been out many days, we had been exceedingly tossed with a tempest; and at the beginning of a stormy evening, in one gleam of sunshine, the man at the masthead made out the land. Night came down and shut it out from us; but we knew it was there, and rejoiced in the hope of reaching it. So as to the thief. Our Lord goes forth as a champion to meet the prince of the powers of this world. He had not conquered him then, but yet He speaks certainly of victory. If the thief is to be with him in Paradise, He must needs be there Himself; if there Himself, He must have overcome Satan; for He could not reign till He had conquered. O happy malefactor, that thus, at the last hour, was heard, and like a most blessed thief, stole the kingdom of heaven! J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 206. The Penitent Malefactor Luke 23:42 The one absorbing thought in the mind of this man who is moved by the Holy Ghost, is to show us a soul passing from darkness into marvellous light, from death unto life, from the power of Satan unto God. I. 'Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.' There is a way to heaven from the very gate of hell. There is no soul so sunken in sin and given over by the shallow heart of man but one glimpse of the mercy of God may restore him. Listen to the way in which Browning puts this truth, as he tells the story of a man of whom the best despaired, a man whom fox-like cunning and wolf-like ferocity had possessed: For the main criminal I have no hope Except in such a suddenness of Fate. I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all; But the night's black was burst through by a blaze Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountains visible; There lay the city thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost dis-shrouded, white the sea. So may the truth be flashed out by one blow And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. ( The Ring and the Book, Pope, III. 147.) That sets this great experience for us. This malefactor saw one instant, and was saved. He hung upon the cross, at first in torpor, for the wine mingled with myrrh had done its stupefying work. But as his awful agony asserted itself, he fixed his eyes upon his fellow-sufferer. He marked His grace. He saw a sight he never saw before. There, in loneliness, hung One on whose face was imprinted the ineffaceable beauty of holiness. There He hung, and heard the taunts and derision of priest and ruler and passer-by, yet He reviled not again. And as he looks, lo! like a soft, sweet music that rises and hushes every coarse and clamouring sound, His voice is heard in prayer: 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do'. The great, long bound heart of this man stirred within him. Like the Arctic world, after the dreary winter, when the summer sun has come, a new life began to leap within him. You can trace in his words the very birth of his soul. II. Now this story is teeming with spiritual truth beating directly on the rise and progress of religion in the soul. Let me ask you to think first of the suddenness of a spiritual change. This malefactor was led to his cross at some hour before noon. He walked to Golgotha with cursing in his heart, in the defiance of despair, looking out to the darkness of death. He hung upon the cross with the second death that awful shadow beyond death itself casting its chill upon him, yet in an instant the great spiritual change passed upon him, and in three hours after he is living in the light of God, with penitent confession, lowly ascription of honour, imploring prayers upon his lips, and the grace of God, like a well of cleansing water, springing up in his heart. Mark, in the second place, the swiftness of spiritual growth. This malefactor, as we have seen, was a noble theologian, the only discerning Christian thinker of his day, a man who knew with more than Peter's knowledge, and saw with more than John's vision. But we can make an even greater claim for him. He was justified by faith alone. He was snatched as a brand from the burning, and yet it can be made clear that in those few hours he hung beside Jesus, he grew into the ripest saint, the man on earth meetest for heaven. For what makes a man a saint? A tender conscience, a deep reverence for God, a devout submission to His will, a heart lifted above the power of the world, scorning its gifts and advantages, a complete dependence on God, a vivid sense of the world unseen, a humble trust in Christ, relinquishing all personal merit, a whole-hearted zeal for His honour, and an absorbing craving for His fellowship. These things make a saint wherever they are found, and all these grew to strength and beauty in the soul of this malefactor in that short afternoon, while his life-blood ebbed away. But the truth which engrosses all our hearts, as we read this amazing story, is that there is hope for the worst of sinners. Here is the most unlikely man, under the most unlikely circumstances, saved by the grace of God in Christ. After a youth of waywardness, and a manhood of crime, he is seized and held when on the very edge of his doom. W. M. Clow, The Day of the Cross, p. 227. References. XXIII. 42. J. Edwards, Preacher's Magazine, vol. x. p. 128. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 213. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 306. A Saved Soul and a Lost Life Luke 23:42-43 This story brings to us a twofold message. I see in it the beckoning finger of encouragement; I see in it also the uplifted finger of warning. His soul was saved but his life was lost; Christ seeks to save both our soul and our life. Let us look at these two points in turn for a moment. I. The encouragement Exactly what this penitent robber knew of Christ we do not know: at most it could be but little. And yet, though he knew not even what he said, and though his prayer dropped from lips already white with death, Christ heard and saved him: 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. To all God offers to forgive the sin of the past and to give strength for the future; and He offers to do it now. Christ never spurns a true cry for pardon. What I fear is not lest a day should come when Christ will be deaf, but a day when you will be dumb; not that He will say 'No' to your prayer, but that you will not care to pray. Now, now, though it be the eleventh hour, though the candle of life have burnt to the socket, though you have nothing to offer God but the fragments that remain from a misspent life, yet even now if you will He will receive you, and whatsoever of good His love can bring to sinful men, He will give to you. II. We turn from the encouragement to the warning. 'One was saved upon the cross,' says an old divine, 'that none might despair; and only one that none might presume.' The robber's soul was saved, but his life was lost. But God seeks to save not only our soul but our life our days, our years, our strength for service. I want to tell you why you should come to Christ now. (1) It will save you from vain and bitter regrets in after life. (2) And further, I want you to come to Christ now because, coming to Him, you will be saved for earnest service. I have no greater quarrel with sin than this, that it unfits men for this high service. In some churchyard in Germany two tombstones stand side by side; on the one it is written Vergeben , 'Forgiven,' on the other Vergebens , 'In vain'. If I had to write an epitaph for some, I think I would write both Vergeben and Vergebens . God asks your life while the bloom is on it; will you wait to give it Him till it is a poor, withered, shrivelled thing? G. Jackson, First Things First, p. 237. References. XXIII. 42, 43. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 291. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 190 and 205. Bishop Alexander, Verbum Crucis, p. 39. A. Bradley, Se r mons Chiefly on Character, p. 114. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2078. W. M. Clow, The Day of the Cross, p. 311. Today Shalt Thou Be with Me in Paradise Luke 23:43 The more one studies our Lord's life, the more one is able to see that He did all things well, and the more, also, one finds out that, in gentleness and quietness, He was doing all things in due order and in due time. So we may venture perhaps to trace even in the midst of this most terrible battle on the battlefield of the cross, a calmness and an order and a gentle taking up of events. We saw in the first word our Lord spoke of those who were still His enemies, those who were persecuting Him and crucifying Him: He prayed for them. Now, in the second word, He comes as it were a little nearer to Himself, and He addresses His words to one who had been a great enemy, but who now had turned. It is the word, you know, to the penitent thief 'This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. It is addressed to one not now His enemy, but to one who had been His enemy. And it is a word of comfort, of assurance, and of love. I. This man, whose penitence was, like St. Peter's, complete, threw his heart at the feet of our Lord, and challenged His Omniscient Love to unravel and explain the circumstances which were so dead against him. St. Peter said, 'Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee'. Circumstances and appearances are against me, the penitent thief must have felt; but he was brave and trustful, and exclaimed:'Lord, remember me; remember all my life; do not forget a bit of it; for if any other should take it up and bring it forward, if it is brought before the judgment-seat by any hand but Thine, I am lost. Remember every act, word, thought, remember it all; "Remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom".' He would have all known, and all remembered; because he had no doubt at all of the measurement of the Cross of Christ the length, and breadth, and height, and depth, was the measure of His infinite love, which went beyond the robber's life. He wished it to be remembered, and he was not afraid of it. 'I have no fear to tell you what I was, being what I am,' is one of the brave utterances of an English poet. And this penitent thief could take it up: 'I have no fear to remember what I was, being what I am a penitent believer in Jesus. That is all in all to me. I care not for the rest,' and you know the answer so quick the love flows 'Verily I say unto you, To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. II. I cannot leave the word 'Remember' without giving one more thought of hope. What a proof it is that the soul after death still lives. Our Lord must have been a mere mocker if He did not mean that the penitent thief though dead would live. And surely it means more than that when He said, ' To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. He meant not that his soul should be with Him in sleep; when He said, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me,' He expressed the conscious presence of two awakened personalities. 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise' was deceitful language unless it meant that the soul of the penitent thief should be conscious of the presence of Jesus. Yes, this word 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise 'gives us a firm, strong hope that those who have gone before in the faith of Christ are happy in His presence. Oh, let none despair then. Here was a robber up to the end of his life; he threw himself without any reservation on the heart of Jesus; He accepted him at once, and pledged His word that that day they should be together in Paradise. Bishop Edward King, * Meditations on the Seven Last Words. * The Penitent Thief Luke 23:43 Below the cross the soldiers are dicing and shouting and quarrelling. The priests jeer and scoff. The women stand afar off and watch. The crowd are scanning with curious eyes the sufferers upon the crosses, and above what strange things are happening! What words are passing between one and the other? What is it which God looks down upon with so much pleasure, which the angels rejoice to see? I. A Soul Come Back. It is a soul come home, come back. I would ask you to see for a moment that here we have a wonderful illustration of how God seeks and wins. This man was not penitent; he was a robber, going about in those bands which haunted the mountains of Judea, just as years and years ago there were bands of robbers infesting the forests in this country. Often young men, who were wild and got themselves into trouble, would join these bands of robbers for the sake of adventure. It may be that this man was one like that, and God had been seeking him, seeking him all his life, through his home life, through the prayers of his mother, through all the many ways in which God pleads for the soul, and yet he had remained hardened, he had still been untouched. What shall win him back, what shall bring him back to his God? Then he was to suffer death as a criminal; he was to be hanged upon a cross as a felon. Was it too late, then? Was there no chance that this man might yet be touched? There was only one way that God should place His own Son on the cross next to him. So God sent His Son to the cross for that robber. It was the last appeal that could be made, and it was the last appeal which won. Is it not something like that in our own lives? God is seeking each one of us; He has sought us all our lives. God makes a last appeal to us. He brings His own Blessed Son to die on the cross next to us that we may witness His suffering; and we humbly pray, 'Lord, remember me!' and the blessing comes back swift and sure, 'To-day, today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. II. The Cross as the Divider of Men. Again, there is another thought which is suggested, How the cross divides men! Is it not strange that the only man who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ at that moment in the world, the only one who really believed in Christ, was the dying robber upon the cross! All the others had gone. The Disciples had fled. A few women in their tenderness and love stood at a distance from the cross. They had lost all hope; only the robber could say, 'I believe'. There was the cross a dividing power amongst men. These two men, the two malefactors, crucified one on one side and the other on the other, had witnessed the same suffering, had had the same appeal made to each of them. They had heard the same prayer; and yet what was the effect? The one was made penitent and the other was hardened. And the same spectacle is going on all through the ages. III. The Appeal to the Individual. Let us remember that the greatest obstacle to our coming to God is not sin in its outward form, but sin and self-righteousness. 'Lord, remember me!' How the cry rings out! 'I am suffering and deserve it' Was there ever a greater confession of sin than that? 'Lord, remember me!' Was not that a great, stirring appeal of faith? And the answer was as sure and certain, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise'. The Penitent Thief Luke 23:43 I. We have here a wondrous revelation of the unseen world. II. We have here the utterance of kingly conscious ness of power. III. We have also a royal and loving answer to penitence and faith. A. Maclaren. References. XXIII. 43. W. Robertson Nicoll, The Seven Words from the Cross, p. 21. A. G. Mortimer, The Chief Virtues of Man, p. 31. J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p. 268. F. Harper, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 30. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 113. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 88. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (3rd Series), p. 35. G. S. Barrett, The Seven Words from the Cross, p. 23. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 22. J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 369. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p. 160. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 254; ibid. vol. x. p. 447; ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 222. A. G. Mortimer, In the Light of the Cross, p. 20. XXIII. 44. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 216. XXIII. 44-46. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxvii. p. 214. XXIII. 46. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 313. Into Thy Hands Luke 23:46 The first word from the cross breathed the calm of an unbroken communion between the Father and the Son, which made the sufferings of the wounded body of Jesus an act of intercession for the transgressors. And the last expresses the sweet surrender of the loyal spirit into the hands of its faithful guardian. The peace of a perfect love and the peace of a finished work blend in the peace of a perfect trust, as the life 'which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home'. The first thought that springs out of this last word is a very obvious one. Jesus came forth from God and goeth to God. That is the explanation of His whole career; it is the interpretation alike of His loving ministry and of His perfect life. The last words of Jesus convey 'no sadness of farewell'. In the old Greek tragedy Aias, the warrior king, passes out in the night of self-destruction, with a pathetic lament for 'the light of golden day,' and the 'sacred land that was my home': 'To you that fed my life I bid farewell'. What a contrast is this hopeless misery to the quiet confidence of the Son of man. When the sun is going down toward the west, beyond the roofs and towers of Jerusalem, and the evening shadows creep gently up over the braes of Olivet, the dying Saviour greets the dawn of the endless day and commits Himself to the guardianship of His eternal home: 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit'. Two facts account for the striking contrast: (1) the revelation of Fatherhood, (2) the unique character of Christ's surrender of life. I. If the ultimate fact of all existence be neither force nor fate but fatherhood, then there can be no death except separation from the living will that loves. Dr. Newman has a sermon, the title of which is The Thought of God the Stay of the Soul. That surely is the truth. 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,' is a philosophy that brings no satisfaction. From the bodily life men turn to the society of their fellows; the intercourse of friendship, the affections of the family, the love of home. But these too pass away, for 'man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live'. But to call Him Father who exists behind all change, is to find rest. II. The unique character of Jesus' death. When we speak of a man's exit from the world, we say 'he died' or 'he breathed his last'. If it be a person of more than ordinary piety whose death we record, we say 'he entered into rest,' or 'he fell asleep'. None of these expressions are used by the evangelists to describe the death of Jesus. St. Matthew says, 'He let go His spirit,' St John, 'He bowed His head and yielded up His spirit'. And it is clear that much more is implied in the words of commendation which Christ borrows from the thirty-first Psalm than they originally meant or have been employed by others to mean. Some men have cheerfully acquiesced in the necessity of dying. Others have chosen the manner, method, or time of death. But the death of the Son of man, as the Gospel writers present it to us, is as willing, as self-determined, as free as the acceptance or refusal of any of the ordinary duties of life. It is the obedience of a glad mind to a Divine call. 'I lay it down of Myself.' 'No man taketh it from Me.' In committing His spirit as a deposit to the hands of His Father, Christ exercises the free right of disposition which is His. His confidence is the peace of an unflinching loyalty. His own implicit faithfulness is the measure of His implicit trust in the utter faithfulness of God. J. G. Simpson, Christus Crucifixus, p. 295. Luke 23:46 Once more ere the end the Son's heart turned to the Father. He had commenced with the appeal to the Father; He closed His life with His Father in His mind. None of us can read the story of His life in the Gospels without realising how often that word 'Father' was on His lips. It was that word 'Father' which summed up the whole purpose of His life. I. The Removal of Sin. And it suggests, first of all, that here is the result of the removal of sin. Through the darkness He was bearing the curse of sin as He had borne it at no other time. Then, having made atonement, having borne the curse, having taken it away, having made a living new way by which men might approach and come back to God, it is not 'My God,' but it is 'Father'. So it is with us. You and I will never know the depths of love there is in the word 'Father' as applied to God until we know what it is to partake in the atonement which Christ has made; you and I will never know the depths of love which the Father can lavish upon His children until we know something of our Lord's blessed redemption and atonement. II. The Purpose of Life. And yet, again, that word 'Father' seems to sum up the whole purpose of our Blessed Lord's life. You remember how constantly He was saying 'I go to My Father'. Now the time has come when he is going to His Father. If you and I could have that same thought in our minds, do you not think that as we look upon our lives it would unravel many of the mysteries? We are faced with so many problems, but our Lord saw no mystery in them. He saw no mystery in suffering and pain as He shared it It was quite plain. Why? Because of this great fact of Fatherhood, because He could appeal to God as His father; therefore He understood it. If you and I could understand in our daily lives the meaning of these words, 'I go to My Father,' what a help it would be to us! If our faith were only large enough, these words would be a help to us, would supply us with a purpose in our lives if we understood them. The small vexations of our daily life are but part of the discipline of the child on the journey. We know that the end of all things is the Father. That is the summary of life, that is its final climax. So these words come to us as supplying a rich purpose in our lives. III. The Source of Comfort. Not only that, but they also come to us in words of comfort The death of Jesus has been called a magnificent and royal procession, and yet how He shuddered and shrank from it! You and I need not think that we are faithless because we have a fear of death. Most of us have that, and, believe me, the more we realise what life is, the more we realise what life can be, the more we realise that our bodies are the temples of the living God, the more, perhaps, will that fear of death come to us. Yet, when that time comes, when all is done, if we have lived with the conscious presence of God, we can look back and say, 'It is finished'. And Christ, because He has been before us, will give us strength to have the same prayer upon our lips, 'Father, Thou with Whom I have lived my life, Thou with Whom I have had such joy, Thou Who hast been my Father here on earth, I commend my spirit into Thy hands'. Jesus, the Helper of the Dying Luke 23:46 Jesus, the Helper of the dying. Let us try to remember those who are dying, who axe appointed to death, who are nigh unto death. Let us pray our Blessed Saviour that He will speak the word of comfort, of light, of assurance, to those who are drawing nigh to the dark shadow of death. For there is a question which we ask with trembling breath, the question which now and then arises and seems to shake our souls Is there hope in death? Do those we have lost still live? The last words of Jesus give us the answer, an answer which we cannot mistake. Yes; the soul lives. 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.' I think our Saviour helps us very simply by dwelling on two fundamental truths of religion which we are very apt in the strain and stress of life to forget or overlook. I. First of all there is the true Fatherhood of God. If God seems other to us than a Father, if He seems a hard taskmaster or tyrant, if He seems to us a relentless force that carries us we know not where, we have yet to learn the chief lesson which Jesus came to teach; and if that great truth is to sustain us at death, as it has sustained so many, we must learn to grasp it and make it our own now. If you once begin honestly and whole-heartedly to believe in the Fatherhood of God, you are on the way to become one of those who adore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and who find their freedom and their joy and their blessedness in the ancient faith of the sons of God from the beginning. Hold fast, then, to the Fatherhood of God. There you shall find a secret that shall transfigure life. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ The Easter Message Luke 24:2 (with Mark 16:3-4 * ) * Very remarkable that none of the Evangelists attempt to describe the Resurrection itself. They tell us all the details on either side of the stupendous fact but it they leave all untold. Just where you might have expected mythical books to have gone off into rhapsodical accounts they are utterly silent. He rose in the early dawn of that morning, but when or how is all untold. Certainly if they are legend writers they are the strangest legend writers the world ever saw. Such a subject would have been too tempting for anybody who was not an honest historian. The accumulated details of that early morning are very striking and helpful. They are exactly what we might expect of eye-witnesses. Even their apparent discrepancies are proofs of their truthfulness. These circumstantial details not only ring honest but they are of immense service in taking that wonderful fact out of the region of mist into which we are too apt to fling it, and in bringing it home to our apprehensions as a thing that once verily happened on this earth. There are mainly three in reference to the story of the grave that the stone was rolled away, that angels were visible and audible within its shut darkness, and that the grave-clothes were folded up and the napkin laid aside in a place by itself. These three seem to us of widely different importance. The disciples who saw them did not seem to think so. They tell about the folded grave-clothes with as much fullness of detail as about the white-robed forms that sat within the tomb. They tell about these angel visitants in exactly the same level tone of simple narration as they do about the napkin and the swathing clothes. And perhaps this is not a confusion of the relative importance of the natural and supernatural but a very clear discernment of the true importance of each. Let us see whether that which the disciples beheld on that Easter morning before they saw the risen Lord may not do for us what it did for them. We take them in the order in which they stand: I. The Significance of the Sealed Stone Rolled Away. How natural the story is of the women preparing their spices and resolving to come and anoint Him without ever thinking of the difficulty till they came near to the grave. How natural the startling question that occurs to them all as they come nearer the place and begin to realise in more detail what they were to do, 'Who shall roll us away the stone?' And how one feels with them the thrill of surprise with which as they looked from afar through the very early morning as it began to dawn they could see that the great stone was rolled away. They knew that there had been a guard set. They knew that the authoritative seal of the officials had been placed on the stone. They could not suppose that it had been broken without the connivance of those who had made it as sure as they could. They never thought of His having burst the bands of death. And so the first thing that occurs to them is that the rulers have persecuted even after they have killed the body and have taken it to bury it as malefactors should have been buried. Afterwards they learned to think more truly of the meaning of that stone rolled away. It was the first witness of His Resurrection. It was a symbol for us all of what the grave is now to us since Christ has risen. * The women's words a type of the cry of all mankind. The longing for some one to roll away the stone. The sense of impotence. The idea of death as an eternal condition. * It seems the end as far as sense can see. It seems to separate for ever us and them. No more offices of love. We may stand with our spices and our tearful faces and our heavy hearts, but there is the great stone, and they that are within cannot hear us. II. The World has no Answer to the Question. Apart from the Gospel no clear confidence in Immortality and no notion at all of Resurrection. They may hope that on the other side the grave opens into a brighter place, but they have no idea of a backward passage of that which once has been laid there. Like some door that swings only one way and can be opened from only one side; like Ginevra in her chest. Looking to His grave, we see it rolled away. III. Christ has Rolled it Away for Us All. Not by telling it only, but by doing it. Not only as being example, but as being power. A. Maclaren. References. XXIV. 2. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 322. XXIV. 3-5. Ibid. p. 247. XXIV. 5. H. R. Gamble, The Ten Virgins, p. 129. Christ, a Quickening Spirit (For Easter Sunday) Luke 24:5-6 O blessed day of the Resurrection, which of old time was called the Queen of Festivals, and raised among Christians an anxious, nay contentious diligence duly to honour it! Blessed day, once only passed in sorrow, when the Lord actually rose, and the disciples believed not; but ever since a day of joy to the faith and love of the Church! In ancient times Christians all over the world began it with a morning salutation. Each man said to his neighbour, 'Christ is risen'; and his neighbour answered him, 'Christ is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon'. Even to Simon, the coward disciple who denied Him thrice, Christ is risen; even to us, who long ago vowed to obey Him, and have yet so often denied Him before men, so often taken part with sin, and followed the world, when Christ called us another way. J. H. Newman. References. XXIV. 5, 6. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 74. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1106. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 323. XXIV. 6, 35. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 147. XXIV. 8. J. C. M. Bellow, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 220. XXIV. 11. H. Alford, Easter-tide Sermons, p. 1. XXIV. 12. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 520. XXIV. 12-35. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 97. Luke 24:13 My friend, Sir William Russell, was distantly related to a very accomplished man, who, though he never believed the Gospel, admired the Scriptures as the sublimest compositions in the world, and read them often. I have been intimate myself with a man of fine taste who has confessed to me that, though he could not subscribe to the truth of Christianity itself, yet he never could read St. Luke's account of our Saviour's appearance to the two disciples going to Emmanus without being wonderfully affected by it; and he thought that if the stamp of divinity was anywhere to be found in Scripture, it was strongly marked and visibly impressed upon that passage. Cowper. References. XXIV. 13-22. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 145. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 335. XXIV. 13-25. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. pp. 108, 114. XXIV. 13-36. W. Alexander, Primary Convictions, p. 95. Our Companion Luke 24:15 That is a very old metaphor which likens life to a journey. Old as it is, we all feel how true it is the constant change, the continuous effort, the new faces, and scenes, and the end. I. The Companion of our journey is Christ Himself. We believe in a Living Christ and in a Divine Christ, and consequently we believe that His real presence is granted to every soul that seeks it. II. Christ is often unrecognised. How little we see Him in our daily providences! How much joy and strength we lose for want of the open eye! III. Note the sympathy of the Companion. IV. Note the apparent purpose of His departure. 'He made as though He would have gone farther.' The disciples constrained Him to remain. We keep Him by our desire, and need never be alone if we do not send Him away. V. Note the Companionship in repose. (1) Christ accepts our poor offerings. (2) His presence at the humble meal and lowly home is a type of the blessed fact that His presence is possible for us in hours of repose as in hours of labour. (3) Where He comes as guest He becomes host. A. Maclaren. References. XXIV. 16. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p. 28. XXIV. 16,16. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 236. Holden Eyes Luke 24:16 We may profitably consider what it is to have our eyes holden, what a blessing it is, what a source of strength it is not to see things, not to know things, not to hear things, not to have any senses at all. There is a blessing on the negative side of the hedge; there is much profitableness in the impenetrable gloom. Not to see may be a privilege; not to know may be a science. I. How true it is that our eyes are holden so that we may not see the perils of life by which we are constantly surrounded! We walk in danger; the air is full of arrows and sharp darts and poisoned elements. Some things we could not enjoy if there were not an element of poison in them. The honey would soon be no honey, the man of science tells us, if there was not inserted by the sting of the bee just one little drop of poison. There is honey that has no keeping in it because it has no poison in it; so the man of science tells us. On the whole, it is better for us not to be analytical chemists; it ministers much to the comfort of the house not to know the chemical constituents of what we are eating and drinking. There are few things more troublesome than to be on intimate terms with an analytical chemist who lives next door to you. The air is full of danger; every step you take is a step along the edge of your grave. All the darkness has uncounted imps in it; the east wind brings them from no man knows where in countless millions. We do not know how near our death we were this morning; by a hair's breadth we escaped a so-called accident that would have dashed us into eternity. Our eyes were holden. It is well we did not know. II. Our eyes are holden that we may not see our own spiritual surroundings. It is a mercy that we cannot see God. Yet we rave about it as if He had inflicted an injury upon us because He will not show His face. We thus reject our greatest blessing. It is a mercy for us also that we cannot see our spiritual enemy the devil. If we could see him who could live? There is a ministry of evil in the universe. The Bible does not conceal that fact; the Bible reveals it and magnifies it and puts us on our guard against it; but mercifully our eyes are holden that we should not see the evil power that would devour our very soul. III. A great mercy it is also that we cannot see death grim, gruesome, horrible death. Yet he is always looking at us; he seems to be saying in that interrogatory look, Whom shall I strike next? IV. And a great blessing it is that we do not see the future. We cannot see tomorrow. Whether you mean the future by day or month or year, we cannot see it; it is veiled from us, or our eyes are holden that they may not see it; and herein is a gracious, tender mercy. If we could have foreseen some days we could not have lived! I know I may die to-night, I feel I may live a year or years. God says to me, Poor child of mortality, it is infinitely better that thou shouldst not know anything about it; go on steadily, loyally, hopefully, with thy work, and when it is time for thee to leave the plough, though it be left in mid-furrow, and another man shall complete that furrow, I will come for thee. Till I come, occupy! Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 33. References. XXIV. 16. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1180. G. C. Lorimer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 83. The Sadness of the Disciples Luke 24:17 May we not learn from this incident of the walk to Emmaus that today there are not a few of the disciples of Christ who are downcast and sad? To them the risen Lord appears in His Church, in His Scriptures, or in His Sacraments. I. The Sadness of Mental Perplexity. It is our risen Lord Who offers the true solution of all mental perplexities. He can speak with authority. II. The Sadness of Conscience. It is our risen Lord Who reveals Himself to those who are weighed down by sin as pardoning it and blotting it out. What is it that gives His death this power? It is His Resurrection from the dead. III. The Sadness of Soul. This so often arises from the want of an object in life to be grasped by the affections, to be aimed at by the will. To such our risen Lord appears, to teach them that there is something worth living for the known will of the Eternal God. References. XXIV. 17. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 10. F. Ferguson, Peace with God, p. 107. XXIV. 18. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 230. XXIV. 19. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 361. Luke 24:21 Under whatever form this hope encounters us, from the wild excesses of the Fifth-Monarchy Men and Munster Anabaptists, to the simple expectation of the Dorsetshire peasant, who in Monmouth's rebellion talked about 'King Jesus,' there is always something affecting in its expression; and the more so, because the foreseen sadness of its disappointment is one which connects itself with the natural experience of Christian life. Dora Greenwell. References. XXIV. 21. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 186; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 426. XXIV. 22. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 363. XXIV. 25. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1980. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 126; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 232. XXIV. 26, 26. Lyman Abbott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 269. XXIV. 26-27. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 280. The Sufferings of Christ Luke 24:26 Why were the sufferings of Christ necessary? There seem to me to be at least four reasons. I. We have the reason to which Christ Himself pointed in the passage before us. His sufferings were necessary that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. It was trusting to their own interpretation of the Scriptures that the two disciples had turned away from a crucified Jesus. They had thought that they pointed only to a glorious and triumphant King, but now Jesus, 'beginning at Moses and all the prophets... expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. The whole Old Testament, Jesus would show, was Messianic; and the whole Old Testament exhibited to those who read it aright, a suffering, as well as a triumphant Messiah a Messiah passing through suffering and death to glory and life. II. But we must look deeper than the letter of Scripture if we would understand aright the cause of the sufferings of Christ. We must look at the purpose, the work He came to accomplish. What was that work? Not, as the Jews fondly imagined, to make of them a great nation, and raise them to the chief place among the nations of the world; but to save the Jews, and with them to save the world. If men had remained in the state in which God had first created them, if there had been no Fall, the work of Jesus would have been easy. But instead He came, to whom? To men sinful and disobedient, who had passed under the power of evil, and were subject to death. The cross shows us what God thinks of sin. III. The Christ ought to have suffered these things that He might be 'a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God.... For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted' (Hebrews 2:17-18 ). The Christ by His sufferings made Himself one with the whole human race, able to enter into every sorrow, and to strengthen in every temptation or trial. In the presence of great want or great sorrow, I say nothing now of great sin, we must often have felt how vain and presumptuous our attempts at sympathy were. But one thing we could do. We could point to One, Himself the Son of man as well as the Son of God, who, while He lived upon our earth was homeless, friendless, forsaken, 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief'. IV. Once more the Christ ought to have suffered these things 'leaving as an example, that we should follow His steps'. It must ever be in suffering, in fear and trembling, that sinful men 'work out' the salvation which God is working in them, therefore 'it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing more sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings' (Hebrews 2:10 ). As the good Duke said when they would have crowned him King of Jerusalem: 'No, by no means. I will not wear a crown of gold where Jesus was crowned with thorns'. G. Milligan, Eden and Gethsemane, p. 137. References. XXIV. 25-27. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 53. XXIV. 26. W. B. Selbie, The Servant of God, p. 135. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 313; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iv. pp. 72, 389; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 451. XXIV. 26, 21. Ibid. vol. xii. p. 237. XXIV. 26-28. Ibid. vol. ix. p. 121. The Personality of the Word of God Luke 24:27 A modern novelist has described the presence of a Greek Testament in the room of a man tempted to his undoing. How often does the mere presence of the Divine Word make itself felt till the Book becomes no more a Thing but a Person! A glance at it, and though time and custom and sin have checked the old feelings, they are at once unsealed. The volume is not dumb. It speaks, appeals, warns, solicits, in the voice that floated along our dreams in childhood. It takes on an aspect sometimes terrible, as when it gleams like the flashing of a shield, sometimes tender as if it carried in it all the loving remonstrance of the past The tendency to pass into personality characterises things that greatly command us. Wordsworth tells us that on his first visit to Switzerland, as he was hurried down the southern slope of the Alps, the woods, 'decaying never to be decayed,' the drizzling crags, the cataracts, and the clouds appeared to him no longer material things, but characters in an Apocalypse. It was by the force of this feeling that Wordsworth seemed able ultimately to transfigure and unsubstantialise the whole mass of earth. The blood of Abel and the blood of Jesus cried in the ears of God. I. The New Testament is not a mere book, not a mere thing. It is the Word of God, and to the Word of God there are attributed in Scripture the most tremendous energies of personality. Let us take them as they are given in the Book of Revelation. 'And I saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war.' The Word of God is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. Is it not so with the New Testament? Wherever you place it, in whatever company, it is always judging and making war. We may neglect its warning and be deaf to its appeal, but it will not leave us alone. In righteousness it doth judge and make war, and it will go on judging and warning till we yield it the obedience it demands. How wonderful and thrilling must that moment have been when the angels of the Seven Churches each opened his epistle! Each knew that the epistle contained a judgment from which there was no appeal. Each had confronted the various criticisms of the Church and the world. Each had probably judged himself very leniently. We all of us find our comfort in the conflicts of criticism, and are encouraged by those that take side with us to think we are right. The judgment came that was unerring and complete. What a moment it must have been when the thunderbolt burst upon Sardis! 'These things saith He that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead.' The Church that had lived in the atmosphere of flattery suddenly knew that it had sunk out of life! II. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood. Always this is the clothing of the New Testament, no matter how it may be bound. It is clothed in a vesture dipped with blood, and if it were not, it would not be worth the lifting by hands that have been cut and wearied in their conflict with a world like this. Whatever is true about the New Testament, it is true that if you take from it the message of atonement, of the garden where Love once lay bleeding, of the cross on which the Eternal was crucified, nothing is left. The cross is not only its heart and groundwork, but it meets you, however carelessly you look at it, even with the first sight. It is with it as with the Word Himself, there is no Christ recognisable but the Christ Who has been crucified for us. III. The Word of God goes forth to His triumph, conquering and to conquer. It makes war in righteousness and for victories, and its sword will at last smite the nations that would not be won. The triumph of God's Word is sure. Whatever appearances may be from time to time, its 'liquid texture can receive no mortal wound'. The Church has often erred in not putting the Divine in the text and the human in the margin. What is human is perishable, but in the text all is Divine and all must endure. The war is a long war, and it will have its vicissitudes; but at the worst the gates of hell, through which pour the legions of our spiritual foes, shall not prevail against it. We may have missed much of the meaning of the Divine, but there has been nothing to justify alarm as for the imperilled sovereignty of the Book. The new theory of the solar system did not dethrone the sun, did not rescatter the stars over the abyss of heaven. So to the end generation after generation will ponder over His Book, generation after generation will watch by His cross. So it must be. He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet, and His thoughts must reign till all rebellious thoughts are subdued and disappear. There have been times, and the times may come again, when only His hidden ones will feed upon His truth; but in the coldest, darkest hour the buried fire will rise up out of the soil in the midst of a frozen world that thought itself done with the conquering Word of God. W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, p. 323. Reference. XXIV. 27- Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 285. He Would Have Gone Further Luke 24:28 The life of the believer in this world is a walk with Christ in the twilight, and so it is no wonder that the story of the journey to Emmaus still fascinates us. I. In the light of this story, let us ask the meaning of the words: He made as though He would have gone further. Some interpreters say that He was testing them. He was set upon discovering whether the new light had come into their souls, whether they were content to let the unknown Teacher pass on and see no more of Him. A modern preacher who has written with some beauty and insight on this story, says that Christ would not embarrass them, would not force an invitation. He never goes anywhere unasked. He recognises the sanctity of the humblest home. He would delicately relieve them of any obligation to offer their hospitality. He was indeed 'the first true gentleman that ever breathed'. Is there not something that jars in such readings of Him Who was the Truth indeed? Is it not better to take the words as they stand and give them the obvious meaning? He made as though He would have gone further just because He would have gone further. We have before us a shrine of innermost mystery when we seek to understand the whole history of the great Forty Days. Whither did He go, when we fail to trace Him? Did He speed home to the bosom of God? He did not need now to pass the nights in prayer on stormy hills and headlands. His oblation had been rendered. His warfare was accomplished. Did He go, as some have fancied, preaching the glad tidings to the Church of the Old Covenant, to set their hearts on fire with the wonder of fulfilled prophecy? Did He, as some of the Fathers dreamed, work unrecorded miracles among the sick of Judea and even in far countries? We do not know. What we know is that He went further, that His heart was drawn beyond these two whose cravings He had answered, and that even while He sat with them in the shadows, He was constrained and * would have gone further. * II. May we not take these words as summing up the whole story of His life? He would have gone further. Great as were His words, mighty as were His deeds, the sense of restraint, of limitation, is ever present in the Gospel story. He could not do many mighty works because of their unbelief. There was something that seemed to hem in even His omnipotence. When He wept at the grave of Lazarus, it was as if the whole flood of earthly sorrows poured over His mind at once, as if He felt how little He had done to relieve them of how little He was to do even in calling Lazarus back. He would have gone further, and dried all tears, and righted all wrongs, and made an end of all sins and of all pains. And yet may we not reverently say that of Him it was true, even as it was of His servants, that as His day so was His strength? The strength was equal to the day, but no more. It seemed as if the Holy Spirit had to come before the full meaning of His redeeming grace could be told. He would have gone further, doubtless, and spoken words far greater, more meaningful, even than the deepest words of His Spirit through the Apostles, but something hindered. And we know the judgment which He passed on the results of His own work. The hosannahs of the shouting multitude told Him that He had failed. His vision was unfulfilled. He had striven to make manifest the spiritual kingdom, and even the Apostles beside Him did not understand. They planned how they might sit, one on His right hand and the other on His left He knew that the crowd that cried Hosannah would cry Crucify Him, that His own mouth would speak the sentences of mortal weakness, that all would forsake Him and flee. He would have gone further into those blinded, or at best half-blinded natures. He knew what it had all come to, but He did not delay His resolute march to the cross. III. May we not say it about all Christian work and warfare, about the long weary toil and strife of the Church of God? Disciples are meeting just now to go over the result of their labours, and whatever cheer is given to any, all must say, He would have gone further. Yes, He would have gone further, and our comfort in days of weary, unappreciated labour is that He is living, and that He would go further now. We shall see greater things even upon earth if we tarry in Jerusalem, offering up our broken prayer and praise, and waiting for the promise of the Father. IV. He would have gone further is true, also, in the individual Christian life. We have been faint and weak and weary, even when we have most desired to be true-hearted. Those who have chosen the steepest path and the highest aim feel the lameness of their natures. How often has it seemed that our whole Christian life has halted, or even gone back. * He would have gone further. He would go further. May it not be that the last word He says on earth to the nearest and dearest of all His redeemed is: Behold, I stand at the door and knock? * W. Robertson Nicoli., Sunday Evening, p. 155. Luke 24:28 Who can imagine the infinite ardour, and yet delicacy of Divine Love! The-urgency, and yet the non-intrusiveness, of the Holy Presence! He made as though He would have gone further; and at the same time longed to be received. Indeed, He would have gone on, had not the two travellers set the highest value on His continuance and friendship. Had they not entreated Him, pressed Him, to tarry with them, He would have withdrawn from them in favour of more eager souls With the lukewarm He never rests. The heart must-wait upon Him, watch for Him, long after Him, and abandon herself to His love. Love can only dwell with love. But where love is, there Love hastens to be. Love cannot resist love. The traveller loved Him, dreaded his departure, cherished His presence, constrained Him, saying, Abide with us. Love had found his own. He went in to tarry with them. Dr. John Pulsford. References. XXIV. 28, 29. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1665. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 342. XXIV. 28-31. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 14. The Risen Lord Luke 24:29 As we read the story it carries with it conviction of its truth. Nobody could have possibly invented it. How unimportant, too, were the men to whom this appearance was given only one of them whose name, even, is known to us; the other we do not know by name. Two plain, simple, common men, as we are wont to say; but therefore all the more in keeping with His wont. How sad these men are, as they walk and talk together. It is because they are sad that Jesus draws near to them. Death and the Resurrection have not changed Him in this, though they have changed Him in many respects. The sadness of men still attracts Him. But their sadness is not only the sadness of parting; it is also the sadness of doubt. He leads them kindly; He teaches them patiently. They do not recognise Him at first, and He is content to remain unknown a stranger to them. He makes Himself known to them in the humble meal at which they are seated. I. How beautiful is this revelation of the risen Jesus! It sparkles with light, does it not? Let us learn from it of Him, for what He was that day He is still. He has not changed; Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. What shall we learn, then, from it? Realise the presence of the living Jesus in our daily life. Look for Him as He comes to us in the daytime of our work. Seek Him in the everyday actions, in the daily round, in the common task. Find Him in the most commonplace things. Remember Jesus is essentially human, whilst He is truly Divine, very Man as well as very God. Nothing that has to do with our humanity is foreign to Him. Bear in mind that He is never nearer to us than when we are sad. He has so much in common with sorrow, for He was the very Man of Sorrows Himself. As it has been beautifully said, He consecrates our saddest walks, our hardest roads, our longest journeys. Learn how to deal with doubt our own, or the doubts of other people. Jesus bids us be patient with doubt; patient with ourselves, with others. He tells us how He ever manifests Himself to the honest doubter. He promises us that He will be with us in our doubt, although we may not recognise Him; though not perhaps until the evening overtakes us, as darkness and the night of death come over us, we shall know that He has been with us all the time. II. Only one more thought. He was known unto them in the breaking of bread. What does it mean? Was it in Holy Communion? Surely not, though this act of His was sacramental, as all the actions of Jesus must have been. But to us it does come true in the Blessed Sacrament of love, in the quiet of Holy Communion. Where two or three are gathered together in His Name, He is in the midst of them. And then, as we recognise His Presence, as we realise that in the Holy Ordinance, in a special sense, we dwell in Him and He dwells in us, no better prayer than that of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus can come from the hearts and lips of those who have known Him in the breaking of bread 'Lord, abide with us'. Luke 24:29 It is by aspiration that we are worth considering; a soul is measured by the amount of its desire, as one judges in advance of a cathedral by the height of its spire. Flaubert. Reference. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 140. The Supper At Emmaus Luke 24:30-31 Let us meditate upon that Sunday afternoon walk to Emmaus with the wondrous supper-time which followed, and, if we take it as a sort of acting parable of disciple-life, shadowing, not obscurely, to the spiritual reader, the conditions under which you and I have to pursue our earthly walk in the absence of our dear Lord, and also the forms and occasions under which His spiritual presence with us reveals itself from time to time. I. Are not these two men a type, to begin with, of many an ill-instructed and despondent Christian? Their sadness sprang from ignorance, ignorance of the Bible, and want of that spiritual insight to take in the joyous meaning of all God's words and works which we call faith. Is not that exactly the reason why so many of us go on our way with depressed spirits? The roots, I take it, of four-fifths of a Christian's sadness lie in blameable ignorance or misunderstanding of God. When if we would but throw upon it the light of the Divine Word, revealing the Divine purpose, revealing, at all events, the Divine love, all would grow hopeful at least, if not plain, a Divine needs-be would become apparent for every trial, and a Divine issue of glory to cover it. II. I notice next that to such sad disciples Jesus, though in disguise, is always near. Sadness draws Him near: sadness, especially in hearts that love Him most of all when the cause of the sadness is His own absence. But it is not in His own person that He makes Himself known, at least at the first. For that a long preparation is needful. The presence of Jesus in His Church, like His presence on the way to Emmaus, is constant; but it is by the ministry of His Word. It is a sort of disguise, and yet one so thin that the spiritual eye ought to pierce it if only our eyes were not 'holden'. III. May I carry this parable with you just a step farther, as to disciples who listen aright to the teaching voice of the Master? There do come moments rare and brief, perhaps when a clear manifestation of Jesus is made to the soul and a more immediate and more intimate fellowship with Jesus is enjoyed. No tabernacle can Peter build that will detain the glory: the Presence, scarcely seen, seems on the instant to vanish again. Indeed it must. Common day, common life resume their sway all too soon. Yet these moments do not leave the favoured disciple just what he was before, for when once the soul has beheld the face of Jesus and tasted the mysterious joy of knowing Him to be its own Saviour and its own life, ah! then it carries back into the world a lofty, sacred, awe-struck joy that adorns and fills the days to come, a secret joy that is all its own. J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxx. p. 296. References. XXIV. 30, 31. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 33. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 348. XXIV. 31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 681. Texts Explained By Affliction Luke 24:31 There are texts we can only read when we are in the valley: there are stars we can see only in the darkness. We think we know the texts, but we do not; we think we are looking at a common stranger when we are looking at the Divine Lord; we suppose that we are eating supper-bread when in reality we are in symbol and in faith eating the flesh of Christ. So with many a text; the grammarian cannot explain it, the theologian is utterly tost in its unfathomable depths; experience can read the text, tears can see the stars, broken hearts can feel the nearness of God. I. Take an example. 'I will send another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.' Permanence is, so to say, the characteristic of this Paraclete. So we read in the Gospel of John xiv. 16. 'I am the Paraclete,' Christ might have said, 'but I will send another Paraclete, another Comforter, and the distinction between Me and Him or between Him and Me is that He will abide with you never, never go away.' You know what it is to have comfort melting away from you in human circumstances. At first all your friends are round about you in a kind of festival of joy and benediction; they empty their hearts upon you, they offer everything that is in the sanctuary of their love, and you say, 'The loss in almost made up'. But presently one must go to his merchandise, another to his family, and another to fulfil some impending or inevitable responsibility, and another is struck down by sickness, and the thick walls that were built around you are crumbling away, and the loss comes darker and bigger than ever. None can abide but God. He is there amid the broken, shattered ruins night and day, always there. If He were in the broken heart but for one uncertain moment, how terrible would the agony be, but He abides like a long summer, He never needs to be awakened, His energy never fails. He is the abiding-Paraclete, not the visitor, not the guest, not some one who works up to an occasion and is fully equal to the necessity of the case for the time being: He stops. II. Take another passage. 'I am alone, yet not alone.' Can the literal man understand that? Very lamely and darkly; only the spiritual man can discern the spiritual genius of that paradox. I am alone, yet I do not feel lonely; I am alone, and yet a thousand distinct voices can be heard in my soul, not in confusion, but in individual articulateness, each having a song, a psalm, a prophecy, a dream, a cheer from heaven. You are alone? Yes, but not alone. Who is with you? The abiding Comforter, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. There are some things which only the lonely soul can do. The soul that dwells in noise has no message to its age and no message worth hearing to its own family. It is in lonesomeness that we hear the footfall or the going of the eternal Jehovah; it is then we are called upon to interpret the inarticulate and to give as it were shape and form to that which is shapeless, formless. It is even so with man as with water that cannot rise above its own level; so he must shape Jehovah. It is a wondrous process conducted within the sanctuary of the soul. To be alone and yet not alone you will never understand until your whole life has been emptied of everything it rested on and looked to and was sure of. III. Take a third instance, from Mark xv. 34: 'My God, My God 1 why hast Thou forsaken Me?' I am glad Jesus Christ said that, because I wanted to say it and dare not unless somebody had said it first There we some things we dare not say as it were originally, that is to say, on the motion of our own soul, but when some other spirit or personality speaks, then we exclaim as if in gratitude, That is what my own soul has been longing to say; if I were to say it it would be blasphemy, but Jesus Christ said it and made that forsakenness a kind of sacrament. Jesus was our exemplar and forerunner down to the very last extremity of things. IV. The Apostle Paul helps us also to understand the true meaning of death. He said in one of his epistles, 'To die is gain'. No man ever interpreted death in that fashion before; that is a new lexicography. That is the way to get at the meaning of words to live them! When the hot ploughshare rips your heart you will know the meaning of fire, and not until then. 'To die is gain' to the individual? Yes, certainly, and necessarily, but that is not the meaning of this expression of the Apostle in its entirety. 'For me to live is Christ,' is doctrine, is preaching, is obedience to the Lord, is the exemplification of all the mystery of Calvary, so far as that mystery can be exemplified in human life. To die is gain to Paul? That would be unworthy of Paul to mix himself up with the affair at all. Rather he says, No matter what it is to me, I will take God at His word, it will be all right with His saints whom He takes to Himself in sorrow or in sleep, in agony or in the peacefulness of a dream; I am not thinking about myself: to die is gain to the cause! I am better away; it is expedient for you that I should go away, said Christ, and it is expedient for every great cause that its heroes should vanish, die out of sight and into life. I cannot have it that Paul thought about himself and his personal comforts and his great delight in getting away from the crowd and from the stress, from the storm and the sea, and from the loneliness of the desert; all that is included, but there is an infinitely further and higher truth. To live is Christ, to die is gain to the cause of Christ. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. i. p. 59. The Burning Heart Luke 24:32 I. It has been one of the distinctive marks of Christianity that it has caused this burning of the heart. We see this distinctive feature of the Gospel very clearly in its earliest days. What most impresses us in the Acts is not the heroism nor the resource of the first preachers. It is the extraordinary way in which the Gospel reached to the very centre of men's lives, and filled them, sometimes in an instant, with a glowing ardour that was rich in promise. It has been noted by Professor Lecky in his work on the 'History of European Morals,' that one great change has come over the moral temper of Europe. That change may be summed up in a word by saying that the emotions and the affections in a word the heart have won a recognition for themselves in modern life which they never gained in the life of the old world. To-day to be tender-hearted is a noble thing; but then to be tender was to be reckoned weak. I think, too, that in this burning of the heart lies the great secret of Christian progress. A Gospel that carries this power in its message has little need of any other aid. When a man is faced by any great endeavour, it is not more light he wants, it is more heat. II. The Gospel ever makes the heart burn as Christ did here. (1) The hearts of these two men began to burn, not so much by learning what was new, as by a new interpretation of the old. Does not our Saviour always act like that when He begins to make our heart burn? He does not startle us with unexpected novelties; He touches with glory what is quite familiar. (2) But after all what set their heart a-burning was not the mere word of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Christ who was behind the word. The ardour of Christendom, its life and its enthusiasm, its countless efforts, its unwearied service all that is rooted, not in any creed, but in the immediate presence of a living Christ. G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p. 133. References. XXIV. 32. J. C. Lambert, Christian World Pulpit, vol. W. p. 100. W. P. S. Bingham, Sermons on Easter Subjects, p. 26. XXIV. 32-34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2408. XXIV. 34. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p. 15. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 70. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 94. W. C. E. Newbolt, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 245. Scottish Review, vol. li. p. 439. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 70; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 513. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture. St. Luke, p. 362. A. T. Robertson, Epochs in the Life of Jesus, p. 169. Robert J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, p. 103. XXIV. 35. J. W. Boulding, Sermons, p. 109. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 253; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 61. The Realised Presence (for the First Sunday After Easter) Luke 24:36 Our text places before us one of the appearances of our Lord after His Resurrection one of these appearances, of which there are three, which are given, perhaps, in much greater detail than others. The first of those three was the appearance to Mary in the garden; the second, to the two disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus in the afternoon, and the third, the one that is here brought before us, in the upper room at Jerusalem on the evening of the first Easter Day. If our Lord's life and death is full of wonder for us, so is our Lord's sojourn, His stay upon earth after His Resurrection. I. This Tarrying of the Lord upon Earth was to Prepare His Disciples, and through them the whole Church for the manner of His after-presence with them even to the end. As our Lord had intimated to them that He would not abide with them as He had done, so in all His appearances now, and in His intercourse with them, He teaches them and leads them farther on in the same lesson. The uncertainty of His presence and of His departures; His appearing to them in another form so that they knew Him not, as to the disciples travelling that day to Emmaus; His being seen now in the garden by Mary alone, then by the other women; His standing amongst them when the door of the upper room was closed all this, as well as the irregularity as to the time of His absence from them, sometimes appearing often in one day, sometimes being absent a whole week unseen, was evidently teaching the same lesson the new manner of His presence with them. It was imprinting on their minds that, although He had been taken from them, He had been more than given back to them, that now He was ever to be present with them. They felt, indeed, that He was ever near, though they did not always, nor were always able to see Him. They were now learning that He was ever with them, that He was not, as before, present with those who were in one place only, and, therefore, absent from those who were in another. And all this gave a sense of reality to their lives. They were learning the great law of His spiritual presence, for all they did was done now, and they were conscious of it, in His sight. He was, though He might be unseen to them, a witness of all their actions. II. He was Present with them also Individually. Yes, the same Jesus, His words to them were, 'It is I Myself. How much is conveyed to them, and surely to us, in that word, 'Myself,' the' Myself of the Resurrection. This chapter, after we have read it carefully for ourselves, must leave this one thought with us, and that in a very marked way, that it was the same Jesus Who was risen from the dead. This thought is brought out in the narrative in the same chapter of the two friends on their way home from Jerusalem in the afternoon. It was Jesus Himself as He walked and talked with the two disciples, as He had previously revived the broken heart of Mary; and last, as the narrative from which our text is taken tells, He came and stood in their midst and breathed His word of peace, His word of assurance, 'It is I Myself Peace be unto you'. Thus He taught them to know that they were each one singly before Him, that in their fears, their sorrows, their difficulties and dangers, they were indeed with Him and He with them. III. For us the Lesson is the same. Though ascended, yet He is here, and He will manifest Himself to us, the same risen Lord. In times of sorrow, in times of difficulty, in the quiet hour of prayer, when we seek to open our hearts before Him, He, Jesus Himself, will come and talk with us. He will, if we will invite Him, walk with us along the path of life. Our hearts, too, shall burn as He speaks with us, as He opens to us the Scriptures, and for us, as for them, His presence shall be our strength, it shall be our life. His own disciples at one time had forsaken Him and had fled, and yet He comes to them, and so He will come to us if we long for His peace, if we long for His rest. Then we must seek and look upon Him, knowing Him more and more as our Saviour. References. XXIV. 36. T. J. Lawrence, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 292. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 164. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 116. E. H. Bickersteth, Thoughts in Past Years, p. 303. XXIV. 36-43. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 100. XXIV. 36-44. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1958. XXIV. 36-53. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 372. XXIV. 37, 38. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 248. XXIV. 38. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2408. XXIV. 38, 39. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 241. Hands Beautiful Luke 24:39 What are these hands? What do they signify? I. Behold His hands, for they are hands of brotherhood. When Jesus came into Peter's house, we read, He saw his wife's mother laid and sick of a fever. And what did He do? He put out His hand and touched her, and she arose and ministered to them all. In this case, and in a hundred others, what men recognised in the touch was brotherhood. And always, where the Gospel is at work, it stretches out its hands in the same way. II. Again, Behold His hands, for they are hands of power. When Jesus went back the second time to Nazareth, do you remember what the villagers said about Him? 'What wisdom is this that is given Him,' they said, 'that even such mighty works are wrought by His hands.' And then turn to the Gospel of St. John, where our Saviour Himself is speaking of His sheep, and He says: 'I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand'. There have never been hands on earth like those of Jesus, so mighty in action and in guardianship. III. Behold His hands, for they are hands of tenderness. Can you tell me why the Gospel is so precious when the chair is empty and the grave is full? It is not only because the hand of Jesus is powerful to console and to assuage; it is because when every other touch would pain, the touch of Jesus is exquisitely tender. Why are our Christian homes so full of gentle love, so different from the stern spirit of antiquity? There is only one answer, it is 'Behold His hands': it is the touch of Christ which has achieved it. IV. Behold His hands, for they were once disfigured. It is the hands which were pierced that have been the mightiest power in human history. Not the hands laid upon the blind man's eyes, nor the hands laid upon the children's head, have been so mighty in the world's redemption as the hands that were marred and wounded on the cross. V. Lastly, Behold His hands, for they are hands of reassurance. When we are tempted to doubt if He still lives and reigns, to us as to Thomas He says, 'Behold My hands'. In a thousand deeds and in a thousand lives there is the unmistakable touch of the Redeemer. Does not that reassure us and kindle our faith again? It is the risen Saviour saying, 'Behold My hands': it is our answering cry 'My Lord and my God'. G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p. 216. References. XXIV. 39. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 117. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 411. The Hands of Jesus Luke 24:40 We are to contemplate the hands of Jesus. The lessons they teach are plain and simple, and for practical uses. I. Observe, first They were a Man's hands. He was, on earth, a veritable man. He took our nature not the nature of angels, but of men. He was flesh of our flesh, our real kinsman, being in all points such as we are, only without sin. And so He remains for ever. The incarnation was not a temporary expedient. When He came from heaven to earth He did not empty Himself of His Godhood: nor when He returned from earth to heaven did He lay aside His manhood. Here is infinite comfort; He remains the first-born among many brethren, the Elder Brother of us all. II. They were pure hands. Jesus claimed an absolute sinlessness. Of all the accusations brought against Him, not one impeached the spotless purity of His character and life. And His claim was strangely conceded. In Christ alone the claim and the testimony are united. III. They were callous hands. It is written of Buddha that, at the beginning of his ministry he left his palace and took his place under the sacred Bo-tree to meditate. On the contrary, Jesus entered a carpenter's shop, and became the brother of all who give themselves to labour as the fulfilment of the primal law. Our Lord in heaven is as truly the sympathetic Friend of working men as when He made ploughs for the farmers of Galilee, and mended the furniture of the people of Nazareth. IV. They were strong hands. Not strong with a mere knotted muscularity, like those of an athlete, disciplined to strike a blow; but hands that spoke of courage and authority, of a perfect, physical and moral symmetry. (1) The right hand of Jesus is the hand of judgment (2) This right hand is the hand of a King. (3) This right hand of Jesus is the hand of salvation. V. They were friendly hands, the kindest and most helpful. They were ever employed in doing good. VI. They were wounded hands. They have a wonderful story to tell. VII. They were uplifted hands. They are uplifted in intercession for us. VIII. They are outstretched hands. He stands in an attitude of invitation. O infinite patience! D. J. Burrell, The Gospel of Certainty, p. 121. References. XXIV. 40. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp. 249 and 255. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No. 254. XXIV. 41. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 425. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 117. XXIV. 41-43. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 350. XXIV. 41-45. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No. 2279. XXIV. 42. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 118. XXIV. 44. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalms, p. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 452; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 265. XXIV. 45-46. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 369. XXIV. 46, 47. Bishop Moule, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 291. XXIV. 46-49. W. J. Henderson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 352. XXIV. 47. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 213. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 75. F. W. Symes, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 511. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 329, and vol. xxix. No. 1729. T. T. Lynch, Sermons for my Curates, p. 215. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 277; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 80. Witnesses for Christ Luke 24:48 I. How can we become witnesses? (1) We can be witnesses by remembering what it is to be a member of a witnessing Church. (2) We can be witnesses among our friends not canting, not necessarily preaching at them, but letting them take the knowledge that we have been with Jesus. (3) To pray is to witness. (4) The fourth way of bearing witness is to take the right side and never listen to the devil's lie, which tells you that what you know is wrong is manly. II. What is it which prevents us being faithful witnesses? (1) Moral cowardice. (2) Doubt (3) Want of prayer. (4) Want of interest. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p. 92. References. XXIV. 48. Bishop Jacob, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 308. XXIV. 48, 49. C. A. Berry, Vision and Duty, p. 116. G. Campbell Morgan, The Missionary Manifesto, p. 85. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke, p. 379. Profitable Delays Luke 24:49 The mystery of the ten days of waiting to which this command of Christ committed His followers is the mystery of all the daily experience of delay between our apprehension of the glorified Lord and our realisation of the glorifying power which He bestows. It in no sense signifies unwillingness on the part of God to fulfil His Word, or to co-operate with the desires of His people, but rather emphasises the fact that our greatest need is to know ourselves and to have our personal lives dealt with as only God can deal with them, before we are fit for His service. We must stand before Him before we can stand before men, and must ourselves be right before we can be sent out to right the lives of others. It is said of Michael Angelo, the famous painter, that he always made his own brushes; and, if this be true, it is but an illustration of the Divine Workman who is at pains to fashion the lives of His people as instruments by which He designs to effect His will. I. It is full of interest to us to seek rightly to understand the need for this tarrying, which the Saviour unmistakably proclaims as the condition of enduement; and in this we are guided alike by a consideration of the Word and of our own hearts. We need, first of all, in our truest spiritual desires a discipline of our impulse, and the testing of our enthusiasm, for nothing is so unstable as spiritual emotion. There lies before us a long race, and we need to take breath. There lies ahead of us a fierce fight, and we need to gird ourselves for the conflict. Success is not to be achieved, and victory is not to be won, by anything less than a complete control of the whole man by the Lord Whom he serves. And this can only be realised as we tarry in His presence. II. We need also to tarry in order to recover a true sense of proportion. It is in the upper room alone that we learn what is supreme and what is merely secondary, what is fundamental and what is but incidental. We are so apt to exaggerate trifles, and at the same time to lose the importance of that which is vital, that nothing but the quiet of the Presence-chamber can give us that adjustment of vision and appreciation of relative values which makes for strength of life and service. III. We need, like the early disciples, a tarrying-time also to study the problems which discipleship involves; to look out on the throng amid which we must live, and learn how they are to be reached with our message and for our Lord. It has been said that one of the greatest dangers in the Christian life is that of becoming superficially omniscient; and from this nothing but time spent in the secret place will deliver us. IV. And again, we need constantly to tarry in His presence to be saved, as nothing but the lessons of such tarrying-time will save us from the pride which any sudden access of power is bound to promote. The preparation of the vessel is as important as the preparation of the content. For since the power of the Spirit is only given for the glory of the Lord, self-glory will entirely thwart its purpose. J. Stuart Holden, The Pre-Eminent Lord, p. 155. The Holy Spirit and the Church Luke 24:49 The Lord speaks in the words of our text of the promise. There probably is in the Christian experience of each one of us one promise more blessed and precious than any other a promise which shines out in such brilliance that we feel that to be the promise. And to God there is also a promise which He calls the promise. Under the Old Testament dispensation that promise was Christ, under the New Testament dispensation that promise is the Blessed Spirit. Let us think of some of the Spirit's special work in the Church of Christ I. Where He is He Teaches. He takes the Bible and explains it. For instance, how often it happens that even a true Christian has no happy spiritual experience; even a real and true servant of the Lord Jesus Christ has no assurance of His own salvation, no sense of acceptance with God. 'Miserere' is all his prayer. He can never get beyond it. There is no clear reading of his title to mansions in the skies, and yet these great possibilities of the Christian life have been put before him again and again with the greatest clearness. He has never experimentally got hold of them himself, till one day it all breaks in upon him in a minute. He reads his title there: he knows that he is accepted in the Beloved. He rejoices. He has got away from the 'Miserere'. What is the difference? The Holy Spirit has just been throwing the light into his soul and opening his eyes. The Holy Spirit has been doing what no other ministry can do, and that is taking the things of Christ and showing them to the sinner. II. Where the Holy Spirit is, He is Present also as a Remembrancer. 'He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.' The power of sanctified memory is, I believe, in many cases a special gift of the Holy Ghost. He brings to our recollection with freshness the forgotten truths which perhaps we learnt as children. And it has been well said that though the gift of memory is one of the greatest, yet there is another gift of the Spirit as great, namely, the gift of forgetfulness. We do not want to remember some sins in our lives, and if you are looking for the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ you need not remember them. He says, 'Your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more'. And what is the use of our torturing our hearts with remembering what is past when our Lord says to the true believer, 'I throw your sins into the bottom of the sea, and they shall never be remembered any more'. III. The Holy Spirit is Present with Sanctified Grace. The office of the Holy Spirit is not only to begin the spiritual life but, in the advancement and sanctification of the believer, His office is to further and complete it. IV. Where the Holy Spirit is, He is Present with Wonderful Power. 'You shall receive power from on high.' And it is just this power that Christian Churches and Christian believers want today. Expectation (For the Sunday after Ascension Day) Luke 24:49 To-day invites us to revisualise by this optic-glass of imaginative sympathy an experience of the first men of Christ which is intermediate between the great events, and is not much dwelt upon. A group of men and women, who tarried in the city of Jerusalem until the feast of Pentecost arrived, celebrated an occasion which we might correctly name a Sunday after Ascension Day. It was not merely that this day of the year, the seventh day before the Jewish festival of First-fruits, and forty-fourth after the Passover, came round to them. It was already a Sunday to them, a Lord's Day, the weekly return of the day of the Resurrection and of the second appearance to the eleven in this upper chamber, where they met today. This was then the Lord's Day after the Ascension and that assurance last on His lips of a Coming, not now of Himself, but of the promise of the Father, 'not many days hence'. Might not the next Resurrection Day, the day of the Coming Back, be the date intended by the 'not many days hence,' the day therefore of the promise of the Father? If they thought so, with what an awed sense of fate must these men have wakened that morning, with what a silence of repressed emotion have greeted each other on the threshold of the chamber, with what unconfessed tremor of excitement have conducted their service of Jewish prayer to a Jehovah Who was now His Father and their Father. Yet the prayer passed, and there was no Coming. The day passed, and lo! it was not His day: His hour was not yet come. 'Tarry ye, tarry in the city of Jerusalem' wait for the promise of the Father, wait was still the watchword for the sentinels of Salvation: He, the Captain of them, had not changed the signal yet. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/