A Ribband of Blue, and Other Bible StudiesTaylor, James Hudson
Religion
A Ribband of Blue, and Other Bible Studies
Taylor, James Hudson
Bible -- Study and teaching
Do we not often give to a poor CHRIST rather than to a rich one? Are
we not sometimes unwilling to give until we know His work to be in
straits, and sometimes its very existence imperilled? Are not our
hearts oft times more moved by the recital of human needs than by
CHRIST'S claim for the prosecution of the one work for which He has
left His Church on earth? A famine in India, a flood in China, is
more potent to bring temporal relief than the continual famine of the
bread of life and of the increasing floods of heathen ungodliness. It
is well, it is CHRIST-like, to minister temporal relief to suffering
humanity, but shall the deep longings and thirstings of His soul, and
the impressiveness of His last command ere He ascended on high, be
less urgent? How many of the parents who refuse to let son or
daughter go into the mission-field would refuse the Queen of England
were she to confer the honour of a mission on their beloved children?
Do we recognize the majesty of the King of Glory, and the immortal
honor that appertains to His service? To those who do, the glad
exclamations of the Queen of Sheba afford well-suited expressions:
Happy are Thy subjects, happy are Thy servants which stand
continually before Thee and hear Thy wisdom.
To the Queen of Sheba, however, more was given than to those happy
subjects or to those servants who served the king in their own land.
To her was given, as an eye-witness of the majesty of the king, as a
glad participant of his bounty, to return to the far-off land, and to
testify to those to whom, if they had heard at all, the half had not
been told. Not as she came did she return, with a longing, yearning,
unsatisfied heart, with duties to discharge for which she had not the
wisdom;--with a royal dignity indeed, but one which brought not rest
to her own spirit. Now she had seen the king, now all her desire was
met; and the glorious king, after thus marvelously satisfying her,
had further overwhelmed her with unthought-of gifts of his own royal
bounty!
Do we know much of this, beloved friends? Has CHRIST become to us
such a living bright reality that no post of duty shall be irksome,
that as His witnesses we can return to the quiet home side, or to the
distant service among the heathen, with hearts more than glad, more
than satisfied; and most glad, most satisfied, when most sad and most
stripped, it may be, of earthly friends and treasures? Let us put all
our treasures into His hand; then He will never need to take them
from us on account of heart idolatry; and if in wisdom and love He
remove them for a time, He will leave no vacuum, but Himself will
fill the void, Himself wipe away the tear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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