Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VII
We are His, therefore we are bound to live to His praise. That is the
conclusion which one Old Testament passage draws. 'This people have I
formed for Myself; they shall show forth My praise' (Isaiah xliii. 21).
The Apostle Peter quotes these words immediately after those from
Exodus, which describe Israel as 'a people for God's own possession,'
when he says 'that ye should show forth the praise of Him who hath
called you.' Let us, then, live to His glory, and remember that the
servants of the King are bound to stand to their colours amid rebels,
and that they who know the sweetness of possessing God, and the
blessedness of yielding to His supreme control, should acknowledge what
they have found of His goodness, and 'tell forth the honour of His
name, and make His praise glorious.' Let not all the magnificent and
wonderful expenditure of divine longing and love be in vain, nor run
off your hearts like water poured upon a rock. Surely the sun's flames
leaping leagues high, they tell us, in tongues of burning gas, must
melt everything that is near them. Shall we keep our hearts sullen and
cold before such a fire of love? Surely that superb and wonderful
manifestation of the love of God in the Cross of Christ should melt
into running rivers of gratitude all the ice of our hearts.
'He gave Himself for me!' Let us turn to Him and say: 'Lo! I give
myself to Thee. Thou art mine. Make me Thine by the constraint of Thy
love, so utterly, and so saturate my spirit with Thyself, that it shall
not only be Thine, but in a very deep sense it shall be Thee, and that
it may be "no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me."'
THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD
'As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.'--DEUT.
xxxii. 11.
This is an incomplete sentence in the Authorised Version, but really it
should be rendered as a complete one; the description of the eagle's
action including only the two first clauses, and (the figure being
still retained) the person spoken of in the last clauses being God
Himself. That is to say, it should read thus, 'As an eagle stirreth up
his nest, fluttereth over his young, _He_ spreads abroad His wings,
takes them, bears them on His pinions.' That is far grander, as well as
more compact, than the somewhat dragging comparison which, according to
the Authorised Version, is spread over the whole verse and tardily
explained, in the following, by a clause introduced by an unwarranted
'So'--'the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with
him.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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