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
I am afraid that the practice of such meditation as is meant here has
come to be, like the art of making ecclesiastical stained glass, almost
extinct in modern times. You have all so many newspapers and magazines
to read that the Bible has a chance of being shoved out of sight,
except on Sundays and in chapels. The 'meditating' that is enjoined in
my text is no mere intellectual study of Scripture, either from an
antiquarian or a literary or a theological point of view, but it is the
mastering of the principles of conduct as laid down there, and the
appropriating of all the power for guidance and for sustaining which
that word of the Lord gives. Meditation, the familiarising ourselves
with the ethics of Scripture, and with the hopes and powers that are
treasured in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are made up upon a great
many thorny questions as to what we ought to do, and that when crises
or dangers come, as they have a knack of coming, very suddenly, and are
sprung upon us unexpectedly, we shall be able, without much difficulty,
or much time spent in perplexed searching, to fall back upon the
principles that decide our conduct--that is essential to all successful
and victorious Christian life.
And it is the secret of all blessed Christian life. For there is a
lovely echo of these vigorous words of command to Joshua in a very much
more peaceful form in the 1st Psalm: 'Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly, ... but his delight is in the law of
the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night'--the very
words that are employed in the text to describe the duty of the
soldier--therefore 'all that he doeth shall prosper.'
III. That leads to the last thought here--the sure victory of such bold
obedience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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