Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. JohnMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Ephesians -- Commentaries; Bible. Epistle of John, 1st -- Commentaries; Bible. Peter -- Commentaries
Now, brethren, do not forget that this exhortation of my text, and
therefore this description, is addressed to a community of professing
Christians. I hope you will not misunderstand me as if I thought that
such a picture as I have been trying to draw applies only to men that
have no religion in them at all. It applies in varying degrees to men
that have, as--I was going to say the bulk, but perhaps that is
exaggeration, let me say a tragically large number--of professing
Christians, and a proportionate number of the professing Christians in
this audience have, a little life and a great circumference of death.
Dear brethren, you may call yourselves, and may be Christian people, and
have somewhat shaken off the torpor, and roused yourself from the
slumbering death of which I have been speaking. Remember that it still
hangs to you, and that it was of Christians that the Master said:
'Whilst the Lord was away they all slumbered and slept'; and that it was
of a Christian Church, and not of a pagan world, that the same voice
from heaven said: 'Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.' And
so I beseech you, bear with me, and do not think I am scolding, or
flinging about wild words at random, when I make a very earnest appeal
to each individual professing, and real, Christian in this congregation,
and ask them to consider, each for themselves, how much of sleep is
still in their drowsy eyes, and how far it is true that the quickening
life of Jesus Christ has penetrated, as the sunbeams into the darkness,
into the heavy mass of their natural death.
II. Secondly, let me ask you to look at the summons to awake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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