Take another point. The possession of Christ for ourselves imposes upon
us the obligation to impart Him. All property in this world is trust
property, and everything that a man has that can help or bless the
moral or spiritual or intellectual condition of his fellows, he is
thereby under solemn obligation to impart. There is an obligation
arising from the bands that knit us to one another, so that no man can
possess his good alone without being untrue to what we call nowadays
the solidarity of humanity. You have, you say, the bread of life: very
well, what would you think of a man in a famine who, when women were
boiling their children, and men were fighting with the swine on the
dunghill for garbage, was content to eat his morsel alone, and leave
others to perish by starvation? You possess, you say, the healing for
all the diseases of humanity: very well, what would you think of a man
who, in a pestilence, was contented with swallowing his own specific,
and leaving others to die and to rot in the street? If you have the
Christ, you have Him that you may impart Him. 'He that withholdeth
bread, the people shall curse him'; of how much deeper malediction from
despairing lips will they be thought worthy who call themselves the
followers of Him that gave His life to be the bread of the world, and
yet withhold it from famishing souls?
And it is an obligation that arises, too, from the very purposes of our
calling. What are Christian men and women saved for? For their own
blessedness? Yes, and no. No creature in God's great universe but is
great enough to be a worthy end of the divine action; the happiness of
the humblest and most insignificant moves His mighty hand. Ay, but no
creature in God's universe so great as that he is a worthy end of the
divine action, if he is going to keep all the divine gifts in himself.
We are all brought into the light that we may impart light.
'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues.'
II. And now turn to the second thought which I desire to draw from
these words. We have here, in a very picturesque and vivid form, the
setting forth of the manner in which the Evangelist Zion is to proclaim
her message.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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