Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
There is life for you in Jesus Christ, who '_is_ the Life.' Like the
great aqueducts that stretch from the hills across the Roman Campagna,
His Incarnation brings the waters of the fountain from the mountains of
God into the lower levels of our nature, and the fetid alleys of our
sins. The cool, sparkling treasure is carried near to every lip. If we
drink, we live. If we will not, we die in our sins, and are dead whilst
we live. Stop the fountain, and what becomes of the stream? It fades
there between its banks, and is no more. You cannot even live the animal
life except that life were joined to Him. If it could be broken away
from God it would disappear as the clouds melt in the sky, and there
would be nobody, and you would be nowhere. You cannot break yourself
away from God _physically_ so completely as to annihilate yourself. You
can do so _spiritually_, and some of you do it, and the consequence is
that you are dead, _dead_, DEAD! You can be made 'alive from the dead,'
if you will lay hold on Jesus Christ, and get His life-giving Spirit
into your hearts.
IV. Light. 'In Thy light shall we see light.'
God is 'the Father of lights.' The sun and all the stars are only lights
kindled by Him. It is the very crown of revelation that 'God is light,
and in Him is no darkness at all.' Light seems to the unscientific eye,
which knows nothing about undulations of a luminiferous ether, to be the
least material of material things. All joyous things come with it. It
brings warmth and fruit, fulness and life. Purity, and gladness, and
knowledge have been symbolised by it in all tongues. The Scripture uses
light, and the sun, which is its source, as an emblem for God in His
holiness, and blessedness, and omniscience. This great word here seems
to point chiefly to light as knowledge.
This saying is true, as the former clause was, in relation to all the
light which men have. 'The inspiration of the Almighty giveth him
understanding.' The faculties by which men know, and all the exercise of
those faculties, are His gift. It is in the measure in which God's light
comes to the eye that the eye beholds. 'Light' may mean not only the
faculty, but the medium of vision. It is in the measure in which God's
light comes, and because His light comes, that all light of reason in
human nature sees the truth which is its light. God is the Author of all
true thoughts in all mankind. The spirit of man is a candle kindled by
the Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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