Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters; I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.Maclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters; I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy.
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Epistles of Paul -- Commentaries
Projectors may have beautiful specifications with attractive pictures of
their new inventions; they look very well upon paper, but we must see
them working before we are sure of their worth. And so, here is this
great body of Divine truth, which assumes to be sufficient for guidance,
for conduct, for comfort, for life. Live upon it, and thereby your grasp
of it and your confidence in it will be immensely increased. And no man
has a right to say 'I have rejected Christianity as untrue,' unless he
has put it to the test by living upon it; and if he has, he will never
say it. A Swiss traveller goes into a shop and buys a brand-new
alpenstock. Does he lean upon it with as much confidence as another man
does, who has one with the names of all the mountains that it has helped
him up branded on it from top to bottom? Take _this_ staff and lean on
it. Live your creed, and you will believe your creed as you never will
until you do. Obedience takes a man up to an elevation from which he
sees further into the deep harmonies of truth. In all regions of life
the principle holds good: 'To him that hath shall be given.' And it
holds eminently in reference to our grasp of Christian principles. Use
them and they grow; neglect them and they perish. Sometimes a man dies
in a workhouse who has a store of guineas and notes wrapped up in rags
somewhere about him; and so they have been of no use to him. If you want
your capital to increase, trade with it. As the Lord said when He gave
the servants their talents: 'Trade with them till I come.' The creed
that is utilised is the creed that grows. And that is why so many of you
Christian people have so little real intellectual grasp of the
principles of Christianity, because you have not lived upon them, nor
tried to do it.
And, in like manner, another side of this thought is, be true to your
convictions. There is no such barrier to a larger and wholesomer view of
our duty as the neglect of anything that plainly is our duty. It stands
there, an impassable cliff between us and all progress. Let us live and
be what we know we ought to be, and we shall know better what we ought
to be at the next moment.
II. Secondly, let me put the Apostle's meaning in another exhortation,
Go on as you have begun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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