Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and EcclesiastesMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
There is nothing so sure to make life beautiful, and noble, and pure,
and peaceful, and strong as this--the application to its monotonous
trifles of religious principles. If you do not do little things as
Christian men and women, and under the influence of Christian
principle, pray _what_ are you going to do under the influence of
Christian principle? If you are keeping your religion to influence the
crises of your lives, and are content to let the trifles be ruled by
the devil or the world and yourselves, you will find out, when you
come to the end, that there were perhaps three or four crises in your
experience, and that all the rest of life was made of trifles, and
that when the crises came you could not lay your hand on the religious
principle that would have enabled you to deal with them. The sword had
got so rusty in its scabbard because it had never been drawn for long
years, that it could not be readily drawn in the moment of sudden
peril; and if you could have drawn it, you would have found its edge
blunted. Use your religion on the trifles, or you will not be able to
make much of it in the crises. 'He that is faithful in that which is
least is faithful also in much.' The worship of every day is the
preparation for the work of that day.
Further, that worship, that religion, wearing its common, modest suit
of workaday clothes, must also, if there is to be any power in it,
have a certain variety in its methods. 'Solomon offered burnt
offerings ... on the Sabbaths, on the new moons,' which had a little
more ceremonial than the Sabbaths, 'and on the solemn feasts three
times in a year,' which had still more ceremonial than the new moons,
'even in the Feast of unleavened bread, and in the Feast of weeks, and
in the Feast of tabernacles.' These were spring-tides when the sea of
worship rose beyond its usual level, and they kept it from stagnating.
We, too, if we wish to have this every-day religion running with any
strength of scour and current through our lives, will need to have
moments when it touches high-water mark, else it will not flush the
foulness out of our hearts and our lives.
Lastly, take the other suggestion, that every day has its own
supplies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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