Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
It is the power that will fit any of us for the work for which we are
sent into the world. If we are here to represent Jesus Christ, and if
it is true of us that 'as He is, so are we, in this world,' that
likeness can only come about by our receiving into our spirits a
kindred life which will effloresce and manifest itself to men in
kindred beauty of foliage and of fruit. If we are to be 'the lights of
the world,' our lamps must be fed with oil. If we are to be Christ's
representatives, we must have Christ's life in us. Here, too, is the
only source of strength and life to us Christian people, when we look
at the difficulties of our task and measure our own feebleness against
the work that lies before us. I suppose no man has ever tried honestly
to be what Christ wished him to be amidst his fellows, whether as
preacher or teacher or guide in any fashion, who has not hundreds of
times clasped his hands in all but despair, and said, 'Who is
sufficient for these things?' That is the temper into which the power
will come. The rivers run in the valleys, and it is the lowly sense of
our own unfitness for the task which yet presses upon us, and
imperatively demands to be done, that makes us capable of receiving
that divine gift.
It is for lack of it that so much of so-called 'Christian effort' comes
to nothing. The priests may pile the wood upon the altar, and compass
it all day long with vain cries, and nothing happens. It is not till
the fire comes down from heaven that sacrifice and altar and wood and
water in the trench, are licked up and converted into fiery light. So,
dear brethren! it is because the Christian Church as a whole, and we as
individual members of it, so imperfectly realise the A B C of our
faith, our absolute dependence on the inbreathed life of Jesus Christ,
to fit us for any of our work, that so much of our work is ploughing
the sands, and so often we labour for vanity and spend our strength for
nought. What is the use of a mill full of spindles and looms until the
fire-born impulse comes rushing through the pipes? Then they begin to
move.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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