Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIVMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIV
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
There is another kind of seeking that is vain, an intellectual seeking
without the preparation of the heart. There are, no doubt, some people
here to-day that would say, 'We have been seeking the truth about
religion all our lives, and we have not got to it yet.' Well, I do not
want to judge either your motives or your methods, but I know this,
that there is many a man who goes on the quest for religious certainty,
and looks _at_, if not _for_ Jesus Christ, and is not really capable of
discerning Him when he sees Him, because his eye is not single, or
because his heart is full of worldliness or indifference, or because he
begins with a foregone conclusion, and looks for facts to establish
that; or because he will not cast down and put away evil things that
rise up between him and his Master.
My brother! if you go to look for Jesus Christ with a heart full of the
world, if you go to look for Him while you wish to hold on by all the
habitudes and earthlinesses of your past, you will never find Him. The
sensualist seeks for Him, the covetous man seeks for Him, the
passionate, ill-tempered man seeks for Him; the woman plunged in
frivolities, or steeped to the eyebrows in domestic cares,—these may in
some feeble fashion go to look for Him and they will not find Him,
because they have sought for Him with hearts overcharged with other
things and filled with the affairs of this life, its trifles and its
sins.
I turn for a moment to the seeking that is not vain. 'Ye shall seek Me'
is not on Christ's lips to any heart that loves Him, however
imperfectly, a sentence of separation or an appointment of a sorrowful
lot, but it is a blessed law, the law of the Christian life.
That life is all one great seeking after Christ. Love seeks the absent
when removed from our sight. If we care anything about Him at all, our
hearts will turn to Him as naturally as, when the winter begins to
pinch, the migrating birds seek the sunny south, impelled by an
instinct that they do not themselves understand.
The same law which sends loving thoughts out across the globe to seek
for husband, child, or friend when absent, sets the really Christian
heart seeking for the Christ, whom, having not seen, it loves, as
surely as the ivy tendril feels out for a support. As surely as the
roots of a mountain-ash growing on the top of a boulder feel down the
side of the rock till they reach the soil; as surely as the stork
follows the warmth to the sunny Mediterranean, so surely, if your heart
loves Christ, will the very heart and motive of your action be the
search for Him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account