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
What confidence then, what tender pity, what hope should fill our minds
when we look on the heathen world! We must never be contented with
present achievements. We are committed to a task which cannot end till
all the world hears the joyful sound and is blessed by walking in the
light of His countenance. When the great Roman Catholic missionary, the
Apostle of the East, was lying on his dying bed among the barbarous
people whom he loved, his passing spirit was busy about his work, and,
even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly
and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions
of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was
'Amplius'—_Onward_! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of
us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our
own souls. If ever we are tempted to repose, to despondency, to rest
and be thankful when we number up our work and our converts, let us
listen to His voice as it speaks in that supreme hour when He beheld
the vision of the Cross, and beyond it that of a gathered world: 'Other
sheep I have, which are not of this fold.'
We have here—
II. Christ teaching us how to think of His work and ours.
'Them also I must bring.' A necessity is laid upon Him, which springs
at once from that divine work which is the law of His life, and from
His own love and pity. The means for accomplishing this necessary work
are implied in the context, as in other parallel Scriptural sayings, to
be His propitiatory death. The instrumentality employed is not only His
own personal agency on earth, nor only His throned rule on the right
hand of God with power over the Spirit of holiness, but also the work
of His Church, and His work through them. Of that He is mainly speaking
when He says, 'Them also I must bring.' Here, then, are some truths
which ought to underlie and shape as well as animate our efforts for
heathenism.
And first, remember that the same sovereign necessity which was laid on
Him presses on us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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