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
But then, the principle is one that might be fairly expanded beyond the
home circle. The natural relationships into which we are brought by
neighbourhood and by ordinary associations prescribe the direction of
our efforts. What, for instance, are we set down in this swarming
population of Lancashire for? For business and personal ends? Yes,
partly. But is that all? Surely, if we believe that 'there is a
divinity that shapes our ends' and determines the bounds of our
habitation, we must believe that other purposes affecting other people
are also meant by God to be accomplished through us, and that where a
man who knows and loves Christ Jesus is brought into neighbourly
contact with thousands who do not, he is thereby constituted his
brethren's keeper, and is as plainly called to tell them of Christ as
if a voice from Heaven had bid him do it. What is to be said of the
depth and vital energy of the Christianity that neither hears the call
nor feels the impulse to share its blessing with the famishing Lazarus
at its gate? What will be the fate of such a church? Why, if you live
in luxury in your own well drained and ventilated house, and take no
heed to the typhoid fever or cholera in the slums at its back, the
chances are that seeds of the disease will find their way to you, and
kill your wife, or child, or yourself. And if you Christian people,
living in the midst of godless people, do not try to heal them, they
will infect you. If you do not seek to impress your conviction that
Christ is the Messiah upon an unbelieving generation, the unbelieving
generation will impress upon you its doubts whether He is; and your
lips will falter, and a pallor will come over the complexion of your
love, and your faith will become congealed and turn into ice.
Notice again the simple word which is the most powerful means of
influencing most men.
Andrew did not begin to argue with his brother. Some of us can do that
and some of us cannot. Some of us are influenced by argument and some
of us are not. You may pound a man's mistaken creed to atoms with
sledge-hammers of reasoning, and he is not much the nearer being a
Christian than he was before; just as you may pound ice to pieces and
it is pounded ice after all. The mightiest argument that we can use,
and the argument that we can all use, if we have got any religion in us
at all, is that of Andrew, 'We have found the Messias.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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