Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible. Matthew IX-XXVIII -- Commentaries
You may say, 'That is all very well in theory. What about the
practice? I do not see such a mighty difference between you
Christians and us.' Well, for myself and my brethren, I accept the
rebuke. There is not such a difference as there ought to be. But do
you know why? Not because our great Gardener cannot change the
nature of the plant, but because we do not submit ourselves to His
power as we ought to do. Debit us with as many imperfections and
inconsistencies as you like, do not lay them to the charge of
Christ.
And yet we are willing to accept the test of Christianity which lies
in its power to change men. I point to the persecutor on the road to
Damascus. I point to the Bedfordshire tinker, to him that wrote
_Pilgrim's Progress_. I point to the history of the Christian
Church all down through the ages. I point to our mission fields to-day.
I point to every mission hall, where earnest, honest men are working,
and where, if you go and ask them, they will let you see people
lifted from the very depths of degradation and sin, and made honest,
sober, respectable, hard-working, though not very intelligent or
refined, Christian people. I suppose that there is no man in an
official position like mine who cannot look back over his ministry
and remember, some of them dozens, some of them scores, some of them
hundreds, of cases in which the change was made on the most hopeless
people, by the simple acceptance of the simple gospel, 'Christ died
for me, and Christ lives in me.' I know that I can recall such, and
I am sure that my brethren can.
People who are not Christians talk glibly about the failure of
Christianity to transform men. They have never seen the
transformations because they have never put themselves in the way of
seeing them. They are being worked to-day; they might be worked here
and now.
Try the power of the Gospel for yourselves. You cannot make the tree
good, but you can let Jesus Christ do it. The Ethiopian cannot
change his skin, nor the leopard his spots, but Jesus can do both.
'The lion shall eat straw like the ox.' It is weary work to be
tinkering at your acts. Take the comprehensive way, and let Him
change your character. I believe that in some processes of dyeing, a
piece of cloth, prepared with a certain liquid, is plunged into a
vat full of dye-stuffs of one colour, and is taken out tinged of
another. The soul, wet with the waters of repentance, and plunged
into the 'Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness,' the crimson
fountain of the blood of Christ, emerges 'whiter than snow.' Let Him
'make the tree good and fruit will be good,' for if not we shall be
'hewn down and cast into the fire,' because we cannot bear any fruit
unto holiness, nor can the end be everlasting life.
'A GREATER THAN JONAS'
'A greater than Jonas is here.'--MATT. xii. 41.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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