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
That is the bearing of it in the immediate context from which our
text is taken. Our Lord explains that teaching by parable--a
transparent veil over a truth--was adopted in order that the veiled
truth might be a test as well as a revelation. And although I do not
believe that the Christian revelation has been made in any degree
less plain and obvious than it could have been made, I cannot but
recognise the fact that the necessities of the case demand that,
when God speaks to us, He should speak in such a fashion as that it
is possible to say, 'Tush! It is not God that is speaking; it is
only Eli!' and so to turn about the young Samuel's mistake the other
way. I do not believe that God has diminished the evidence of His
Revelation in order to try us; but I do maintain that the Revelation
which He has made does come to us, and must come to us, in such a
form as that, not by mathematical demonstration but by moral
affinity, we shall be led to recognise and to bow to it. He that
will be ignorant, let him be ignorant, and he that will come asking
for truth, it will flood his eyeballs with a blessed illumination.
The veil will but make more attractive to some eyes the outlines of
the fair form beneath it, whilst others are offended at it and say,
'Unless we see the truth undraped, we will not believe that it is
truth at all.'
So, brethren, let me remind you--what is really but a repetition in
reference to another subject of what I have already said,--that in
regard to God's speech to men, and especially in regard to what I,
for my part, believe to be the complete and ultimate and perfect
speech of God to men, in Jesus Christ our Saviour, the principle of
my text holds good.
'To him that hath shall be given.' If you will make that truth your
own by loyal faith and honest obedience, if you will grapple it to
your heart, then you will learn more and more. Whatever tiny corner
of the great whole you have grasped, hold on by that and draw it
into yourselves, and you will by degrees get the entire, glorious,
golden web to wrap round you. 'If any man wills to do His will he
shall know.' That is Christ's promise; and it will be fulfilled to
us all. 'To him that hath shall be given.'
If, on the other hand, you 'have' Christian truth and Christ, who is
the Truth, in the fashion in which so many of us have it and Him, as
a form, as a mere intellectual possession, so that we can, when we
go to church, repeat the creed without feeling that we are telling a
lie, but that when we go to market we do not carry the Commandments
with us--if that is our Christianity, then it will dribble away into
nothing. We shall not be much the poorer for the loss of such a sham
possession, but it will go. It drops out of the hands that are not
clasped to hold it. It is just that a thing so neglected shall some
day be a thing withdrawn. So in regard to Revelation and a man's
perception and reception of it, my text holds good in both its
halves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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