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
Further, the possession of God, who belongs to all those that are
the subjects of the kingdom of God, is our true treasure, because
that wealth, and that alone, meets at once all the diverse wants of
the human soul. There is nothing else of which that can be said.
There are a great many other precious things in this world--human
loves, earthly ambitions of noble and legitimate kinds. No one but a
fool will deny the convenience and the good of having a competency
of this world's possessions. But all these have this miserable
defect, or rather limitation, that they each satisfy some little
corner of a man's nature, and leave all the rest, if I may so say,
like the beasts in a menagerie whose turn has not yet come to be
fed, yelping and growling while the keeper is at the den of another
one. There is only one thing that, being applied, as it were, at the
very centre, will diffuse itself, like some fragrant perfume,
through the whole sphere, and fill the else scentless air with its
rich and refreshing fragrance. There is but one wealth which meets
the whole of human nature. You, however small you are, however
insignificant people may think you, however humbly you may think of
yourselves, you are so great that the whole created Universe, if it
were yours, would be all too little for you. You cannot fill a
bottomless bog with any number of cartloads of earth. And you know
as well as I can tell you that 'he that loveth silver shall not be
satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase,'
and that none of the good things here below, rich and precious as
many of them are, are large enough to fill, much less to expand, the
limitless desires of one human heart. As the ancient Latin father
said, 'Lord, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is unquiet
till it attains to Thee.'
Closely connected with that thought, but capable of being dealt with
for a moment apart, is the other, that this is our true treasure,
because we have it all in one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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