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 remember the beautiful emphasis of one of the parables in our
text about the man that dissipated himself in seeking for many
goodly pearls? He had secured a whole casket full of little ones.
They were pearls, they were many; but then he saw one Orient pearl,
and he said, 'The one is more than the many. Let me have unity, for
there is rest; whereas in multiplicity there is restlessness and
change.' The sky to-night may be filled with galaxies of stars.
Better one sun than a million twinkling tininesses that fill the
heavens, and yet do not scatter the darkness. Oh, brethren, to have
one aim, one love, one treasure, one Christ, one God--there is the
secret of blessedness. 'Unite my heart to fear Thy name'; and then
all the miseries of multiplicity, and of drawing our supplies from a
multitude of separate lakes, will be at an end, when our souls are
flooded from the one fountain of life that can never fail or be
turbid. Thus, the unity of the treasure is the supreme excellence of
the treasure.
Nor need I remind you in more than a word of how this is our true
treasure, because it is our permanent one. Nothing that can be taken
from me is truly mine. Those of you who have lived in a great
commercial community as long as I have done, know that it is not for
nothing that sovereigns are made circular, for they roll very
rapidly, and 'riches take to themselves wings and fly away.' We can
all go back to instances of men who set their hearts upon wealth,
and flaunted their little hour before us as kings of the Exchange,
and were objects of adoration and of envy, and at last were left
stranded in poverty. Nothing that can be stripped from you by the
accidents of life, or by inevitable death, is worth calling your
'good.' You must have something that is intertwined with the very
fibres of your being. And I, unworthy as I am, come to you, dear
friends, now, with this proffer of the great gift of wealth from
which 'neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us.' And I
beseech you to ask yourselves, Is there anything worth calling
wealth, except that wealth which meets my deepest need, which
satisfies my whole nature, which I may have all in one, and which,
if I have, I may have for ever? That wealth is the God who may be
'the strength of your hearts and your heritage for ever.'
II. Now notice, secondly, the concealment of the treasure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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