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
'They took of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.' More
was gathered than they had possessed at first. They preserved over,
for their own sustenance and refreshment in days to come, a far
larger store than the five loaves and two small fishes with which
they had begun. The fact contains a principle which is true about
almost all except material possessions, which is often in God's
providence made true about them, and which is emphatically true
about spiritual blessings, about our religious emotions, our
Christian beliefs, the joys and powers which Christ comes to give.
For all these, the condition of increase is diffusion. To impart to
others is to gain for oneself. Every honest effort to bring some
other human heart into conscious possession of Christ's love deepens
one's own sense of its preciousness. Every attempt to lead some
other understanding to the perception of the truth, as it is in
Jesus, helps me to understand it better myself. If you would learn,
teach. That will clear your mind, will open hidden harmonies, will
reveal unsuspected deficiencies and contradictions in your own
conceptions, will help you to feel more the truths that come from
your lips. It will perhaps shame your cold appreciation of them,
when you see how others grasp at them from your teaching, or give
you more confidence in the Gospel as the power of God unto
salvation, when you behold it, even as ministered through you,
mighty to pull down strongholds. At the lowest, it will keep your
own mind in healthy contact with what you art but too apt to forget.
If you would learn to love Christ more, try to lead some one else to
love Him, You will catch new gleams from His gracious heart in the
very act of commending Him to others. If you would have your own
spiritual life strengthened and deepened, remember that not by
solitary meditation or raptures of silent communion alone can that
be accomplished, but by these and by honest manful work for God in
the world. The Mount of Transfiguration must be left, although there
were there Moses and Elias, and the cloud of the divine glory and
the words of approval from heaven, because there were a demoniac boy
and his weeping, despairing father needing Christ down below. Work
for God if you would live with God. Give the bread to the hungry, if
you would have it for the food of your own souls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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