Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
Further, to be with Christ will open a man's lips. The fountain, if it
is full, must well up. 'Light is light which circulates. Heat is heat
which radiates.' The true possession of Jesus Christ will always make
it impossible for the possessor to be dumb. I pray you to test
yourselves, as I would that all professing Christians should test
themselves, by that simple truth, that a full heart must find
utterance. The instinct that drives a man to speak of the thing in
which he is interested should have full play in the Christian life. It
seems to me a terribly sad fact that there are such hosts of good, kind
people, with some sort of religion about them, who never feel any
anxiety to say a word to any soul concerning the Master whom they
profess to love. I know, of course, that deep feeling is silent, and
that the secrets of Christian experience are not to be worn on the
sleeve for daws to peck at. And I know that the conventionalities of
this generation frown very largely upon the frank utterance of
religious convictions on the part of religious people, except on
Sundays, in Sunday-schools, pulpits, and the like. But for all that,
what is in you will come out. If you have never felt 'I was weary of
forbearing, and I could not stay,' I do not think that there is much
sign in you of a very deep or a very real being with Jesus.
III. The last point to be noted is, the impression which such a
character makes.
It was not so much what Peter and John said that astonished the
Council, as the fact of their being composed and bold enough to say
anything.
A great deal more is done by character than by anything else. Most
people in the world take their notions of Christianity from its
concrete embodiments in professing Christians. For one man that has
read his Bible, and has come to know what religion is thereby, there
are a hundred that look at you and me, and therefrom draw their
conclusions as to what religion is. It is not my sermons, but your
life, that is the most important agency for the spread of the Gospel in
this congregation. And if we, as Christian people, were to live so as
to make men say, 'Dear me, that is strange. That is not the kind of
thing that one would have expected from that man. That is of a higher
strain than he is of. Where did it come from, I wonder?' 'Ah, he
learned it of that Jesus'--if people were constrained to speak in that
style to themselves about us, dear friends, and about all our brethren,
England would be a different England from what it is to-day. It is
Christians' lives, after all, that make dints in the world's conscience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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