Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
Now let me press the thought that this commandment makes indifference
and silence criminal. We hear people talk, people whose Christianity it
is not for me to question, though I may question two things about it,
its clearness and its depth--we hear them talk as if to help or not to
help, in the various forms of Christian activity, missionary or
otherwise, was a matter left to their own inclination. No! it is not.
Let us distinctly understand that to help or not to help is not the
choice open to any man who would obey Jesus Christ. Let us distinctly
understand--and God grant that we may all feel it more--that we dare
not stand aside, be negligent, do nothing, leave other people to give
and to toil, and say, 'Oh! my sympathies do not go in that direction.'
Jesus Christ told you that they were to go in that direction, and if
they do not, so much the worse for the sympathies for one thing, and so
much the worse for you, the rebel, the disobedient in heart. I do not
want to bring down this great gift and token of love which Jesus Christ
has given to His servants, in entrusting them with the spread of the
Gospel, to the low level of a mere commandment, but I do sometimes
think that the tone of feeling, ay! and of speech, and still more the
manner of action, among professing Christian people, in regard to the
whole subject of the missionary work of God's Church, shows that they
need to be reminded; as the Duke of Wellington said, 'There are your
marching orders!' and the soldier who does not obey his marching orders
is a mutineer. There is a definite commandment which makes indifference
criminal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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