Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
Once get that truth wrought into men's minds, that the true test of
Christianity is the visible presence of a grace in character which is
evidently God's, and whole mountains of prejudice and error melt away.
We are just as much in danger of narrowing the Church in accordance
with our narrowness as any 'sacramentarian' of them all. We are tempted
to think that no good thing can grow up under the baleful shadow of
that tree, a sacerdotal Christianity. We are tempted to think that all
the good people are Dissenters, just as Churchmen are to think that
nobody can be a Christian who prays without a prayer-book. Our own type
of denominational character--and there is such a thing--comes to be
accepted by us as the all but exclusive ideal of a devout man; and we
have not imagination enough to conceive, nor charity enough to believe
in, the goodness which does not speak our dialect, nor see with our
eyes. Dogmatical narrowness has built as high walls as ceremonial
Christianity has reared round the fold of Christ, And the one
deliverance for us all from the transformed selfishness, which has so
much to do with shaping all these wretched narrow theories of the
Church, is to do as this man did--open our eyes with sympathetic
eagerness to see God's grace in many an unexpected place, and square
our theories with His dealings.
It used to be an axiom that there was no life in the sea beyond a
certain limit of a few hundred feet. It was learnedly and conclusively
demonstrated that pressure and absence of light, and I know not what
beside, made life at greater depths impossible. It was proved that in
such conditions creatures could not live. And then, when that was
settled, the _Challenger_ put down her dredge five miles, and brought
up healthy and good-sized living things, with eyes in their heads, from
that enormous depth. So, then, the savant had to ask, _How_ can there
be life? instead of asserting that there cannot be; and, no doubt, the
answer will be forth coming some day.
We have all been too much accustomed to set arbitrary limits to the
diffusion of the life of Christ among men. Let us rather rejoice when
we see forms of beauty, which bear the mark of His hand, drawn from
depths that we deemed waste, and thankfully confess that the bounds of
our expectation, and the framework of our institutions, do not confine
the breadth of His working, nor the sweep of His grace.
II. What Barnabas felt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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