Religious Studies, Sketches and PoemsStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
There seems to be about him none of the wearying anxiety as
to immediate results, none of the alternations of hope and
discouragement that mark our course. He had faith in God, whose
great plan he was working, whose message he came to deliver, and
whose times and seasons he strictly regarded. So, too, did he regard
the mental and spiritual condition of the imperfect ones by whom he
was surrounded. "I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot
bear them now," he said even to his disciples. When their zeal
transcended his, and they longed to get hold of the thunderbolts and
call down fire from heaven, his grave and steady rebuke recalled
them: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of."
We see his disciples excited, ardent,--now coming back with triumph
to tell how even the devils were subject to them, now forbidding
one to cast out devils because he followed not them, now contending
who should be greatest; and among them sits the Master, lowly,
thoughtful, tranquil, with the little child on his knee, or bending
to wash the feet of a disciple, the calmest, sweetest, least
assuming of them all.
This should be the model of all Christian reformers. He that
believeth shall not make haste is the true motto of Christian reform.
And these great multitudes, to whose hands no special, individual
power is given--they are only minute workers in a narrower sphere.
Daily toils, small economies, the ordering of the material cares of
life, are all their lot. Before them in their way they can see the
footsteps of Jesus. We can conceive that in the lowly path of his
life all his works were perfect, that never was a nail driven or a
line laid carelessly, and that the toil of that carpenter's bench
was as sacred to him as his teachings in the temple, because it was
duty.
Sometimes there is a sadness and discontent, a repressed eagerness
for some higher sphere, that invades the minds of humble workers.
Let them look unto Jesus, and be content. All they have to do is to
be "faithful over a few things," and in his own time he will make
them "ruler over many things."
VIII
THE PRAYER-LIFE OF JESUS
The Bible presents us with the personality of a magnificent
Being--the only-begotten Son of God--who, being in the form of God
and without robbery equal with God, emptied himself of his glory and
took upon him the form of a servant; and, being found in fashion as
a man, humbled himself and became obedient to death--even the death
of the cross.
This great Being, we are told, entered the race of mortality,
divested of those advantages which came from his divine origin,
and assuming all those disadvantages of limitation and dependence
which belong to human beings. The Apostle says, "It behooved him
in all respects to be made like unto his brethren." His lot was
obedience--dependence upon the Father--and he gained victories by
just the means which are left to us--faith and prayer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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