The Preacher's Complete Homiletic Commentary of the Books of the Bible: Volume 29 (of 32): The Preacher's Complete Homiletic Commentary of the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and I-II ThessaloniansBarlow, George
Religion
The Preacher's Complete Homiletic Commentary of the Books of the Bible: Volume 29 (of 32): The Preacher's Complete Homiletic Commentary of the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and I-II Thessalonians
Barlow, George
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible. Epistles of Paul -- Commentaries
+III. A few words in conclusion.+--"Unto every one of us is given
grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." As no two
human souls exactly resemble each other, so no two souls are endowed
in an exactly similar way. And for the difference of endowment let us
be sure there is always a reason in the Divine Mind, for each soul in
every generation has its appointed work to do, without itself as
within itself; and it is endowed with exactly the grace, whether of
mind or heart, which will best enable it to do that particular work.
Some may think that they have received little or nothing--some gift
so small as to be scarcely appreciable. The probability is that they
have not yet considered what God has done for them. They have spent
their time in thinking of what He has withheld, instead of thinking
of what He has given; of what they might have been, instead of what
they are. Certainly the grace which our Lord gave to St. Paul when he
wrote his great epistle to the Romans was immensely greater than that
which He gave to Tertius, the poor amanuensis, who took it down from
the apostle's dictation, and who inserts a greeting from himself just
at the end of the document. And yet Tertius, too, had his part in the
work--a humble but a very real part, according to the measure of the
gift of Christ. He did not say, "Because I am not the eye I am not of
the body." He made the most of the grace which was certainly his. And
others may think, rightly or wrongly, that unto them very great
graces have been given according to the gift of Christ, that they are
the hands or the eyes of the holy body, the men who do its work, or
the men who discern the truths which support its life. Well, if it be
so, this is a reason, not for confident satisfaction, but for
anxiety. Such gifts as these are edge tools; they may easily prove
the ruin of their possessors. For all such gifts an account must one
day most assuredly be rendered; and if self has appropriated that
which belongs to God or to His Church, it cannot but entail misery on
the possessor. If a man has wealth, or ability, or station; much more
if he has cultivated intelligence and generous impulses; most of all
if his heart has been fixed by the love of God, and the unseen is to
him a serious reality, and he has hopes and motives which really
transcend the frontiers of the world of sense, then, assuredly, his
safety lies in remembering that he is a trustee who will one day have
to present his account at the great audit, when the eminence of his
gifts will be the exact measure of his responsibility. Eighteen
centuries have passed since St. Mark went to reign somewhere beneath
his Master's throne whose life he had described; but he has left us
the result of his choicest gift--he has left us his Gospel. What has
it--what have the four Gospels--hitherto done for each of us? It is
recorded that John Butler, an excellent Church of England layman of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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