A Goodly Heritage

The seeming silence of God The seeming silence of God means human incapacity and dulness. This is the obstacle to hearing. There is an eternal reality corresponding with the ancient phrase, “Communion with God.” But this implies more than the existence of the Heavenly voice. It implies organs made sensitive to it. The material world is full of sounds which are constantly failing upon ears that are too dull or too deaf to hear them. We speak of the silence of the sea, of the silence of the night, of the silence of the mighty mountain. But to men with ears, to men not wanting in “the   vision and the faculty divine,” these things are unceasingly eloquent with speech. To some God does not seem to speak because there has been no preparation for hearing. Where the soul is filled with the noise of mundane voices, the Divine voices which are resounding through its chambers cannot be distinguished. The man who cries despairingly to God, “Be not silent to me,” needs to remember that it is h

The silence of God I shall treat the subject mainly from the standpoint of those to whom the silence of God is a burden, more or less perplexing, mysterious. I.  while complaining of God’s silence, are you really so certain that he is silent? What if God has been speaking distinctly and repeatedly, while from faults of your own you have not heard Him? There are two pre-requisites to the catching of God’s voice! Listen for it in the proper quarter. Many miss the Divine message because they fail to realize how often it comes to us in the ordinary and the commonplace. “Where is the Christ?” do you ask?--“the Christ that I need to save me, to guide me?” Why, in the weekly sermons you hear, in the daily Scriptures you read, in the temporal experiences that befall you, in the spiritual aspirations that stir in you. Lay your ear to the things that are close to you: customary ordinances, customary providences, as well as your yearnings and anxieties for a better life. Christ is speakin

The instinct of religion is to cry to God. The personal providence of God is the reason of prayer. The psalmist is in trouble, and as he prays his imagination suggests what it would be if God were silent to him. I.  Is God silent to our prayers? We pray expecting His answer. Prayer is not the mere utterance of surcharged hearts, like Lear’s raving to the winds. There is moral benefit in simple desire, and that desire grows by utterance. The Rock may not speak to us, but we can lean against it and find shelter under it. But the idea of God speaking to us is as essential for prayer as our speaking to Him. We ask for response, not merely that He would listen. In what sense may God be silent to a praying man? It is a possibility, and as such it is deprecated. Perhaps David was impatient because the answer did not at once come. Sometimes the answer may follow at once, as the thunder-clap the lightning. “I will, be thou clean,” was the instant answer to the leper’s cry. But the answe

Many of God's dear people are frequently afraid, that, on account of their own weakness, and the power of their spiritual enemies, they shall at length make shipwreck of faith, and totally fall away. Yet perhaps none stand more sure and safe than those, who think they cannot stand at all: for “Happy is the man who feareth always," Pr 28:14. Happy the soul that is possessed of that holy fear, which drives him to the Lord, keeps him vile in his own eyes, and causeth him to be ever dependent upon the word and promise of a faithful God, and makes him rejoice with trembling, and tremble with hope. But we are assured from the oracles of unerring truth, "that the righteous should hold on his way; and he that hath clean hands," he (whose actions are pure, in consequence of his heart being purified by faith) "shall be stronger and stronger,” Job 17:9. As this doctrine is a source of comfort and support to the children of God, I shall humbly offer some arguments to pr

“   And yet, before this holy Lord God, every soul  must  one day stand. “We shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ,” says the apostle, “that every one may receive according to the things he hath done in the body.” In some sense, we may be said to stand before Him now: “for He is not far from everyone of us;” nay, “in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” The consequence of this is, that there is no creature which is not manifest to His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes “of Him with whom we have to do.” With regard therefore to His own Omniscience and Omnipresence, we already stand before this holy Lord God. He is about our bed, and about our paths, and is acquainted with all our ways; nor is there a word in our tongues, or a thought in our hearts, but He knows it altogether. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” I shall not detain the reader with considering on what occasion the men of Bethshemesh spoke t

We  have been considering the most awful and affecting transaction that ever came to pass; I mean the death and crucifixion of the Lord of Glory. But here we are presented with a brighter scene, and reminded us of that joyful and ever-memorable morning, when our Omnipotent Redeemer burst the inclosure of the tomb; when the sepulchre could no longer detain its illustrious prisoner; and when the Sun of Righteousness, who had so lately set in darkness, triumphantly emerged from His sad, though short eclipse, and rose to set no more. According to our blessed Lord’s own prediction, related in the above Scripture, when pointing to Himself, He says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up;” meaning His own body; and intimated that the Jews should be permitted, in some sense, to destroy it, but that He would raise it up in three days. The reason why the Son of God styled His body a temple was, because, as the temple of Jerusalem was built by direction of God Himself,

My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” — MATTHEW xxvii, 46. L ONG  before our blessed Saviour was manifested in the flesh, the particular circumstances of His humiliation and death were revealed to the ancient prophets, and by them made known to the people. Neither can there be a more unanswerable proof given of the Messiahship of Christ than that all the prophecies from the least to the greatest, that were descriptive  of  the Messiah, were accomplished, to a tittle, in Him. Thus, for instance — Isaiah, who flourished about eight hundred and thirty years before the coming of Christ, foretold of Him that He should be despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; that He should be wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; that He should be numbered with transgressors, and make His soul an offering for sin. Zechariah expressly foretold, that Christ should be delivered up for thirty pieces of silver, and that a potter’s field sho