A Goodly Heritage

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. A Supreme Purpose In Life 1Corinthians 2:2 What does this mean? Perhaps you will reply that a child can answer that inquiry. Let us try first whether a man can. Say, then, what does it mean? You may answer, It means that the Apostle Paul in going to Corinth had made up his mind not to listen to anything, but to preach or teach or converse regarding Jesus Christ and him crucified. He would not speak about weather, or health, or commerce, or nature; he would close his ears against all minor topics and all meaner appeals, and would listen to nothing from sunrise to sundown but Jesus Christ and him crucified. You wonder that any one should ask what words so obvious in their significance could mean. First then, they do not mean that. It is an awkward criticism for you. They mean largely the contrary of that. Where is the child, then, that you set in the midst of us at the first to answer the inq...

Did the Apostle voluntarily deny himself the pleasure of being eloquent? Was he not an eloquent man? Not in the sense in which Apollos was eloquent, the fluent, ornate, dazzling style of eloquence, but rather suggestive, stimulating, audacious, and yet chastened with the sublimest spirit of devotion. Was Paul his very best intellectual self when he went to Corinth? He says he was not. In one sense, the Corinthians saw the poorest aspect of his manifold nature; and yet, if they had known it, they were in reality seeing the very best aspect of the man's ministry. But they were sensuous, objective, looking out for spectacle and colour, and not listening with the inner ear, which alone can hear the true music of life and speech. The Apostle had a specific reason for not being verbally eloquent: he was talking to children; he would rebuke their intellectual vanity by presenting himself under aspects that were, apparently at least, humiliating. But the reason is deeper than a mere acco...

The Psalmist will be "preserved"; he will not only be created. There is a cold deism which says, "Having been created, that is enough; the rest belongs to myself; I must attend to the details of life; creation may have been a Divine act, but all education, culture, "progress, preservation must fall under my own personal care." The Psalmist begins in another tone. He opens his Psalm with the great word "preserve" — equal to, Attend to all my cares and wants; pity my feebleness; take hold of my right hand, and of my left hand, and be round about me, and never leave me for one moment to myself. That is true worship. Only a sense of the Divine nearness of that kind can adequately sustain a noble and growing religion. We need a daily prayer; we die for want of daily food; every morning must be a revelation in light, every night must be a revelation in rest. This is not a selfish preservation, a preservation from evil, or danger, or suffering only, but the...

He hath withdrawn Himself from them. Hosea 5:6 "Withdrawn" is a word that may well chill our heart. It would be enough to express intolerable displeasure, if it stood just as it stands in this verse; but a larger meaning belongs to the word. "Withdrawn" is in some senses a negative relation, but it was a distinctly positive and we may add repelling action which the Lord meant to convey by the use of the term. All words were originally pictures, and the real dictionary when it appears will be pictorial. The Lord in this instance frees Himself from them. That is the literal and broader meaning of the prophecy. He releases Himself, He detaches Himself, He shakes off an encumbrance, a nuisance, a claim that is without righteousness. This may be taken in two senses. 1.  The people are going with flocks and herds as if bent on sacrificial purpose; they will give the Lord any quantity of blood — hot, reeking blood; but the Lord says, I will have no more of your sa...

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh . . . and vex them in His sore displeasure. The heathen and the people, the kings and the rulers are answered with contempt, they are laughed at and derided; and if this be not enough to change their spirit and their purpose, they will be spoken to in wrath, and vexed in sore displeasure. It is interesting and instructive to remark how creation first laughs at and derides men who oppose it, and how in the next place it avenges the insults that are offered to its laws. When Canute rebuked the waves the sea laughed at him, and the waves had him in derision; had he remained upon the position he had chosen, laughter and derision would have been changed for vengeance and overthrow. Let a man attempt to put down the wind, and the only possible answer is derision; let him attempt to defy the lightning, and he may perish under its stroke. There is but a short distance between the derision of nature and its penal judgments. So every attempt to re...

I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. God knows His people where nobody else will take any notice of them. You do not know a man until you know him in the wilderness. There is but little revelation of character in laughter. So long as a man is living in rioting and wantonness, in great abundance and prosperity, having only to lift his hand to command a regiment of servants, you cannot really tell what his true quality is. Men show themselves in the darkness; men cry out of their hearts when they are in distress; it is in the nighttime of life’s bitter sorrows that men’s true quality is revealed. God never forsakes His people in wilderness and in desert places; He is more God and Father to them there than ever. No man knows God who only knows Him theologically. It is impossible to read much about God; you must read the writing in your own heart The world is within you; you carry the universe in your own bosom. Unless you have the faculty and genius of in...