A Goodly Heritage

Looking at the things of this world, the"I am" not the "I have."is the standard of His valuation. To Him they are precious or vile just as they enrich or impoverish the inward man, just as they fit or unfit him for the grand future . His own choice , when He became a sojourner here , was the poor man's lot ; and when He died , as a man , he had no legacy to leave His dearest friend but His poor mother . Silver and gold are not named among the things that come  us through the death of Christ . But if we are not down in His will for earthly property , we shall, through His  cross ,have the "true riches"He has said "seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness ,and all other things shall be added unto you."Christians, what He means by all other things you will not know till you die ; but you know this -"You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ ,that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor , That ye through His po...

"He shall grow up before him as a tender plant " The figure , we think , is indicative of high and exquisite valuation .  It can be understood by the simplest and lowliest . That poor old lone mother has on the window sill of her little room a "tender plant" . As she watches it grow up before her from week to week ; she waters , keeps . and tends it sensitively as if it could feel . It was the gift of someone who has gone ; it is all her own , and to her mind it breathes a sweeter scent , and burns with a richer blush of beauty , than any other plant she knows  .Your "tender plant " perhaps , is some human life - a  life now in the nursery , or a life at school or a life tremulous and fragile through age and sorrow - a life for which you would gladly spend and be spent , and for which you pray that the wind may not visit it too roughly .  During the unknown , unchronicled years of His life at Nazareth , Jesus was growing up before the Lord as a "tende...

The earthquake was a sign through which God caused the earth to pay royal homage to Jesus , when Jesus died . He" created all things by Jesus Christ ". The Son of God " by whom God made the worlds ,"having passed through the mystery of " the holy incarnation" and the greater mystery of death - at the dread moment when all was over , earth was made to display these signs in honour of her King . Let us have no more abuse of earth , such as it has been thought Christian to indulge in . "O ,call not the earth a barren spot !" Give up confounding the earth with the world of society living in it . We may say , to borrow , with some changes the words of another ; "Our earth owned not Satan but Christ . It felt the pressure of His foot ; its waters sustained His form ; its midnight sky rang with the song of His nativity ; its air bore Him up as He rose  to His Father ; In a golden cloud it provided the Conqueror with a chariot ; its waves and winds ...

In the black fog of one night in London , when with a crash the train came to a standstill near Blackfriars Bridge , "Jump!"said some voice out of the darkness to the guard ; and he answered in his panic , "Which way ?" In the freezing stillness of the last dead-stop , when you must let go from the body , you Christians will not have to say , "Which way?" There will be" hands " held out to catch ; hands that are familiar ; hands that no unassisted light of reason could ever find ; hands that the mighty sceptered souls of antiquity knew nothing of . Even Aristotle , one of the mightiest of them all , was only like a blind man feeling about in the darkness to find these hands , and saying pathetically , "Shamefully did I enter into the world , in anxiety have I lived , in perturbation I die ."    " Voices from Calvary "