A Goodly Heritage

"If any man thirsts—let him come to Me and drink!" John 7:37 This was an astonishing announcement. If  Plato  had uttered it from his Academy, it would have savored of boastful presumption. Yet a Galilean peasant, whose whole "school" of followers scarcely went beyond a dozen fishermen and publicans, makes this proclamation to all human kind: "If anyone is thirsty for pure happiness—I will satisfy him; if any one is suffering from a sense of guilt—I will relieve him; if any one is heart-broken—I will comfort him." There is no alternative. Either this carpenter's son from Galilee is an insane impostor—or else he is a being clothed with divine power. No madman ever talked for three years without uttering one foolish syllable; no impostor ever pushed himself before the public eye for three years without doing one selfish act. Jesus of Nazareth, then, was what he claimed to be—the Son of God. He does not draw from others, his supplies for human needs...

The Song at the Well From there the Israelites traveled to Beer, which is the   well   where the Lord said to Moses, "Assemble the people, and I will give them water." There the Israelites sang this song: "Spring up, O well! Yes, sing about it! Sing of this well, which princes dug, which great leaders hollowed out with their scepters and staffs." Numbers 21:16-18 There was once a sermon at a well. The teacher was Jesus of Nazareth, and the discourse was delivered to one poor sinful woman as the entire audience. The Son of God felt (what we ministers too often forget on stormy Sundays) that   a single immortal soul   is a great audience. Other wells in the Bible are historic besides the well of   Sychar . One, at   Bethlehem , is associated with a princely act of chivalry; another, at   Nahor , with the beginning of a singular courtship. We venture to say that there is one well beside which most of our readers never halted—and out of which they ha...

Sometimes we have a sorrowful experience in life, which seems like  walking through a long dark tunnel.  The chilling air and the thick darkness make it hard walking, and the constant wonder is why  we  are compelled to tread so gloomy a path, while  others  are in the open day of health and happiness. We can only fix our eyes on the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and we comfort ourselves with the thought that every step we take, brings us nearer to the joy and the rest which lie at the end of the way. Extinguish the light of heaven which gleams in the distance, and this  tunnel of trial  would become a horrible tomb! Some of us are passing through just such an experience now. We can adopt the plaintive language of the Psalmist and cry out: "O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before ...

"The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God.   They will still bear fruit in old age , they will stay fresh and green." Psalm 92:12-14 Young   Christians are like an orchard in   May ; every   blossom   is full of promise. The same people, after the sunshine and showers of forty or fifty years, become like an orchard in   October , when the ripe apples are ready for the bin. In this fast age, there is a clamorous demand for young men, and sometimes a disposition to shelve those who are past threescore; but there are some men who will not be shelved, or, if they have been, the public necessities take them down again, and demand their ripe judgment and experience. When a difficult case comes into court, it is commonly a veteran lawyer who is called on to make the decisive argument; when the young physician is baffled by the novel dise...

From there the Israelites traveled to Beer, which is the   well   where the Lord said to Moses, "Assemble the people, and I will give them water." There the Israelites sang this song: "Spring up, O well! Yes, sing about it! Sing of this well, which princes dug, which great leaders hollowed out with their scepters and staffs." Numbers 21:16-18 There was once a sermon at a well. The teacher was Jesus of Nazareth, and the discourse was delivered to one poor sinful woman as the entire audience. The Son of God felt (what we ministers too often forget on stormy Sundays) that   a single immortal soul   is a great audience. Other wells in the Bible are historic besides the well of   Sychar . One, at   Bethlehem , is associated with a princely act of chivalry; another, at   Nahor , with the beginning of a singular courtship. We venture to say that there is one well beside which most of our readers never halted—and out of which they have never drawn either a...

Among the manifold improvements in the Westminster Revision, we are happy to find that our Lord's discourse against  sinful worrying  is given in the right English. Our common version of the closing portion of the sixth chapter of Matthew has always been very misleading to the average reader. Christ never commanded us to "take no thought for the morrow"; such counsel would contradict common sense, rational prudence, and other explicit commands in the Bible. What our Lord so emphatically forbade—was  sinful anxiety , or the overloading of today's work with worry—about the day that has not yet come. The revisers have hit the nail exactly on the head, by introducing the word "anxious" into a half-dozen verses of that portion of the Sermon on the Mount. "Be not  anxious  for your life—as to what you shall eat," etc. "Which of you by being  anxious  can add one cubit to the measure of his life?" This whole remonstrance against borrowing tr...

The smallest verse in the Bible, is one of the largest and deepest in its heavenly pathos. "Jesus wept." What mysterious meanings may have lain behind those tears—no one need try to fathom! But, for one, I prefer to see in them the honest expression of grief for a friend who was dead, and of sympathy for two heart-broken women. Christ's   power   displayed at that sepulcher overwhelms me—it was the power of God. But His   pity   touches me most tenderly—it was the pity of a man. Those moistened eyes are my Elder Brother's. The sympathy that walked twenty miles to Bethany, that drew Him to those desolate women, that started the tears down His cheeks and choked His voice with emotion—that sympathy links us to Him as the sharer and the bearer of our own sorrows! There is something vicarious in those tears, as there is in the precious blood shed on the cross a few days afterwards. His love seems to "insert itself vicariously right into our sorrows," and He...

Today as I sit in my lonely room, this passage of God's Word flies in like a white dove through the window, "And now men see not the sun which is in the   clouds ; but the wind passes and clears them." Job 37:21. To my weak vision, dimmed with tears, the   cloud   is exceeding dark, but through it stream some rays from the infinite love which fills the Throne with an exceeding and eternal brightness of glory. By-and-by we may get above and behind that cloud—into the overwhelming light. We shall not need comfort then; but we do need it now. And for our present consolation, God lets through the clouds some clear, strong, distinct rays of love and gladness. One truth which beams in through the vapors is this—God not only reigns, but He governs His world by a most beautiful   law of compensations . He sets one thing over against another. Faith loves to study the illustrations of this law, notes them in her diary, and rears her pillars of praise for every fresh disc...

A great many precious spiritual truths lie concealed under the out-of-the-way passages of God's Word, like Wordsworth's "violet by a mossy stone, Half hidden from the eye." If we turn to a certain verse in 2 Samuel 14, we shall find such a truth hidden under a historical incident. The incident goes this way: Absalom, the deceitful aspirant to his father's throne, wishes to have an interview with Joab, the commander of David's army. He sends for Joab to come to him, but Joab refuses. Finding that the obstinate old soldier pays no heed to his urgent request, he practices a stratagem. He says to one of his servants: "See! Joab's field is next to mine, and he has barley there. Go and set it on fire!" And Absalom's servant set the field on fire. Then Joab arose and came to Absalom. Now, just as the shrewd young prince dealt with Joab in order to bring him unto him—so God employs a regimen of discipline very often in order to bring wayward ...