A Goodly Heritage

John Chapter 1.     The other Gospels begin with Bethlehem; John begins with ‘the bosom of the Father.’ Luke dates his narrative by Roman emperors and Jewish high-priests; John dates his ‘in the beginning.’ To attempt adequate exposition of these verses in our narrow limits is absurd; we can only note the salient points of this, the profoundest page in the New Testament. The threefold utterance in  verse 1  carries us into the depths of eternity, before time or creatures were. Genesis and John both start from ‘the beginning,’ but, while Genesis works downwards from that point and tells what followed, John works upwards and tells what preceded—if we may use that term in speaking of what lies beyond time. Time and creatures came into being, and, when they began, the Word ‘was.’ Surely no form of speech could more emphatically declare absolute, uncreated being, outside the limits of time. Clearly, too, no interpretation of these words fathoms their depth, or makes...

Brethren, no man is so poor, so low, so narrow in capacity, so limited in heart and head, but that he needs a whole God to make him restful. Nothing else will. To seek for satisfaction elsewhere is like sailors in their desperation, when the water tanks are empty, slaking their thirst with the treacherous blue that washes cruelly    along the battered sides of their ship. A moment's alleviation is followed by the recurrence  in tenfold intensity in the pangs of thirst, and by madness and death. Do not drink the salt water that flashes and rolls by your side , when you can have recourse to the fountain of life that is with God.

"Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness." (Proverbs 14:13) "These thing have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled." (John 15:11, R.V.). A poet, who used to be more fashionable than he is now, pronounces 'happiness' to be our being's end and aim. That is not true, except under great limitation and with many explanations. It may be regarded as God's end, but it is ruinous to make it man's aim. It is by no means the highest conception of the Gospel to say that it makes men happy, however true it may be. The highest is that it makes them good. I put these two texts together, not only because they bring out the contrast between the laughter which is hollow and fleeting and the joy which is perfect and perpetual, but also because they suggest to us the difference in kind and object between earthly and heavenly joys; which difference underlies the other between ...