Expositions of Holy Scripture eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 902 pages of information about Expositions of Holy Scripture.

Expositions of Holy Scripture eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 902 pages of information about Expositions of Holy Scripture.

So that if Christian people, individually and as Churches, are justly exposed, in any measure, to the sarcasm which is freely cast upon them, that they neglect the temporal well-being of men in order to attend exclusively to their spiritual wants, they have not learned the example of such partial treatment from their Master; nor have they taken in the significance and the power of His life in its relation to human sorrow.  All that makes the heart bleed Christ comes to take away.  ’All the ills that flesh is heir to,’ as well as those which each spirit, by rebellion, brings upon itself—­are the foes with whom Christ has left His Church in the world in order to wage incessant warfare.  If we Christians, oppressed with the sense of the depth and central nature of the evil of man’s sin, have so devoted ourselves to preaching and evangelising, that we are, in any measure, rightly chargeable with neglecting hospitals and infirmaries and other forms of relief for temporal necessities, just in that proportion have we departed from our Master’s spirit.  But I do not, for my part, much believe, either in the good faith of the accusers or in the applicability of the charge which men, who never do anything for the religious improvement of their fellows, are apt to bring against us.  My little experience, I think, teaches me that the folk who say to us ’Do not waste your money on Bibles and missionaries, give it to hospitals and schools,’ are not usually the people that ‘waste their money’ on either; and that the largest portion of all the work that is done in England to-day, for the temporal well-being of men, comes from the Christians who also do work for their spiritual well-being.

But let us learn the lesson, if we need it, from our enemies and our critics; and see to it that the more we feel the lofty and transcendent importance of carrying Christ’s salvation to men’s souls, the more we endeavour, likewise, to live amongst them as He did, the embodiment of pity, wide-eyed and comprehensive, for every evil that racks their hearts and every pain that tortures their nerves.  As a fact, hospitals are found within the limits of Christianity, and not outside it; and so far, Christendom, though it is largely professing Christendom only, has learned that it follows a Christ who is the Saviour of the body and the Physician of the soul.

In the next place, another practical lesson which I would draw from this is, as to the sole conditions upon which any form of Christian help can be rendered.  The condition for the elevation of men is that the lever which lifts them must have its point below them.  That is to say, you have to go down if you would heave up.  You have to go amongst if you would deliver; you have to make your own, by a sympathy which you have learned of your Master, the sorrows and the sins of humanity, if you would effectually remedy them.  A guinea to an hospital is not your contribution to the Christ-like relief of human suffering.  It

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Expositions of Holy Scripture from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.