The Anniversary, and the End

Today, Wednesday, May 5, 2010, is the 100th anniversary of the death of Alexander Maclaren, who died on this date in 1910 at the age of 84.  He had retired in 1903 after 57 consecutive years of pastoral ministry – first, at Portland Baptist Chapel in Southampton, England (1846-1858), and then, at Union Baptist Chapel in Manchester, England (1858-1903).  He is not nearly as well-known now as he was in his lifetime (only Spurgeon sold more copies of his printed sermons than Maclaren), so his name should be kept before the Christian public eye – which is what this blog has sought to do.

And, speaking of this blog, let me announce that this is its last post.  I’ve decided to leave off posting to it.  But I will leave the blog up so that others may troll through it in order to read the many excerpts it contains from this remarkable Baptist minister.  And so, I will close with one more short quote: The secret of success for a minister is that he should concentrate his intellectual force on the one work of preaching.  Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910) certainly lived up to that statement.

Lot Lessons

Lot teaches us that material good may tempt and conquer, even after it has once been overcome.  His early life had been heroic.  In his young enthusiasm, he had thrown in his portion with Abram in his great venture.  He had not been thinking of his flocks when he left Haran.  Probably, as I have just said, he was a good deal galvanized into imitation.  But, still, he had chosen the better part.  But now, he has tired of a pilgrim’s life.  There are men who cut down the thorns and in whom the seed is sown.  But, thorns are tenacious of life and quick growing, and so they spread over the field and choke the seed.  It is easier to take some one bold step than to keep true through life to its spirit.  Youth contemns but, too often, middle age worships worldy success.  The world tightens its grasp as we grow older, and Lot and Demas teach us that it is hard to keep, for a lifetime, on the heights.  Faith, strong and ever renewed by communication, can do it.  Nothing else can. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Genesis 13:1-13.

Paying Attention

There is the indifference springing from the absorbing interests of the present.  A man has only a certain quantity of interest to put forth.  If he expends it all on small things, he has none for great.  This overmastering, overshadowing present draws us all to itself, and we have no power of attention or interest to spare for anything else, or for reflection upon Christian truth in connection with our own conduct. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Matthew 13:13.

On Preaching

No Christian teacher has any business to open his mouth unless he is sure that he has received something to impart to men as a gift from the divine Spirit.  To preach our doubts, to preach our own opinions, to preach poor platitudes, to talk about politics and morals and taste and literature, and the like, in the pulpit is profanation and blasphemy.  Let no man open his lips unless he can say, “The Lord has showed me this, and this I bring to you as His Word.”  Nor has a Christian organization any right to exist unless it recognizes the communication and reception and further spreading of this spiritual gift as its great function.  Churches which have lost that consciousness and, instead of a divine gift, have little more to offer than formal worship or music or entertainments or mere intellectual discourse, whether orthodox or “advanced,” have no right to be and, by the law of the survival of the fittest, will not long be.  The one thing that warrants such a relationship as subsists between you and me is this: my consciousness that I have a message from God and your belief that you hear such from my lips.  Unless that be our bond, the sooner these walls crumble and this voice ceases and these pews are emptied, the better…O, for more, in all our pulpits, of that burdened consciousness of a divine message which needs the relief of speech and longs, with a longing caught from Christ, to impart its richest treasures. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Romans 1:11-12.

Something to Think About

Think, then, of the rebuke which the obstinate adherence of idolators to their idols gives to the slack hold which so many professing Christians have on their religion. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Jeremiah 2:11.

The Beginning of True Faith

We accept a man’s words when we trust the man.  Even if belief, or faith, is represented in the New Testament, as it very rarely is, as having, for its object, the words of revelation, behind that acceptance of the words lies confidence in the person speaking.  And the beginning of all true Christian faith has in it, not merely the intellectual acceptance of certain propositions as true, but a confidence in the veracity of Him by whom they are made known to us – even Jesus Christ, our Lord. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on John 8:30-31.

The Effect of the Gospel

Christ does something to every one of us.  His gospel will tell upon you.  It is telling upon you.  If you disbelieve it, you are not the same as if you had never heard it.  Never is the box of ointment opened without some savor from it abiding in every nostril to which its odor is wafted.  Only the alternative – the awful either/or – is open for each: the “savor of life unto life or the savor of death unto death.”  To come back to the illustration of the text, Christ is something, and does something, to every one of us.  He is either the rock on which I build – poor, weak, sinful creature that I am, getting security and sanctity and strength from Him, I being a “living stone” built upon “the living stone” and partaking of the vitality of the foundation – or else He is the other thing, “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to those who stumble at the word.”  Christ stands, forever, in some kind of relation to, and exercises forever some kind of influence on, every man who has heard the gospel. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Matthew 21:44.

His Eye Upon Us

Let us lay ourselves full in the sunshine of His gaze and take, for ours, the old prayer, “Search me, O Christ, and know my heart!” [Psalm 139:23].  It is heaven on earth to feel His eye resting upon us and know that it is love.  It will be the heaven of heavens to see Him face to face and to know, even as we are known. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Mark 5:32.

The Father of Lights

God is “the Father of lights.”  The sun and all the stars are only lights kindled by Him.  It is the very crown of revelation that “God is light and, in Him, is no darkness at all.”  Light seems, to the unscientific eye, which knows nothing about undulations of a luminiferous ether, to be the least material of material things.  All joyous things come with it.  It brings warmth and fruit, fulness and life.  Purity and gladness and knowledge have been symbolized by it in all tongues.  The Scriptures use light and the sun, which is its source, as an emblem for God in His holiness and blessedness and omniscience.  This great word, here, seems to point, chiefly, to light as knowledge. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Psalm 36:8-9.

On the Transfiguration

What was the purpose of the Transfiguration?  Matthew seems to tell us, in that “before them.”  It was for their sakes, not for His as, indeed, follows from the belief that it was the irradiation, from within, of the indwelling light.  The new epoch of His life, in which they were to have a share of trial and cross-bearing, needed some great encouragement poured into their tremulous hearts.  And so, for once, He deigned to let them look on His face shining as the sun, for a remembrance when they saw it covered with “shame and spitting” and His brow bleeding from the thorns.  But, perhaps, we may venture a step farther and see, here, some prophecy of that body of His glory in which He now reigns.  Speculations as to the difference between the earthly body of our Lord and ours are fascinating but unsubstantial.  It was a true human body, susceptible of hunger, pain, and weariness, but we are not taught that it carried in it the necessity of death.  It may have been more pliable to the spirit’s behests and more transparent to its light than ours.  There may have been, in that hour of radiance, some approximation to the perfect harmony between the perfect spirit and the body, which is its fit organ, which we know is His now, and to which we also know that He will conform the body of our humiliation.  Then, His face “shone as the sun.”  When one of these three saw Him in His glory, “His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”  And, His own promise to us is that we, too, “shall shine forth as the sun.”  Then, His garments were white as the light.  His promise is that those who are worthy shall “walk with Him in white.”  The Transfiguration was a revelation and a prophecy. – From: Expositions of Holy Scripture.  Comment on Matthew 17:1-13.