Thy Brother—Exposition of Matthew 5:23, 24
6. Inexhaustible Riches of the Bible—Perennial Interest of the Expository Method
In answer to this plea for Scripture exposition, it might be answered that the times need to be preached to, and that men must be up to date in their choice of themes. But such criticism ignores the fact that:
Human life in its essential features does not vary from one age to another. Whether lived in the grey dawn of history or in the New York Broadway, the play of human passion, of love and hate, of jealousy and revenge, of hope or foreboding, is identical. The dress, speech, accessories may differ, but all this is superficial and transitory; the woman that wore the jewels of an Egyptian sarcophagus was actuated by the same motives as her sister in the height of Parisian fashion. It is for this reason that the drama of every age retains its fascination for all succeeding ones. Neither Aristophanes, nor Moliere, nor Shakespeare can grow old. Drama possesses this quality because it holds the mirror to the heart and unveils its most secret passages.
What is true of the drama is equally true of Scripture. Humanity retains with unerring precision whatever is true of itself, whatever portrays the inner working of heart and mind, which no man could confess to his fellows, but every man recognises when set out before him. With infinite relish, therefore, generation repeated to generation the story of Abraham and Isaac, of Esau and Jacob, of Joseph and his brethren, of Moses and Aaron, and of all the other good men and bad, who pass before us in the ever-shifting panorama. These stories have been passed on from lip to lip under the shadow of the pyramids and on the sands of the desert, by the Bedouin, the Mesopotamian, the Syrian, and the Hebrew. The attrition of the ages has moulded, rounded and smoothed them as the ocean waters the pebbles or the brooks the swirling stones. The very ease with which they unfold, the elimination of all extraneous matter, the clear-cut sentences which reveal tracks of character as lightning at night reveals a landscape, all prove the charm, the spell, the attraction which these ancient records have wielded. To be unfamiliar with them is to be uneducated and miss the chief opportunity of becoming acquainted with the throbbing heart of humanity. The Bible is not only the Word of God, but the revelation of man. It is the university of the world. Therefore to unfold its story in successive discourses is to enchain the interest of one’s audience and procure a profound assent. The bad man recognises the workings of his own evil nature; the weak man sees the reflection of his own broken resolution and foiled purposes; the tempted perceives that other men have trodden the valley before him and encountered the straddling form of Apollyon; whilst the tempest-tossed learn that the storms that sweep their sky have spent themselves on others, and have been succeeded by blue skies and clear shining. “If there come in one unbelieving or unlearned, he is reproved of all, he is judged by all; the secrets of his heart are made manifest; and so he will fall down on his face, and worship God, declaring that God is in you and truth.”
When Nathan desired to convict David of his sin he was too wise to approach the royal conscience by a direct attack. He would have found the gates closed, the portcullis down, and the drawbridge up. But he interested him in a narrative, perhaps drawn from real life, or at least quite likely to have happened. The scene of the story and its accompaniments were so dissimilar to those of the royal palace that the shy conscience of the criminal never suspected that it was being approached; and it was only when the royal judgments had been unhesitatingly expressed that the veil was suddenly dropped and the rapier was thrust to the dividing of soul and spirit, of its joints and marrow. Deal with a man directly, and he resents the attack; deal with him implicitly and indirectly, and before he is aware he stands before the judgment seat and is speechless before its award. There is no man so likely to speak to his times as the conscientious expositor of Scripture. He is always up to date. In his congregation there is almost certainly a Peter with his impulse, a John with his fervour and imagination, a calculating Judas, a reflective and hesitating Thomas, a cool, practical Andrew. Pilate may be there, cruel, crafty, and calculating, which is the main and likeliest chance. Herodias is sitting next to Martha, and Mary of Magdala to Mary of Bethany. It is impossible to delineate the character, the salient feature, the beauty or blemish of any of these without compelling their modern counterparts to behold their faces in a mirror.
The gist of much of the New Testament is also intended to prove that the attitude of the soul towards God is practically and essentially the same in every age. Paul, for instance, argues that when Abram believed God he exercised the same faith as we do when we “believe on him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.” And the imputation of righteousness, which reckons the sinner of to-day, justified and accepted, is not otherwise than that which operated in the case of the patriarch, of whom it is said that “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.” The expositor of Genesis will, therefore, find himself in the midst of New Testament truth. When expounding the Book of Judges and retelling the stories of Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, he will be describing the faith which dwelt in its most developed form in Jesus, the Author and Finisher of Faith, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.”
It is instructive to consider how much of the New Testament is expository of the Old. We may without exaggeration describe Matthew’s Gospel as an exposition of the Royal Psalms and prophecies. Whilst Mark views our Lord as the Servant of God, and Luke in His human aspects, Matthew’s soul is filled with His supreme claim as “Son of David.” In his pages what Isaiah and Jeremiah, Zechariah and Daniel said about the King and His kingdom is carefully selected and set forth. He reads the secrets that psalmists set to harp-music, and shows their fulfilment in the Redeemer. As King He was to ride the ass’s colt; as Foundation-stone He was to be rejected of the builders; but as Lord He was to sit on the right hand of God, and, though born of a human mother, His goings forth were of old, even from everlasting. Here is the key for unlocking closed doors. Here is the die from which all those precious well-born coins were minted. Here is He of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write.
But still more markedly the Epistle to the Hebrews is an exposition of the old Book of Leviticus. Those glowing paragraphs may have been originally given as expositions. It does not require a great effort of the imagination to picture Apollos, who has often been credited with the authorship of this epistle, delivering it just as a series of expositions in the synagogue at Ephesus. He was mighty in the Scriptures, we are told. What more likely than that he should take up one of the most profound of its books for systematic treatment? He would be inclined thereto by his early training at Alexandria, where Hebrewism was strong, but the outward observance of Levitical ritual was impossible. The germ of these discourses may have been suggested during his residence there, in the effort to reconcile the teaching of Jesus being the Lamb of God with the prescriptions of the ancient law. When he redelivered his expositions at Ephesus, teaching the things concerning Jesus “with all carefulness,” Priscilla and Aquila were arrested and deeply interested in the young apostle, so fervent, so bold, so eloquent, and took him to lodge with them, and expounded the way of God more carefully. It may be, therefore, that in this epistle, which is characterized by so many of the qualities of the Alexandrian, bears the last touches of his devoted friends. Later critics have even credited Priscilla as the authoress. There may be truth in the older hypothesis which inscribed the name of Apollos on the title-page, and this more recent one. We may have a joint-production: the main argument elaborated by Apollos, while Priscilla contributed the annotations. The comment of Luke the historian is, therefore, hardly to be wondered at. “When he was come, he helped them much which had believed through grace.” Such preaching as this could hardly fail to be helpful.
The Book of Revelation may also be said to be an exposition of the Book of Daniel. The ministry of the watcher-angels, their conflicts with strong resistance in the heavenly graces, their interest in our strifes and tears and prayers, are dwelt upon at length, expanded and expounded until we see their forms in rainbows and suns, and hear their trumpets sounding from star to star, and detect their resonant voices as they call to each other in the exercise of their patrol through the worlds. This great Babylon is explained to mean not only the royal dwelling-place of Nebuchadnezzar, which he built by the might of his power and the glory of his majesty, but the spirit of human society which magnifies the creature more than the Creator, and sets itself to persecute the saints. The witness borne by the Hebrew youths amid the luxuries of the palace and by their erectness amid the prostrate crowds, is shown to have its analogies in every age, and especially in the two witnesses who lie unburied in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also the Lord was crucified. But the breath of God entered unto them and they stood on their feet. The wild beasts of Daniel’s vision reappear in the Apocalypse as visions of great kingdoms which set themselves against the Lord and against His Christ. The closing chapter of Daniel seems to lie at the heart of all those glimpses of the Resurrection which fill the latter pages of the Apocalypse, and the angel of Daniel 12:7 cries to the angel of Revelation 10:6. Of the many expositions of Daniel we have followed, John’s was the first.
It is necessary, therefore, that no teacher or preacher should quote texts at random from any part of Scripture without staying to consider the stage in the progressive development of truth out of which that fragment was spoken. The hurling of texts by one school of theologians at another is, to say the least, unseemly; and it may be highly misleading, because in the heat of argument there may be little or no regard to the precise value that should be attached to this or the other passage. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable, but the Divine element was constantly affected by its human medium, precisely as the expression of the nature of Jesus grew and gathered strength with the development of His soul and mind and body. There is a precise analogy between the advancing expression of truth from Genesis to Revelation, and of the utterance of the Divine Word from the babblings of childhood to the teaching of the forty days during which He tarried after His resurrection. Luke tells us that He began to do and teach until the day that He was taken up.
This progress is very remarkable when we study the Bible as a whole. We open it at the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” but how stately and entrancing is the steady sweep of the ascending stairway which lands us finally in the cry, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” To read through the Koran is to be oppressed by an unconnected, shapeless mass of statements, more or less incongruous; but to read the Bible is to become educated by an orderly scheme of advancing doctrines. Take its teaching as to immorality, for instance. What a leaven of difference there is between the pessimism of Ecclesiastes and the trumpet note of 1 Corinthians 15!
The New Testament bears a striking testimony to the same law. We begin with the Person of Christ and the story of His manifestation in the flesh. We witness His miracles, wonder at His wonderful words, behold the expanding fulness of His program, and see His ministry approaching its climax. Then suddenly a great change occurs; we pass from the Synoptic Gospels and come under the teaching of John, who draws aside the veil, and we behold His glory, the glory of the only-begotten Son of God. When we read the Synoptics we are walking with Christ along the road to Emmaus, with our hearts indeed burning, but our eyes holden; but in the Fourth Gospel our eyes are opened, and we know Him for what He is. Is not this a distinct development of His character and glory?
We close the Gospels and open the Acts of the Apostles, and again find ourselves in the midst of movement. We cannot see or touch the Lord, but He is as literally present as in the days of His flesh. He is there as a spiritual presence, providing for difficulties and perplexities, building up the temple of God, succouring, comforting, moulding, shaping, directing, leading His people to new triumphs, experiences and participations of the divine life. There is surely movement here. The natural and physical has made way for the spiritual and eternal. “That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; afterward that which is spiritual.” “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.”
When we turn from the Acts of the Apostles to the Epistles, the movement is still more apparent. There were many things which our Lord desired to communicate during the days of His flesh, but His apostles could not bear them, though they were of the highest moment. But He promised the Spirit of Truth to guide them unto all the truth. That word was carefully chosen to indicate the successive steps by which they were to be led forward and shewn plainly the truth as it is in Jesus. The earlier teaching had anticipated the coming of a day in which many things would be unfolded to them for communication to the world, and that happy day had now arrived. At first they were taught as those who were with Jesus, afterwards as being in Christ. They knew that He was in the Father, and they in Him, and He in them.
To quote the Bampton lecturer of 1864: “Thus the great course of divine teaching reached its highest stage. After slowly moving on through the simple thoughts of patriarchal piety, through the system and covenant of the Law, and through the higher spirituality of the prophets, it rose suddenly to a lofty elevation when God spoke to us in His Son, and even higher yet when the Son ascended back unto glory and sent down His Holy Spirit to take up His unfinished Word and open the mysteries which had been hid from ages and generations. Each stage of progress based itself on the facts and instructions of that which went before. The law was given to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the prophets spake to those who were under the law; Jesus Christ came to those who had been taught by the prophets; the Holy Spirit instructed those who had received Christ.”
In the Book of Revelation there is a still further advance. As we turn its pages we behold the war of the Lamb and His saints against all that opposes the reign of God amongst men, and the ultimate realization of a condition in which there is no sin nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain, nor death. Here is the restoration not only of personal, but corporate life. The Temple of God will be built; the city will realize the corporate existence of humanity, as members of each other; and the earth shall sing again in her motions as she did at her first creation.
Of course the Divine Unity of the Bible is apparent to the eyes of all thoughtful students. The slow process of evolving the truth from its earliest incipiency to its supreme manifestation is acknowledged by all schools of thought. But even when this is granted it is clear that the gradations by which the Divine Author of Revelation proceeds will be more simply and accurately drawn as pastor and people turn slowly page by page, and linger not over the text, but the context, and extracting instruction not merely from one cluster of the Vine, but from the entire vintage. It is difficult to conceive of any process, therefore, which will more magnify the Scriptures, more unfold their truth, more explain their method, more saturate our congregations with their essence and spirit, than the habit of continuous exposition. It has been the practice of most of the preachers of the past, who have left their indelible impression both in speech and print on the life of the church, and it is still the secret of that freshness and fertility, which remind one of the River, that at every thousand cubits becomes deeper, and in the presence of whose life-giving waters the salt marshes were healed.
Thy Brother—Exposition of Matthew 5:23, 24
“Therefore, if thou bringest thy gifts to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” (Matt. 5:23, 24.)
You can easily understand how great an effect the message of our Lord must have produced upon the truly religious Jews, of whom probably there were many at this time in Palestine. We can imagine how they would gather round His message whenever He preached, and it is not difficult for us to realize how great an impression His pure and holy teaching must have had upon the Jewish church. We can easily imagine, also, how these very words, having been heard by a pious Jew, would influence him in some such way as this. On one occasion, in the afternoon, in the glory of the Eastern climate, he would enter the sanctuary of God, bearing a gift about to be placed in the hands of the priest waiting, white-vestured, beside the altar, as an offering to Jehovah. But suddenly, to the priest’s astonishment, he would place his gift at the foot of the altar; then, turning his back upon the sacrifice so placed, would hasten away; returning after two hours, with the morning in his face, he would take the gift and place it in the hand of the priest, and so present it to God. If afterwards the priest accosted him, and asked how it was he delayed so long, the man might answer: “A little while ago, standing upon one of the hills of Galilee, listening to Jesus of Nazareth—a truly holy man is He—I heard Him say, ‘When you are about to offer your gift at the altar, if you remember your brother has aught against you, you must defer your worship until you have made it right with him.’ And there suddenly flashed into my mind the memory of one man in Jerusalem whom I could not look in the face, because I have wronged him, and I hastened to find him and make it right with him. I have received his full and frank forgiveness, and feel the more able to realize the forgiveness of the Almighty, who puts away your sins as far as the east is from the west.”
All that has gone; the altar is razed to the ground, the long line of Levitical priests has passed away for ever, and the whole Levitical system is no longer in vogue or imperative. But the eternal truth that underlies these great words of Christ is for every age and for every race. In these days there is nothing that needs to be brought home to the conscience and mind with more force than this, that man can never get right with the Eternal until he is right with his fellow, and it is absolutely impossible to enjoy the sunlight and forgiveness of the Almighty as long as there is a grievance which has not been made up between ourselves and any man, woman, or child under God’s sky.
1. Remember. Each thoughtful person admits that the record of our life in its minutest incident is being recorded upon two books, each of which is sure to keep it secret. On the one hand we are recording upon the yielding ether every act we do, every word we speak, every scene in which we take part. If I raise my hand I produce a movement which has already passed beyond this church roof and is making its way into the infinite profound. If we could take the wings of the morning or, borne onward by a strong angel, pursue the retreating impressions of our life in some distant realm, we should descry there, imprinted upon the walls of Eternity, which for evermore will retain its impression, our cradle, our mother’s form, ourselves, our school days; and as we travelled nearer and nearer to this moment we should behold again all those scenes, for ever recorded, some of which we would fain obliterate and forget, but, though they may be forgiven, they can never, never be undone. O God! who seest these impressions, is there no power with Thee anywhere that shall blot out what has been wrought? Art Thou also impotent as Thou standest face to face with the past of Thy children?
Everything is also recorded upon the convolutions of our brain. As when you add books to your library you have to increase the shelves to hold them, so doubtless the brain is constantly increasing in size, from the boy to the man, and from young manhood onward. The increasing convolutions of the brain receive the impressions of everything we say and do and hear and take part in.
There is a great difference, we acknowledge, between memory and recollection. Memory holds everything, though recollection cannot always find anything. Memory is like a great box into which a man puts all his letters, receipts, bills, manuscripts, scraps and paragraphs he cuts out of the newspapers; but the hand may dive into the box and turn over the mass of letters, and fail to discover any given paper for which it is making search. Memory holds everything; recollection cannot always remind us of everything just when we choose. But yet, when we go forth and wander through streets or woods, there may be the scent from wild flowers, the call from the birds, or the odour from the grass, for the sense of smell is the quickest to recover from the shrine of memory, which will remind us of something which we have failed to discover. Memory contains everything.
There are moments when the imperishableness of memory’s rewards becomes apparent to most men.
1. One of these is the moment of drowning. Those who have been recovered from the water will tell you how, when they sank for the third time, and it seemed as if all hope must be abandoned, the history of their past life stood out before them in its minutest detail, as the landscape stands out in the night under the flash of the lightning.
2. Mental disease. It is recorded as a simple, illiterate girl that, under the touch of some mental disease, she was able to speak in an unknown tongue. A learned man who heard her recognised it as one of the languages in which the Old Testament was written, and it was discovered that in early life she had been in the service of a clergyman who was accustomed to read the Hebrew version aloud. Without doubt she had heard and retained those impressions involuntarily.
3. Under the touch of any great emotion—such as fear, hope, love, ecstasy—any sudden stroke of emotion will make memory yield up its contents. Therefore, Jesus said, in your highest moments, when you come to the altar, when you stand in the Presence of the Infinite and Eternal, when you take the shoes from your feet, remembering the place on which you stand is holy ground, then you will remember. In the silence, in the loneliness, the awestricken wonder of the spirit, when the curtains are being drawn, and God is looking down upon your heart, then we remember. That is its lustre, that is its uplifting strain of solemn music. When we stand in the death chamber and our beloved is passing from us, then we remember. Probably the place where we remember most clearly the way in which our brother has been grieved at us is at that solemn hour when earth meets earth and dust touches dust, and the form we loved, or thought we loved, or professed to love, is forever taken from our sight. Then we remember.
For us the altar is specially the Cross. And I want to ask myself and each of my hearers why it is, when we come near to the Cross of Christ (for “we have an altar whereof they have no right to eat who serve this tabernacle”), why there we remember? Is it not because the cross reveals, as nothing else on this earth reveals, the eternal life of God? Will you forgive me if I say—I know the metaphor is not the most complete—that in some aspects the cross seems to be God’s tuning fork set to the music of eternity, suddenly placed amid the discords of earth, and it is only when we hear that pure note that we know how dissonant our lives are.
In yonder village a boy grew up, adored by all the villagers, who thought his voice would surpass that of the world’s greatest singers, though probably they had never heard one of them. A musician, anxious to recruit his choir, journeys to the village and finds the boy the centre of an admiring group. Certainly, the boy has a strong, sweet voice; but there are many defects in it, and the quick ear of the musician detects them. He asks the boy if he will come to be trained. The parents consent, and the boy enters the musician’s house, where probably he will spend some months. On the first night after his arrival the choir boys who have been trained for three or five years are there to sing, and the country lad is placed within full view of the musician’s eye. At first his face bears the look of rapt expectancy; he had never heard anything like that; then it flushes, the tears flow down his cheeks, and the boy sobs until the professor, who desires to befriend him, exclaims: “Why is this? Is it for mother or home you cry?” “No,” says the boy, “I never heard singing like that. I thought I could sing; they all told me that I could sing; but if that is singing, I can never sing. Let me go home; it is useless for me to stay.” It is only when he has heard the infinite beauty of perfect singing that he knows his own limitations; and it is only when you and I stand in the light and glory of Calvary that we know what love can do—for “Herein God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And to me the most wonderful thing in the love of God is that it leaves no stone unturned to win back those who are stolid and sullen. I can understand God forgiving the penitent. Human love will easily forgive those who sue for pardon; but our difficulty is to win back those whom we have grieved and offended, and driven by our hardness to enclose themselves in the ice of strong resistance. That is the difficulty, and that is where God’s love surpasses ours. He is not simply good to those who are good, but to the unthankful and evil, who shut themselves up in their cells.
At the Cross, also, we remember that we have not done all we might to win others. It is the failure of our lives that hurts them most. It is not that we have been cruel or violent towards those who were dear, as men may be under the influence of drink, but that we have failed them. We have been shut up in our own self-consciousness; we have not responded, not carried a beaming face, not uplifted in our home-life. Multitudes have grievances against us because we have not been all we might have been in strong, chivalrous love. It is this that we remember.
We should not be surprised, after a vision of the Cross, or after kneeling at the Lord’s table, to find some Christian matron get up between the bread and wine and leave the church. And when the pastor calls to inquire the reason, fearing she might be ill, she replies: “Ah, no; but I had a little motherless sewing-maid in my house! I am sure I did not understand the child, and was always chiding her; she thought me unkind and left me. She drifted away. I felt I had not done all I could for that motherless girl. I went to seek her, I brought her back to my home and to church, and she is again sheltered under my care.”
I recall a story I heard recently of one converted by the grace of God after a wild life. They urged him to join the church and take the Lord’s Supper. “No, never,” he said; “at least not yet.” He left his home and sought through the slums of three great cities for the girl once pure and undefiled, upon whom he had laid his tainting touch, and who had drifted to the furthest lengths. He found her in a top attic, burning with a consumptive fever, on a straw pallet, with no one but the woman of the house to look in on her now and again and moisten her lips. He hastened away and procured what was necessary for her wants. Then, as a pure brother to a pure sister, he nursed her for three weeks until she died. But in that time he had won her back to Christ, and she blessed and forgave him with her dying breath. Then he came and took the Lord’s Supper. He had put it right with her and had been forgiven, and her forgiveness opened the door for the floodtide of Christ’s. Some of you will never get right with God till you have found the man, woman, or child who, if death intervened, would go to complain to God about you, not only because of what you did, but because of what you did not do. “I was hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these men, women, and children, whom I put within your reach, ye did it not to me.”
“Remember.” Through this church to-day may there pass a great quickening of memory, so that between this morning and to-night or early to-morrow morning you will all put things right that are wrong; and not in this church only, for the time is coming when judgment must begin in the house of God, and He is demanding that His Church should arise and shine, because she cannot minister to the great needs of vast populations until every man and woman is utilizing their opportunities for the best interests of others; not till then will the revival for which we are longing visit us.
2. Be Reconciled. We are not dealing with your forgiveness of people who kneel at your feet and ask your pardon; we are dealing with the cases of people from whom you have to extract pardon, which is a very different thing. I think it is in the Book of Proverbs that the Wisdom of the past says, “An offended brother is harder to win than a defensed city with bars.”
Do you remember that poem, the dream of St. Gerontius, which gives us that great hymn which was Mr. Gladstone’s favourite, “Praise to the Holiest in the Height?” Do you remember the time when the soul of St. Gerontius, having left its earthly body, is passing upward in immortal vesture, attended by an angel? There are some wonderful lines where the angel tries to explain to the soul how he had disentangled it from the earthly coil. I am perfectly sure there are many people around whom a sort of coil is twisted which has been manufactured out of our fancied or literal ill-treatment of them. They have magnified, distorted, exaggerated; they have shut themselves up against Christianity. “I have had one taste of it,” they say, “and am sick of it. Never again.” And they have proceeded to justify their position by saying, “There is no Christ, no religion, no God.” Many a soul has drifted into atheism, or at least agnosticism, in consequence. You have to disentwine all that. First there must be the honest purpose; then there must be confession and absolute reparation. Hildebrand kept the emperor waiting at his gate for three days and nights, clad in the thinnest vesture in the icy wind, before he deigned to pardon him, and the outraged soul will often keep us waiting. Only the love of God can sustain us in our quest.
One of the most successful missions of my life originated thus. On the first night of the mission my word was used of God until the soul of a certain man responded, like King Richard, from this prison cell to his minstrel, Blondin. This man had been entrusted with a very wealthy ward, to whom he gave five per cent on her capital, which had been invested at seven and a half per cent. He had considered himself perfectly justified in appropriating the extra two and a half per cent, and had done this for many years. That hour he awoke to see that he had been unfaithful to his trust. He went home, knelt before God, and vowed that he would right the wrong. He wrote out a check for the whole amount he had purloined through the past, and with interest added; posted the note that night, so that he might not withdraw from his purpose, and in the morning, when he awoke, the light of the Eternal was shining in his heart and face. That man’s conversion brought about a revival which is lingering to-day in its wonderful effect.
Surely the brother who has the greatest grievance, though he never reproaches us, is Christ Himself. He does not complain; He does not break the silence; He carries our offense deep buried in His heart. It is difficult to understand how heaven can be a perfectly happy place. To some of us, at least, the first entrance to it will be one of almost infinite heart-breaking regret, and we shall want to stand in the rear of the mighty multitude, so as to avoid the sight of His face, marred by the addition of our ingratitude. Have you not grieved Him? And will you not go to your great Brother, as the brothers went to Joseph, after Jacob’s death (thirty years after the time when they sold him into Egypt), and said, “Wilt thou forgive us for the way we treated thee?” He wept because they remembered it; and in the magnificent language of ancient Scripture we are told, “He nourished them, and spake to their heart.” Will you not also see that the failures and sins you have committed are forgiven by God and man? Then Jesus Christ shall nourish you also and speak to your hearts.
3. Return. “Come again.” “Then come.” Is it not tender? This Sermon on the Mount is full of the gospel. “Then come.” “But, Lord, I called my brother ‘fool!’ May my lips speak to thee.” “Then come.” “I called him ‘Raca,’ ‘Atheist.’ May I come?” “Then come.” But, Lord, the passion is hot upon me!” “Don’t delay, but come. Then come.” It seems as if all heaven is ringing with that message. Don’t stay out in the cold. Don’t count yourself to have sinned beyond hope. Don’t give up! Think of those intimate relations with God you once cherished. Come, backslider! Cold-hearted Christian, come. Let the forgiveness of men be the sacrament of the forgiveness of God. Again it says, “Come.” Come and take that gift which thirty years ago you placed on the altar—that gift which then you meant to make so profusely to Him—the gift of yourself. Forget the long years that have passed, and which gape like a gulf between that moment and this. Take up your life where you dropped it before you went astray, before you dropped the thread of obedience, became immersed in business and adopted schemes not of God. Come back to where you were in those happy, holy days, when you lived in the presence of God. You were a better man then, a nobler woman than you have been of late. This you know perfectly well. You know you have gone back; you have become materialistic, hard-fisted, worldly. Then come back. Take up the high purpose of your life where you dropped it, and then cooperate with your Redeemer by going out to redeem the world by love.