and became, so to speak, individualized in David and his seed.4
For when God bound up the future of all nations in the history of Abraham and his seed (Gen. 12:3), He made that history prophetic; and each event and every rite became, as it were, a bud, destined to open in blossom and ripen into fruit on that tree under the shadow of which all nations were to be gathered.5
Affliction
And when troubles are around, and we see no way of escape, when our consciences condemn us for backsliding from the Lord, what comfort to discover that the precious Word of God is still near us, with its message of pity and forgiveness, ever meeting our wants.6
God’s people are not preserved from the common evils of this world. They are sustained and helped in them.7
Even a heathen poet speaks of the pleasure of looking back upon past trials. Yet, would we rather look upon a present Saviour than a past affliction.8
Little do they know, who wonder at the afflictions of God’s people, what precious lessons have been learned, what mighty sermons have been preached in sick rooms and on death-beds. The letting down through the roof of the bed which bore the poor paralytic, laying him at the feet of Jesus, was itself a testimony more powerful than many a long life.9
Agnostics
I believe in a personal God; I also believe in a personal Satan. Agnosticism on the latter point seems to me to lay us open to the most serious practical dangers.10
Alexandrian Judaism
Separated from their brethren of Palestine, they constituted an almost independent sect, having their rival high-priest and temple. Left to themselves, and set free from those elements which led to the development of Rabbinism in the mother country, the Alexandrian Jews pursued a different direction. They had to defend their faith from the attacks of a philosophical system apparently related to it, but claiming for those initiated in its mysteries a higher spirituality and a loftier elevation.11
There can be no doubt that, in the providence of God, the location of so many Jews in Alexandria, and the mental influence which they acquired, were designed to have an important bearing on the later spread of the Gospel of Christ among the Greek-speaking and Grecian-thinking educated world.12
Angels
The ministry of His angels will only be fully understood when our eyes shall have been opened, and when we shall hold personal converse with them in another state of existence.13
The angels whom God sends are all good, though their commission may be judgment to bring evil upon us. As one has rightly remarked, “God sends good angels to punish evil men, while to chastise good men, evil angels claim the power.”14
Anthropology
As in the soul of man we see the ruins of what he had been before the fall, so in the legends and traditions of the various religions of antiquity we recognize the echoes of what men had originally heard from the mouth of God.15
Has the great maker of the machinery, to us incomprehensible in its magnitude and complication, left it to the operation of those laws which has put within its every part to regulate and check its working? If so, what of the intellectual and moral aspirations within us, of that which constitutes equally the real being of man and his dignity? What of those thoughts and hopes which we instinctively feel to be heaven-born, since we know them not to have been earth-sprung? What of high moral motives, the noble inward struggles and victories, the self-devotion and self sacrifice, the patient bearing, the trustful waiting, and holy living? Truly, we cannot believe in man without believing in God.16
Anti-Semitism
To me, indeed, it is difficult to associate the so-called Anti-Semitic movement with any but the lowest causes; envy, jealousy, and cupidity on the one hand; or, on the other, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry and hatred of race.17
As they had been oppressed by Caligula, by Nero, by Domitian, and by the whole line of pagan monarchs; so were they persecuted by a Eugenius, by a Paul, by a Caraffa, and more or less by the whole line of Popes, - by the very men who owed all their idolatrous glory to the fact that they assume to be the spiritual descendants of a Hebrew fisherman! Nay, the Christian Bishops of Rome even exceeded the heathen Caesars in their cruelty and inhumanity towards this people.18
I feel convinced that the real root of anti-Semitism is depreciation of the Old Testament. If we have low opinions of the Old Testament we shall come to despise and to hate the Jews, and perhaps not unreasonably so. Love for the Old Testament leads to love for Israel.19
Anxiety
There is no anxious, nor nervous seeking of deliverance when faith has made its confessions to God. All that is left is to anticipate victory.20
An anxious mind is an unbelieving mind. Full of cares is full of self.21
Apocrypha
The silence of the Apocrypha about the person of the Messiah is so strange, as to be scarcely explained by the consideration, that those books were composed when the need of a Messiah for the deliverance of Israel was not painfully felt.22
The hope of the Old Testament centered in the person of the Messiah; that of the Apocrypha, in the nation of the Jews.23
It is true that the Apocrypha preserve silence about the person of the Messiah. But this, not because the Messiah was ignored, but because it was apprehended and presented in another form. It was no longer the person of the Messiah, but the Messianic times, which engaged the expectancy of the people.24
Apologetics
The chief use of apologetics is to answer a fool according to his folly; that is, to silence him.25
Apostles
Too often we commit in our estimate the error of thinking of them exclusively as Apostles, not as disciples; as our teachers, not as His learners, with all the failings of men, the prejudice of Jews, and the unbelief natural to us, but assuming in each individual special forms, and appearing as characteristic weaknesses.26
Art
For, art is God-given, and what is God-given must be capable of being in turn devoted to God. But how can this be done? The consecration of art, which is the highest expression of mind, is itself an act of homage.27
Not to produce religious feelings, but to express it, is the province of true art. Again, art calms and elevates the mind, and, if it takes us to its own high altitude, that there we may pray and worship, another of its objects is fulfilled.
Poetry and music have always been favorite engagements with Israel, and originality peculiarly their own, and peculiarly expressive of their national mental characteristics.28
Speaking as one who has no claim to knowledge of art, only one picture of Christ ever really impressed me. It was that of an ‘Ecce Homo,’ by Carlo Dolei, in the Pitti Gallery at Florence.29
Art, like Scripture, has this for its object: to make us see, through the actual and outward, the spiritual and therefore the truly real. It presents reality, but as that through which we look far away into the ideal, which underlies all, surrounds all, and gives meaning to all.30
Atheism
Self indulgence and covetousness are practical atheism.31
