The Importance of the Bible

How instructive to us is this great truth that the Incarnate Word lived on the Inspired Word!  It was food to Him, as it is to us; and, brothers and sisters, if Christ thus lived upon the Word of God, should not you and I do the same?  He, in some respects, did not need [...]

Read Full Post »

Meditating on Psalm 73

The great value of the Book of Psalms is that, in it, we have godly men stating their experience and giving us an account of things that have happened to them in their spiritual lives and warfare.  Throughout history, the Book of Psalms has, therefore, been a book of great value for God’s people.  Again [...]

Read Full Post »

John Calvin

Calvin belongs to the second generation of the reformers.  His place, chronologically and, to a large extent, theologically, is among the heirs rather than with the initiators of the Reformation.  At his birth, Luther and Zwingli were already 25 years of age, Melanchthon was about to take up a student’s career at the University of [...]

Read Full Post »

Between the Death of Puritanism and the Rise of Methodism

At last, the governing authorities took fright at the general level of corruption and immorality.  A House of Lords committee was appointed, “to inquire into the causes of the present excessive immorality and corruption.”  In its report, the committee stated that many men of evil character had, lately, gathered themselves into a club called the [...]

Read Full Post »

For the Lord’s Day (28)

Now, we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves.  Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification.  For even Christ did not please Himself but, as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me.”  [...]

Read Full Post »

Alexander Maclaren Week – 6

Job is put in the place of intercessor for the three – a profound humiliation for them and an honor for him.  They obeyed at once, showing that they have learned their lesson, as well as Job, his.  An incidental lesson from that final picture of the sufferer-become-the-priest requiting accusations with intercession is the duty [...]

Read Full Post »

Alexander Maclaren Week – 5

And what does the Lord’s Supper mean?  Why did Jesus Christ select that one point of His life as the point to be remembered?    Why did He institute the double memorial, the body parted from the blood being a sign of a violent death?  I know of no explanation that makes the Lord’s Supper an [...]

Read Full Post »

Alexander Maclaren Week – 4

We have, in this psalm, the record of the Psalmist’s struggle with the great standing difficulty of how to reconcile the unequal distribution of worldly prosperity with the wisdom and providence of God.  That difficulty pressed more acutely upon men of the Old Dispensation than even upon us because the very promise of that stage [...]

Read Full Post »

Alexander Maclaren Week – 3

That is the true ground of our unity, and of our obligation to love all who are begotten of Him.  You cannot safely put them on any other footing.  All else – identity of opinion, similarity of practice and ceremonial, local or national ties, and the like – all else is insufficient.  It may be [...]

Read Full Post »

Alexander Maclaren Week – 2

In considering the Jewish sacrificial system, it is important to distinguish the symbolical from the typical value of the sacrifices.  The former could scarcely be quite unnoticed by the offerers; but the latter was only gradually made plain, was probably never very generally seen, and is a great deal clearer to us, in the light [...]

Read Full Post »