Gold Nugget 253 - Twin Sisters

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II Kings 130.doc (20 KB)
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      What friendly relations there should be between professors and students, between ministers and their people, between parents and children, between teachers and scholars, between employers and employed, between masters and servants!  Authority is never weakened by kindness.

      Some employers, some teachers, seem to think it adds to their dignity and to their influence to be stern to those beneath them.  They make a great mistake.  The most respected professors are those who treat their students as brothers, and not as inferiors.  The most respected employers are those who are kind and courteous and considerate to those in their employment.

      Kindness does not weaken influence; it increases it. … Kindness and humility are twin sisters.

The Pulpit Commentary, II Kings p.130, II Kings 6: 1-7, (C. H. Irwin)

Gold Nugget 253

Twin Sisters

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Gold Nugget 254 - Their Delightful Dream

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      Artistic work seems to emanate so entirely from a man himself, to be so purely his own absolute creation, that it naturally raises in him an admiration of himself and an exalted conception of his own powers.  How shall he not be proud of faculties that enable him to produce works which send a thrill of delight through crowds, and are recognized as possessions for all time!  Again, the beautiful is so charming, so attractive, that it is apt to seem sufficient for a man, and so to absorb all his attention, and shut out all thought of higher and nobler things.

      In our own time the cult is actually preached as sufficient religion, and men are asked what more they can possibly desire than to feast the eye perpetually on beautiful objects – beautiful buildings, beautiful furniture, beautiful clothes, pictures, statues, statuettes, harmonious colours, delicate textures, soft and subdued light, graceful forms, pleasing contrasts.

      A weak and effeminate race is produced by such a training; the robuster virtues are uncared for; men become lapped in a luxurious sensualism, and need a warning voice … to wake them from their delightful dream to life’s stern realities.   

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Isaiah I p. 375, Isaiah 23:9, (G. Rawlinson)

 

Gold Nugget 254

Their Delightful Dream

 

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Gold Nugget 252 - Beyond Our Fathers

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      “Two things we ought to learn from history:  one, that we are not in ourselves superior to our fathers; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior to them if we do not advance beyond them” (Froude).

The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p.223, I Samuel 12:8-12, (B. Dale)

Gold Nugget 252

Beyond Our Fathers

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Gold Nugget 251 - Honor in Old Age

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      On speaking of himself as “old and grey-headed,” Samuel immediately afterwards made reference to his childhood.  “I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day.”  He loved to linger (as old men are wont) over his early days; and in his case there was every reason for doing so, for they were surpassingly pure and beautiful.  One of the chief lessons of his life is that a well-spent childhood and youth conduces greatly to a happy and honored age. …

      Among the Spartans, when a hoary-headed man entered their assemblies, they all immediately rose, and remained standing till he had taken his place; and it is enjoined in the law of Moses:  “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man”.  But this injunction assumes the possession of godliness, without which old age neither deserves nor receives appropriate reverence. …

      “An old disciple, or “such an one as Paul the aged”, is like a veteran soldier bearing on him the scars of many a hard-fought battle, and wearing the honours conferred by a grateful country.  He is like a giant of the forest, standing erect when the storm has laid his companions in the dust. …

      Wisdom is proverbially associated with age.  Those who have seen and heard much of the world, and had long experience of life, may be expected to know more than those who are just starting out in their course.  Their judgment is less influenced by passion and impulse; they look at things in a clearer light, and in a calmer frame of mind, and are more likely to perceive the truth concerning them. …

      Let the aged cherish the dispositions by which it is made beautiful and useful.  Let the young honour the aged, and not forsake “the counsel of the old men”.  Let them also remember that they will grow old, and so live that they may then be honoured and happy.

The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p. 219-220, I Samuel 12:2, (C. Chapman)

See also:  Leviticus 19:32, Acts 32:16, Philemon 9, I Kings 12:8

Gold Nugget 251

Honor in Old Age   

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Gold Nugget 250 - Good for Evil

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      To return good for good and evil for evil is natural, to return evil for good is devilish, but to return good for evil is Divine.

The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p. 207, I Samuel 11:12-13, (B. Dale)

Gold Nugget 250

Good for Evil

Gold Nugget 249 - Concurrent Actions

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      Men have spoken, written entreated, sympathized, prayed.  Some critics ascribe all success in heathen lands to sheer force of superior intelligence and moral influence; and in civilized lands to what of moral excellence there may be in connection with a great superstition, enforced as this is by a zeal that takes captive the uncritical.  But the solution is that God is a co-worker with the Church.  The human and Divine action are concurrent, the one being the vehicle through which the other operates. …

      The work to be done before the human soul can rise to the highest form of life is enormous.  Few men consider what is involved in “entering into the kingdom of heaven” even on earth.  To rise to the life of the “kingdom” means work, conflict, suppression, elevation, excision, nurture, self-denial, aspiration, ambition, persistence within a sphere into which only the eye of God can penetrate.  Yet all the expenditure of energy the greatest mind can command is of itself inadequate.

      We are conquerors and “more than conquerors through Christ,” who helpeth us.  He “worketh within us to will and to do.”  In this subtle concurrence of the Divine and human the highest form of life is realized for the “whole body, soul, and spirit.”

           

The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p. 203, I Samuel 11:12-15, (C. Chapman)

Gold Nugget 249

Concurrent Actions

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Gold Nugget 248 - Miserable as a Lark

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      We are all partly subject to our surroundings; but some natures happen to be in circumstances which appear to be quite alien to the development of what is in them.  They are repressed; the strong forces of their life refuse to come forth; they are comparative nonentities; if no change occurs in their relative position they will pass away from life unknown and almost useless.

      There are in some persons mental faculties which, being predominant, but not drawn out by appropriate nutriment and exercise, give the individual an appearance of stupidity and vacuity.  A poet’s soul encompassed by everything antagonistic to its development will be miserable as a lark that cannot rise.  But when the unnatural restraints are removed, and the dispositions and faculties of individuals are placed amidst circumstances favourable to their proper development, there comes a change as rapid, as fresh, and striking as when the light and rain of spring call forth the bulb from under the dull earth into a form of beauty and sweetness. …

      The reality of the transformation is seen in the new aims, the new joys, the new acts of the soul, the new outward form of life, the new spiritual discernment of the spiritual and unseen, the new hidden secret which no words can reveal, the new absorption in Christ. … How unlike our former selves will that perfectly holy, tearless, strong, joyous, unwearied life, exercised in a “spiritual body,” created in special adaptation for the new activities and joys of the kingdom of heaven.    

The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p.179-180, I Samuel 10: 1-8, (C. Chapman)

Gold Nugget 248

Miserable as a Lark

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Gold Nugget 247 - Drifting With the Stream

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      If a man does not hate evil, it is certain he loves not good.  Those twin precepts are like stems from one root.  What a man loves and follows shows what he will be; but what he hates shows what he is. …

      True, any real love for goodness, desire after righteousness and holiness, shows a man not yet hopelessly bad.  But there is a weak approval of good, with no earnest effort to follow it, which only amounts to self-condemnation.  To recognize the right, true, good, kind, honourable path, and yet not choose it, is even a distinct step downward.

      Power to say “No” is the decisive test of strength of moral character.  Good, if followed at all, must be pursued actively – uphill.  But to go wrong you need but yield, and drift with the stream.

The Pulpit Commentary, Psalms p. 276, Psalms 36:4, (E. R. Conder, W. Clarkson)

Gold Nugget 247

Drifting With the Stream

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Gold Nugget 246 - Snapping at Shadows

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      Just because desire is never satisfied, it wanders on in pursuit of other objects which are often visionary, and almost always illusory; as a consequence, like the dog which snapped at his shadow and lost the meat he carried in his mouth, desire frequently missed such enjoyments as are within its reach through striving after those that are beyond its power.

The Pulpit Commentary, Ecclesiastes p. 144, Ecclesiastes 6:7-9, (T. Whitelaw)

Gold Nugget 246

Snapping at Shadows

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Gold Nugget 245 - The Tremendous Power of Children

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      It is impossible to estimate the tremendous influence which children have on the happiness of their parents.  The unfortunate thing about it is that the children are the last to realize it.  It may be that a misplaced modesty inclines them to imagine that their course in life cannot be of much consequence to any one.  In many cases, unhappily, gross selfishness engenders sheer indifference to the feelings of those who have most claim upon them, so that they never give a thought to the pain they are inflicting. 

      But behind these special points is the universal fact that no one can understand the depth and overpowering intensity of a parent’s love until he becomes a parent himself.  Then, in the yearning anxiety he experiences for his own children, a man may have a revelation of the love which he had received all the days of his life without ever dreaming of its wonderful power.       

      But surely, up to their capacity for understanding it, children should realize the great trust that is given to them.  They are entrusted with the happiness of their parents.  After receiving from them life, food, shelter, innumerable good things and a watchful, tender love throughout, they have it in their power to make bright the evening of their father’s and mother’s life, or to cloud it with deep, dark gloom of hopeless misery. …

      In the infancy of their children fond parents often dream of the earthly prosperity they would wish for them – a brilliant career, success in business, wealth, renown, happiness.  But as life opens out more fully they come to see that these are of secondary importance … and it is soon swallowed up in just pride and delight if he is upright and kind and good.

      It is not the dullness, nor the failures, nor the troubles, nor the early death of children that bring a father’s “grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”  It is their sins.  If these sins show direct unkindness, the grief reaches it saddest height.  Then the father may well say, with poor Lear –

                        “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

                          To have a thankless child!”

     

      The son has it in his power to make his parents life happy or miserable.  So great a trust involves a serious responsibility.  “No man liveth unto himself.”  Besides his higher obligations, the son has a life in regard to his father and mother.  He is not at liberty to run riot as he chooses, because he thinks his own future only is at state.  By all the terrible pain he inflicts, by the deep gladness he might have conferred, the guilt of his sin is aggravated. …

      If the mad young man cares little for abstract righteousness, if he has lost the fear of God, still is it nothing that every new folly is a stab in the heart of those who have done most for him and who would even now give their lives to save him?  It is not unmanly to say to one’s self, “For my mother’s sake I will not do this vile thing.”  It is devilish not to be capable of such thought.  Similar considerations may help us in our highest relations.

The Pulpit Commentary, Proverbs 199-200, Proverbs 10:1, (W. F. Adeney)

Gold Nugget 245

The Tremendous Power of Children 

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