Moments with Maclaren in Exodus

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EXODUS 1

"The great Vizier who seemed to be the only protection of Israel is lying in ‘a coffin in Egypt.’ And all these truculent brothers of his that had tormented him, they are gone, and the whole generation is swept away. What of that? They were the depositories of God’s purposes for a little while. Are God’s purposes dead because the instruments that in part wrought them are gone? By no means. If I might use a very vulgar proverb, ‘There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,’ especially if God casts the net. So when the one generation has passed away there is the other to take up the work." --Death and Growth, Exodus 1:6-7

"A great many hands are placed on the ropes that draw the car of the Ruler of the world. And one after another they get stiffened in death; but the car goes on. We should be contented to do our little bit of the work. Never mind whether it is complete and smooth and rounded or not. Never mind whether it can be isolated from the rest and held up, and people can say, ‘He did that entire thing unaided.’ That is not the way for most of us. A great many threads go to make the piece of cloth, and a great many throws of the shuttle to weave the web." --Death and Growth, Exodus 1:6-7

EXODUS 2

"We never feel the preciousness of dear ones so much, nor are so calm in the joy of possession, as when we have laid them in God’s hands, and have learned how wise and wonderful His care is." --The Ark Among the Flags, Exodus 2:1-10

". . . God’s way of blessing the world is to fill men with His message, and let others draw from them." --The Ark Among the Flags, Exodus 2:1-10

"The same principle which sent Saul of Tarsus to be trained at the feet of Gamaliel, and made Luther a monk in the Augustinian convent at Erfurt, planted Moses in Pharaoh’s palace and taught him the wisdom of Egypt, against which he was to contend. It was a strange irony of Providence that put him so close to the throne which he was to shake." --The Ark Among the Flags, Exodus 2:1-10

"Our story teaches us that God’s chosen instruments are immortal till their work is done. No matter how forlorn may seem their outlook, how small the probabilities in their favour, how divergent from the goal may seem the road He leads them, He watches them. Around that frail ark, half lost among the reeds, is cast the impregnable shield of His purpose." --The Ark Among the Flags, Exodus 2:1-10

EXODUS 3

"God sends no man on errands which He does not give him power to do." --The Call of Moses, Exodus 3:10-20

EXODUS 15

"Daily mercies are a pledge and a pattern of His continuous acts. The confidence that we shall be kept is based upon no hard doctrine of final perseverance, but on the assurance that God is always the same, like the sunshine which has poured out for all these millenniums and still rushes on with the same force." --The Ultimate Hope, Exodus 15:17

EXODUS 16

"The farther men stray from Him, the more tender and penetrating His recalling voice. We multiply transgressions, He multiplies mercies." --The Bread of God, Exodus 16:4-12

"The manna ceased when the people came near cornfields and settled homes. Miracles end when means are possible. But the God of the miracle is the God of the means." --The Bread of God, Exodus 16:4-12

EXODUS 17

"Only let us remember that the first field upon which we have to fight for God we carry about within ourselves; and that there will be no victories for us over other enemies until we have, first of all, subdued the foes that are within." --Jehovah Nissi, Exodus 17:15

"How easy it has been, in all generations, to make the sign of the Cross over what had none of the spirit of the Cross in it; and to say, ‘The cause is God’s, and therefore I war for it’; when the reality was, ‘The cause is mine, and therefore I take it for granted that it is God’s.’" --Jehovah Nissi, Exodus 17:15

"They only understand their place as Christ’s servants and soldiers who have learned to hush their own will until they know their Captain’s." --Jehovah Nissi, Exodus 17:15

EXODUS 18

"There is a great deal more in every man than can ever find a field of expression, of work, or of satisfaction in anything beneath the stars. And no man that understands, even superficially, his own character, his own requirements, can fail to feel in his sane and quiet moments, when the rush of temptation and the illusions of this fleeting life have lost their grip upon him: ‘This is not the place that can bring out all that is in me, or that can yield me all that I desire.’ Our capacities transcend the present, and the experiences of the present are all unintelligible, unless the true end of every human life is not here at all, but in another region, for which these experiences are fitting us." --Gershom and Eliezer, Exodus 18:3,4

" . . . we shall never say and feel ‘the Lord is my Helper,’ as we ought to do, until we have got deep in our hearts, and settled in our consciousness, the other conviction that we are strangers here. It is only when we realise that there is no other permanence for us that we put out our hands and grasp at the Eternal, in order not to be swept away upon the dark waves of the rushing stream of Time."--Gershom and Eliezer, Exodus 18:3,4

"Just as when the floods are out, men are driven to the highest ground to save their lives; so when the billows of the waters of time are seen to be rolling over all creatural things, we take our flight to the Rock of Ages." --Gershom and Eliezer, Exodus 18:3,4

"It is only fools that do not change." --The Ideal Statesman, Exodus 18:21

". . . there is something noble in the spectacle of a man ever keeping his mind, even when its windows were beginning to be dimmed by the frosts of age, open to the beams of new truth . . . Innovators aged eighty are not too numerous." --The Ideal Statesman, Exodus 18:21

"We cannot all be great men. Never mind. It is character that tells; we can all be good men, and we can all be Christian men. And whether we build cottages or palaces, if we build on one foundation, and only if we do, they will stand." --The Ideal Statesman, Exodus 18:21

EXODUS 20

"No more serious damage can be inflicted on society or on individuals than the weakening of the honour paid to fathers and mothers." --The Decalogue: II. Man and Man, Exodus 20: 12-21

EXODUS 23

"What we are depends largely on what we have been, and what we have been powerfully acts in determining what we shall be. Life is a mystic chain, not a heap of unconnected links." --The Feast of Ingathering in the End of the Year, Exodus 23:16

EXODUS 25

", , ,  what I desire to insist upon now is how important, for the nobleness and purity of our daily lives, it is that we should be in the continual habit of realising to ourselves the thought that whatever we do, we do before His Face." --The Bread of the Presence, Exodus 25:30

"Dear brethren, you can do far more to help or hinder the spread of Christ’s Kingdom by the way in which you do common things, side by side with men who are not partakers of the ‘like precious faith’ with yourselves, than I or my fellow-preachers can do by all our words." --The Golden Lampstand, Exodus 25:31 

". . . every Christian soul has some other soul to whom its word comes with a force that none other can have." --The Golden Lampstand, Exodus 25:31

EXODUS 28

" ‘Holiness to the Lord’ is self-surrender of will and heart and mind and everything. And that surrender is of the very essence of Christianity. --Three Inscriptions with One Meaning, Exodus 28:36

EXODUS 30

"If our prayers are to be heard as music in heaven, they must come from a stretched string." --The Altar of Incense, Exodus 30:1

"There must be definite times of distinct prayer if the aroma of devotion is to be diffused through our else scentless days." --The Altar of Incense, Exodus 30:1

EXODUS 32

"One man, with God at his back, is always in the majority." --The Swift Decay of Love, Exodus 32:15-26

EXODUS 33

"God does not send His servants out to sow without seed, or to fight without a sword. His command is His pledge." --The Mediator's Threefold Prayer, Exodus 33:12-23

EXODUS 34

"Sin evokes His pardoning mercy. This insignificant speck in Creation has been the scene of the wonder of the Incarnation, not because its magnitude was great, but because its need was desperate." --God Proclaiming His Own Name, Exodus 34:6

"The wilder the storm of human evil roars and rages, the deeper and louder is the voice that peals across the storm. So for us all Christ is the full and final revelation of God’s grace. The last, because the perfect embodiment of it; the sole, because the sufficient manifestation of it. ‘See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.’" --God Proclaiming His Own Name, Exodus 34:6

"There is no influence to refine and beautify men like that of living near Jesus Christ, and walking in the light of that Beauty which is ‘the effulgence of the divine glory and the express image of His Person.’" --Blessed and Tragic Unconsciousness, Exodus 34:29

"Let us, then, try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. That way of self-oblivion is emancipation and blessedness and power. It is safe for us to leave all thoughts of our miserable selves behind us, if instead of them we have the thought of that great, sweet, dear Lord, filling mind and heart." --Blessed and Tragic Unconsciousness, Exodus 34:29

Moments with Maclaren in Genesis

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GENESIS 4

"We drink as we have brewed. As we make our beds, so we lie on them. There is no escape from the law of consequences." --What Crouches at the Door, Genesis 4:7

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"The little sins get in at the window, and open the front door for the full-grown house-breakers. One smooths the path for the other. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and increasing itself." --What Crouches at the Door, Genesis 4:7

"By a continuous, definite effort, as we are going through the bustle of daily life, and amid all the pettiness and perplexities and monotonies that make up our often weary and always heavy days, we can realise to ourselves that He is of a truth at our sides, and by purity of life and heart we can bring Him nearer, and can make ourselves more conscious of His nearness." --With, Before, After, --Genesis 5:22; Genesis 17:1; Deuteronomy 13:4

GENESIS 5

"Never mind, though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with you, whatever passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a system to which we do not belong, and its transiency and our transiency bring with them many sorrows, when we can say, ‘Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations,’ we are at home, and that eternal home will never pass." --With Before, After, --Genesis 5:22; Genesis 17:1; Deuteronomy 13:4

"So, then, ‘practise the presence of God.’ An old mystic says: ‘If I can tell how many times to-day I have thought about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.’" --With Before, After, --Genesis 5:22; Genesis 17:1; Deuteronomy 13:4

"A master’s eye makes diligent servants. If we, in the strength of God, would only realise, day by day and act by act of our lives, that we are before Him, what a revolution could be effected on our characters and what a transformation on all our conduct!" --With Before, After, Genesis 5:22; Genesis 17:1; Deuteronomy 13:4

"Do not be in too great a hurry to press upon the heels of God, if I may so say. Do not let your decisions outrun His providence. Keep back the impatience that would hurry on, and wait for His ripening purposes to ripen and His counsels to develop themselves. Walk after God, and be sure you do not go in front of your Guide, or you will lose both your way and your Guide." --With Before, After, Genesis 5:22; Genesis 17:1; Deuteronomy 13:4

"The Unseen is the Real, and the Material is the merely Apparent. Behind all visible objects, and giving them all their reality, lies the unchangeable God." --The Course and Crown of a Devout Life, Genesis 5:24

"It is hard, amidst all our work and thought and joys and sorrows, to keep fresh our consciousness of His presence, and to talk with Him in the midst of the rush of business. But what do we do about our dear ones when we are away from them? The measure of our love of them is accurately represented by the frequency of our remembrances of them." --The Course and Crown of a Devout Life, Genesis 5:24

GENESIS 6

"One man, with God to back him, is always in the majority. Though surrounded by friends, have we found that, after all, we live and suffer, and must die alone? Here is the all-sufficient Friend, if we have fellowship with whom our hearts will be lonely no more." --The Saint Among Sinners, Genesis 6:9-22

"Learn that a faith which does not work on the feelings is a very poor thing. Some Christian people have a great horror of emotional religion. Unemotional religion is a great deal worse. The road by which faith gets at the hands is through the heart. And he who believes but feels nothing, will do exactly as much as he feels, and probably does not really believe much more." --The Saint Among Sinners, Genesis 6:9-22

GENESIS 12

"A true obedience is content to have orders enough for present duty." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"Some people’s faith says that it delights in God’s promises, but it does not delight in His commandments. That is no faith at all. Whoever takes God at His word, will take all His words. There is no faith without obedience; there is no obedience without faith." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"There is no mystery in getting to the journey’s end. ‘One foot up, and the other foot down,’ continued long enough, will bring to the goal of the longest march. It looks a weary journey, and we wonder if we shall ever get thither. But the magic of ‘one step at a time’ does it." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"He dwelt in tents because he looked for the city. The clear vision of the future detached him, as it will always detach men, from close participation in the present." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"The great lesson from the wandering life of Abram is, ‘Set your affection on things above.’ Cultivate the sense of belonging to another polity than that in the midst of which you dwell." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"The hope of the permanent future made him keep clear of the passing present; and we are to feel ourselves pilgrims and sojourners, not so much because earth is fleeting and we are mortal, as because our true affinities are with the unseen and eternal." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"He unfolds His purposes to those who keep His commandments; obedience is the mother of insight." --An Example of Faith, Genesis 12:1-9

"Life is strenuous, fruitful, and noble, in the measure in which its ultimate aim is kept clearly visible throughout it all." --Going Forth, Genesis 12:5

"The pilgrims who had but one single aim, ‘to go to the land of Canaan,’ were delivered from the miseries of conflicting desires, and with simplicity of aim came concentration of force and calm of spirit." --Going Forth, Genesis 12:5

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"No man honestly and rightly seeks God and fails to find Him." --Coming In, Genesis 12:5

GENESIS 13

". . . the direct effect of Abram’s faith was to make him feel that the matter in dispute was too small to warrant a quarrel. A soul truly living in the contemplation of the future, and filled with God’s promises, will never be eager to insist on its rights, or to stand on its dignity, and will take too accurate a measure of the worth of things temporal to get into a heat about them." --The Importance of a Choice, Genesis 13:1-13

". . . an elevated calm and ‘sweet reasonableness’ will mark the man who truly lives by faith, and he will seek after the things that make for peace." --The Importance of a Choice, Genesis 13:1-13

". . . if our religion does not make us put the world beneath our feet, and count all things but loss that we may win Christ, we had better ask ourselves whether our religion is any better than Lot’s, which was second-hand, and was much more imitation of Abram than obedience to God." --The Importance of a Choice, Genesis 13:1-13

GENESIS 14

". . . That is the impression which Christian people ought to make in the world. They should be recognised, by even unobservant eyes who know nothing of the inner secret of their lives, as plainly belonging to another order." --Abram the Hebrew, Genesis 14:13

"Let us learn that, if Christian men will live well apart from the world, they will be able to sympathise with and help the world; and that our religion should fit us for the prompt and heroic undertaking, as it certainly does for the successful accomplishment, of all deeds of brotherly kindness and sympathy, bringing help and solace to the weak and the wearied, liberty to the captives, and hope to the despairing." --Abram the Hebrew, Genesis 14:13

GENESIS 15

"It was not the promise, but the promiser, that was truly the object of Abram’s trust." --God's Covenant with Abraham, Genesis 15:5-18

GENESIS 17

 

 "We, too, are often tempted to think that, in the highest matters, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’ and to wish that God would be content with our Ishmaels, which satisfy us, and would not withdraw us from possessed good, to make us live by hope of good unseen." --Waiting Faith Rewarded and Strengthened by New Revelations, Genesis 17: 1-9

"Better to climb, with faces turned upwards to the inaccessible peak, than to lie at ease in the fat valleys! It is the salt of life to have our aims set fixedly towards ideal perfection, and to say, ‘I count not myself to have apprehended: but . . .I press toward the mark.’" --Waiting Faith Rewarded and Strengthened by New Revelations, Genesis 17: 1-9

". . . He sometimes comes to us, and lifts us out of some lower kind of good, which is perfectly satisfactory to us, or all but perfectly satisfactory, in order to give to us something nobler and higher." --A Petulant Wish, Genesis 17:18

"I believe in importunate prayer, but I believe also that a great deal of what calls itself importunate prayer is nothing more than an obstinate determination not to be satisfied with what satisfies God." --A Petulant Wish, Genesis 17:18

GENESIS 18

". . . it is still more evidently true that the one way to apprehend God’s purposes in it is to keep in close friendship with Him." --Because of His Importunity, Genesis 18:16-33

"In the final resort, each soul must reap its own harvest from its own deeds; but the individualism of Christianity is not isolation. We are bound together in mysterious community, and a good man is a fountain of far-flowing good. The truest ‘saviours of society’ are the servants of God." --The Intercourse of God and His Friend, Genesis 18:16-33

"God’s friends are true priests, and help their brethren by their prayers. Our voices should ‘rise like a fountain night and day’ for men." --The Intercourse of God and His Friend, Genesis 18:16-33

". .  there is a secret distrust of the power, and a flagrantly plain neglect of the duty, of intercession nowadays, which need sorely the lesson that God ‘remembered Abraham’ and delivered Lot." --The Intercourse of God and His Friend, Genesis 18:16-33

GENESIS 22

"The life of faith is ever a life of testing, and very often the fire that tries increases in heat as life advances. The worst conflicts are not always at the beginning of the war." --The Crowning Test and Triuph of Faith, Genesis 22:1-14

"Abraham christened the anonymous mountain-top, not by a name that reminded him or others of his trial, but by a name that proclaimed God’s deliverance." Jehovah-Jireh, Genesis 22:14

When we look back on the past what do we see? Times of trial or times of deliverance? . . . Let us name the heights that lie behind us, visible to memory, by names that commemorate, not the troubles that we had on them, but the deliverances that on them we received from God." --Jehovah-Jireh, Genesis 22:14

GENESIS 24

". . . if we expect guidance we must diligently do present duty." --Guidance in the Way, Genesis 24:27

"‘Do the duty that lies nearest thee,’ and the remoter duty will become clearer." --Guidance in the Way, Genesis 24:27

"God leaves a great deal to our common sense. His way of speaking to common sense is by very common things." --Guidance in the Way, Genesis 24:27

GENESIS 25

"Abraham had had a richly varied life. It had brought him all he wished. He has drunk a full draught, and needs no more. He is satisfied, but that does not mean loss of interest in present duties, occupations, or enjoyments. It is possible to keep ourselves fully alive to all these till the end, and to preserve something of the keen edge of youth even in old age, by the magic of communion with God, purity of conduct, and a habitual contemplation of all events as sent by our Father." --The Death of Abraham, Genesis 25:8

"Scaffoldings are for buildings, and the moments and days and years of our earthly lives are scaffolding. What are you building inside the scaffolding, brother? What kind of a structure will be disclosed when the scaffolding is knocked away?" --The Death of Abraham, Genesis 25:8

"If we cultivate that sense of detachment from the present, and of having our true affinities in the unseen, if we dwell here as strangers because our citizenship is in heaven, then death will not drag us away from our associates, . . . but will bring us where closer bonds shall knit the ‘sweet societies’ together, and the sheep shall couch close by one another, because all are gathered round the one shepherd. Then many a broken tie shall be rewoven, and the solitary wanderer meet again the dear ones whom he had ‘loved long since, and lost awhile.’" --The Death of Abraham, Genesis 25:8

GENESIS 28

"God did not want Jacob’s altar, nor his tenths; He wanted Jacob. But many a weary year and many a sore sorrow have to leave their marks on him before the evil strain is pressed out of his blood; and by the unwearied long-suffering of his patient Friend and Teacher in heaven, the crafty, earthly-minded Jacob ‘the supplanter’ is turned into ‘Israel, the prince with God, in whom is no guile.’ The slower the scholar, the more wonderful the forbearance of the Teacher; and the more may we, who are slow scholars too, take heart to believe that He will not be soon angry with us, nor leave us until He has done that which He has spoken to us of." --The Heavenly Pathway and the Earthly Heart, Genesis 28:10-22

GENESIS 32

"The true field for religion is the field of common life.  . . . it is in the path where God has bade us walk that we shall find the angels round us.  . . . But the friendly helpers, the emissaries of God’s love, the apostles of His grace, do not haunt the roads that we make for ourselves." --Manahaim: The Two Camps, Genesis 32:1-2

"We need not ask for more sunshine, but take care to spread ourselves out in the full sunshine which we have, and let it drench our eyes and fire our hearts." --The Twofold Wrestle--God's with Jacob and Jacob's with God, Genesis 32:9-12

GENESIS 39, 40

"Joseph won hearts because God was with him, as the story is careful to point out. Our religion should recommend us, and therefore itself, to those who have to do with us.  . . .we are to be gentle and lovable, gracious towards men, because we receive grace from God. We owe it to our Lord and to our fellows, and to ourselves, to be magnets to attract to Jesus, by showing how fair He can make a life. Joseph in prison found work to do, and he did not shirk it." --Goodness in a Dungeon, Genesis 39:20-23; 40:1-15

GENESIS 41

"We cannot afford to lose one of our sorrows or trials. There would be no summer unless winter had gone before. There is a bud or a fruit for every snowflake, and a bird’s song for every howl of the storm." --Joseph, The Prime Minister, Genesis 41: 38-48

". . . outward success is not God’s best gift. It was better to be the Joseph who deserved his high place, than to have the place." --Joseph, The Prime Minister, Genesis 41: 38-48

"Whatever our task, let us do it, as Joseph did his, with strenuous concentration, knowing, as he did, that the years in which it is possible are but few at the longest." --Joseph, The Prime Minister, Genesis 41: 38-48

GENESIS 45

"More than natural sweetness and placability must have gone to the making of such a temper of forgiveness. He must have been living near the Fountain of all mercy to have had so full a cup of it to offer." --Recognition and Reconciliation, Genesis 45:1-15

"If we would cultivate the habit of seeing God behind second causes, our hearts would be kept free from much wrath and bitterness." --Joseph, The Pardoner and Preserver, Genesis 45:1-15

"We cannot all have great tasks in the line of God’s purposes, but we can all feel that our little ones are made great by being seen to be in it." --Joseph, The Pardoner and Preserver, Genesis 45:1-15

". . . the more we try to find out what God means by setting us where we are, and to do that, the better for our peace and true dignity. A true man does not care for the rewards of work half as much as for the work itself. Find out what God intends, and never mind whether He puts you in a dungeon or in a palace. Both places lie on the road which He has marked and, in either, the main thing is to do His will." --Joseph, The Pardoner and Preserver, Genesis 45:1-15

GENESIS 47, 48

"We have no call to be curious as to what will come of our deeds. This end of the action, the motive of it, is our care; the other end, the outcome of it, is God’s business to see to." --Growth by Transplanting, Genesis 47:1-12

"Now, both things are true--life is short, life is long." --Two Retrospects of One Life, Genesis 47:9; 48:15-16

". . . it is largely a matter for our own selection which of the two views of our lives we take. We may make our choice whether we shall fix our attention on the brighter or on the darker constituents of our past." --Two Retrospects of One Life, Genesis 47:9; 48:15-16

"There is enough in all our lives to make material for plenty of whining and complaining, if we choose to take hold of them by that handle. And there is enough in all our lives to make us ashamed of one murmuring word, if we are devout and wise and believing enough to lay hold of them by that one. Remember that you can make your view of your life either a bright one or a dark one, and there will be facts for both; but the facts that feed melancholy are partial and superficial, and the facts that exhort, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice,’ are deep and fundamental." --Two Retrospects of One Life, Genesis 47:9; 48:15-16

GENESIS 50

"A man who sees God’s hand in his past, and thinks lightly of his sorrows and nobly of the opportunities of service which they have brought him, will waste no feeling on the men who were God’s tools. If we want to live high above low hatreds and revenges, let us cultivate the habit of looking behind men to God. So we shall be saved from many fruitless pangs over irrevocable losses and from many disturbing feelings about other people." --A Calm Evening, Promising a Bright Morning, Genesis 50:14-26

"His career may teach another lesson; namely, that true faith does not detach us from strenuous interest and toil in the present. Though the great hope burned in his heart, he did all his work as prime minister all the better because of it. It should always be so. Life here is not worth living if there is not another. The distance dignifies the foreground. The highest importance and nobleness of the life that now is, lie in its being preparation or apprenticeship for the greater future. The Egyptian vizier, with Canaan written on his heart, and Egypt administered by his hands, is a type of what every Christian should be." --A Calm Evening, Promising a Bright Morning, Genesis 50:14-26

"Brethren, what makes us Christians is not the theology we have in our heads, but the faith and love we have in our hearts." --Joseph's Faith, Genesis 50:25

"There can be but little strength in our faith if it does not compel us to separation. If it has any power to do anything at all, it will certainly do that. If we are naturalised as citizens there, we cannot help being aliens here." --Joseph's Faith, Genesis 50:25