Thomas Guthrie

“ Never from surf-beaten shore or rocky headland do spectators watch with such anxious interest the life-boat, as, now seen and now lost, now breasting the waves and now hurled back on the foaming crest of a giant billow, she makes for the wreck, as they watch those who, with the Bible in their hearts and hands, go forth to save the lost. And when the poor perishing sinner throws himself into Jesus’ arms, what gratulations among these happy spirits! “There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons.” ”

“ Where God has a will, God always has a way. At the throne of divine grace, none had ever to shed Esau’s tears, or cry with him, Hast thou but one blessing, O my father? Our father in heaven is affluent in blessings, plenteous in redemption, abundant in goodness and in truth. Who ever turned an imploring eye on God, and brought to prayer the earnestness of him that bends the knee to yon blind old man, but became in time the happy object of God’s loving, saving mercy. Let men trust in the Lord. In the name of Christ let them throw themselves on His mercy. ”

“ Here is present, not the immortal, but the eternal; here is not one kind of matter united to another, or a spiritual to an earthly element, but the Creator to a creature, divine Omnipotence to human weakness, the Ancient of Days to the infant of a day. What deep secrets of divine wisdom, power, and love lie here, wrapped up in these poor swaddling-clothes! Mary holds in her arms, in this manger with its straw, what draws the wondering eyes, and inspires the loftiest songs of angels. ”

“ A drop of water is an ocean, a spark of fire is a sun, every grain of sand on the sea-shore is a world, in miniature; and as those who have never seen ocean, or sun, or world, may form some idea of their appearance by magnifying these their miniatures millions of millions of times, so, by immensely magnifying the age, the power, the wisdom, the holiness of an angel, we could form some dim conception of God. ”

“ The peace we are to seek, and, seeking to pursue, is not that of death, but life,—not that the lake presents in winter, when no life appears on its shores, nor sound breaks the silence of its frozen waters; but that of a lake which, protected from tempests by lofty mountains, carries life in its waters, beauty on its banks, and heaven mirrored in its unruffled bosom. ”

“ As guard of honour, they had swept in their downward flight by many a sun and star, escorting the Son of God to our nether world. And now—ere they left Him to tread the wine-press alone, and returned on upward wings to their native heavens, and their service before the throne of God—these celestials bent their loving eyes on the stable; and in anticipation of Jesus’ triumphs, of men saved, death conquered, graves spoiled, and Satan crushed, they sang “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” ”

“ Peace is in the battle-field when the last gun is fired, and, the last of the dying having groaned out his soul in a gush of blood, the heaving mass is still. Peace was on the sea and the storm suddenly became a calm, when the waves leaping up against the flying ship obtained their prey, and from the deck where he stood summoned by the voice, Arise, O thou that sleepest, and call upon thy God, Jonah was flung into the jaws of death. ”

“ Dying, the just for the unjust, He has made peace; and these are the easy terms, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” How gladly should we accept them? If men reject peace, what chance for them in war? “Hast thou an arm like God? Canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” “Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth; but woe to the man who striveth with his Maker!” ”

“ Not without reason does He ask, “If I be a father, where is mine honour? if I be a master, where is my fear?” And who that thinks of his sins, their guilt, their number, and, as committed against infinite love and tender mercy, their unspeakable atrocity, but will acknowledge the truth of these words, “Because I am God, and not man, therefore the children of men are not consumed”—just as it is because the ship rides by a cable, and not a cobweb, that, when sails are rent, and yards are gone, and breakers are foaming on the reef, she mounts the billows and survives the storm. ”

“ And when that judgment comes to which these are but as the big drops that prepare us for a burst of thunder and the rushing rain, when the great white throne is set, and the books are opened, and the Judge rises in awful majesty to pronounce words of doom, the voices of ten times ten thousand saints shall add, Amen; and in an outburst of praise that drowns the wail of the lost, the whole host of angels shall sing, Glory to God! ”

“ The divine glory of that scene is not peculiar to it. For as an eagle, so soon as she has stooped from her realm to the ground, mounts aloft again, soaring into the blue skies of her native heavens, our Lord never descends into the abasement of His meanest circumstances without some act which bespeaks divinity, and bears Him up before our eyes into the regions of Godhead. The grave, where He weeps like a woman, gives up its prisoner at His word. ”

“ The fact that redemption yields God the highest glory will appear also if we look at—
The Redeemed.—It is in them, in sinners saved, not in the happy and holy angels, that God stands out fully revealed as in a mirror; long and broad enough, if I may say so, to show forth all His attributes. To vary the figure; the cross of Christ is the focus in which all the beams of divinity, all the attributes of the Godhead, are gathered into one bright, burning spot, with power to warm the coldest and melt the stoniest heart. No man hath seen God at any time, otherwise than in His works ”

“ To a meditative man it is curious to stand over any cradle where an infant sleeps; and, as we look on the [Pg 17] face so calm, and the little arms gently folded on the placid breast, to think of the mighty powers and passions which are slumbering there; to think that this feeble nursling has heaven or hell before it; that an immortal in a mortal form is allied to angels; that the life which it has begun shall last when the sun is quenched, enduring throughout all eternity. Much more wonderful the spectacle the manger offers, where shepherds bend their knees, and angels bend their eyes! ”

“ Here is the Bible, the scheme of redeeming love, that grand work which saved a lost world, gladdened angels in heaven, confounded devils in hell, and engaged the highest attributes of the Godhead, summed up in one short, glorious, glowing paragraph. For what so much as the gospel, what, indeed, but the gospel, yields Jehovah the highest glory, blesses our earth with peace, and expresses Heaven’s good-will to the sons of men? Such were the ambassadors, and such the embassage! ”

“ What a commentary is human history on these words of Holy Scripture, “The whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain till now!—nor shall it cease to groan, or hail the day of its redemption, till the Prince of Peace is enthroned in the heart of all nations, and the labours of missionaries have extended that kingdom to the ends of the earth, whose triumphs are bloodless—whose walls are Salvation and her gates Praise.”
Without disparagement to the happy influence of education, the extension of commerce, and the efforts of benevolent men, the real Peace Society is the Church of God ”

“ And so, till the nations have emerged from spiritual darkness; till God’s Word is an open book, and duly honoured in all lands; till immorality has ceased to weaken the bonds of social happiness, discontent to rankle in the bosom of the people, and ambition to fire the breasts of kings, the world may expect ever and anon to hear the voice of Joel sounding out this trumpet call, “Prepare ye war; wake up the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near—beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears—put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.” ”

“ Deer are furnished by nature with horns, dogs with teeth, eagles with talons, serpents with poison, and bees with stings; but men have no weapons of offence. Yet, acting under the dominion of their lusts, men have a passion for fighting, and, easily fired with the spirit, and dazzled with the glory of war, are ready to abandon arguments for blows; and I cannot but think that He who would not permit David, the man after His own heart, to build Him a house because he had been a man of blood, conferred this honour on these humble shepherds because they were men of peace. ”

“ The person is God—He who spake by holy men of old, speaking here by the lips of angels. Where there is a will, there is a way, is a brave and admirable proverb. Yet, though comparatively true in most cases, to some it is altogether inapplicable. Look, for example, at the women who, when the men had turned cowards, boldly follow our Lord to Calvary, bewailing and lamenting Him! What tears they shed, what a wail they raise, when the door opens, and, surrounded by armed guards, Jesus comes forth from the Judgment Hall, bleeding, bound, crowned with thorns. ”

“ VIII. JESUS RESTORES PEACE BETWEEN GOD AND MAN.
There are things which God cannot do—which it were not to honour but dishonour Him to believe He could. He can neither tempt, nor be tempted, to sin. The sinner He may love, but not his sin; that is impossible; as the prophet expresses it, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” Indeed, I would as soon believe that God could condemn a holy spirit to the pains of hell, as admit a guilty one, unjustified and unsanctified, to the joys of heaven. ”

“ Were we to range the vast universe to find its rival, we should return, like the dove to its ark, to the stable-door, and the swaddled babe, there to mingle human voices with the heavenly choir—singing, Glory to God in the highest! ”

“ Mean as it looks, yet more splendid than marble palaces,—more sacred than the most venerable and hallowed temples, here the Son of God was born, and with Him were born Faith, Hope, and Charity—our Peace, our Liberty, and our Eternal Life. ”

“ In warfare patriots have stood up gallantly against overwhelming odds, and, closing their broken ranks, have said, “Better fall on the field, better lose life than honour;” but when sinners, dropping the weapons of rebellion, yield themselves up to God, honour is not lost, but won, in a crown that fadeth not away. Brave men have said, “Better fight to the last, die with our swords in our hands, than become captives to pine away a weary, ignoble life within the walls of a prison;” but when the sinner gives himself up to God, he goes not to exile but home ”

“ Where death, with grim and grisly aspect, stood by the mouth of an open grave, shaking his fatal dart, we see an angel form opening with one hand the gate of heaven, and holding in the other a shining [Pg 106] crown—from the face of God we see the features of an angry, stern, inexorable judge melt all away, and in room of an object of terror we behold the face and form of a kind, loving, forgiving Father, with open arms hastening to embrace us. ”

“ But people are too apt to suppose that religion lies mainly, if not exclusively, in prayers, reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and attending on sacraments; in time spent, or work done, or offerings made, or sacrifices endured, for what are called, in common language, religious objects. These are the means, not the end. He who rises from his knees to his daily task, and, with an eye not so much to please men as God, does it well, carries divine worship to the workshop, and throws a sacred halo around the ordinary secularities of life. ”

“ The fairest, purest, oldest of created things, passing untainted through pollution, turning gloomy night into day, and imparting their varied beauties to earth and air and ocean, this of all material elements was the fittest symbol of God. A circumstance this to which we probably owe the ancient practice of worshipping the Divinity by fire, and certainly such figures as these: “God is light;” “He clothes himself with light as with a garment;” “He dwelleth in light that is inaccessible and full of glory.” ”

“ I see them, as, regardless of appearances, and saluting no one, they press on, along the road, through the streets, with panting breath and gleaming eye and streaming hair and flying feet, striving who shall be first to proclaim the resurrection, and burst in on the disciples with the glad tidings, crying, “The Lord is risen!” Teaching the Churches how to strive, their only rivalry who shall first carry the tidings of salvation to heathen lands, I dare to say those holy women never took such bounding steps, nor sped on their way with such haste before. ”

“ Till all nations receive the Bible in its integrity and own it as their only rule of policy, till kings reign for Christ and lay their crowns at His feet, a lasting peace is an idle dream. Treaties will no more bind nations that lie under the influence of unsanctified passions, that chains him who dwelt among the tombs, and within whom dwelt a legion of devils. Till other and better days come, the best cemented peace is only a pause—a truce—an armistice ”

“ But shall our world be the limits of the wondrous tale? Though ever and deeply interesting as the scene of redemption, just as to patriots is the barest moor where a people fought and conquered for their freedom, our earth holds in other respects but a very insignificant place in creation. In a space of the sky no larger than a tenth part of the moon’s disc, the telescope discovers many thousands of stars, each a sun, attended probably by a group of planets like our own: their number indeed is such that many parts of the heavens appear as if they were sprinkled with gold-dust ”

“ Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the peace which we are to seek—a peace which, springing from a sense of reconciliation through the blood of the Lamb and wrought within the soul by the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, has so raised the saint above all [Pg 109] fears of death, and shed such a flood of glory around his dying head, that wicked men have turned from the scene to exclaim, May I die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like his! ”

“ We pity their ignorance. But how do they rebuke the indifference of many; their unwillingness to submit to any sacrifice whatever for the honour of Jesus and the interests of their souls? These heathens may pity thousands whom they shall rise up in judgment to condemn. Neglecting the great salvation, preferring the pleasures of sin, what a contrast do these offer to a poor Hindoo, who, hearing a missionary tell of the blood of Christ, sprang from the ground, and, loosing his bloody sandals, flung them away to exclaim, “Now, now I have found what I want!” ”

“ Though rich in the wealth of Godhead, with the resources of heaven and of earth at His sovereign command, poverty attended His steps like His shadow, along the way from a humble cradle to a bloody grave. ”