Matthew 12:46-50 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood without, desiring to speak with him.… Christ saw things in their superior relationships. All true relationship springs from moral states, not from the mechanical arrangements of society. 1. It is the real and proper tendency of all moral affections to seek each other, and to coalesce. The lower feelings are to a certain extent centrifugal. Policy, self interest, gifts, are perpetually separating men. All attempts to compromise union, to reason men into external union have failed. It is not found in contiguity. It is found in divergence of thought and feeling. All harmonies are in the direction of diversity. Love will do what reason never could do. 2. Human affections are never carried to their full power, and sweetness and beauty, till they are lifted up into the higher sphere, by their affinities and associations, religious. It is not enough to love the human that is in man; but that which is to live after the body. An unsanctified affection an imperfect one. 3. It is a matter of great rejoicing to those who ponder the spirit of this passage, that this world, after all, is as rich as it is. Although hearts are distributed and unrecognized, yet you can feel what a wealth of relationship there is after all. 4. The true man of God, in our day, is he who feels most sensitively his relationship to the Divine element which is in his fellow man. The largest man is the man of the largest heart. 5. It is piteous to see how men have spent their lives in resisting their relationships, and in putting trust and charity upon hard conditions. We must change away from the hating and fighting to the loving principle. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. |
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