Mark 4:23-24 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.… Some of the old philosophers taught that from the earth continually ascended invisible exhalations, and these vapours, they affirmed, fed the sun and stars, and kept them ever bright and burning. According to this theory, what the earth gave to the sky, the sky gave back again to the earth in light and beauty. Wrong in science, but a beautiful parable of the law of life — what we give to the world around us comes back to our own bosom again in sevenfold brightness and preciousness. To this law Christ refers in the text: "Give, and it shall be given unto you again." According to your bounty in communicating light shall be the measure of light shed on your own path. Teach, instruct, give forth illumination, and as you do so your own brain shall be the clearer, your own knowledge the more full and certain. Light comes through evangelistic work. Evangelistic work is necessary — I. TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE TRUTH. If we do not communicate the light we lose it. If we seek to keep the truth to ourselves we lose our perception of it, our hold upon it — our candle goes out in the confined air. Thus Moses to Israel: "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but teach them thy sons, and thy son's sons" (Deuteronomy 4:9). If you are not to forget — if you are not to lose the truth — you must teach it. Truth unspoken "spoils, like bales unopened to the sun." To seek light in intellectual pursuits to the neglect of evangelistic work is to commit a vital error. The Church needs thinkers and scholars, but it needs, with a more imperative necessity, preachers, teachers, visitors, missionaries, otherwise the intellectualists would soon ruin it. A merely speculative, literary, philosophizing Church would soon lose the truth as it is in Jesus, and substitute the unsubstantial and fantastic shapes of dreamland. If a Church thinks and works, it shall be well with it; its actions shall correct and chasten its thinking, and thus it shall be saved from rationalism on the one side, and mysticism on the other. Unduly exalt intellectual work, and the Church is forthwith afflicted with all kinds of theological vagaries; give the first and largest place to the practical work of saving the souls of men in the field of the world, and the pure gospel shall be conserved, a light and a salvation. We only keep the light whilst we spread it, and this is true alike of Churches and of individuals. Evangelistic work is necessary — II. TO THE REALIZATION OF THE TRUTH. In active service the truth is defined and realized. Earnestly striving to save the souls of men, the haziness of mere opinion passes into well-defined and strongly-held knowledge and conviction. Some scientific men say that the sun is a dark body, and that it is only when its dark radiations touch our atmosphere that it realizes itself — only then that it flashes out a globe of glory, only then that its beams become luminous and vital. So it is when the thinker leaves his solitude and speculation, and comes into contact with society, seeking to profit and bless, that his knowledge realizes itself, that it becomes defined, and bright, and vital. A working Church knows, as no merely literary Church can know. A working Christian knows as no mere idealist can know. The "full assurance" for which we cry, comes through the constant application of gospel truth to the world's wants and woes, through constantly beholding the practical triumphs of the gospel in the hearts, lives, and homes of the people. Livingstone having recorded in his diary how vividly and powerfully he had recognized some commonplace truth, the editor of his "Last Journals" justly observes: "Men, in the midst of their hard. earnest toil, perceive great truths with a sharpness of outline and a depth of conviction which is denied to the mere idle theorist." Evangelistic work is necessary — III. TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRUTH. Working for God in the salvation of men, we shall see the truth more clearly, and further discoveries of it shall be granted. Luther, speaking of the truth, declared that he would not "have the eagle put in a sack." And ever since he gave freedom to the truth, and insisted on its being freely and fully enforced the world over, the "Eagle" has spread a more majestic wing, its golden feathers have shone with a rarer glory, and its eye has kindled into a sublimer fire. The truth spoken, enforced, has grown. More light has shone from God's holy Word. If we wish to know more we must teach more, work more. The men who gave us the Epistles were not students, but workers and preachers, and light came from their work as the wheel kindles as it turns. Our missionaries teach the same lesson. What light they have poured on many great and obscure questions! The missionaries diffusing the light, working to compass the salvation of men, have poured far more light on a score dark problems than they could possibly have done had they remained to ponder in studies and cloisters. Teaching the pagan, we have in turn been taught. The light we communicated to them comes back to us as from a polished reflector. "We are debtors both to the wise and the unwise, to the Greek and to the barbarian." There are abounding proofs that love to others, leading us to instruct and serve them, is a precious but much neglected source of illumination. A heart full of pure and practical charity is the east window in the temple of human life, whilst dim and uncertain is the light which filters through a cold and selfish brain. You will not find truth through thinking for thinking's sake; nay, you will not find truth through seeking for it directly. Truth, like happiness, is "found of them that seek it not" directly and selfishly, but who find it, when scarcely thinking of it, in the paths of charity and duty. Stirred by a glorious discontent we seek to know more, and ever more. Plants turn toward the light, and stretch their branches to reach it; the migration of birds, naturalists tell us, is the result of an intense longing for the light. And so the same instinct, in its highest manifestation, works in man, and he yearns towards the "Day spring." Hear, with a true heart; do, with a sincere and loyal heart; give, with a loving heart as you have freely received; and the "light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be seven fold, as the light of seven days." (W. L. Watkinson.) Parallel Verses KJV: If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. |
    |