Luke 15:8-10 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, does not light a candle, and sweep the house… And as mere habit and neglect hide souls from themselves, and from the just sympathy and care of their fellows, God's Spirit sends its great disturbing agencies into the society, the nation, the age, or into the narrower bounds of the family. The besom does not really make the new dust; but it only brings the old and long-gathering deposit more, for a time, into the air and upon the lungs. The messengers of the gospel are, for the time, regarded as "turning the world upside down." Or God's providences in calamities, and wars, and social revolutions, show men the magnitude of past hereditary errors. The besom of judgment goes shaking society out of its torpor and equanimity. It was so in Luther's day, and in Calvin's. It was so in the Puritans of our ancestral Britain, and in their colonists who crossed to this country. God, by them, broke up many a pile of quiet litter; and brushed aside many a film of long-settled green mould, picturesque in its verdure, or venerable in its grey, hoar antiquity, which had gathered upon the national conscience. But a Bunyan, and a Milton, and a Baxter, and an Owen, and a Howe were precious medals brought out by the besoming; and constitutional freedom and national morality, and English literature, and Christian piety were greatly enriched by the agitation. It was so in the revolution that made us a nation. It was so in the agitations that went over Europe in the train of our first revolution. It was so in our last great struggle. It has been so in modern missions. Would you put that shaking and bosoming peremptorily and effectually down? We hear, behind the turmoil and the thick streaming clouds of dust, as God's great besoms sweep along, the words of an august cry: "I will overturn, and overturn, and overturn until He, whose right it is to reign, shall come." (W. R. Williams.) Parallel Verses KJV: Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? |
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