Horatious Bonar

Showing 21 to 40 of 126 articles.

Search Articles:

21.) Follow the Lamb! (selections)
      "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me." John 10:27 Christian, your whole life is to be one continuous following of the Lord. You began with turning your back upon the world, and 'looking to Jesus'; keep ever thus. Looking to Him brought rest to you at first, and healed your soul; so, looking to Him daily will maintain your rest an ...read more

22.) Gain and Loss for Eternity.
      "For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he has gained, when God takes away his soul?" - Job 27:8 "For what hope do the godless have when God cuts them off and takes away their life?" Job 27:8 The word "hypocrite" means properly the "ungodly," and corresponds to the "wicked" and "unrighteous" of whom Job was speaking. To this passage, ...read more

23.) God Finding A Resting-Place
      1 Chronicles 21:1-30 THERE is something very peculiar about this fragment or episode of Israel's history. It is abrupt, and in a manner isolated, though not wholly so. It has also some very remarkable points about it. It is the introduction to the history of the temple. It shews the way in which David was led to Moriah as the temple site, and ...read more

24.) God Seeking Worshippers
      For ages before God sought a temple, he had been seeking worshippers. He could do without the former, but not without the latter. His first sanctuary was but a tent; and three thousand years had elapsed before he said, Build me a house wherein I may dwell. Yet all this time he was seeking for worshippers amongst the sons of men. By man's sin God h ...read more

25.) GOD'S CHARACTER OUR RESTING-PLACE
      We have seen that a sinner's peace cannot come from himself, nor from the knowledge of himself, nor from thinking about his own acts and feelings, nor from the consciousness of any amendment of his old self. Whence, then, is it to come? How does he get it? It can only come from God; and it is in knowing God that he gets it. God has written a ...read more

26.) God's Dealing With Sin And The Sinner
      "Er, the first-born of Judah, was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him." -1 Chronicles 2:3 HERE we have, in one brief sentence, a statement of the way in which God deals with sin and the sinner. It is the repetition of a verse in Genesis, in a very unlikely place,-in the midst of names and genealogies; God thus giving us to know the ...read more

27.) God's Desire to Bless the Sinner.
      "Woe unto you, O Jerusalem! will you not be made clean? when shall it once be?" - Jeremiah 13:27 Without dwelling on Jerusalem and her apostasy, which this verse specially brings before us, we pass at once to the application of the words to man in general. I. MAN'S UNCLEANNESS. The uncleanness here spoken of is spiritual, and refers specially ...read more

28.) GOD'S TESTIMONY CONCERNING MAN
      God knows us. He knows what we are; he knows also what he meant us to be; and upon the difference between these two states he founds his testimony concerning us. He is too loving to say anything needlessly severe; too true to say anything untrue; nor can he have any motive to misrepresent us; for he loves to tell of the good, not of the evil, th ...read more

29.) God’s Trees Grow Slowly
      God's processes are not always rapid. His greatest works rise slowly. Swiftness of growth has been one of man's tests of greatness; not so is it with God. His trees grow slowly; the stateliest are the slowest. His creatures grow slowly, year by year; man, the noblest, grows the most slowly of all. God can afford to take His time. Man cannot; he is ...read more

30.) Going Out and Keeping Out
      "Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shall be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in t ...read more

31.) Herod's Ball-Room
      "But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod."-Matthew 19:6. This birthday ball of Herod was held, in all likelihood, at Machaerus, a fortress beyond Jordan, not far from the Dead Sea. It was a high and royal festival. Pomp, splendor, luxury, and lust were all gathered there. In the midst ...read more

32.) His Sun
      "He maketh his sun to rise."-Matthew 5:45. Here is the true link between God and "nature" (as men call it), and between us and nature. Here is the divine claim to proprietorship, to lordship over "nature." All things are God's. No created thing is the proprietor of itself or of any other created thing. There is but one proprietor, one universa ...read more

33.) Home!
      Afflictions are preparing for us a "more abundant entrance," a weightier crown, a whiter robe, a sweeter rest, a home made doubly precious by a long exile and many sufferings here below. However desperate our earthly warfare may be, it is not forever. No, it is brief, very brief. Its end is near, very near. And with the end come triumph, and honor, ...read more

34.) Human Anodynes
      1 Samuel 16:14-23 OF Saul we may say, "Thou didst run well, who hath hindered you?" He began well, but ended ill. His first days and works were better than his last. So with Demas; so with the church of Ephesus; so with the Jews, whose following Jehovah at first was belied by their last apostasy. So is it still with souls, churches, nations, a ...read more

35.) Human Heedlessness and Divine Remembrance.
      "They consider not in their hearts that I remember their wickedness.'' - Hosea 7:2 "They do not realize that I remember all their evil deeds. Their sins engulf them; they are always before me." - Hosea 7:2 Let me present this passage to you under these two heads: (1.) human sin; (2.) the divine remembrance of it. I. HUMAN SIN. What is si ...read more

36.) Human Leprosy And Its Divine Cure
      "When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed."-Matthew 8:1-3. The Lord ends speaking and be ...read more

37.) Human Remedies.
      "And whenever the tormenting spirit from God troubled Saul, David would play the harp. Then Saul would feel better, and the tormenting spirit would go away." 1 Samuel 16:23 Of Saul we may say, "You did run well, who has hindered you?" He began well, but ended ill. His first days and works were better than his last. So with Demas; so with the chu ...read more

38.) INSENSIBILITY
      You say that you do not feel yourself to be a sinner; that you are not anxious enough; that you are not penitent enough. Be it so. Let me, however, ask you such questions as the following: - 1. Does your want of feeling alter the gospel? Does it make the good news less free, less blessed, less suitable? Is it not glad tidings of God's love to ...read more

39.) Jesus In Season And Out Of Season
      "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease, among the people."-Matthew 4:23. It is Christ himself that comes before us here; Christ in his life and doings here below; Christ as the God-man, the sent of God, the revealer ...read more