James 1:17-18 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no ficklenss… The word "gift" is one of the loveliest in the language. It is a flower-like word, and full of fragrance. It is a most significant and expansive term. Like the firmament, it is inclusive of all bright things visible to man in the doings of God. You might enumerate every act of the Father, from the creation of man to the gift of the Holy Ghost, and all the operations of His mercy since, and group them all together; you may call the roll of all His deeds of love to man, and all His gracious acts to us individually: and above them all, or upon the face of each separately, one might, with the accuracy of entire truthfulness, write "Gift." They have all come to the race, and to each of us, fresh from His hand. There is not a hope I have in which I do not see my Father's face; and the reflection of the face reveals the mirror's use, and makes it lovely. There is not a love known to your life, to which is any depth or purity, from which come not Divine reflections. Nor is there any sympathy in your heart or mine, friend, or any sweet impulse or prompting, no high aim or noble motive, no, nor any consolation which makes our sorrows like wounds which heal themselves in bleeding, not of God. I bring all these together, and string them like pearls upon one necklace, and lay them in the palm of His benevolence — a kind of tribute; my little gift to the All-giving. You may begin with the very lowest of His gifts to you — those that come through the ordinary channels of nature, and hence seem least connected with supernatural bestowment — even your bodily powers — and you can but see at a glance how perfectly you are equipped for usefulness and happiness upon the earth. In your own body find proof of your Creator's love. What grace, what beauty, what sensitiveness, and subtlety of feeling, has been given to the body! How responsive it is to the mind I how willing its subjection I how free and generous its service! I know that it shall fail, and be not; I know that by-and-by we shall have a better; but for the time being, for the present state of soul-development, how adapted the instrument is to the wishes and wants of the player! But it is not until you contemplate man in respect to his mental and moral faculties; it is not until you look within yourself, and behold the powers of your mind, and the more subtle but incomparably superior attributes of the soul — that you fairly see what God has done for you. What costly, what magnificent furniture is this with which the almighty Architect has fitted up and adorned the temple of the Spirit! Here is Reason — that pale but lovely reflection of God — which draws the line between beast and man: on one side of which is mastery, the powers and pleasures of intelligence and eternal life; on the other, inbred subjection, absence of thought, and existence that hurries to extinction. This is ours — our birthright; given, not bought: bestowed, not acquired — the sign and proof of our sonship, and a bond that binds us as with ties of blood to His eternal Fatherhood. Here, too, is Memory — life's great thesaurus, where we bestow all our jewels; that gallery in which are hung the faces of the loved as no limner could depict them; that chamber swathed thick with tapestry, on which the days, like flying fingers, have wrought grave and bright forms, and retained the otherwise transient joys. Who would give up his memory? who surrender this shield against forgetfulness? No one. And yet memory is one of God's gifts to you. Here, too, is Imagination, the divinest faculty of them all, winged like an eagle, tuneful as a lark. Of all faculties, of all powers given of God, I count this the greatest, the most subtle, the most ethereal, and the most Divine. Are you not rich in gifts? Are you not blessed? What more could He have done for you than He has done? Has He not given as a father who as a God should give — generously, munificently? What, now, let me ask, have you done for Him? Where are your days of labour? where the long account of service? How and when have you cancelled the bond and obligation you are under? When your Father called, have you answered? when He directed, have you gone? when He commanded, have you obeyed? To what use have you put these faculties? Or again: to what use do you put your memories? Its lessons are many. Do you allow them to teach you wisdom? Do you not know that the highest of all attainments is to so live that recollection shall not be painful? Half of heaven will consist of remembrance: the endless song will derive half its pathos and power from retrospection. The day hasteth on, yea, is even nigh unto us, when we must own all these children of the mind, be they white or black; when they will swarm about us, and say to Him who shall then be sitting in judgment, "This is our father and our mother!" And, lastly, imagination — what have you been doing with that? What are you doing with it day by day? Do you fill its hand with tare-seeds, and send it forth over all the field of your future life, compelling its unwilling palms to sow for a dire harvest? or have you even debauched it until its former Divine repugnance to such service is lost, and it delights itself in wickedness? Christ alone can forgive your abuse of reason; He alone can take remorse from recollection, even by washing out the record of the transgression which feeds it; He alone can restore your imagination to its original purity, and make it as familiar with spiritual sights and uses as you have made it with sensual. And so you see that the bestowments of grace are even greater than the bestowments of nature; and that, in this offer to rectify the misadjustment of your faculties, God does more for you than He did even in their endowment. The mercy which forgives and reforms is greater than the goodness that created. (W. H. Murray, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. |
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