Luke 11:47-48 Woe to you! for you build the sepulchers of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.… The Jews may have believed and boasted themselves incapable of taking part in the killing a prophet, little suspecting that they needed only the being placed in the same circumstances as their fathers in order to their imitating their crimes. And this is but the illustration of a general truth that, whilst men are not tempted to a sin, they cannot judge whether or act they would commit it if they were. With singular propriety are we instructed to pray, "Lead us not into temptation"; for only temptation may be needed to our perpetrating the worst crimes that disgrace human nature. They say that the earth contains varieties of seed, and that according to concurrent circumstances is there one production at one time and another at another. And this I am sure is the case with the heart, "out of which," according to Christ, "proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." The seeds of all these iniquities are deposited in the heart; and a certain state, so to speak, of the moral atmosphere, or a certain combination of exciting causes, is all that is required to develop them in the practice. It does, therefore, but argue great ignorance of ourselves to suppose that this or that sin is too bad for us to commit. And the persuasion that we could not commit it is but an evidence of the likelihood of our being betrayed into the commission; for it shows a measure of self-confidence, as well as of ignorance, which God may be expected to punish by withdrawing His grace — and if that be withdrawn, where is human virtue? We are bound, as believers in Revelation, to believe that nothing of evil is beyond our power, and nothing of good within it, if we be left to ourselves, and are not acted on by an influence from above. And our only security against becoming perpetrators of crimes at whose very mention we perhaps shudder, lies in such a consciousness of our own depravity as leads to a prayerful, continual dependence on the preventing and restraining grace of God. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.WEB: Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. |
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