| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 19 |
Page 5 |
When we think of it closely we see that the collection to which St. Paul refers was not something incongruous, after the great resurrection lesson, but came most fittingly after what he had been saying. It was a collection for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. One of the first impulses of Christianity is to care for those who are poor and in need. There was something very beautiful, therefore, in this “collection.” It was to be taken by Gentile Christians to be sent to Palestine for the relief of poor Jewish Christians. The feeling between Gentiles and Jews was not naturally friendly, but love of Christ brought the two races together.
The fifteenth chapter, therefore, belongs logically before the sixteenth. They could not have had this collection before they had the wonderful teachings about the death and resurrection of Christ. There must be a spring with its exhaustless fountains away back in the hills before there can be streams of water to pour out with their refreshment. There would never have been a collection among the Gentiles in Corinth and Ephesus for poor Jews in Palestine, if Christ had not died and risen again. Nothing but the gospel can make men of different races love each other. But as we read the great works, “Now hath Christ been raised.”… “O death, where is thy sting?”… “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” I is natural and fitting, no descending from lofty peak to lowly valley, no coming down form the glorious to the commonplace, to read, “Now for the collection.” It is only part of the great outflow of love.
If, after a sacred communion service, in which we have all been lifted up in blessed love for Christ, the minister should tell us of a family of Christians somewhere who were suffering and in sore distress, hungry and famishing, and ask us for a collection for their relief, we should not think he had broken in upon the sacredness of the holy service, and there would be nothing inappropriate or incongruous in his saying, after the bread and the wine had been received, “Now we will take the collection for these poor fellow Christians of ours.” The collection would be almost as much of a sacrament as the taking of the bread and the wine. Religion always kindles love. Every time we really look anew upon Christ as our suffering Redeemer, we love others more, and our sympathies come out in greater tenderness.
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