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Daily Readings for a Year, on the Life of Jesus Christ
Daily Readings for a Year on the Life of Jesus Christ Author:Peter Young General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1863 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: HOW strange must it have seemed to the disciples to hear themselves thus spoken of, as the salt of the earth, the light of the world! A very short time before, they were poor, simple fishermen, who had no thought for themselves, but that of gaining a scanty livelihood by their humble calling, and serving God in their generation. Now they are told that their light and influence is to extend throughout the world. But Christ had already bidden them "follow Him," in order that He might make them "fishers of men." He had plainly given them to understand also, that as He Himself was come to work a great change among men, they were intended to be His instruments in effecting that change. They were to be separated, too, from the rest of the world, by the trials which they would have to endure for righteousness' sake, -- trials in which they were to rejoice, because they would be a mark that they specially belonged to Him. Thus our Lord's former sayings must have led the disciples to believe that their future lot would be very different from the quiet and peacefulness of their early life. But now He speaks still more plainly. He makes use of two figures to express how high the dignity and how important the duties of the disciples; and how much depended upon them. First of all He says, that they were to be to the rest of mankind what salt is to human food. Ye are the salt of the earth, He says; ' ye are the purifiers of the world, that which is to keep mankind from corruption, and preserve them for immortality, by infusing into them heavenly truth. Your good examples and self-denying labours will be the means o...« less