Flesh
There is nothing noble in the flesh left to itself.
It is petty, insignificant, narrow and cloudy.
Only in the things of the Spirit is there that which is noble,
sublime, far-reaching, broad, intelligent, interesting and everlasting-
Brother Robert Roberts
~
People who take offense
They are generally selfish people;
they are highly sensitive,
but it is always about themselves.
They are not sensitive about other people.
They are hurt that they have not been visited;
they are never hurt that they have neglected to visit others.
They are hurt that you did not speak to them after meeting;
they are not hurt that they did not approach you with friendly greeting.
Such oversensitive feelings are of the flesh,
and are among the weights to be laid aside as hindrances to the growth of
Spiritual fruits- love, joy, peace, long suffering, etc.
The remedy will be found in the cultivation of that lowliness of mind
which esteemeth others better than themselves -
not looking to their own things,
but to the things of others;
and the practice of that charity which thinketh no evil,
but rejoiceth in truth.
-SJ
~
There must be no reasoning upon the
harmlessness of conforming to the world.
Its enticements without,
and sympathizing instincts of the flesh within,
must be instantly suppressed;
for, to hold parley with its lusts is dangerous.
When one is seduced by "the deceitfulness of sin"
"he is drawn away by his own lusts, and enticed.
Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin;
and sin when it is finished, brings forth death" ;
in other words, he plucks forbidden fruit, and dies,
if not forgiven.
Brother John Thomas
~
We want men and women who can think
-and do think;
and who are not afraid of truth which does violence to the thinking of the flesh.
Such an audience we seemed to have.
they seemed to listen as though they were thinking upon what they had heard;
and such are the only people that will ultimately be led captive
by the gospel of the Kingdom.
Brother John Thomas
1854
~
Men have always eyes and mouth in the same place:
why should dress and talk be constantly changing?
There will be a change in this changeability
with the change that will establish the unchangeable.
Brother Robert Roberts
Diary of a Voyage
~
Men dare not,
as bad as they are,
appear to be enemies to virtue;
when, therefore,
they persecute virtue,
they pretend to think it counterfeit -
or else lay some crime to its charge.
Herald of the Kingdom Age
~
The world's thinking is the
"thinking of the flesh",
unenlightened by the teaching of God in the Scriptures.
When the popular mind, expressed through its leading spirits,
undertakes the delineation of the future,
its vaticinations are sure to be false,
because the people's thoughts are not God's thoughts,
nor their ways His ways-
Brother John Thomas
~
“Do you think it would be wrong for me to learn the noble art of self-defense?” said a religiously-inclined youth to his mentor. “Certainly not,” answered the other. “I learned it in youth myself, and I have found it of great value during my life. “Indeed, sir? Did you learn the old English system, or Sullivan's system?” “Neither. I learned Solomon's system.” “Solomon's system?” “Yes. You will find it laid down in the first verse of the fifteenth chapter of Proverbs-`A soft answer turneth away wrath.' It is the best system of self-defense of which I have any knowledge.” (There is a better, Mr. Mentor: but it belongs to the same school. “The Lord be thy defense.” If God be a man's friend, he is safe, whatever happens.
The best self-defense is to commit your way to God in well doing.)
Brother Robert Roberts
1888
~
It is impossible for us to
“bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”
if we teach them to do things that are in opposition to the Lord's commandments.
Therefore, Christ having forbidden us to resist evil or take the sword,
no one having to bring up his children in the way described
would train them to “fight and defend themselves.”
Brother Robert Roberts
The Christadelphian 1875
~
The man [or woman] who tries to preserve his own importance by talking of himself,
or who finds pleasure in that puny exercise,
has not yet learnt how great is God who contains the universe and lives for ever,
and how small is man who is but of yesterday, a shadow on the plain,
a little surf on the ocean,
a flower in the desert, grass in the field,
a vapor that appeareth for a very little while, and then vanisheth away.
The Christadelphian
~
“Many a conversion is ascribed to the Spirit of God
which ought to be credited to the speaker,
and the proof is, the convert feels more than he understands .
One of our infallible tests of human and Bible conversion is found in this secret:
the former feel much and know little ,
while the latter feel only in the ratio of their knowledge .”
The Christadelphian
1888
~
A man once said:
"There is one thing I can do: I can humble myself as a little child.”
It is certain that God hates the proud.
It is so revealed many times, and it seems almost natural it should be so,
for if a proud man is an offence to fellow-mortals,
how particularly odious must his self-consequence be to Him
upon whom he is dependent for the breath he draws,
and who sees him through and through in all his native corruption.
Brother Robert Roberts
1998
~
There is no more prominent characteristic
of the worldly mind than this puff-upedness on various grounds.
The pride of intellect stands foremost perhaps
-the pride of knowledge
-the self-consequence of knowing more than men in common.
It is a poor, beggarly, contemptible, irrational sentiment,
which lowers its possessor in the ratio of its height.
Nothing more thoroughly reduces a man's consequence in creation
than self-assessment.
It is not what a man thinks of himself,
but what he is to others-what he is to God-that determine his measure;
and this measure it is not he that can estimate or proclaim.
Yea, no one's reckoning of it is so low as his.
Brother Robert Roberts
The Christadelphian 1883
~
The world worships success,
which is the passport to its favor and admiration.
Not so with him, whose servants we claim to be.
He commends and rewards the merits of his brethren,
although they may not have been attended with success.
He does not forget his own failure when he “labored in vain and spent his strength for naught, and in vain” in the work of “bringing Jacob again to Jehovah.”
We prove and brighten our own faith
in laboring under difficulties and discouragements
to develop faith and good conduct in our contemporaries.
Let us then, be of good courage, and, nothing daunted,
though the clerical and editorial “spirituals of the wickedness in high places”
be as thick or multitudinous as the tiles upon the houses of Birmingham,
or the shingles upon those of New York.
Brother John Thomas
~
To speculate
upon the lawfulness of compliance is partly to give consent.
There must be no reasoning upon the harmlessness of conforming to the world.
Brother John Thomas
Elpis Israel
~
We ought not to let the victory be on the side of evil.
Let it at least be a drawn battle.
Let us not give in to the flesh;
do not be overcome, whether in yourself or the conduct of others, by its influence.
Always pursue a tranquil and unfaltering course of duty and kindness,
with Christ in full blazing view.
Brother Robert Roberts
The Christadelphian '69 p 329
~
A man is not to be trusted in the long run
who fears not God.
He may be kept on the track for a while at the beginning,
by the secondary influences that affect all men more or less;
but as these, one by one,
get worn away by the friction of time,
if the fear of God be not the kernel of his mental composition,
he will act the part of the natural man,
and do those things only that are agreeable to himself,
without reference to what Christ has required at his hands.
Brother Robert Roberts
The Christadelphian 1882 p. 211
~
The sapling green and tender,
yields readily to the wind and sun,
and the hand of the trainer;
the grown tree resists the storm,
and 'tis well with it if be not torn up by the roots;
the aged trunk, dried to the core,
spreads out its branches and perishes.
This is human life.
The Herald of the Kingdom Age
1851
~
Let us mistrust the doleful feelings of the flesh.
Let us not measure God or the hope of the future
by our own thoughts and experience. The flesh is weak.
Our very fears are largely due to this.
Let us not be unduly distressed by them.
They are known on high, and the cause of them.
"He knoweth our frame: He remembereth we are dust."
The fact of this pity was exemplified by the Lord in Gethsemane,
when finding the disciples all asleep at the supreme hour of his mortal service,
he said, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
This same Lord is our High Priest-
who is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God by him.
We may therefore take comfort.
We do not rely for comfort on the state of our feelings,
which may be depressed enough from physical causes.
God is not displeased with our weakness;
He is displeased at a lacking faith and a faltering disobedience.
Brother Robert Roberts
~
The world's thinking is the "Thinking of the flesh," unenlightened by the teaching of God in the Scriptures. When the popular mind, expressed through its leading spirits, undertakes the delineation of the future, its vaticinations are sure to be false, because the people's thoughts are not God's thoughts, nor their ways.
Brother John Thomas
~
Books and men of all sorts glorify human nature, and paint human life in bright colors.
Men take more naturally to words of men than to the words of God.
Consequently, they all indulge the most pleasing views and ideals,
and go forth hopefully to find good.
But one after the other, they all come to experience the truth of the Word of God,
that human life now is, "all is vanity and vexation of spirit."
The pleasing views dissolve as life advances
and the grim nature of current facts is slowly realized,
though never finally discerned or clearly understood
by those who receive not the teaching of the Bible wisdom.
Illusion more or less prevails to the last,
for if a man finds not good in his own case,
he at least imagines that his neighbor has found it-
his neighbor all the while thinking perhaps the same of him!
Brother Robert Roberts
~
The natural mind
is inveterately prone to its own notions, views, and feelings
which are all as far below Divine ideas as the earth is below the sun;
it is only by daily contact with Divine ideas
that human ideas are displaced,
and the mind so tinctured with the Divine thought
as to become spiritual minded.
This is true of the mere "knowledge of his will,"
but how much more so of the richness of mental harmony with God expressed in the further words,
"in all wisdom and spiritual understanding."
This ripeness cannot be attained if we give our studies of the Scriptures a slack handed place,
immerse our faculties in the animal excitements connected with the various forms of pleasure in the world,
or light reading which is so prevalent and so blighting.
Unless we set our faces resolutely against
"the lust of the eye, and the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life,"
so rampant in the world universally,
it is impossible we can ever attain to
"knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding."
Brother Robert Roberts
The Christadelphian
1882
~
“Let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
We may be glad that it pleases Him to be worshipped.
This worship is a great privilege.
The pureness of reason and the sweetness of emotion unite in a transporting thrill.
“Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory.”
We are but dust, animate for a few years by permission.
We have no claim to honor except such as God may confer.
“Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name.” To him it is “due.”
He doeth whatsoever pleaseth Him in heaven and in earth.
There is not an excellence in nature, there is not a faculty among animals,
there is not a power in man, there is not a grace in angels, but what is rooted in Him.
They are all but the flowering of His invisible energy
by the contrivance of His exquisite wisdom
in the effectual working of His unfailing power.
Praise to Him is reasonable and glorious.
Brother Robert Roberts
1887
~
What can be the cause that underlies these outbreaks of the flesh?
Ah, that flesh!
It is the root of the whole disturbance of the peace.
Truly did Paul say that in the flesh dwells no good thing.
Among “the works of the flesh” are “enmities, variance, jealousies, wrath, strife, dissensions, factions, envyings.”
These demonstrations are not prompted
by the fulness of the truth dwelling in all.
This indwelling fulness develops a different cluster of fruit;
such as “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance.”
Where these virtues prevail
as the result of an intelligent and affectionate belief of the truth,
the works of the flesh cannot be manifested.
...May I not, then, conclude from these general principles,
in the absence of particular details,
that the cause which underlies all ecclesiastical troubles, great and small, is the play of the flesh,
unsubdued and uncontrolled by the truth as it is in Jesus ?
If Christ dwelt in all hearts by faith, there would be “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit;
and he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God,
and approved of men”
Brother John Thomas
1869