Deuteronomy 4:9 Only take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen… In the business of life there are three parties concerned, three parties of whose existence it behoves us to be equally and intensely conscious. These three are God on the one hand and our own individual souls on the other, and the one Mediator, Jesus Christ, who alone can join the two into one. 1. There is all the difference in the world between saying, Bear yourselves in mind, and saying, Bear in mind always the three, God and Christ and yourselves, whom Christ unites to God. For then there is no risk of selfishness, nor of idolatry, whether of ourselves or of anything else; we do but desire to keep alive and vigorous, not any false or evil life in us, but our true and most precious life, the life of God in and through His Son. But what we see happen very often is just the opposite to this. The life in ourselves, of which we are keenly conscious, never for an instant forgetting it, is but the life of our appetites and passions, and this life is quite distinct from God and from Christ. But while this life is very vigorous, our better life slumbers; we have our own desires, and they are evil, but we take our neighbour's knowledge and faith and call them our own, and we live and believe according to our neighbour's notions; so our nobler life shrinks up to nothing, and our sense of truth perishes from want of exercise. 2. In combining a keen sense of our own soul's life with the sense of God and of Christ there is no room for pride or presumption, but the very contrary. We hold our knowledge and our faith but as God's gifts, and are sure of them only so far as His power and wisdom and goodness are our warrant. Our knowledge, in fact, is but faith; we have no grounds for knowing as of ourselves, but great grounds for believing that God's appointed evidence is true, and that in believing it we are trusting Him. (T. Arnold, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; |
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