Christ's Gradual Teaching by His Providence
Canon Liddon. John 16:12-15 I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.… Consider the history of our own country. What lessons has God been teaching it during its fifteen centuries! Lessons of order to the England of the Heptarchy; lessons of patience and hope to the England of the Norman kings; lessons of the value of freedom to the England of the Tudors and the Stuarts; lessons of the need of seriousness in life and conviction to the England of the Georges. And surely in our time He is saying many things, stern and tender, to those who have ears to hear, in the events amidst which day by day we are living now. He is teaching us that morality should never be divorced from politics; that the duties of property rank higher than its undoubted rights; that races which trifle with the laws of purity are on the road to ruin; that "righteousness exalteth a nation" much more truly than any financial, or diplomatic, or military success. And much that God teaches us of to-day would have been unintelligible to our ancestors. As we look out on the surface of our national life, on its hopes and fears, on its unsolved, to us apparently insoluble, problems, on its incessant movement, whether of unrest or aspiration, we hear from behind the clouds the more or less distinct announcement of a future which will be at any rate as unlike our present as our past. "I have many things to say unto thee, but thou canst not bear them now." (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. WEB: "I have yet many things to tell you, but you can't bear them now.