The Homilist 1 Corinthians 4:3-5 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yes, I judge not my own self.… Place on a cold polished metal, such as a new razor, a wafer. Breathe on it; and though, when the wafer is removed, no trace of the wafer whatever will be discovered, breathe again, and a spectral image of the wafer will come plainly into view. And as often as you repeat the breathing, the image will appear. More than this, if the polished metal be carefully put aside where nothing can deteriorate its surface, though it remains for many months, breathing on it again will cause a shadowy form to emerge. Indeed, a shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which might be made visible by reverting to proper processes. In photography, peoples, palaces, churches, landscapes, &c., may lay hidden from the eye on the sensitive surface for years, and reappear in all their freshness, reality, and proportion, as soon as the proper developers are applied. It is thus with mental impressions. No impression once made upon the mind is ever lost. Like the wafer image on the polished metal, or the picture on the sensitive plate, it may lay concealed; but a mere breath, or beam, or particle will call it forth in all its reality, and thus on for ever. A man commits a trifling sin; the act falls as a mere wafer on the surface of his soul; but the impression of that wafer is more lasting than the stars. But God has given to the human soul a quality which no polished metal or sensitive plate possesses. No impression made thereon is ever obliterated, though it is multiplied on millions of millions of times. Every impression is vividly and imperishably fixed in all its own distinctiveness, and so it would be well for us to reflect as we look or think or act. (The Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. |
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