Mark 6:3

Mark 6:3

The Holiness of Common Life.

I. The holiest of men may to all outward eyes appear exactly like other people. For in what does holiness consist but in a due fulfilment of the relative duties of our state in life, and in spiritual fellowship with God. Now the relative duties of life are universal. Every man has his own. That which makes one man to differ from another is not so much what things he does, as his manner of doing them. Two men, the most opposite in character, may dwell side by side, and do the very same daily acts, but in the sight of God be as far apart as light and darkness.

II. True holiness is not made up of extraordinary acts. For the greater part of men, the most favourable description of holiness will be found exactly to coincide with the ordinary path of duty, and it will be most surely promoted by repressing the wanderings of ambition, in which we frame to ourselves states of mind and habits of devotion remote from our actual lot, and by spending all our strength in those things, great or small, pleasing or unpalatable, which belong to our calling and position.

III. Any man, whatever be his outward circumstances of life, may reach to the highest point of devotion. In all ages the saints of the Church have been mingled in all the duties and toils of life, until age or the events of Providence set them free. There was nothing uncommon about most of them but their holiness. Their very lot in life ministered to them occasions of obedience and humiliation. They sought God fervently in the turmoil of homes and armies and camps and courts; and He revealed Himself to them in love, and became the centre about which they moved, and the rest of all their affections. Let us whose lot is cast in these latter times, when the Church has once more become almost hidden in the world, be of the holy fellowship of Him who to the eyes of men was only the carpenter, but in the eyes of God was the very Christ. Let us look well to our daily duties. The least of them is a wholesome discipline of humiliation; if, indeed, anything can be little which may be done for God.

H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 220.

References: Mark 6:3. W. Dorling, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 232; J. Johnston, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 85; Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 164.