Bible Commentaries
Leviticus 22

Verse 32

"Handfuls of Purpose"

"I will be hallowed among the children of Israel." Lev 22:32

Reverence is the very basis of lofty character, and is the guarantee of the purity of society. When our worship falls our conduct will go down along with it. The loftier the prayer, the tenderer will be the common speech of the day. If the children of God do not hallow him, the enemy never will. God, so to say, depends for his position in the world upon the loyalty of his own people. If we are ashamed of God, God will be ashamed of us. "Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." We cannot love our neighbour until we love our God The commandments, which are now but two in number, are really set in philosophical relation to one another. In this sense theology is the great philosophy of life. We cannot revere a redeeming God, and yet be careless about the moral condition of the people. We cannot pray to a throne of mercy, and then seat ourselves upon chairs of judgment. Our intensest solicitude should be expended upon the idea of true worship. To have a small conception of God is to have a small conception of life. To be irreverent in any degree towards Heaven is to be flippant in all our social relations. When a man has come away from long and profound communion with a God of purity and tenderness, it is impossible for him to either sympathise with iniquity, or to be impatient with weakness. As a debtor himself to the mercy of God, he is bound to be a creditor to the infirmities of his fellow-men. When the intellect of the Church supersedes the worship of the Church, Ichabod may be written upon its doors. The tendency of the times may be to magnify preaching above prayer, or genius above meditation: this may be to pay a flattering tribute to the spirit of so-called progress, but it is to lose the very bloom of godliness.