Personal Ministry

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Title: Kept for the Master’s Use

Creator(s): Havergal, Frances Ridley

Print Basis: Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1895

Rights: Public domain.

LC Call no: BV467

LC Subjects:

Practical theology

Worship (Public and Private) Including the church year, Christian

symbols, liturgy, prayer, hymnology

Hymnology

Hymns in languages other than English

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Kept for the Master’s Use–Havergal

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Kept for

the Master’s

Use

By

Frances Ridley

Havergal

Philadelphia

Henry Altemus Company

Copyrighted 1895, by Henry Altemus.

HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER,

PHILADELPHIA.

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CONTENTS.

[1]I. Our Lives kept for Jesus, 9

[2]II. Our Moments kept for Jesus, 26

[3]III. Our Hands kept for Jesus, 34

[4]IV. Our Feet kept for Jesus, 46

[5]V. Our Voices kept for Jesus, 51

[6]VI. Our Lips kept for Jesus, 66

[7]VII. Our Silver and Gold kept for Jesus, 79

[8]VIII. Our Intellects kept for Jesus, 91

[9]IX. Our Wills kept for Jesus, 96

[10]X. Our Hearts kept for Jesus, 104

[11]XI. Our Love kept for Jesus, 109

[12]XII. Our Selves kept for Jesus, 115

[13]XIII. Christ for us, 122

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PREFATORY NOTE.

My beloved sister Frances finished revising the proofs of this book

shortly before her death on Whit Tuesday, June 3, 1879, but its

publication was to be deferred till the Autumn.

In appreciation of the deep and general sympathy flowing in to her

relatives, they wish that its publication should not be withheld.

Knowing her intense desire that Christ should be magnified, whether by

her life or in her death, may it be to His glory that in these pages

she, being dead,

Yet speaketh!’

MARIA V. G. HAVERGAL.

Oakhampton, Worchestershire.

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KEPT

FOR

The Master’s Use.

Take my life, and let it be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days;

Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move

At the impulse of Thy love.

Take my feet, and let them be

Swift and beautiful’ for Thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing

Always, only, for my King.

Take my lips and let them be

Filled with messages from Thee.

Take my silver and my gold;

Not a mite would I withhold.

Take my intellect, and use

Every power as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it Thine;

It shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart; it is Thine own;

It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love; my Lord, I pour

At Thy feet its treasure-store.

Take myself, and I will be

Ever, only, ALL for Thee.

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CHAPTER I.

Our Lives kept for Jesus.

Keep my life, that it may be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.’

Many a heart has echoed the little song:

Take my life, and let it be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee!’

And yet those echoes have not been, in every case and at all times, so

clear, and full, and firm, so continuously glad as we would wish, and

perhaps expected. Some of us have said:

I launch me forth upon a sea

Of boundless love and tenderness;’

and after a little we have found, or fancied, that there is a hidden

leak in our barque, and though we are doubtless still afloat, yet we

are not sailing with the same free, exultant confidence as at first.

What is it that has dulled and weakened the echo of our consecration

song? what is the little leak that hinders the swift and buoyant course

of our consecrated life? Holy Father, let Thy loving spirit guide the

hand that writes, and strengthen the heart of every one who reads what

shall be written, for Jesus’ sake.

While many a sorrowfully varied answer to these questions may, and

probably will, arise from touched and sensitive consciences, each being

shown by God’s faithful Spirit the special sin, the special yielding to

temptation which has hindered and spoiled the blessed life which they

sought to enter and enjoy, it seems to me that one or other of two

things has lain at the outset of the failure and disappointment.

First, it may have arisen from want of the simplest belief in the

simplest fact, as well as want of trust in one of the simplest and

plainest words our gracious Master ever uttered! The unbelieved fact

being simply that He hears us; the untrusted word being one of those

plain, broad foundation-stones on which we rested our whole weight, it

may be many years ago, and which we had no idea we ever doubted, or

were in any danger of doubting now,–Him that cometh to Me I will in no

wise cast out.’

Take my life!’ We have said it or sung it before the Lord, it may be

many times; but if it were only once whispered in His ear with full

purpose of heart, should we not believe that He heard it? And if we

know that He heard it, should we not believe that He has answered it,

and fulfilled this, our heart’s desire? For with Him hearing means

heeding. Then why should we doubt that He did verily take our lives

when we offered them–our bodies when we presented them? Have we not

been wronging His faithfulness all this time by practically, even if

unconsciously, doubting whether the prayer ever really reached Him? And

if so, is it any wonder that we have not realized all the power and joy

of full consecration? By some means or other He has to teach us to

trust implicitly at every step of the way. And so, if we did not really

trust in this matter, He has had to let us find out our want of trust

by withholding the sensible part of the blessing, and thus stirring us

up to find out why it is withheld.

An offered gift must be either accepted or refused. Can He have refused

it when He has said, Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out’?

If not, then it must have been accepted. It is just the same process as

when we came to Him first of all, with the intolerable burden of our

sins. There was no help for it but to come with them to Him, and take

His word for it that He would not and did not cast us out. And so

coming, so believing, we found rest to our souls; we found that His

word was true, and that His taking away our sins was a reality.

Some give their lives to Him then and there, and go forth to live

thenceforth not at all unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them.

This is as it should be, for conversion and consecration ought to be

simultaneous. But practically it is not very often so, except with

those in whom the bringing out of darkness into marvellous light has

been sudden and dazzling, and full of deepest contrasts. More

frequently the work resembles the case of the Hebrew servant described

in Exodus xxi., who, after six years’ experience of a good master’s

service, dedicates himself voluntarily, unreservedly, and irrevocably

to it, saying, I love my master; I will not go out free;’ the master

then accepting and sealing him to a life-long service, free in law, yet

bound in love. This seems to be a figure of later consecration founded

on experience and love.

And yet, as at our first coming, it is less than nothing, worse than

nothing that we have to bring; for our lives, even our redeemed and

pardoned lives, are not only weak and worthless, but defiled and

sinful. But thanks be to God for the Altar that sanctifieth the gift,

even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself! By Him we draw nigh unto God; to

Him, as one with the Father, we offer our living sacrifice; in Him, as

the Beloved of the Father, we know it is accepted. So, dear friends,

when once He has wrought in us the desire to be altogether His own, and

put into our hearts the prayer, Take my life,’ let us go on our way

rejoicing, believing that He has taken our lives, our hands, our feet,

our voices, our intellects, our wills, our whole selves, to be ever,

only, all for Him. Let us consider that a blessedly settled thing; not

because of anything we have felt, or said, or done, but because we know

that He heareth us, and because we know that He is true to His word.

But suppose our hearts do not condemn us in this matter, our

disappointment may arise from another cause. It may be that we have not

received, because we have not asked a fuller and further blessing.

Suppose that we did believe, thankfully and surely, that the Lord heard

our prayer, and that He did indeed answer and accept us, and set us

apart for Himself; and yet we find that our consecration was not merely

miserably incomplete, but that we have drifted back again almost to

where we were before. Or suppose things are not quite so bad as that,

still we have not quite all we expected; and even if we think we can

truly say, O God, my heart is fixed,’ we find that, to our daily

sorrow, somehow or other the details of our conduct do not seem to be

fixed, something or other is perpetually slipping through, till we get

perplexed and distressed. Then we are tempted to wonder whether after

all there was not some mistake about it, and the Lord did not really

take us at our word, although we took Him at His word. And then the

struggle with one doubt, and entanglement, and temptation only seems to

land us in another. What is to be done then?

First, I think, very humbly and utterly honestly to search and try our

ways before our God, or rather, as we shall soon realize our

helplessness to make such a search, ask Him to do it for us, praying

for His promised Spirit to show us unmistakably if there is any secret

thing with us that is hindering both the inflow and outflow of His

grace to us and through us. Do not let us shrink from some unexpected

flash into a dark corner; do not let us wince at the sudden touching of

a hidden plague-spot. The Lord always does His own work thoroughly if

we will only let Him do it; if we put our case into His hands, He will

search and probe fully and firmly, though very tenderly. Very

painfully, it may be, but only that He may do the very thing we

want,–cleanse us and heal us thoroughly, so that we may set off to

walk in real newness of life. But if we do not put it unreservedly into

His hands, it will be no use thinking or talking about our lives being

consecrated to Him. The heart that is not entrusted to Him for

searching, will not be undertaken by Him for cleansing; the life that

fears to come to the light lest any deed should be reproved, can never

know the blessedness and the privileges of walking in the light.

But what then? When He has graciously again put a new song in our

mouth, and we are singing,

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

Who like me His praise should sing?’

and again with fresh earnestness we are saying,

Take my life, and let it be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee!’

are we only to look forward to the same disappointing experience over

again? are we always to stand at the threshold? Consecration is not so

much a step as a course; not so much an act, as a position to which a

course of action inseparably belongs. In so far as it is a course and a

position, there must naturally be a definite entrance upon it, and a

time, it may be a moment, when that entrance is made. That is when we

say, Take’; but we do not want to go on taking a first step over and

over again. What we want now is to be maintained in that position, and

to fulfil that course. So let us go on to another prayer. Having

already said, Take my life, for I cannot give it to Thee,’ let us now

say, with deepened conviction, that without Christ we really can do

nothing,–Keep my life, for I cannot keep it for Thee.’

Let us ask this with the same simple trust to which, in so many other

things, He has so liberally and graciously responded. For this is the

confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to

His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we

ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. There

can be no doubt that this petition is according to His will, because it

is based upon many a promise. May I give it to you just as it floats

through my own mind again and again, knowing whom I have believed, and

being persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed

unto Him?

Keep my life, that it may be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Keep my moments and my days;

Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Keep my hands, that they may move

At the impulse of Thy love.

Keep my feet, that they may be

Swift and beautiful’ for Thee.

Keep my voice, that I may sing

Always, only, for my King.

Keep my lips, that they may be

Filled with messages from Thee.

Keep my silver and my gold;

Not a mite would I withhold.

Keep my intellect, and use

Every power as Thou shalt choose.

Keep my will, oh, keep it Thine!

For it is no longer mine.

Keep my heart; it is Thine own;

It is now Thy royal throne.

Keep my love; my Lord, I pour

At Thy feet its treasure-store.

Keep myself, that I may be

Ever, only, ALL for Thee.

Yes! He who is able and willing to take unto Himself, is no less able

and willing to keep for Himself. Our willing offering has been made by

His enabling grace, and this our King has seen with joy.’ And now we

pray, Keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the

heart of Thy people’ (1 Chron. xxix. 17, 18).

This blessed taking,’ once for all, which we may quietly believe as an

accomplished fact, followed by the continual keeping,’ for which He

will be continually inquired of by us, seems analogous to the great

washing by which we have part in Christ, and the repeated washing of

the feet for which we need to be continually coming to Him. For with

the deepest and sweetest consciousness that He has indeed taken our

lives to be His very own, the need of His active and actual keeping of

them in every detail and at every moment is most fully realized. But

then we have the promise of our faithful God, I the Lord do keep it, I

will keep it night and day.’ The only question is, will we trust this

promise, or will we not? If we do, we shall find it come true. If not,

of course it will not be realized. For unclaimed promises are like

uncashed cheques; they will keep us from bankruptcy, but not from want.

But if not, why not? What right have we to pick out one of His faithful

sayings, and say we don’t expect Him to fulfil that? What defence can

we bring, what excuse can we invent, for so doing?

If you appeal to experience against His faithfulness to His word, I

will appeal to experience too, and ask you, did you ever really trust

Jesus to fulfil any word of His to you, and find your trust deceived?

As to the past experience of the details of your life not being kept

for Jesus, look a little more closely at it, and you will find that

though you may have asked, you did not trust. Whatever you did really

trust Him to keep, He has kept, and the unkept things were never really

entrusted. Scrutinize this past experience as you will, and it will

only bear witness against your unfaithfulness, never against His

absolute faithfulness.

Yet this witness must not be unheeded. We must not forget the things

that are behind till they are confessed and forgiven. Let us now bring

all this unsatisfactory past experience, and, most of all, the want of

trust which has been the poison-spring of its course, to the precious

blood of Christ, which cleanseth us, even us, from all sin, even this

sin. Perhaps we never saw that we were not trusting Jesus as He

deserves to be trusted; if so, let us wonderingly hate ourselves the

more that we could be so trustless to such a Saviour, and so sinfully

dark and stupid that we did not even see it. And oh, let us wonderingly

love Him the more that He has been so patient and gentle with us,

upbraiding not, though in our slow-hearted foolishness we have been

grieving Him by this subtle unbelief, and then, by His grace, may we

enter upon a new era of experience, our lives kept for Him more fully

than ever before, because we trust Him more simply and unreservedly to

keep them!

Here we must face a question, and perhaps a difficulty. Does it not

almost seem as if we were at this point led to trusting to our trust,

making everything hinge upon it, and thereby only removing a subtle

dependence upon ourselves one step farther back, disguising instead of

renouncing it? If Christ’s keeping depends upon our trusting, and our

continuing to trust depends upon ourselves, we are in no better or

safer position than before, and shall only be landed in a fresh series

of disappointments. The old story, something for the sinner to do,

crops up again here, only with the ground shifted from works’ to trust.

Said a friend to me, I see now! I did trust Jesus to do everything else

for me, but I thought that this trusting was something that I had got

to do.’ And so, of course, what she had got to do’ had been a perpetual

effort and frequent failure. We can no more trust and keep on trusting

than we can do anything else of ourselves. Even in this it must be

Jesus only’; we are not to look to Him only to be the Author and

Finisher of our faith, but we are to look to Him for all the

intermediate fulfilment of the work of faith (2 Thess. i. 11); we must

ask Him to go on fulfilling it in us, committing even this to His

power.

For we both may and must

Commit our very faith to Him,

Entrust to him our trust.

What a long time it takes us to come down to the conviction, and still

more to the realization of the fact that without Him we can do nothing,

but that He must work all our works in us! This is the work of God,

that ye believe in Him whom He has sent. And no less must it be the

work of God that we go on believing, and that we go on trusting. Then,

dear friends, who are longing to trust Him with unbroken and unwavering

trust, cease the effort and drop the burden, and now entrust your trust

to Him! He is just as well able to keep that as any other part of the

complex lives which we want Him to take and keep for Himself. And oh,

do not pass on content with the thought, Yes, that is a good idea;

perhaps I should find that a great help!’ But, Now, then, do it.’ It is

no help to the sailor to see a flash of light across a dark sea, if he

does not instantly steer accordingly.

Consecration is not a religiously selfish thing. If it sinks into that,

it ceases to be consecration. We want our lives kept, not that we may

feel happy, and be saved the distress consequent on wandering, and get

the power with God and man, and all the other privileges linked with

it. We shall have all this, because the lower is included in the

higher; but our true aim, if the love of Christ constraineth us, will

be far beyond this. Not for me’ at all but for Jesus’; not for my

safety, but for His glory; not for my comfort, but for His joy; not

that I may find rest, but that He may see the travail of His soul, and

be satisfied! Yes, for Him I want to be kept. Kept for His sake; kept

for His use; kept to be His witness; kept for His joy! Kept for Him,

that in me He may show forth some tiny sparkle of His light and beauty;

kept to do His will and His work in His own way; kept, it may be, to

suffer for His sake; kept for Him, that He may do just what seemeth Him

good with me; kept, so that no other lord shall have any more dominion

over me, but that Jesus shall have all there is to have;–little

enough, indeed, but not divided or diminished by any other claim. Is

not this, O you who love the Lord–is not this worth living for, worth

asking for, worth trusting for?

This is consecration, and I cannot tell you the blessedness of it. It

is not the least use arguing with one who has had but a taste of its

blessedness, and saying to him, How can these things be?’ It is not the

least use starting all sorts of difficulties and theoretical

suppositions about it with such a one, any more than it was when the

Jews argued with the man who said, One thing I know, that whereas I was

blind, now I see.’ The Lord Jesus does take the life that is offered to

Him, and He does keep the life for Himself that is entrusted to Him;

but until the life is offered we cannot know the taking, and until the

life is entrusted we cannot know or understand the keeping. All we can

do is to say, O taste and see!’ and bear witness to the reality of

Jesus Christ, and set to our seal that we have found Him true to His

every word, and that we have proved Him able even to do exceeding

abundantly above all we asked or thought. Why should we hesitate to

bear this testimony? We have done nothing at all; we have, in all our

efforts, only proved to ourselves, and perhaps to others, that we had

no power either to give or keep our lives. Why should we not, then,

glorify His grace by acknowledging that we have found Him so

wonderfully and tenderly gracious and faithful in both taking and

keeping as we never supposed or imagined? I shall never forget the

smile and emphasis with which a poor working man bore this witness to

his Lord. I said to him, Well, H., we have a good Master, have we not?’

Ah,’ said he, a deal better than ever I thought!’ That summed up his

experience, and so it will sum up the experience of every one who will

but yield their lives wholly to the same good Master.

I cannot close this chapter without a word with those, especially my

younger friends, who, although they have named the name of Christ, are

saying, Yes, this is all very well for some people, or for older

people, but I am not ready for it; I can’t say I see my way to this

sort of thing.’ I am going to take the lowest ground for a minute, and

appeal to your past experience.’ Are you satisfied with your experience

of the other sort of thing’? Your pleasant pursuits, your harmless

recreations, your nice occupations, even your improving ones, what

fruit are you having from them? Your social intercourse, your daily

talks and walks, your investments of all the time that remains to you

over and above the absolute duties God may have given you, what fruit

that shall remain have you from all this? Day after day passes on, and

year after year, and what shall the harvest be? What is even the

present return? Are you getting any real and lasting satisfaction out

of it all? Are you not finding that things lose their flavour, and that

you are spending your strength day after day for nought? that you are

no more satisfied than you were a year ago–rather less so, if

anything? Does not a sense of hollowness and weariness come over you as

you go on in the same round, perpetually getting through things only to

begin again? It cannot be otherwise. Over even the freshest and purest

earthly fountains the Hand that never makes a mistake has written, He

that drinketh of this water shall thirst again.’ Look into your own

heart and you will find a copy of that inscription already traced,

Shall thirst again.’ And the characters are being deepened with every

attempt to quench the inevitable thirst and weariness in life, which

can only be satisfied and rested in full consecration to God. For Thou

hast made us for Thyself, and the heart never resteth till it findeth

rest in Thee.’ To-day I tell you of a brighter and happier life, whose

inscription is, Shall never thirst,’–a life that is no dull

round-and-round in a circle of unsatisfactorinesses, but a life that

has found its true and entirely satisfactory centre, and set itself

towards a shining and entirely satisfactory goal, whose brightness is

cast over every step of the way. Will you not seek it?

Do not shrink, and suspect, and hang back from what it may involve,

with selfish and unconfiding and ungenerous half-heartedness. Take the

word of any who have willingly offered themselves unto the Lord, that

the life of consecration is a deal better than they thought!’ Choose

this day whom you will serve with real, thorough-going, whole-hearted

service, and He will receive you; and you will find, as we have found,

that He is such a good Master that you are satisfied with His goodness,

and that you will never want to go out free. Nay, rather take His own

word for it; see what He says: If they obey and serve Him, they shall

spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures.’ You

cannot possibly understand that till you are really in His service! For

He does not give, nor even show, His wages before you enter it. And He

says, My servants shall sing for joy of heart.’ But you cannot try over

that song to see what it is like, you cannot even read one bar of it,

till your nominal or even promised service is exchanged for real and

undivided consecration. But when He can call you My servant,’ then you

will find yourself singing for joy of heart, because He says you shall.

And who, then, is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the

Lord?’

Do not startle at the term, or think, because you do not understand all

it may include, you are therefore not qualified for it. I dare say it

comprehends a great deal more than either you or I understand, but we

can both enter into the spirit of it, and the detail will unfold itself

as long as our probation shall last. Christ demands a hearty

consecration in will, and He will teach us what that involves in act.’

This explains the paradox that full consecration’ may be in one sense

the act of a moment, and in another the work of a lifetime. It must be

complete to be real, and yet if real, it is always incomplete; a point

of rest, and yet a perpetual progression.

Suppose you make over a piece of ground to another person. You give it

up, then and there, entirely to that other; it is no longer in your own

possession; you no longer dig and sow, plant and reap, at your

discretion or for your own profit. His occupation of it is total; no

other has any right to an inch of it; it is his affair thenceforth what

crops to arrange for and how to make the most of it. But his practical

occupation of it may not appear all at once. There may be waste land

which he will take into full cultivation only by degrees, space wasted

for want of draining or by over fencing, and odd corners lost for want

of enclosing; fields yielding smaller returns than they might because

of hedgerows too wide and shady, and trees too many and spreading, and

strips of good soil trampled into uselessness for want of defined

pathways.

Just so is it with our lives. The transaction of, so to speak, making

them over to God is definite and complete. But then begins the

practical development of consecration. And here He leads on softly,

according as the children be able to endure.’ I do not suppose any one

sees anything like all that it involves at the outset. We have not a

notion what an amount of waste of power there has been in our lives; we

never measured out the odd corners and the undrained bits, and it never

occurred to us what good fruit might be grown in our straggling

hedgerows, nor how the shade of our trees has been keeping the sun from

the scanty crops. And so, season by season, we shall be sometimes not a

little startled, yet always very glad, as we find that bit by bit the

Master shows how much more may be made of our ground, how much more He

is able to make of it than we did; and we shall be willing to work

under Him and do exactly what He points out, even if it comes to

cutting down a shady tree, or clearing out a ditch full of pretty weeds

and wild-flowers.

As the seasons pass on, it will seem as if there was always more and

more to be done; the very fact that He is constantly showing us

something more to be done in it, proving that it is really His ground.

Only let Him have the ground, no matter how poor or overgrown the soil

may be, and then He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert

like the garden of the Lord.’ Yes, even our desert’! And then we shall

sing, My beloved has gone down into His garden, to the beds of spices,

to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.’

Made for Thyself, O God!

Made for Thy love, Thy service, Thy delight;

Made to show forth Thy wisdom, grace, and might;

Made for Thy praise, whom veiled archangels laud:

Oh, strange and glorious thought, that we may be

A joy to Thee!

Yet the heart turns away

From this grand destiny of bliss, and deems

‘Twas made for its poor self, for passing dreams,

Chasing illusions melting day by day,

Till for ourselves we read on this world’s best,

This is not rest!’

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CHAPTER II.

Our Moments kept for Jesus.

Keep my moments and my days;

Let them flow in ceaseless praise.’

It may be a little help to writer and reader if we consider some of the

practical details of the life which we desire to have kept for Jesus’

in the order of the little hymn at the beginning of this book, with the

one word take’ changed to keep.’ So we will take a couplet for each

chapter.

The first point that naturally comes up is that which is almost

synonymous with life–our time. And this brings us at once face to face

with one of our past difficulties, and its probable cause.

When we take a wide sweep, we are so apt to be vague. When we are

aiming at generalities we do not hit the practicalities. We forget that

faithfulness to principle is only proved by faithfulness in detail. Has

not this vagueness had something to do with the constant

ineffectiveness of our feeble desire that our time should be devoted to

God?

In things spiritual, the greater does not always include the less, but,

paradoxically, the less more often includes the greater. So in this

case, time is entrusted to us to be traded with for our Lord. But we

cannot grasp it as a whole. We instinctively break it up ere we can

deal with it for any purpose. So when a new year comes round, we commit

it with special earnestness to the Lord. But as we do so, are we not

conscious of a feeling that even a year is too much for us to deal

with? And does not this feeling, that we are dealing with a larger

thing than we can grasp, take away from the sense of reality? Thus we

are brought to a more manageable measure; and as the Sunday mornings or

the Monday mornings come round, we thankfully commit the opening week

to Him, and the sense of help and rest is renewed and strengthened. But

not even the six or seven days are close enough to our hand; even

to-morrow exceeds our tiny grasp, and even to-morrow’s grace is

therefore not given to us. So we find the need of considering our lives

as a matter of day by day, and that any more general committal and

consecration of our time does not meet the case so truly. Here we have

found much comfort and help, and if results have not been entirely

satisfactory, they have, at least, been more so than before we reached

this point of subdivision.

But if we have found help and blessing by going a certain distance in

one direction, is it not probable we shall find more if we go farther

in the same? And so, if we may commit the days to our Lord, why not the

hours, and why not the moments? And may we not expect a fresh and

special blessing in so doing?

We do not realize the importance of moments. Only let us consider those

two sayings of God about them, In a moment shall they die,’ and, We

shall all be changed in a moment,’ and we shall think less lightly of

them. Eternal issues may hang upon any one of them, but it has come and

gone before we can even think about it. Nothing seems less within the

possibility of our own keeping, yet nothing is more inclusive of all

other keeping. Therefore let us ask Him to keep them for us.

Are they not the tiny joints in the harness through which the darts of

temptation pierce us? Only give us time, we think, and we should not be

overcome. Only give us time, and we could pray and resist, and the

devil would flee from us! But he comes all in a moment; and in a

moment–an unguarded, unkept one–we utter the hasty or exaggerated

word, or think the un-Christ-like thought, or feel the un-Christ-like

impatience or resentment.

But even if we have gone so far as to say, Take my moments,’ have we

gone the step farther, and really let Him take them–really entrusted

them to Him? It is no good saying take,’ when we do not let go. How can

another keep that which we are keeping hold of? So let us, with full

trust in His power, first commit these slippery moments to Him,–put

them right into His hand,–and then we may trustfully and happily say,

Lord, keep them for me! Keep every one of the quick series as it

arises. I cannot keep them for Thee; do Thou keep them for Thyself!’

But the sanctified and Christ-loving heart cannot be satisfied with

only negative keeping. We do not want only to be kept from displeasing

Him, but to be kept always pleasing Him. Every kept from’ should have

its corresponding and still more blessed kept for.’ We do not want our

moments to be simply kept from Satan’s use, but kept for His use; we

want them to be not only kept from sin, but kept for His praise.

Do you ask, But what use can he make of mere moments?’ I will not stay

to prove or illustrate the obvious truth that, as are the moments so

will be the hours and the days which they build. You understand that

well enough. I will answer your question as it stands.

Look back through the history of the Church in all ages, and mark how

often a great work and mighty influence grew out of a mere moment in

the life of one of God’s servants; a mere moment, but overshadowed and

filled with the fruitful power of the Spirit of God. The moment may

have been spent in uttering five words, but they have fed five

thousand, or even five hundred thousand. Or it may have been lit by the

flash of a thought that has shone into hearts and homes throughout the

land, and kindled torches that have been borne into earth’s darkest

corners. The rapid speaker or the lonely thinker little guessed what

use his Lord was making of that single moment. There was no room in it

for even a thought of that. If that moment had not been, though perhaps

unconsciously, kept for Jesus,’ but had been otherwise occupied, what a

harvest to His praise would have been missed!

The same thing is going on every day. It is generally a moment–either

an opening or a culminating one–that really does the work. It is not

so often a whole sermon as a single short sentence in it that wings

God’s arrow to a heart. It is seldom a whole conversation that is the

means of bringing about the desired result, but some sudden turn of

thought or word, which comes with the electric touch of God’s power.

Sometimes it is less than that; only a look (and what is more

momentary?) has been used by Him for the pulling down of strongholds.

Again, in our own quiet waiting upon God, as moment after moment glides

past in the silence at His feet, the eye resting upon a page of His

Word, or only looking up to Him through the darkness, have we not found

that He can so irradiate one passing moment with His light that its

rays never die away, but shine on and on through days and years? Are

not such moments proved to have been kept for Him? And if some, why not

all?

This view of moments seems to make it clearer that it is impossible to

serve two masters, for it is evident that the service of a moment

cannot be divided. If it is occupied in the service of self, or any

other master, it is not at the Lord’s disposal; He cannot make use of

what is already occupied.

Oh, how much we have missed by not placing them at his disposal! What

might He not have done with the moments freighted with self or loaded

with emptiness, which we have carelessly let drift by! Oh, what might

have been if they had all been kept for Jesus! How He might have filled

them with His light and life, enriching our own lives that have been

impoverished by the waste, and using them in far-spreading blessing and

power!

While we have been undervaluing these fractions of eternity, what has

our gracious God been doing in them? How strangely touching are the

words, What is man, that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him, and

that Thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?’

Terribly solemn and awful would be the thought that He has been trying

us every moment, were it not for the yearning gentleness and love of

the Father revealed in that wonderful expression of wonder, What is

man, that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him?’ Think of that

ceaseless setting of His heart upon us, careless and forgetful children

as we have been! And then think of those other words, none the less

literally true because given under a figure: I, the Lord, do keep it; I

will water it every moment.’

We see something of God’s infinite greatness and wisdom when we try to

fix our dazzled gaze on infinite space. But when we turn to the marvels

of the microscope, we gain a clearer view and more definite grasp of

these attributes by gazing on the perfection of His infinitesimal

handiworks. Just so, while we cannot realize the infinite love which

fills eternity, and the infinite vistas of the great future are dark

with excess of light’ even to the strongest telescopes of faith, we see

that love magnified in the microscope of the moments, brought very

close to us, and revealing its unspeakable perfection of detail to our

wondering sight.

But we do not see this as long as the moments are kept in our own

hands. We are like little children closing our fingers over diamonds.

How can they receive and reflect the rays of light, analyzing them into

all the splendour of their prismatic beauty, while they are kept shut

up tight in the dirty little hands? Give them up; let our Father hold

them for us, and throw His own great light upon them, and then we shall

see them full of fair colours of His manifold loving-kindnesses; and

let Him always keep them for us, and then we shall always see His light

and His love reflected in them.

And then, surely, they shall be filled with praise. Not that we are to

be always singing hymns, and using the expressions of other people’s

praise, any more than the saints in glory are always literally singing

a new song. But praise will be the tone, the colour, the atmosphere in

which they flow; none of them away from it or out of it.

Is it a little too much for them all to flow in ceaseless praise’?

Well, where will you stop? What proportion of your moments do you think

enough for Jesus? How many for the spirit of praise, and how many for

the spirit of heaviness? Be explicit about it, and come to an

understanding. If He is not to have all, then how much? Calculate,

balance, and apportion. You will not be able to do this in heaven–you

know it will be all praise there; but you are free to halve your

service of praise here, or to make the proportion what you will.

Yet,–He made you for His glory.

Yet,–He chose you that you should be to the praise of His glory.

Yet,–He loves you every moment, waters you every moment, watches you

unslumberingly, cares for you unceasingly.

Yet,–He died for you!

Dear friends, one can hardly write it without tears. Shall you or I

remember all this love, and hesitate to give all our moments up to Him?

Let us entrust Him with them, and ask Him to keep them all, every

single one, for His own beloved self, and fill them all with His

praise, and let them all be to His praise!

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter III.

Our Hands Kept for Jesus.

Keep my hands, that they may move

At the impulse of Thy love.’

When the Lord has said to us, Is thine heart right, as My heart is with

thy heart?’ the next word seems to be, If it be, give Me thine hand.’

What a call to confidence, and love, and free, loyal, happy service is

this! and how different will the result of its acceptance be from the

old lamentation: We labour and have no rest; we have given the hand to

the Egyptians and to the Assyrians.’ In the service of these other

lords,’ under whatever shape they have presented themselves, we shall

have known something of the meaning of having both the hands full with

travail and vexation of spirit.’ How many a thing have we taken in

hand,’ as we say, which we expected to find an agreeable task, an

interest in life, a something towards filling up that unconfessed

aching void’ which is often most real when least acknowledged; and

after a while we have found it change under our hands into irksome

travail, involving perpetual vexation of spirit! The thing may have

been of the earth and for the world, and then no wonder it failed to

satisfy even the instinct of work, which comes natural to many of us.

Or it may have been right enough in itself, something for the good of

others so far as we understood their good, and unselfish in all but

unravelled motive, and yet we found it full of tangled vexations,

because the hands that held it were not simply consecrated to God.

Well, if so, let us bring these soiled and tangle-making hands to the

Lord, Let us lift up our heart with our hands’ to Him, asking Him to

clear and cleanse them.

If He says, What is that in thine hand?’ let us examine honestly

whether it is something which He can use for His glory or not. If not,

do not let us hesitate an instant about dropping it. It may be

something we do not like to part with; but the Lord is able to give

thee much more than this, and the first glimpse of the excellency of

the knowledge of Christ Jesus your Lord will enable us to count those

things loss which were gain to us.

But if it is something which He can use, He will make us do ever so

much more with it than before. Moses little thought what the Lord was

going to make him do with that rod in his hand’! The first thing he had

to do with it was to cast it on the ground,’ and see it pass through a

startling change. After this he was commanded to take it up again, hard

and terrifying as it was to do so. But when it became again a rod in

his hand, it was no longer what it was before, the simple rod of a

wandering desert shepherd. Henceforth it was the rod of God in his

hand’ (Ex. iv. 20), wherewith he should do signs, and by which God

Himself would do marvellous things’ (Ps. lxxviii. 12).

If we look at any Old Testament text about consecration, we shall see

that the marginal reading of the word is, fill the hand’ (e. g. Ex.

xxviii. 41; 1 Chron. xxix. 5). Now, if our hands are full of other

things,’ they cannot be filled with the things that are Jesus

Christ’s’; there must be emptying before there can be any true filling.

So if we are sorrowfully seeing that our hands have not been kept for

Jesus, let us humbly begin at the beginning, and ask Him to empty them

thoroughly, that He may fill them completely.

For they must be emptied. Either we come to our Lord willingly about

it, letting Him unclasp their hold, and gladly dropping the glittering

weights they have been carrying, or, in very love, He will have to

force them open, and wrench from the reluctant grasp the earthly

things’ which are so occupying them that He cannot have His rightful

use of them. There is only one other alternative, a terrible one,–to

be let alone till the day comes when not a gentle Master, but the

relentless king of terrors shall empty the trembling hands as our feet

follow him out of the busy world into the dark valley, for it is

certain we can carry nothing out.’

Yet the emptying and the filling are not all that has to be considered.

Before the hands of the priests could be filled with the emblems of

consecration, they had to be laid upon the emblem of atonement (Lev.

viii. 14, etc.). That came first. Aaron and his sons laid their hands

upon the head of the bullock for the sin-offering.’ So the transference

of guilt to our Substitute, typified by that act, must precede the

dedication of ourselves to God.

My faith would lay her hand

On that dear head of Thine,

While like a penitent I stand,

And there confess my sin.’

The blood of that Holy Substitute was shed to make reconciliation upon

the altar.’ Without that reconciliation we cannot offer and present

ourselves to God; but this being made, Christ Himself presents us. And

you, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked

works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through

death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His

sight.

Then Moses brought the ram for the burnt-offering; and Aaron and his

sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram, and Moses burnt the

whole ram upon the altar; it was a burnt-offering for a sweet savour,

and an offering made by fire unto the Lord.’ Thus Christ’s offering was

indeed a whole one, body, soul, and spirit, each and all suffering even

unto death. These atoning sufferings, accepted by God for us, are, by

our own free act, accepted by us as the ground of our acceptance.

Then, reconciled and accepted, we are ready for consecration; for then

he brought the other ram; the ram of consecration; and Aaron and his

sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram.’ Here we see Christ,

who is consecrated for evermore.’ We enter by faith into union with Him

who said, For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be

sanctified through the truth.’

After all this, their hands were filled with consecrations for a sweet

savour,’ so, after laying the hand of our faith upon Christ, suffering

and dying for us, we are to lay that very same hand of faith, and in

the very same way, upon Him as consecrated for us, to be the source and

life and power of our consecration. And then our hands shall be filled

with consecrations,’ filled with Christ, and filled with all that is a

sweet savour to God in Him.

And who then is willing to fill his hand this day unto the Lord?’ Do

you want an added motive? Listen again: Fill your hands to-day to the

Lord, that He may bestow upon you a blessing this day.’ Not a long time

hence, not even to-morrow, but this day.’ Do you not want a blessing?

Is not your answer to your Father’s What wilt thou?’ the same as

Achsah’s, Give me a blessing!’ Here is His promise of just what you so

want; will you not gladly fulfil His condition? A blessing shall

immediately follow. He does not specify what it shall be; He waits to

reveal it. You will find it such a blessing as you had not supposed

could be for you–a blessing that shall verily make you rich, with no

sorrow added–a blessing this day.

All that has been said about consecration applies to our literal

members. Stay a minute, and look at your hand, the hand that holds this

little book as you read it. See how wonderfully it is made; how

perfectly fitted for what it has to do; how ingeniously connected with

the brain, so as to yield that instantaneous and instinctive obedience

without which its beautiful mechanism would be very little good to us!

Your hand, do you say? Whether it is soft and fair with an easy life,

or rough and strong with a working one, or white and weak with illness,

it is the Lord Jesus Christ’s. It is not your own at all; it belongs to

Him. He made it, for without Him was not anything made that was made,

not even your hand. And He has the added right of purchase–He has

bought it that it might be one of His own instruments. We know this

very well, but have we realized it? Have we really let Him have the use

of these hands of ours? and have we ever simply and sincerely asked Him

to keep them for His own use?

Does this mean that we are always to be doing some definitely

religious’ work, as it is called? No, but that all that we do is to be

always definitely done for Him. There is a great difference. If the

hands are indeed moving at the impulse of His love,’ the simplest

little duties and acts are transfigured into holy service to the Lord.

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.’

George Herbert.

A Christian school-girl loves Jesus; she wants to please Him all day

long, and so she practices her scales carefully and conscientiously. It

is at the impulse of His love that her fingers move so steadily through

the otherwise tiresome exercises. Some day her Master will find a use

for her music; but meanwhile it may be just as really done unto Him as

if it were Mr. Sankey at his organ, swaying the hearts of thousands.

The hand of a Christian lad traces his Latin verses, or his figures, or

his copying. He is doing his best, because a banner has been given him

that it may be displayed, not so much by talk as by continuance in

well-doing. And so, for Jesus’ sake, his hand moves accurately and

perseveringly.

A busy wife, or daughter, or servant has a number of little manual

duties to perform. If these are done slowly and leisurely, they may be

got through, but there will not be time left for some little service to

the poor, or some little kindness to a suffering or troubled neighbour,

or for a little quiet time alone with God and His word. And so the

hands move quickly, impelled by the loving desire for service or

communion, kept in busy motion for Jesus’ sake. Or it may be that the

special aim is to give no occasion of reproach to some who are

watching, but so to adorn the doctrine that those may be won by the

life who will not be won by the word. Then the hands will have their

share to do; they will move carefully, neatly, perhaps even elegantly,

making every thing around as nice as possible, letting their

intelligent touch be seen in the details of the home, and even of the

dress, doing or arranging all the little things decently and in order

for Jesus’ sake. And so on with every duty in every position.

It may seem an odd idea, but a simple glance at one’s hand, with the

recollection, This hand is not mine; it has been given to Jesus, and it

must be kept for Jesus,’ may sometimes turn the scale in a doubtful

matter, and be a safeguard from certain temptations. With that thought

fresh in your mind as you look at your hand, can you let it take up

things which, to say the very least, are not for Jesus’? things which

evidently cannot be used, as they most certainly are not used, either

for Him or by Him? Cards, for instance! Can you deliberately hold in it

books of a kind which you know perfectly well, by sadly repeated

experience, lead you farther from instead of nearer to Him? books which

must and do fill your mind with those other things’ which, entering in,

choke the word? books which you would not care to read at all, if your

heart were burning within you at the coming of His feet to bless you?

Next time any temptation of this sort approaches, just look at your

hand!

It was of a literal hand that our Lord Jesus spoke when He said,

Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table;’

and, He that dippeth his hand with Me in the dish, the same shall

betray Me.’ A hand so near to Jesus, with Him on the table, touching

His own hand in the dish at that hour of sweetest, and closest, and

most solemn intercourse, and yet betraying Him! That same hand taking

the thirty pieces of silver! What a tremendous lesson of the need of

keeping for our hands! Oh that every hand that is with Him at His

sacramental table, and that takes the memorial bread, may be kept from

any faithless and loveless motion! And again, it was by literal wicked

hands’ that our Lord Jesus was crucified and slain. Does not the

thought that human hands have been so treacherous and cruel to our

beloved Lord make us wish the more fervently that our hands may be

totally faithful and devoted to Him?

Danger and temptation to let the hands move at other impulses is every

bit as great to those who have nothing else to do but to render direct

service, and who think they are doing nothing else. Take one practical

instance–our letter-writing. Have we not been tempted (and fallen

before the temptation), according to our various dispositions, to let

the hand that holds the pen move at the impulse to write an unkind

thought of another; or to say a clever and sarcastic thing, or a

slightly coloured and exaggerated thing, which will make our point more

telling; or to let out a grumble or a suspicion; or to let the pen run

away with us into flippant and trifling words, unworthy of our high and

holy calling? Have we not drifted away from the golden reminder, Should

he reason with unprofitable talk, and with speeches wherewith he can do

no good?’ Why has this been, perhaps again and again? Is it not for

want of putting our hands into our dear Master’s hand, and asking and

trusting Him to keep them? He could have kept; He would have kept!

Whatever our work or our special temptations may be, the principle

remains the same, only let us apply it for ourselves.

Perhaps one hardly needs to say that the kept hands will be very gentle

hands. Quick, angry motions of the heart will sometimes force

themselves into expression by the hand, though the tongue may be

restrained. The very way in which we close a door or lay down a book

may be a victory or a defeat, a witness to Christ’s keeping or a

witness that we are not truly being kept. How can we expect that God

will use this member as an instrument of righteousness unto Him, if we

yield it thus as an instrument of unrighteousness unto sin? Therefore

let us see to it, that it is at once yielded to Him whose right it is;

and let our sorrow that it should have been even for an instant

desecrated to Satan’s use, lead us to entrust it henceforth to our

Lord, to be kept by the power of God through faith for the Master’s

use.’

For when the gentleness of Christ dwells in us, He can use the merest

touch of a finger. Have we not heard of one gentle touch on a wayward

shoulder being the turning-point of a life? I have known a case in

which the Master made use of less than that–only the quiver of a

little finger being made the means of touching a wayward heart.

What must the touch of the Master’s own hand have been! One imagines it

very gentle, though so full of power. Can He not communicate both the

power and the gentleness? When He touched the hand of Peter’s wife’s

mother, she arose and ministered unto them. Do you not think the hand

which Jesus had just touched must have ministered very excellently? As

we ask Him to touch our lips with living fire,’ so that they may speak

effectively for Him, may we not ask Him to touch our hands, that they

may minister effectively, and excel in all that they find to do for

Him? Then our hands shall be made strong by the hands of the Mighty God

of Jacob.

It is very pleasant to feel that if our hands are indeed our Lord’s, we

may ask Him to guide them, and strengthen them, and teach them. I do

not mean figuratively, but quite literally. In everything they do for

Him (and that should be everything we ever undertake) we want to do it

well–better and better. Seek that ye may excel.’ We are too apt to

think that He has given us certain natural gifts, but has nothing

practically to do with the improvement of them, and leaves us to

ourselves for that. Why not ask him to make these hands of ours more

handy for His service, more skilful in what is indicated as the next

thynge’ they are to do? The kept’ hands need not be clumsy hands. If

the Lord taught David’s hands to war and his fingers to fight, will He

not teach our hands, and fingers too, to do what He would have them do?

The Spirit of God must have taught Bezaleel’s hands as well as his

head, for he was filled with it not only that he might devise cunning

works, but also in cutting of stones and carving of timber. And when

all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, the

hands must have been made skilful as well as the hearts made wise to

prepare the beautiful garments and curtains.

There is a very remarkable instance of the hand of the Lord, which I

suppose signifies in that case the power of His Spirit, being upon the

hand of a man. In 1 Chron. xxviii. 19, we read: All this, said David,

the Lord made me understand in writing by His hand upon me, even all

the works of this pattern.’ This cannot well mean that the Lord gave

David a miraculously written scroll, because, a few verses before, it

says that he had it all by the Spirit. So what else can it mean but

that as David wrote, the hand of the Lord was upon his hand, impelling

him to trace, letter by letter, the right words of description for all

the details of the temple that Solomon should build, with its courts

and chambers, its treasuries and vessels? Have we not sometimes sat

down to write, feeling perplexed and ignorant, and wishing some one

were there to tell us what to say? At such a moment, whether it were a

mere note for post, or a sheet for press, it is a great comfort to

recollect this mighty laying of a Divine hand upon a human one, and ask

for the same help from the same Lord. It is sure to be given!

And now, dear friend, what about your own hands? Are they consecrated

to the Lord who loves you? And if they are, are you trusting Him to

keep them, and enjoying all that is involved in that keeping? Do let

this be settled with your Master before you go on to the next chapter.

After all, this question will hinge on another, Do you love Him? If you

really do, there can surely be neither hesitation about yielding them

to Him, nor about entrusting them to Him to be kept. Does He love you?

That is the truer way of putting it; for it is not our love to Christ,

but the love of Christ to us which constraineth us. And this is the

impulse of the motion and the mode of the keeping. The steam-engine

does not move when the fire is not kindled, nor when it is gone out; no

matter how complete the machinery and abundant the fuel, cold coals

will neither set it going nor keep it working. Let us ask Him so to

shed abroad His love in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given

unto us, that it may be the perpetual and only impulse of every action

of our daily life.

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter IV.

Our Feet kept for Jesus.

Keep my feet, that they may be

Swift and beautiful for Thee.’

The figurative keeping of the feet of His saints, with the promise that

when they run they shall not stumble, is a most beautiful and helpful

subject. But it is quite distinct from the literal keeping for Jesus of

our literal feet.

There is a certain homeliness about the idea which helps to make it

very real. These very feet of ours are purchased for Christ’s service

by the precious drops which fell from His own torn and pierced feet

upon the cross. They are to be His errand-runners. How can we let the

world, the flesh, and the devil have the use of what has been purchased

with such payment?

Shall the world’ have the use of them? Shall they carry us where the

world is paramount, and the Master cannot be even named, because the

mention of His Name would be so obviously out of place? I know the

apparent difficulties of a subject which will at once occur in

connection with this, but they all vanish when our bright banner is

loyally unfurled, with its motto, All for Jesus!’ Do you honestly want

your very feet to be kept for Jesus’? Let these simple words, Kept for

Jesus,’ ring out next time the dancing difficulty or any other

difficulty of the same kind comes up, and I know what the result will

be!

Shall the flesh’ have the use of them? Shall they carry us hither and

thither merely because we like to go, merely because it pleases

ourselves to take this walk or pay this visit? And after all, what a

failure it is! If people only would believe it, self-pleasing is always

a failure in the end. Our good Master gives us a reality and fulness of

pleasure in pleasing Him which we never get out of pleasing ourselves.

Shall the devil’ have the use of them? Oh no, of course not! We start

back at this, as a highly unnecessary question. Yet if Jesus has not,

Satan has. For as all are serving either the Prince of Life or the

prince of this world, and as no man can serve two masters, it follows

that if we are not serving the one, we are serving the other. And Satan

is only too glad to disguise this service under the less startling form

of the world, or the still less startling one of self. All that is not

kept for Jesus,’ is left for self or the world, and therefore for

Satan.

There is no fear but that our Lord will have many uses for what is kept

by Him for Himself. How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad

tidings of good things!’ That is the best use of all; and I expect the

angels think those feet beautiful, even if they are cased in muddy

boots or goloshes.

Once the question was asked, Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing

that thou hast no tidings ready?’ So if we want to have these beautiful

feet, we must have the tidings ready which they are to bear. Let us ask

Him to keep our hearts so freshly full of His good news of salvation,

that our mouths may speak out of their abundance. If the clouds be full

of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth.’ The two olive branches

empty the golden oil out of themselves.’ May we be so filled with the

Spirit that we may thus have much to pour out for others!

Besides the great privilege of carrying water from the wells of

salvation, there are plenty of cups of cold water to be carried in all

directions; not to the poor only,–ministries of love are often as much

needed by a rich friend. But the feet must be kept for these; they will

be too tired for them if they are tired out for self-pleasing. In such

services we are treading in the blessed steps of His most holy life,

who went about doing good.’

Then there is literal errand-going,–just to fetch something that is

needed for the household, or something that a tired relative wants,

whether asked or unasked. Such things should come first instead of

last, because these are clearly indicated as our Lord’s will for us to

do, by the position in which He has placed us; while what seems more

direct service, may be after all not so directly apportioned by Him. I

have to go and buy some soap,’ said one with a little sigh. The sigh

was waste of breath, for her feet were going to do her Lord’s will for

that next half-hour much more truly than if they had carried her to her

well-worked district, and left the soap to take its chance.

A member of the Young Women’s Christian Association wrote a few words

on this subject, which, I think, will be welcome to many more than she

expected them to reach:–

May it not be a comfort to those of us who feel we have not the mental

or spiritual power that others have, to notice that the living

sacrifice mentioned in Rom. xii. 1 is our “bodies- Of course, that

includes the mental power, but does it not also include the loving,

sympathizing glance, the kind, encouraging word, the ready errand for

another, the work of our hands, opportunities for all of which come

oftener in the day than for the mental power we are often tempted to

envy? May we be enabled to offer willingly that which we have. For if

there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man

hath, and not according to that he hath not.’

If our feet are to be kept at His disposal, our eyes must be ever

toward the Lord for guidance. We must look to Him for our orders where

to go. Then He will be sure to give them. The steps of a good man are

ordered by the Lord.’ Very often we find that they have been so very

literally ordered for us that we are quite astonished,–just as if He

had not promised!

Do not smile at a very homely thought! If our feet are not our own,

ought we not to take care of them for Him whose they are? Is it quite

right to be reckless about getting wet feet,’ which might be guarded

against either by forethought or afterthought, when there is, at least,

a risk of hindering our service thereby? Does it please the Master when

even in our zeal for His work we annoy anxious friends by carelessness

in little things of this kind?

May every step of our feet be more and more like those of our beloved

Master. Let us continually consider Him in this, and go where He would

have gone, on the errands which He would have done, following hard’

after Him. And let us look on to the time when our feet shall stand in

the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, when holy feet shall tread the

streets of the holy city; no longer pacing any lonely path, for He hath

said, They shall walk with Me in white.’

Sarah Geraldina Stock.

And He hath said, “How beautiful the feet!”

The “feet” so weary, travel-stained, and worn–

The “feet” that humbly, patiently have borne

The toilsome way, the pressure, and the heat.

The “feet,” not hasting on with wingd might,

Nor strong to trample down the opposing foe;

So lowly, and so human, they must go

By painful steps to scale the mountain height.

Not unto all the tuneful lips are given,

The ready tongue, the words so strong and sweet;

Yet all may turn, with humble, willing “feet,”

And bear to darkened souls the light from heaven.

And fall they while the goal far distant lies,

With scarce a word yet spoken for their Lord–

His sweet approval He doth yet accord;

Their “feet” are beauteous in the Master’s eyes.

With weary human “feet” He, day by day,

Once trod this earth to work His acts of love;

And every step is chronicled above

His servants take to follow in His way.’

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Chapter V.

Our Voices kept for Jesus.

Keep my voice, and let me sing

Always, only, for my King.’

I have wondered a little at being told by an experienced worker, that

in many cases the voice seems the last and hardest thing to yield

entirely to the King; and that many who think and say they have

consecrated all to the Lord and His service, revolt’ when it comes to

be a question of whether they shall sing always, only,’ for their King.

They do not mind singing a few general sacred songs, but they do not

see their way to really singing always and only unto and for Him. They

want to bargain and balance a little. They question and argue about

what proportion they may keep for self-pleasing and company-pleasing,

and how much they must give up’; and who will and who won’t like it;

and what they really must sing,’ and what they really must not sing’ at

certain times and places; and what won’t do,’ and what they can’t very

well help,’ and so on. And so when the question, How much owest thou

unto my Lord?’ is applied to this particularly pleasant gift, it is not

met with the loyal, free-hearted, happy response, All! yes, all for

Jesus!’

I know there are special temptations around this matter. Vain and

selfish ones–whispering how much better a certain song suits your

voice, and how much more likely to be admired. Faithless

ones–suggesting doubts whether you can make the holy song go.’

Specious ones–asking whether you ought not to please your neighbours,

and hushing up the rest of the precept, Let every one of you please his

neighbour for his good to edification’ (Rom. xv. 2). Cowardly

ones–telling you that it is just a little too much to expect of you,

and that you are not called upon to wave your banner in people’s very

faces, and provoke surprise and remark, as this might do. And so the

banner is kept furled, the witness for Jesus is not borne, and you sing

for others and not for your King.

The words had passed your lips, Take my voice!’ And yet you will not

let Him have it; you will not let Him have that which costs you

something, just because it costs you something! And yet He lent you

that pleasant voice that you might use it for Him. And yet He, in the

sureness of His perpetual presence, was beside you all the while, and

heard every note as you sang the songs which were, as your inmost heart

knew, not for Him.

Where is your faith? Where is the consecration you have talked about?

The voice has not been kept for Him, because it has not been truly and

unreservedly given to Him. Will you not now say, Take my voice, for I

had not given it to Thee; keep my voice, for I cannot keep it for

Thee’?

And He will keep it! You cannot tell, till you have tried, how surely

all the temptations flee when it is no longer your battle but the

Lord’s; nor how completely and curiously all the difficulties vanish,

when you simply and trustfully go forward in the path of full

consecration in this matter. You will find that the keeping is most

wonderfully real. Do not expect to lay down rules and provide for every

sort of contingency. If you could, you would miss the sweetness of the

continual guidance in the kept’ course. Have only one rule about

it–just to look up to your Master about every single song you are

asked or feel inclined to sing. If you are willing and obedient,’ you

will always meet His guiding eye. He will always keep the voice that is

wholly at His disposal. Soon you will have such experience of His

immediate guidance that you will be utterly satisfied with it, and only

sorrowfully wonder you did not sooner thus simply lean on it.

I have just received a letter from one who has laid her special gift at

the feet of the Giver, yielding her voice to Him with hearty desire

that it might be kept for His use. She writes: I had two lessons on

singing while in Germany from our Master. One was very sweet. A young

girl wrote to me, that when she had heard me sing, “O come, every one

that thirsteth,” she went away and prayed that she might come, and she

did come, too. Is not He good? The other was: I had been tempted to

join the Gesang Verein in N—-. I prayed to be shown whether I was

right in so doing or not. I did not see my way clear, so I went. The

singing was all secular. The very first night I went I caught a bad

cold on my chest, which prevented me from singing again at all till

Christmas. Those were better than any lessons from a singing master!’

Does not this illustrate both the keeping from and the keeping for? In

the latter case I believe she honestly wished to know her Lord’s

will,–whether the training and practice were needed for His better

service with her music, and that, therefore, she might take them for

His sake; or whether the concomitants and influence would be such as to

hinder the close communion with Him which she had found so precious,

and that, therefore, she was to trust Him to give her much more than

this.’ And so, at once, He showed her unmistakeably what He would have

her not do, and gave her the sweet consciousness that He Himself was

teaching her and taking her at her word. I know what her passionate

love for music is, and how very real and great the compensation from

Him must have been which could thus make her right down glad about what

would otherwise have been an immense disappointment. And then, as to

the former of these two lessons,’ the song she names was one

substituted when she said, Take my voice,’ for some which were far more

effective for her voice. But having freely chosen to sing what might

glorify the Master rather than the singer, see how, almost immediately,

He gave her a reward infinitely outweighing all the drawing-room

compliments or concert-room applause! That one consecrated song found

echoes in heaven, bringing, by its blessed result, joy to the angels

and glory to God. And the memory of that song is immortal; it will live

through ages to come, never lost, never dying away, when the vocal

triumphs of the world’s greatest singers are past and forgotten for

ever. Now you who have been taking a half-and-half course, do you get

such rewards as this? You may well envy them! But why not take the same

decided course, and share the same blessed keeping and its fulness of

hidden reward?

If you only knew, dear hesitating friends, what strength and gladness

the Master gives when we loyally sing forth the honour of His Name,’

you would not forego it! Oh, if you only knew the difficulties it

saves! For when you sing always and only for your King,’ you will not

get much entangled by the King’s enemies, Singing an out-and-out sacred

song often clears one’s path at a stroke as to many other things. If

you only knew the rewards He gives–very often then and there; the

recognition that you are one of the King’s friends by some lonely and

timid one; the openings which you quite naturally gain of speaking a

word for Jesus to hearts which, without the song, would never have

given you the chance of the word! If you only knew the joy of believing

that His sure promise, My Word shall not return unto Me void,’ will be

fulfilled as you sing that word for Him! If you only tasted the solemn

happiness of knowing that you have indeed a royal audience, that the

King Himself is listening as you sing! If you only knew–and why should

you not know? Shall not the time past of your life suffice you for the

miserable, double-hearted, calculating service? Let Him have the whole

use of your voice at any cost, and see if He does not put many a

totally unexpected new song into your mouth!

I am not writing all this to great and finished singers, but to

everybody who can sing at all. Those who think they have only a very

small talent, are often most tempted not to trade with it for their

Lord. Whether you have much or little natural voice, there is reason

for its cultivation and room for its use. Place it at your Lord’s

disposal, and He will show you how to make the most of it for Him; for

not seldom His multiplying power is brought to bear on a consecrated

voice. A puzzled singing master, very famous in his profession, said to

one who tried to sing for Jesus, Well, you have not much voice; but,

mark my words, you will always beat anybody with four times your

voice!’ He was right, though he did not in the least know why.

A great many so-called sacred songs’ are so plaintive and pathetic that

they help to give a gloomy idea of religion. Now don’t sing these; come

out boldly, and sing definitely and unmistakeably for your King, and of

your King, and to your King. You will soon find, and even outsiders

will have to own, that it is a good thing thus to show forth His

loving-kindness and His faithfulness (see Ps. xcii. 1-3).

Here I am usually met by the query, But what would you advise me to

sing?’ I can only say that I never got any practical help from asking

any one but the Master Himself, and so I would advise you to do the

same! He knows exactly what will best suit your voice and enable you to

sing best for Him; for He made it, and gave it just the pitch and tone

He pleased, so, of course, He is the best counsellor about it. Refer

your question in simplest faith to Him, and I am perfectly sure you

will find it answered. He will direct you, and in some way or other the

Lord will provide the right songs for you to sing. That is the very

best advice I can possibly give you on the subject, and you will prove

it to be so if you will act upon it.

Only one thing I would add: I believe there is nothing like singing His

own words. The preacher claims the promise, My word shall not return

unto Me void,’ and why should not the singer equally claim it? Why

should we use His own inspired words, with faith in their power, when

speaking or writing, and content ourselves with human words put into

rhyme (and sometimes very feeble rhyme) for our singing?

What a vista of happy work opens out here! What is there to prevent our

using this mightiest of all agencies committed to human agents, the

Word, which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged

sword, whenever we are asked to sing? By this means, even a young girl

may be privileged to make that Word sound in the ears of many who would

not listen to it otherwise. By this, the incorruptible seed may be sown

in otherwise unreachable ground.

It is a remarkable fact that it is actually the easiest way thus to

take the very highest ground. You will find that singing Bible words

does not excite the prejudice or contempt that any other words,

sufficiently decided to be worth singing, are almost sure to do. For

very decency’s sake, a Bible song will be listened to respectfully; and

for very shame’s sake, no adverse whisper will be ventured against the

words in ordinary English homes. The singer is placed on a

vantage-ground, certain that at least the words of the song will be

outwardly respected, and the possible ground of unfriendly criticism

thus narrowed to begin with.

But there is much more than this. One feels the power of His words for

oneself as one sings. One loves them and rejoices in them, and what can

be greater help to any singer than that? And one knows they are true,

and that they cannot really return void, and what can give greater

confidence than that? God may bless the singing of any words, but He

must bless the singing of His own Word, if that promise means what it

says!

The only real difficulty in the matter is that Scripture songs, as a

rule, require a little more practice than others. Then practise them a

little more! You think nothing of the trouble of learning, for

instance, a sonata, which takes you many a good hour’s practice before

you can render it perfectly and expressively. But you shrink from a

song, the accompaniment of which you cannot read off without any

trouble at all. And you never think of such a thing as taking one-tenth

the pains to learn that accompaniment that you took to learn that

sonata! Very likely, too, you take the additional pains to learn the

sonata off by heart, so that you may play it more effectively. But you

do not take pains to learn your accompaniment by heart, so that you may

throw all your power into the expression of the words, undistracted by

reading the notes and turning over the leaves. It is far more useful to

have half a dozen Scripture songs thoroughly learnt and made your own,

than to have in your portfolios several dozen easy settings of sacred

poetry which you get through with your eyes fixed on the notes. And

every one thus thoroughly mastered makes it easier to master others.

You will say that all this refers only to drawing-room singing. So it

does, primarily, but then it is the drawing-room singing which has been

so little for Jesus and so much for self and society; and so much less

has been said about it, and so much less done. There would not be half

the complaints of the difficulty of witnessing for Christ in even

professedly Christian homes and circles, if every converted singer were

also a consecrated one. For nothing raises or lowers the tone of a

whole evening so much as the character of the music. There are few

things which show more clearly that, as a rule, a very definite step in

advance is needed beyond being a believer or even a worker for Christ.

Over how many grand or cottage pianos could the Irish Society’s motto,

For Jesus’ sake only,’ be hung, without being either a frequent

reproach, or altogether inappropriate?

But what is learnt will, naturally, be sung. And oh! how many Christian

parents give their daughters the advantage of singing lessons without

troubling themselves in the least about what songs are learnt, provided

they are not exceptionally foolish! Still more pressingly I would say,

how many Christian principals, to whom young lives are entrusted at the

most important time of all for training, do not give themselves the

least concern about this matter! As I write, I turn aside to refer to a

list of songs learnt last term by a fresh young voice which would

willingly be trained for higher work. There is just one sacred’ song in

the whole long list, and even that hardly such a one as the writer of

the letter above quoted would care to sing in her fervent-spirited

service of Christ. All the rest are harmless and pleasing, but only

suggestive of the things of earth, the things of the world that is

passing away; not one that might lead upward and onward, not one that

might touch a careless heart to seek first the kingdom of God, not one

that might show forth the glory and praise of our King, not one that

tells out His grace and love, not one that carries His comfort to His

weary ones or His joy to His loving ones. She is left to find and learn

such songs as best she may; those which she will sing with all the ease

and force gained by good teaching of them are no help at all, but

rather hindrance in anything like wish or attempt to sing for Jesus.’

There is not the excuse that the songs of God’s kingdom, songs which

waft His own words to the souls around, would not have answered the

teacher’s purpose as well. God has taken care of that. He has not left

Himself without witness in this direction. He has given the most

perfect melodies and the richest harmonies to be linked with His own

words, and no singer can be trained beyond His wonderful provision in

this way. I pray that even these poor words of mine may reach the

consciences of some of those who have this responsibility, and lead

them to be no longer unfaithful in this important matter, no longer

giving this strangely divided service–training, as they profess to

desire, the souls for God, and yet allowing the voices to be trained

only for the world.

But we must not run away with the idea that singing sacred songs and

singing for Jesus are convertible terms. I know by sorrowful personal

experience that it is very possible to sing a sacred song and not sing

it for Jesus. It is easier to have one’s portfolio all right than one’s

heart, and the repertory is more easily arranged than the motives. When

we have taken our side, and the difficulties of indecision are

consequently swept away, we have a new set of more subtle temptations

to encounter. And although the Master will keep, the servant must watch

and pray; and it is through the watching and the praying that the

keeping will be effectual. We have, however, rather less excuse here

than even elsewhere. For we never have to sing so very suddenly that we

need be taken unawares. We have to think what to sing, and perhaps find

the music, and the prelude has to be played, and all this gives quite

enough time for us to recollect whose we are and whom we serve, and to

arouse to the watch. Quite enough, too, for quick, trustful prayer that

our singing may be kept free from that wretched self-seeking or even

self-consciousness, and kept entirely for Jesus. Our best and happiest

singing will flow when there is a sweet, silent undercurrent of

prayerful or praiseful communion with our Master all through the song.

As for nervousness, I am quite sure this is the best antidote to that.

On the other hand, it is quite possible to sing for Jesus without

singing a sacred song. Do not take an ell for the inch this seems to

give, and run off with the idea that it does not matter after all what

you sing, so that you sing in a good frame of mind! No such thing! And

the admission needs very careful guarding, and must not be wrested into

an excuse for looking back to the world’s songs. But cases may and do

arise in which it may be right to gratify a weary father, or win a

wayward brother, by trying to please them with music to which they will

listen when they would not listen to the songs you would rather sing.

There are cases in which this may be done most truly for the Lord’s

sake, and clearly under His guidance.

Sometimes cases arise in which we can only say, Neither know we what to

do, but our eyes are upon Thee.’ And when we honestly say that, depend

upon it we shall find the promise true, I will guide thee with Mine

eye.’ For God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above

that ye are able, but will, with the temptation, also make a way (Gr.

the way) to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

I do not know why it should be so, but it certainly is a much rarer

thing to find a young gentleman singing for Jesus than a young lady,–a

very rare thing to find one with a cultivated voice consecrating it to

the Master’s use. I have met some who were not ashamed to speak for

Him, to whom it never seemed even to occur to sing for Him. They would

go and teach a Bible class one day, and the next they would be

practising or performing just the same songs as those who care nothing

for Christ and His blood-bought salvation. They had left some things

behind, but they had not left any of their old songs behind. They do

not seem to think that being made new creatures in Christ Jesus had

anything to do with this department of their lives. Nobody could gather

whether they were on the Lord’s side or not, as they stood and sang

their neutral songs. The banner that was displayed in the class-room

was furled in the drawing-room. Now, my friends, you who have or may

have far greater opportunities of displaying that banner than we

womenkind, why should you be less brave and loyal than your sisters? We

are weak and you are strong naturally, but recollect that want of

decision always involves want of power, and compromising Christians are

always weak Christians. You will never be mighty to the pulling down of

strongholds while you have one foot in the enemy’s camp, or on the

supposed neutral ground, if such can exist (which I doubt), between the

camps. You will never be a terror to the devil till you have enlisted

every gift and faculty on the Lord’s side. Here is a thing in which you

may practically carry out the splendid motto, All for Jesus.’ You

cannot be all for Him as long as your voice is not for Him. Which shall

it be? All for Him, or partly for Him? Answer that to Him whom you call

Master and Lord.

When once this drawing-room question is settled, there is not much need

to expatiate about other forms of singing for Jesus. As we have

opportunity we shall be willing to do good with our pleasant gift in

any way or place, and it is wonderful what nice opportunities He makes

for us. Whether to one little sick child or to a thousand listeners,

according to the powers and openings granted, we shall take our happy

position among those who minister with singing (1 Chron. vi. 32). And

in so far as we really do this unto the Lord, I am quite sure He gives

the hundred-fold now in this present time more than all the showy songs

or self-gratifying performances we may have left for His sake. As we

steadily tread this part of the path of consecration, we shall find the

difficulties left behind, and the real pleasantness of the way reached,

and it will be a delight to say to oneself, I cannot sing the old

songs;’ and though you have thought it quite enough to say, With my

song will I please my friends,’ especially if they happen to be pleased

with a mildly sacred song or two, you will strike a higher and happier,

a richer and purer note, and say with David, With my song will I praise

Him.’ David said also, My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto

Thee, and my soul, which Thou hast redeemed.’ And you will find that

this comes true.

Singing for Jesus, our Saviour and King;

Singing for Jesus, the Lord whom we love!

All adoration we joyously bring,

Longing to praise as they praise Him above.

Singing for Jesus, our Master and Friend,

Telling His love and His marvellous grace,–

Love from eternity, love to the end,

Love for the loveless, the sinful, and base.

Singing for Jesus, and trying to win

Many to love Him, and join in the song;

Calling the weary and wandering in,

Rolling the chorus of gladness along.

Singing for Jesus, our Life and our Light;

Singing for Him as we press to the mark;

Singing for Him when the morning is bright;

Singing, still singing, for Him in the dark!

Singing for Jesus, our Shepherd and Guide;

Singing for gladness of heart that He gives;

Singing for wonder and praise that He died;

Singing for blessing and joy that He lives!

Singing for Jesus, oh, singing with joy;

Thus will we praise Him, and tell out His love,

Till He shall call us to brighter employ,

Singing for Jesus for ever above.

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter VI.

Our Lips kept for Jesus.

Keep my lips, that they may be

Filled with messages from Thee.’

The days are past for ever when we said, Our lips are our own.’ Now we

know that they are not our own.

And yet how many of my readers often have the miserable consciousness

that they have spoken unadvisedly with their lips’! How many pray, Keep

the door of my lips,’ when the very last thing they think of expecting

is that they will be kept! They deliberately make up their minds that

hasty words, or foolish words, or exaggerated words, according to their

respective temptations, must and will slip out of that door, and that

it can’t be helped. The extent of the real meaning of their prayer was

merely that not quite so many might slip out. As their faith went no

farther, the answer went no farther, and so the door was not kept.

Do let us look the matter straight in the face. Either we have

committed our lips to our Lord, or we have not. This question must be

settled first. If not, oh, do not let another hour pass! Take them to

Jesus, and ask Him to take them.

But when you have committed them to Him, it comes to this,–is He able

or is He not able to keep that which you have committed to Him? If He

is not able, of course you may as well give up at once, for your own

experience has abundantly proved that you are not able, so there is no

help for you. But if He is able–nay, thank God there is no if’ on this

side!–say, rather, as He is able, where was this inevitable necessity

of perpetual failure? You have been fancying yourself virtually doomed

and fated to it, and therefore you have gone on in it, while all the

time His arm was not shortened that it could not save, but you have

been limiting the Holy One of Israel. Honestly, now, have you trusted

Him to keep your lips this day? Trust necessarily implies expectation

that what we have entrusted will be kept. If you have not expected Him

to keep, you have not trusted. You may have tried, and tried very hard,

but you have not trusted, and therefore you have not been kept, and

your lips have been the snare of your soul (Prov. xviii. 7).

Once I heard a beautiful prayer which I can never forget; it was this:

Lord, take my lips, and speak through them; take my mind, and think

through it; take my heart, and set it on fire.’ And this is the way the

Master keeps the lips of His servants, by so filling their hearts with

His love that the outflow cannot be unloving, by so filling their

thoughts that the utterance cannot be un-Christ-like. There must be

filling before there can be pouring out; and if there is filling, there

must be pouring out, for He hath said, Out of the abundance of the

heart the mouth speaketh.’

But I think we should look for something more direct and definite than

this. We are not all called to be the King’s ambassadors, but all who

have heard the messages of salvation for themselves are called to be

the Lord’s messengers,’ and day by day, as He gives us opportunity, we

are to deliver the Lord’s message unto the people.’ That message, as

committed to Haggai, was, I am with you, saith the Lord.’ Is there not

work enough for any lifetime in unfolding and distributing that one

message to His own people? Then, for those who are still far off, we

have that equally full message from our Lord to give out, which He has

condensed for us into the one word, Come!’

It is a specially sweet part of His dealings with His messengers that

He always gives us the message for ourselves first. It is what He has

first told us in darkness–that is, in the secrecy of our own rooms, or

at least of our own hearts–that He bids us speak in light. And so the

more we sit at His feet and watch to see what He has to say to

ourselves, the more we shall have to tell to others. He does not send

us out with sealed despatches, which we know nothing about, and with

which we have no concern.

There seems a seven-fold sequence in His filling the lips of His

messengers. First, they must be purified. The live coal from off the

altar must be laid upon them, and He must say, Lo, this hath touched

thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged.’

Then He will create the fruit of them, and this seems to be the great

message of peace, Peace to him that is far off, and to him that is

near, saith the Lord; and I will heal him’ (see Isa. lvii. 19). Then

comes the prayer, O Lord, open Thou my lips,’ and its sure fulfilment.

For then come in the promises, Behold, I have put My words in thy

mouth,’ and, They shall withal be fitted in thy lips.’ Then, of course,

the lips of the righteous feed many,’ for the food is the Lord’s own

giving. Everything leads up to praise, and so we come next to My mouth

shall praise Thee with joyful lips, when I remember Thee.’ And lest we

should fancy that when’ rather implies that it is not, or cannot be,

exactly always, we find that the meditation of Jesus throws this added

light upon it, By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise

to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to’

(margin, confessing) His name.’

Does it seem a coming down from the mount to glance at one of our

King’s commandments, which is specially needful and applicable to this

matter of our lips being kept for Him? Watch and pray, that ye enter

not into temptation.’ None of His commands clash with or supersede one

another. Trusting does not supersede watching; it does but complete and

effectuate it. Unwatchful trust is a delusion, and untrustful watching

is in vain. Therefore let us not either wilfully or carelessly enter

into temptation, whether of place, or person, or topic, which has any

tendency to endanger the keeping of our lips for Jesus. Let us pray

that grace may be more and more poured into our lips as it was into

His, so that our speech may be alway with grace. May they be pure, and

sweet, and lovely, even as His lips, like lilies, dropping

sweet-smelling myrrh.’

We can hardly consider the keeping of our lips without recollecting

that upon them, more than all else (though not exclusively of all

else), depends that greatest of our responsibilities, our influence. We

have no choice in the matter; we cannot evade or avoid it; and there is

no more possibility of our limiting it, or even tracing its limits,

than there is of setting a bound to the far-vibrating sound-waves, or

watching their flow through the invisible air. Not one sentence that

passes these lips of ours but must be an invisibly prolonged influence,

not dying away into silence, but living away into the words and deeds

of others. The thought would not be quite so oppressive if we could

know what we have done and shall be continuing to do by what we have

said. But we never can, as a matter of fact. We may trace it a little

way, and get a glimpse of some results for good or evil; but we never

can see any more of it than we can see of a shooting star flashing

through the night with a momentary revelation of one step of its

strange path. Even if the next instant plunges it into apparent

annihilation as it strikes the atmosphere of the earth, we know that it

is not really so, but that its mysterious material and force must be

added to the complicated materials and forces with which it has come in

contact, with a modifying power none the less real because it is beyond

our ken. And this is not comparing a great thing with a small, but a

small thing with a great. For what is material force compared with

moral force? what are gases, and vapours, and elements, compared with

souls and the eternity for which they are preparing?

We all know that there is influence exerted by a person’s mere

presence, without the utterance of a single word. We are conscious of

this every day. People seem to carry an atmosphere with them, which

must be breathed by those whom they approach. Some carry an atmosphere

in which all unkind thoughts shrivel up and cannot grow into

expression. Others carry one in which thoughts of Christ and things

divine’ never seem able to flourish. Have you not felt how a happy

conversation about the things we love best is checked, or even

strangled, by the entrance of one who is not in sympathy? Outsiders

have not a chance of ever really knowing what delightful intercourse we

have one with another about these things, because their very presence

chills and changes it. On the other hand, how another person’s incoming

freshens and develops it and warms us all up, and seems to give us,

without the least conscious effort, a sort of lift!

If even unconscious and involuntary influence is such a power, how much

greater must it be when the recognised power of words is added!

It has often struck me as a matter of observation, that open profession

adds force to this influence, on whichever side it weighs; and also

that it has the effect of making many a word and act, which might in

other hands have been as nearly neutral as anything can be, tell with

by no means neutral tendency on the wrong side. The question of Eliphaz

comes with great force when applied to one who desires or professes to

be consecrated altogether, life and lips: Should he reason with

unprofitable talk, and with speeches wherewith one can do no good?’

There is our standard! Idle words, which might have fallen

comparatively harmlessly from one who had never named the Name of

Christ, may be a stumbling-block to inquirers, a sanction to

thoughtless juniors, and a grief to thoughtful seniors, when they come

from lips which are professing to feed many. Even intelligent talk on

general subjects by such a one may be a chilling disappointment to some

craving heart, which had indulged the hope of getting help, comfort, or

instruction in the things of God by listening to the conversation. It

may be a lost opportunity of giving and gaining no one knows how much!

How well I recollect this disappointment to myself, again and again,

when a mere child! In those early seeking days I never could understand

why, sometimes, a good man whom I heard preach or speak as if he loved

Christ very much, talked about all sorts of other things when he came

back from church or missionary meeting. I did so wish he would have

talked about the Saviour, whom I wanted, but had not found. It would

have been so much more interesting even to the apparently thoughtless

and merry little girl. How could he help it, I wondered, if he cared

for that Pearl of Great Price as I was sure I should care for it if I

could only find it! And oh, why didn’t they ever talk to me about it,

instead of about my lessons or their little girls at home? They did not

know how their conversation was observed and compared with their sermon

or speech, and how a hungry little soul went empty away from the supper

table.

The lips of younger Christians may cause, in their turn, no less

disappointment. One sorrowful lesson I can never forget; and I will

tell the story in hope that it may save others from causes of similar

regret. During a summer visit just after I had left school, a class of

girls about my own age came to me a few times for an hour’s singing. It

was very pleasant indeed, and the girls were delighted with the hymns.

They listened to all I had to say about time and expression, and not

with less attention to the more shyly-ventured remarks about the words.

Sometimes I accompanied them afterwards down the avenue; and whenever I

met any of them I had smiles and plenty of kindly words for each, which

they seemed to appreciate immensely. A few years afterwards I sat by

the bedside of one of these girls–the most gifted of them all with

both heart and head. She had been led by a wonderful way, and through

long and deep suffering, into far clearer light than I enjoyed, and had

witnessed for Christ in more ways than one, and far more brightly than

I had ever done. She told me how sorrowfully and eagerly she was

seeking Jesus at the time of those singing classes. And I never knew

it, because I never asked, and she was too shy to speak first! But she

told me more, and every word was a pang to me,–how she used to linger

in the avenue on those summer evenings, longing that I would speak to

her about the Saviour; how she hoped, week after week, that I would

just stretch out a hand to help her, just say one little word that

might be God’s message of peace to her, instead of the pleasant,

general remarks about the nice hymns and tunes. And I never did! And

she went on for months, I think for years, after, without the light and

gladness which it might have been my privilege to bring to her life.

God chose other means, for the souls that He has given to Christ cannot

be lost because of the unfaithfulness of a human instrument. But she

said, and the words often ring in my ears when I am tempted to let an

opportunity slip, Ah, Miss F., I ought to have been yours!’

Yes, it is true enough that we should show forth His praise not only

with our lips, but in our lives; but with very many Christians the

other side of the prayer wants praying–they want rousing up even to

wish to show it forth not only in their lives but with their lips. I

wonder how many, even of those who read this, really pray, O Lord, open

Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.’

And when opened, oh, how much one does want to have them so kept for

Jesus that He may be free to make the most of them, not letting them

render second-rate and indirect service when they might be doing direct

and first-rate service to His cause and kingdom! It is terrible how

much less is done for Him than might be done, in consequence of the

specious notion that if what we are doing or saying is not bad, we are

doing good in a certain way, and therefore may be quite easy about it.

We should think a man rather foolish if he went on doing work which

earned five shillings a week, when he might just as well do work in the

same establishment and under the same master which would bring him in

five pounds a week. But we should pronounce him shamefully dishonest

and dishonourable if he accepted such handsome wages as the five

pounds, and yet chose to do work worth only five shillings, excusing

himself by saying that it was work all the same, and somebody had

better do it. Do we not act something like this when we take the lower

standard, and spend our strength in just making ourselves agreeable and

pleasant, creating a general good impression in favour of religion,

showing that we can be all things to all men, and that one who is

supposed to be a citizen of the other world can be very well up in all

that concerns this world? This may be good, but is there nothing

better? What does it profit if we do make this favourable impression on

an outsider, if we go no farther and do not use the influence gained to

bring him right inside the fold, inside the only ark of safety? People

are not converted by this sort of work; at any rate, I never met or

heard of any one. He thinks it better for his quiet influence to tell!’

said an affectionately excusing relative of one who had plenty of

special opportunities of soul-winning, if he had only used his lips as

well as his life for his Master. And how many souls have been converted

to God by his “quiet influence” all these years?’ was my reply. And to

that there was no answer! For the silent shining was all very beautiful

in theory, but not one of the many souls placed specially under his

influence had been known to be brought out of darkness into marvellous

light. If they had, they must have been known, for such light can’t

help being seen.

When one has even a glimmer of the tremendous difference between having

Christ and being without Christ; when one gets but one shuddering

glimpse of what eternity is, and of what it must mean, as well as what

it may mean, without Christ; when one gets but a flash of realization

of the tremendous fact that all these neighbours of ours, rich and poor

alike, will have to spend that eternity either with Him or without

Him,–it is hard, very hard indeed, to understand how a man or woman

can believe these things at all, and make no effort for anything beyond

the temporal elevation of those around, sometimes not even beyond their

amusements! People must have entertainment,’ they urge. I do not find

that must in the Bible, but I do find, We must all stand before the

judgment-seat of Christ.’ And if you have any sort of belief in that,

how can you care to use those lips of yours, which might be a fountain

of life to the dying souls before you, merely to entertain’ them at

your penny reading or other entertainment? As you sow, so you reap. The

amusing paper is read, or the lively ballad recited, or the popular

song sung, and you reap your harvest of laughter or applause, and of

complacence at your success in entertaining’ the people. And there it

ends, when you might have sown words from which you and they should

reap fruit unto life eternal. Is this worthy work for one who has been

bought with such a price that he must say,

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all’?

So far from yielding all’ to that rightful demand of amazing love, he

does not even yield the fruit of his lips to it, much less the lips

themselves. I cannot refrain from adding, that even this lower aim of

entertaining’ is by no means so appreciated as is supposed. As a

cottager of no more than average sense and intelligence remarked, It

was all so trifling at the reading; I wish gentlefolks would believe

that poor people like something better than what’s just to make them

laugh.’ After all, nothing really pays like direct, straightforward,

uncompromising words about God and His works and word. Nothing else

ever made a man say, as a poor Irishman did when he heard the Good News

for the first time, Thank ye, sir; you’ve taken the hunger off us

to-day!’

Jephthah uttered all his words before the Lord; what about ours? Well,

they are all uttered before the Lord in one sense, whether we will or

no; for there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, Thou, O Lord, knowest

it altogether! How solemn is this thought, but how sweet does it become

when our words are uttered consciously before the Lord as we walk in

the light of His perpetual presence! Oh that we may so walk, that we

may so speak, with kept feet and kept lips, trustfully praying, Let the

meditation of my heart and the words of my mouth be alway acceptable in

Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer!’

Bearing in mind that it is not only the words which pass their

lightly-hinged portal, but our literal lips which are to be kept for

Jesus, it cannot be out of place, before closing this chapter, to

suggest that they open both ways. What passes in should surely be

considered as well as what passes out. And very many of us are

beginning to see that the command, Whether ye eat or drink, or

whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,’ is not fully obeyed when

we drink, merely because we like it, what is the very greatest obstacle

to that glory in this realm of England. What matter that we prefer

taking it in a more refined form, if the thing itself is daily and

actively and mightily working misery, and crime, and death, and

destruction to thousands, till the cry thereof seems as if it must

pierce the very heavens! And so it does–sooner, a great deal, than it

pierces the walls of our comfortable dining-room! I only say here, you

who have said, Take my lips,’ stop and repeat that prayer next time you

put that to your lips which is binding men and women hand and foot, and

delivering them over, helpless, to Satan! Let those words pass once

more from your heart out through your lips, and I do not think you will

feel comfortable in letting the means of such infernal work pass in

through them.

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter VII.

Our Silver and Gold Kept for Jesus.

Keep my silver and my gold;

Not a mite would I withhold.’

The silver and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ Yes, every

coin we have is literally our Lord’s money.’ Simple belief of this fact

is the stepping-stone to full consecration of what He has given us,

whether much or little.

Then you mean to say we are never to spend anything on ourselves?’ Not

so. Another fact must be considered,–the fact that our Lord has given

us our bodies as a special personal charge, and that we are responsible

for keeping these bodies, according to the means given and the work

required, in working order for Him. This is part of our own work.’ A

master entrusts a workman with a delicate machine, with which his

appointed work is to be done. He also provides him with a sum of money

with which he is to procure all that may be necessary for keeping the

machine in thorough repair. Is it not obvious that it is the man’s

distinct duty to see to this faithfully? Would he not be failing in

duty if he chose to spend it all on something for somebody else’s work,

or on a present for his master, fancying that would please him better,

while the machine is creaking and wearing for want of a little oil, or

working badly for want of a new band or screw? Just so, we are to spend

what is really needful on ourselves, because it is our charge to do so;

but not for ourselves, because we are not our own, but our Master’s. He

who knoweth our frame, knows its needs of rest and medicine, food and

clothing; and the procuring of these for our own entrusted bodies

should be done just as much for Jesus’ as the greater pleasure of

procuring them for some one else. Therefore there need be no quibbling

over the assertion that consecration is not real and complete while we

are looking upon a single shilling as our own to do what we like with.

Also the principle is exactly the same, whether we are spending pence

or pounds; it is our Lord’s money, and must not be spent without

reference to Him.

When we have asked Him to take, and continually trust Him to keep our

money, shopping’ becomes a different thing. We look up to our Lord for

guidance to lay out His money prudently and rightly, and as He would

have us lay it out. The gift or garment is selected consciously under

His eye, and with conscious reference to Him as our own dear Master,

for whose sake we shall give it, or in whose service we shall wear it,

and whose own silver or gold we shall pay for it, and then it is all

right.

But have you found out that it is one of the secrets of the Lord, that

when any of His dear children turn aside a little bit after having once

entered the blessed path of true and conscious consecration, He is sure

to send them some little punishment? He will not let us go back without

a sharp, even if quite secret, reminder. Go and spend ever such a

little without reference to Him after you have once pledged the silver

and gold entirely to Him, and see if you are not in some way rebuked

for it! Very often by being permitted to find that you have made a

mistake in your purchase, or that in some way it does not prosper. If

you observe these things,’ you will find that the more closely we are

walking with our Lord, the more immediate and unmistakeable will be His

gracious rebukes when we swerve in any detail of the full consecration

to which He has called us. And if you have already experienced and

recognised this part of His personal dealing with us, you will know

also how we love and bless Him for it.

There is always a danger that just because we say all,’ we may

practically fall shorter than if we had only said some,’ but said it

very definitely. God recognises this, and provides against it in many

departments. For instance, though our time is to be all’ for Him, yet

He solemnly sets apart the one day in seven which is to be specially

for Him. Those who think they know better than God, and profess that

every day is a Sabbath, little know what floodgates of temptation they

are opening by being so very wise above what is written. God knows

best, and that should be quite enough for every loyal heart. So, as to

money, though we place it all at our Lord’s disposal, and rejoice to

spend it all for Him directly or indirectly, yet I am quite certain it

is a great help and safeguard, and, what is more, a matter of simple

obedience to the spirit of His commands, to set aside a definite and

regular proportion of our income or receipts for His direct service. It

is a great mistake to suppose that the law of giving the tenth to God

is merely Levitical. Search and look’ for yourselves, and you will find

that it is, like the Sabbath, a far older rule, running all through the

Bible, [1] and endorsed, not abrogated, by Christ Himself. For,

speaking of tithes, He said, These ought ye to have done, and not to

leave the other undone.’ To dedicate the tenth of whatever we have is

mere duty; charity begins beyond it; free-will offerings and

thank-offerings beyond that again.

First-fruits, also, should be thus specially set apart. This, too, we

find running all through the Bible. There is a tacit appeal to our

gratitude in the suggestion of them,–the very word implies bounty

received and bounty in prospect. Bringing the first of the first-fruits

into the house of the Lord thy God,’ was like saying grace’ for all the

plenty He was going to bestow on the faithful Israelite. Something of

gladness, too, seems always implied. The day of the first-fruits’ was

to be a day of rejoicing (compare Num. xxviii. 26 with Deut. xvi. 10,

11). There is also an appeal to loyalty: we are commanded to honour the

Lord with the first-fruits of all our increase. And that is the way to

prosper, for the next word is, So shall thy barns be filled with

plenty.’ The friend who first called my attention to this command, said

that the setting apart first-fruits–making a proportion for God’s work

a first charge upon the income–always seemed to bring a blessing on

the rest, and that since this had been systematically done, it actually

seemed to go farther than when not thus lessened.

Presenting our first-fruits should be a peculiarly delightful act, as

they are themselves the emblem of our consecrated relationship to God.

For of His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we should be

a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. How sweet and hallowed and

richly emblematic our little acts of obedience in this matter become,

when we throw this light upon them! And how blessedly they may remind

us of the heavenly company, singing, as it were, a new song before the

throne; for they are the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb.

Perhaps we shall find no better plan of detailed and systematic setting

apart than the New Testament one: Upon the first day of the week let

every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.’ The

very act of literally fulfilling this apostolic command seems to bring

a blessing with it, as all simple obedience does. I wish, dear friends,

you would try it! You will find it a sweet reminder on His own day of

this part of your consecration. You will find it an immense help in

making the most of your little charities. The regular inflow will guide

the outflow, and ensure your always having something for any sudden

call for your Master’s poor or your Master’s cause. Do not say you are

afraid you could not keep to it.’ What has a consecrated life to do

with being afraid’? Some of us could tell of such sweet and singular

lessons of trust in this matter, that they are written in golden

letters of love on our memories. Of course there will be trials of our

faith in this, as well as in everything else. But every trial of our

faith is but a trial of His faithfulness, and is much more precious

than gold which perisheth.’

What about self-denial?’ some reader will say. Consecration does not

supersede this, but transfigures it. Literally, a consecrated life is

and must be a life of denial of self. But all the effort and pain of it

is changed into very delight. We love our Master; we know, surely and

absolutely, that He is listening and watching our every word and way,

and that He has called us to the privilege of walking worthy of the

Lord unto all pleasing.’ And in so far as this is a reality to us, the

identical things which are still self-denial in one sense, become

actual self-delight in another. It may be self-denial to us to turn

away from something within reach of our purse which it would be very

convenient or pleasant to possess. But if the Master lifted the veil,

and revealed Himself standing at our side, and let us hear His audible

voice asking us to reserve the price of it for His treasury, should we

talk about self-denial then? Should we not be utterly ashamed to think

of it? or rather, should we, for one instant, think about self or

self-denial at all? Would it not be an unimaginable joy to do what He

asked us to do with that money? But as long as His own unchangeable

promise stands written in His word for us, Lo, I am with you alway,’ we

may be sure that He is with us, and that His eye is as certainly on our

opened or half-opened purse as it was on the treasury, when He sat over

against it and saw the two mites cast in. So let us do our shopping as

seeing Him who is invisible.’

It is important to remember that there is no much or little in God’s

sight, except as relatively to our means and willingness. For if there

be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath,

and not according to that he hath not.’ He knows what we have not, as

well as what we have. He knows all about the low wages in one sphere,

and the small allowance, or the fixed income with rising prices in

another. And it is not a question of paying to God what can be screwed

out of these, but of giving Him all, and then holding all at His

disposal, and taking His orders about the disposal of all.

But I do not see at all how self-indulgence and needless extravagance

can possibly co-exist with true consecration. If we really never do go

without anything for the Lord’s sake, but, just because He has

graciously given us means, always supply for ourselves not only every

need but every notion,’ I think it is high time we looked into the

matter before God. Why should only those who have limited means have

the privilege of offering to their Lord that which has really cost them

something to offer? Observe, it is not merely going without something

we would naturally like to have or do, but going without it for Jesus’

sake. Not, I will go without it, because, after all, I can’t very well

afford it;’ or, because I really ought to subscribe to so and so;’ or,

because I daresay I shall be glad I have not spent the money:’ but, I

will do without it, because I do want to do a little more for Him who

so loves me–just that much more than I could do if I did this other

thing.’ I fancy this is more often the heart language of those who have

to cut and contrive, than of those who are able to give liberally

without any cutting and contriving at all. The very abundance of God’s

good gifts too often hinders from the privilege and delight of really

doing without something superfluous or comfortable or usual, that they

may give just that much more to their Lord. What a pity!

The following quotation may (I hope it will), touch some conscience:–A

gentleman once told us that his wine bill was 100 a year–more than

enough to keep a Scripture reader always at work in some populous

district. And it is one of the countless advantages of total abstinence

that it at once sets free a certain amount of money for such work.

Smoking, too, is a habit not only injurious to the health in a vast

majority of cases, and, to our mind, very unbecoming in a “temple of

the Holy Ghost,” but also one which squanders money which might be used

for the Lord. Expenses in dress might in most people be curtailed;

expensive tastes should be denied; and simplicity in all habits of life

should be a mark of the followers of Him who had not where to lay His

head.’

And again: The self-indulgence of wealthy Christians, who might largely

support the Lord’s work with what they lavish upon their houses, their

tables, or their personal expenditure, is very sad to see.’ [2]

Here the question of jewellery seems to come in. Perhaps it was an

instance of the gradual showing of the details of consecration,

illustrated on page 21, but I will confess that when I wrote Take my

silver and my gold,’ it never dawned on me that anything was included

beyond the coin of the realm! But the Lord leads on softly,’ and a good

many of us have been shown some capital bits of unenclosed but easily

enclosable ground, which have yielded pleasant fruit.’ Yes, very

pleasant fruit! It is wonderfully nice to light upon something that we

really never thought of as a possible gift to our Lord, and just to

give it, straight away, to Him. I do not press the matter, but I do ask

my lady friends to give it fair and candid and prayerful consideration.

Which do you really care most about–a diamond on your finger, or a

star in the Redeemer’s kingdom, shining for ever and ever? That is what

it comes to, and there I leave it.

On the other hand, it is very possible to be fairly faithful in much,

and yet unfaithful in that which is least. We may have thought about

our gold and silver, and yet have been altogether thoughtless about our

rubbish! Some have a habit of hoarding away old garments, pieces,’

remnants, and odds and ends generally, under the idea that they will

come in useful some day;’ very likely setting it up as a kind of mild

virtue, backed by that noxious old saying, Keep it by you seven years,

and you’ll find a use for it.’ And so the shabby things get shabbier,

and moth and dust doth corrupt, and the drawers and places get choked

and crowded; and meanwhile all this that is sheer rubbish to you might

be made useful at once, to a degree beyond what you would guess, to

some poor person.

It would be a nice variety for the clever fingers of a lady’s maid to

be set to work to do up old things; or some tidy woman may be found in

almost every locality who knows how to contrive children’s things out

of what seems to you only fit for the rag-bag, either for her own

little ones or those of her neighbours.

My sister trimmed 70 or 80 hats every spring for several years with the

contents of friends’ rubbish drawers, thus relieving dozens of poor

mothers who liked their children to go tidy on Sunday,’ and also

keeping down finery in her Sunday school. Those who literally fulfilled

her request for rubbish’ used to marvel at the results.

Little scraps of carpet, torn old curtains, faded blinds, and all such

gear, go a wonderfully long way towards making poor cottagers and old

or sick people comfortable. I never saw anything in this rubbish’ line

yet that could not be turned to good account somehow, with a little

considering of the poor and their discomforts.

I wish my lady reader would just leave this book now, and go straight

up-stairs and have a good rummage at once, and see what can be thus

cleared out. If she does not know the right recipients at first hand,

let her send it off to the nearest working clergyman’s wife, and see

how gratefully it will be received! For it is a great trial to workers

among the poor not to be able to supply the needs they see. Such

supplies are far more useful than treble their small money value.

Just a word of earnest pleading for needs, closely veiled, but very

sore, which might be wonderfully lightened if this wardrobe

over-hauling were systematic and faithful. There are hundreds of poor

clergymen’s families to whom a few old garments or any household

oddments are as great a charity as to any of the poor under their

charge. There are two Societies for aiding these with such gifts, under

initials which are explained in the Reports; the P.P.C.

Society–Secretary, Miss Breay, Battenhall Place, Worcester; and the

A.F.D. Society–Secretary, Miss Hinton, 4 York Place, Clifton. I only

ask my lady friends to send for a report to either of these devoted

secretaries; and if their hearts are not so touched by the cases of

brave and bitter need that they go forthwith to wardrobes and drawers

to see what can be spared and sent, they are colder and harder than I

give Englishwomen credit for.

There is no bondage in consecration. The two things are opposites, and

cannot co-exist, much less mingle. We should suspect our consecration,

and come afresh to our great Counsellor about it, directly we have any

sense of bondage. As long as we have an unacknowledged feeling of

fidget about our account-book, and a smothered wondering what and how

much we ought’ to give, and a hushed-up wishing the thing had not been

put quite so strongly before us, depend upon it we have not said

unreservedly, Take my silver and my gold.’ And how can the Lord keep

what He has not been sincerely asked to take?

Ah! if we had stood at the foot of the Cross, and watched the

tremendous payment of our redemption with the precious blood of

Christ,–if we had seen that awful price told out, drop by drop, from

His own dear patient brow and torn hands and feet, till it was ALL

paid, and the central word of eternity was uttered, It is finished!’

should we not have been ready to say, Not a mite will I withhold!’

__________________________________________________________________

My Jewels.

From Woman’s Work.

Shall I hold them back–my jewels?

Time has travelled many a day

Since I laid them by for ever,

Safely locking them away;

And I thought them yielded wholly.

When I dared no longer wear

Gems contrasting, oh, so sadly!

With the adorning I would bear.

Shall I keep them still–my jewels?

Shall I, can I yet withhold

From that living, loving Saviour

Aught of silver or of gold?

Gold so needed, that His gospel

May resound from sea to sea;

Can I know Christ’s service lacketh,

Yet forget His “unto Me”!

No; I lay them down–my jewels,

Truly on the altar now.

Stay! I see a vision passing

Of a gem-encircled brow:

Heavenly treasure worn by Jesus,

Souls won through my gift outpoured;

Freely, gladly I will offer

Jewels thus to crown my Lord!’

__________________________________________________________________

[1] See Gen. xiv. 20, xxviii. 22; Lev. xxvii. 30, 32; Num. xviii. 21;

Deut. xiv. 22; 2 Chron. xxxi. 5, 6, 12; Neh. x. 37, xii. 44, xiii. 12;

Mal. iii. 8, 10; Matt. xxiii. 23; Luke xi. 42; 1 Cor xvi. 2; Heb. vii.

8.

[2] Christian Progress, vol. iii. pp. 25, 26.

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Chapter VIII.

Our Intellects kept for Jesus.

Keep my intellect, and use

Every power as Thou shalt choose.’

There are two distinct sets of temptations which assail those who have,

or think they have, rather less, and those who have, or think they

have, rather more than an average share of intellect; while those who

have neither less nor more are generally open in some degree to both.

The refuge and very present help from both is the same. The intellect,

whether great or small, which is committed to the Lord’s keeping, will

be kept and will be used by Him.

The former class are tempted to think themselves excused from effort to

cultivate and use their small intellectual gifts; to suppose they

cannot or need not seek to win souls, because they are not so clever

and apt in speech as So-and-so; to attribute to want of gift what is

really want of grace; to hide the one talent because it is not five.

Let me throw out a thought or two for these.

Which is greatest, gifts or grace? Gifts are given to every man

according to his several ability.’ That is, we have just as much given

as God knows we are able to use, and what He knows we can best use for

Him. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure

of the gift of Christ.’ Claiming and using that royal measure of grace,

you may, and can, and will do more for God than the mightiest intellect

in the world without it. For which, in the clear light of His Word, is

likely to be most effectual, the natural ability which at its best and

fullest, without Christ, can do nothing’ (observe and believe that

word!), or the grace of our Almighty God and the power of the Holy

Ghost, which is as free to you as it ever was to any one?

If you are responsible for making use of your limited gift, are you not

equally responsible for making use of the grace and power which are to

be had for the asking, which are already yours in Christ, and which are

not limited?

Also, do you not see that when there are great natural gifts, people

give the credit to them, instead of to the grace which alone did the

real work, and thus God is defrauded of the glory? So that, to say it

reverently, God can get more glory out of a feeble instrument, because

then it is more obvious that the excellency of the power is of God and

not of us. Will you not henceforth say, Most gladly, therefore, will I

rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon

me’?

Don’t you really believe that the Holy Spirit is just as able to draw a

soul to Jesus, if He will, by your whisper of the one word, Come,’ as

by an eloquent sermon an hour long? I do! At the same time, as it is

evidently God’s way to work through these intellects of ours, we have

no more right to expect Him to use a mind which we are wilfully

neglecting, and taking no pains whatever to fit for His use, than I

should have to expect you to write a beautiful inscription with my pen,

if I would not take the trouble to wipe it and mend it.

The latter class are tempted to rely on their natural gifts, and to act

and speak in their own strength; to go on too fast, without really

looking up at every step, and for every word; to spend their Lord’s

time in polishing up their intellects, nominally for the sake of

influence and power, and so forth, while really, down at the bottom, it

is for the sake of the keen enjoyment of the process; and perhaps, most

of all, to spend the strength of these intellects for that which doth

not profit,’ in yielding to the specious snare of reading clever books

on both sides,’ and eating deliberately of the tree of the knowledge of

good and evil.

The mere mention of these temptations should be sufficient appeal to

conscience. If consecration is to be a reality anywhere, should it not

be in the very thing which you own as an extra gift from God, and which

is evidently closest, so to speak, to His direct action, spirit upon

spirit? And if the very strength of your intellect has been your

weakness, will you not entreat Him to keep it henceforth really and

entirely for Himself? It is so good of Him to have given you something

to lay at His feet; shall not this goodness lead you to lay it all

there, and never hanker after taking it back for yourself or the world?

Do you not feel that in very proportion to the gift you need the

special keeping of it? He may lead you by a way you know not in the

matter; very likely He will show you that you must be willing to be a

fool for His sake first, before He will condescend to use you much for

His glory. Will you look up into His face and say, Not willing’?

He who made every power can use every power–memory, judgment,

imagination, quickness of apprehension or insight; specialties of

musical, poetical, oratorical, or artistic faculty; special tastes for

reasoning, philosophy, history, natural science, or natural

history,–all these may be dedicated to Him, sanctified by Him, and

used by Him. Whatever He has given, He will use, if we will let Him.

Often, in the most unexpected ways, and at the most unexpected turns,

something read or acquired long ago suddenly comes into use. We cannot

foresee what will thus come in useful’; but He knew, when He guided us

to learn it, what it would be wanted for in His service. So may we not

ask Him to bring His perfect foreknowledge to bear on all our mental

training and storing? to guide us to read or study exactly what He

knows there will be use for in the work to which He has called or will

call us?

Nothing is more practically perplexing to a young Christian, whose

preparation time is not quite over, or perhaps painfully limited, than

to know what is most worth studying, what is really the best investment

of the golden hours, while yet the time is not come for the field of

active work to be fully entered, and the thoroughly furnishing’ of the

mind is the evident path of present duty. Is not His name called

Counsellor’? and will He not be faithful to the promise of His name in

this, as well as in all else?

The same applies to every subsequent stage. Only let us be perfectly

clear about the principle that our intellect is not our own, either to

cultivate, or to use, or to enjoy, and that Jesus Christ is our real

and ever-present Counsellor, and then there will be no more worry about

what to read and how much to read, and whether to keep up one’s

accomplishments, or one’s languages, or one’s ologies’! If the Master

has need of them, He will show us; and if He has not, what need have we

of them? If we go forward without His leading, we may throw away some

talent, or let it get too rusty for use, which would have been most

valuable when other circumstances arose or different work was given. We

must not think that keeping’ means not using at all! What we want is to

have all our powers kept for His use.

In this they will probably find far higher development than in any

other sort of use. I know cases in which the effect of real

consecration on mere mental development has been obvious and surprising

to all around. Yet it is only a confirmation of what I believe to be a

great principle, viz. that the Lord makes the most of whatever is

unreservedly surrendered to Him. There will always be plenty of waste

in what we try to cut out for ourselves. But He wastes no material!

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter IX.

Our Wills kept for Jesus.

Keep my will, oh, keep it Thine,

For it is no longer mine.’

Perhaps there is no point in which expectation has been so limited by

experience as this. We believe God is able to do for us just so much as

He has already done, and no more. We take it for granted a line must be

drawn somewhere; and so we choose to draw it where experience ends, and

faith would have to begin. Even if we have trusted and proved Him as to

keeping our members and our minds, faith fails when we would go deeper

and say, Keep my will!’ And yet the only reason we have to give is,

that though we have asked Him to take our will, we do not exactly find

that it is altogether His, but that self-will crops up again and again.

And whatever flaw there might be in this argument, we think the matter

is quite settled by the fact that some whom we rightly esteem, and who

are far better than ourselves, have the same experience, and do not

even seem to think it right to hope for anything better. That is

conclusive! And the result of this, as of every other faithless

conclusion, is either discouragement and depression, or, still worse,

acquiescence in an unyielded will, as something that can’t be helped.

Now let us turn from our thoughts to God’s thoughts. Verily, they are

not as ours! He says He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all

that we ask or think. Apply this here. We ask Him to take our wills and

make them His. Does He or does He not mean what He says? and if He

does, should we not trust Him to do this thing that we have asked and

longed for, and not less but more? Is anything too hard for the Lord?’

Hath He said, and shall He not do it?’ and if He gives us faith to

believe that we have the petition that we desired of Him, and with it

the unspeakable rest of leaning our will wholly upon His love, what

ground have we for imagining that this is necessarily to be a mere

fleeting shadow, which is hardly to last an hour, but is necessarily to

be exhausted ere the next breath of trial or temptation comes? Does He

mock our longing by acting as I have seen an older person act to a

child, by accepting some trifling gift of no intrinsic value, just to

please the little one, and then throwing it away as soon as the child’s

attention is diverted? Is not the taking rather the pledge of the

keeping, if we will but entrust Him fearlessly with it? We give Him no

opportunity, so to speak, of proving His faithfulness to this great

promise, because we will not fulfil the condition of reception,

believing it. But we readily enough believe instead all that we hear of

the unsatisfactory experience of others! Or, start from another word.

Job said, I know that Thou canst do everything,’ and we turn round and

say, Oh yes, everything except keeping my will!’ Dare we add, And I

know that Thou canst not do that’? Yet that is what is said every day,

only in other words; and if not said aloud, it is said in faithless

hearts, and God hears it. What does Almighty’ mean, if it does not

mean, as we teach our little children, able to do everything’?

We have asked this great thing many a time, without, perhaps, realizing

how great a petition we were singing, in the old morning hymn, Guard my

first springs of thought and will!’ That goes to the root of the

matter, only it implies that the will has been already surrendered to

Him, that it may be wholly kept and guarded.

It may be that we have not sufficiently realized the sin of the only

alternative. Our wills belong either to self or to God. It may seem a

small and rather excusable sin in man’s sight to be self-willed, but

see in what a category of iniquity God puts it! (2 Pet. ii. 10). And

certainly we are without excuse when we have such a promise to go upon

as, It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His

pleasure.’ How splendidly this meets our very deepest

helplessness,–worketh in you to will!’ Oh, let us pray for ourselves

and for each other, that we may know what is the exceeding greatness of

His power to usward who believe.’ It does not say, to usward who fear

and doubt;’ for if we will not believe, neither shall we be

established. If we will not believe what God says He can do, we shall

see it with our eyes, but we shall not eat thereof. They could not

enter in because of unbelief.’

It is most comforting to remember that the grand promise, Thy people

shall be willing in the day of Thy power,’ is made by the Father to

Christ Himself. The Lord Jesus holds this promise, and God will fulfil

it to Him. He will make us willing because He has promised Jesus that

He will do so. And what is being made willing, but having our will

taken and kept?

All true surrender of the will is based upon love and knowledge of, and

confidence in, the one to whom it is surrendered. We have the human

analogy so often before our eyes, that it is the more strange we should

be so slow to own even the possibility of it as to God. Is it thought

anything so very extraordinary and high-flown, when a bride

deliberately prefers wearing a colour which was not her own taste or

choice, because her husband likes to see her in it? Is it very

unnatural that it is no distress to her to do what he asks her to do,

or to go with him where he asks her to come, even without question or

explanation, instead of doing what or going where she would undoubtedly

have preferred if she did not know and love him? Is it very surprising

if this lasts beyond the wedding day, and if year after year she still

finds it her greatest pleasure to please him, quite irrespective of

what used to be her own ways and likings? Yet in this case she is not

helped by any promise or power on his part to make her wish what he

wishes. But He who so wonderfully condescends to call Himself the

Bridegroom of His church, and who claims our fullest love and trust,

has promised and has power to work in us to will. Shall we not claim

His promise and rely on His mighty power, and say, not

self-confidently, but looking only unto Jesus–

Keep my will, for it is Thine;

It shall be no longer mine!’

Only in proportion as our own will is surrendered, are we able to

discern the splendour of God’s will.

For oh! it is a splendour,

A glow of majesty,

A mystery of beauty

If we will only see;

A very cloud of glory

Enfolding you and me.

A splendour that is lighted

At one transcendent flame,

The wondrous Love, the perfect Love,

Our Father’s sweetest name;

For His Name and very Essence

And His Will are all the same!

Conversely, in proportion as we see this splendour of His will, we

shall more readily or more fully surrender our own. Not until we have

presented our bodies a living sacrifice can we prove what is that good,

and perfect, and acceptable will of God. But in thus proving it, this

continual presentation will be more and more seen to be our reasonable

service, and becomes more and more a joyful sacrifice of praise.

The connection in Romans xii. 1, 2, between our sacrifice which He so

graciously calls acceptable to Himself, and our finding out that His

will is acceptable to ourselves, is very striking. One reason for this

connection may be that only love can really understand love, and love

on both sides is at the bottom of the whole transaction and its

results. First, He loves us. Then the discovery of this leads us to

love Him. Then, because He loves us, He claims us, and desires to have

us wholly yielded to His will, so that the operations of love in and

for us may find no hindrance. Then, because we love Him we recognise

His claim and yield ourselves. Then, being thus yielded, He draws us

nearer to Him, [3] and admits us, so to speak, into closer intimacy, so

that we gain nearer and truer views of His perfections. Then the unity

of these perfections becomes clearer to us. Now we not only see His

justice and mercy flowing in an undivided stream from the cross of

Christ, but we see that they never were divided, though the strange

distortions of the dark, false glass of sin made them appear so, but

that both are but emanations of God’s holy love. Then having known and

believed this holy love, we see further that His will is not a separate

thing, but only love (and therefore all His attributes) in action; love

being the primary essence of His being, and all the other attributes

manifestations and combinations of that ineffable essence, for God is

Love. Then this will of God which has seemed in old far-off days a

stern and fateful power, is seen to be only love energized; love

saying, I will.’ And when once we really grasp this (hardly so much by

faith as by love itself), the will of God cannot be otherwise than

acceptable, for it is no longer a question of trusting that somehow or

other there is a hidden element of love in it, but of understanding

that it is love; no more to be dissociated from it than the power of

the sun’s rays can be dissociated from their light and warmth. And love

recognised must surely be love accepted and reciprocated. So, as the

fancied sternness of God’s will is lost in His love, the stubbornness

of our will becomes melted in that love, and lost in our acceptance of

it.

Jean Sophia Pigott.

Take Thine own way with me, dear Lord,

Thou canst not otherwise than bless;

I launch me forth upon a sea

Of boundless love and tenderness.

I could not choose a larger bliss

Than to be wholly Thine; and mine

A will whose highest joy is this,

To ceaselessly unclasp in Thine.

I will not fear Thee, O my God!

The days to come can only bring

Their perfect sequences of love,

Thy larger, deeper comforting.

Within the shadow of this love,

Loss doth transmute itself to gain;

Faith veils earth’s sorrows in its light,

And straightway lives above her pain.

We are not losers thus; we share

The perfect gladness of the Son,

Not conquered–for, behold, we reign;

Conquered and Conqueror are one.

Thy wonderful grand will, my God!

Triumphantly I make it mine;

And faith shall breathe her glad “Amen”

To every dear command of Thine.

Beneath the splendour of Thy choice,

Thy perfect choice for me, I rest;

Outside it now I dare not live,

Within it I must needs be blest.

Meanwhile my spirit anchors calm

In grander regions still than this;

The fair, far-shining latitudes

Of that yet unexplord bliss.

Then may Thy perfect, glorious will

Be evermore fulfilled in me,

And make my life an answ’ring chord

Of glad, responsive harmony.

Oh! it is life indeed to live

Within this kingdom strangely sweet,

And yet we fear to enter in,

And linger with unwilling feet.

We fear this wondrous rule of Thine,

Because we have not reached Thy heart;

Not venturing our all on Thee,

We may not know how good Thou art.’

__________________________________________________________________

[3] Now ye have consecrated yourselves unto the Lord, come near’ (2

Chron. xxix. 31).

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter X.

Our hearts kept for Jesus.

Keep my heart; it is Thine own;

It is now Thy royal throne.’

It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace,’ and yet

some of us go on as if it were not a good thing even to hope for it to

be so.

We should be ashamed to say that we had behaved treacherously to a

friend; that we had played him false again and again; that we had said

scores of times what we did not really mean; that we had professed and

promised what, all the while, we had no sort of purpose of performing.

We should be ready to go off by next ship to New Zealand rather than

calmly own to all this, or rather than ever face our friends again

after we had owned it. And yet we are not ashamed (some of us) to say

that we are always dealing treacherously with our Lord; nay, more, we

own it with an inexplicable complacency, as if there were a kind of

virtue in saying how fickle and faithless and desperately wicked our

hearts are; and we actually plume ourselves on the easy confession,

which we think proves our humility, and which does not lower us in the

eyes of others, nor in our own eyes, half so much as if we had to say,

I have told a story,’ or, I have broken my promise.’ Nay, more, we have

not the slightest hope, and therefore not the smallest intention of

aiming at an utterly different state of things. Well for us if we do

not go a step farther, and call those by hard and false names who do

seek to have an established heart, and who believe that as the Lord

meant what He said when He promised, No good thing will He withhold

from them that walk uprightly,’ so He will not withhold this good

thing.

Prayer must be based upon promise, but, thank God, His promises are

always broader than our prayers. No fear of building inverted pyramids

here, for Jesus Christ is the foundation, and this and all the other

promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen, unto the glory of God

by us.’ So it shall be unto His glory to fulfil this one to us, and to

answer our prayer for a kept’ or established’ heart. And its fulfilment

shall work out His glory, not in spite of us, but by us.’

We find both the means and the result of the keeping in the 112th

Psalm: His heart is fixed.’ Whose heart? An angel? A saint in glory?

No! Simply the heart of the man that feareth the Lord, and delighteth

greatly in His commandments. Therefore yours and mine, as God would

have them be; just the normal idea of a God-fearing heart, nothing

extremely and hopelessly beyond attainment.

Fixed.’ How does that tally with the deceitfulness and waywardness and

fickleness about which we really talk as if we were rather proud of

them than utterly ashamed of them?

Does our heavenly Bridegroom expect nothing more of us? Does His

mighty, all-constraining love intend to do no more for us than to leave

us in this deplorable state, when He is undoubtedly able to heal the

desperately wicked heart (compare verses 9 and 14 of Jeremiah xvii.),

to rule the wayward one with His peace, and to establish the fickle one

with His grace? Are we not without excuse’?

Fixed, trusting in the Lord.’ Here is the means of the fixing–trust.

He works the trust in us by sending the Holy Spirit to reveal God in

Christ to us as absolutely, infinitely worthy of our trust. When we see

Jesus’ by Spirit-wrought faith, we cannot but trust Him; we distrust

our hearts more truly than ever before, but we trust our Lord entirely,

because we trust Him only. For, entrusting our trust to Him, we know

that He is able to keep that which we commit (i. e. entrust) to Him. It

is His own way of winning and fixing our hearts for Himself. Is it not

a beautiful one? Thus his heart is established.’ But we have not quite

faith enough to believe that. So what is the very first doubting, and

therefore sad thought that crops up? Yes, but I am afraid it will not

remain fixed.’

That is your thought. Now see what is God’s thought about the case. His

heart is established, he shall not be afraid.’

Is not that enough? What is, if such plain and yet divine words are

not? Well, the Gracious One bears with us, and gives line upon line to

His poor little children. And so He says, The peace of God, which

passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds, through

Christ Jesus.’ And again, Thy thoughts shall be established.’ And

again, Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on

Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.’

And to prove to us that these promises can be realized in present

experience, He sends down to us through nearly 3000 years the words of

the man who prayed, Create in me a clean heart, O God,’ and lets us

hear twice over the new song put by the same Holy Spirit into his

mouth: My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed’ (Ps. lvii. 7,

cviii. 1).

The heart that is established in Christ is also established for Christ.

It becomes His royal throne, no longer occupied by His foe, no longer

tottering and unstable. And then we see the beauty and preciousness of

the promise, He shall be a Priest upon His throne.’ Not only reigning,

but atoning. Not only ruling, but cleansing. Thus the throne is

established in mercy,’ but by righteousness.’

I think we lose ground sometimes by parleying with the tempter. We have

no business to parley with an usurper. The throne is no longer his when

we have surrendered it to our Lord Jesus. And why should we allow him

to argue with us for one instant, as if it were still an open question?

Don’t listen; simply tell him that Jesus Christ is on the long-disputed

throne, and no more about it, but turn at once to your King and claim

the glorious protection of His sovereignty over you. It is a splendid

reality, and you will find it so. He will not abdicate and leave you

kingless and defenceless. For verily, The Lord is our King; He will

save us’ (Isa. xxxiii. 22).

Our hearts are naturally– God can make them–

Evil, Heb. iii. 12. Clean, Ps. li. 10.

Desperately wicked, Jer. xvii. 9. Good, Luke viii. 15.

Weak, Ezek. xvi. 30. Fixed, Ps. cxii. 7.

Deceitful, Jer. xvii. 9. Faithful, Neh. ix. 8.

Deceived, Isa. xliv. 20. Understanding, 1 Kings iii. 9.

Double, Ps. xii. 2. Honest, Luke viii. 15.

Impenitent, Rom. ii. 5. Contrite, Ps. li. 17.

Rebellious, Jer. v. 23. True, Heb. x. 22.

Hard, Ezek. iii. 7. Soft, Job xxiii. 16.

Stony, Ezek. xi. 19. New, Ezek. xviii. 31.

Froward, Prov. xvii. 20. Sound, Ps. cxix. 80.

Despiteful, Ezek. xxv. 15. Glad, Ps. xvi. 9.

Stout, Isa. x. 12. Established, Ps. cxii. 8.

Haughty, Prov. xviii. 12. Tender, Ephes. iv. 32.

Proud, Prov. xxi. 4. Pure, Matt. v. 8.

Perverse, Prov. xii. 8. Perfect, 1 Chron. xxix. 9.

Foolish, Rom. i. 21. Wise, Prov. xi. 29.

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter XI.

Our love kept for Jesus.

Keep my love; my Lord, I pour

At Thy feet its treasure-store.’

Not as a mere echo from the morning-gilded shore of Tiberias, but as an

ever new, ever sounding note of divinest power, come the familiar words

to each of us, Lovest thou Me?’ He says it who has loved us with an

everlasting love. He says it who has died for us. He says it who has

washed us from our sins in His own blood. He says it who has waited for

our love, waited patiently all through our coldness.

And if by His grace we have said, Take my love,’ which of us has not

felt that part of His very answer has been to make us see how little

there was to take, and how little of that little has been kept for Him?

And yet we do love Him! He knows that! The very mourning and longing to

love Him more proves it. But we want more than that, and so does our

Lord.

He has created us to love. We have a sealed treasure of love, which

either remains sealed, and then gradually dries up and wastes away, or

is unsealed and poured out, and yet is the fuller and not the emptier

for the outpouring. The more love we give, the more we have to give. So

far it is only natural. But when the Holy Spirit reveals the love of

Christ, and sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts, this natural

love is penetrated with a new principle as it discovers a new Object.

Everything that it beholds in that Object gives it new depth and new

colours. As it sees the holiness, the beauty, and the glory, it takes

the deep hues of conscious sinfulness, unworthiness, and nothingness.

As it sees even a glimpse of the love that passeth knowledge, it takes

the glow of wonder and gratitude. And when it sees that love drawing

close to its deepest need with blood-purchased pardon, it is

intensified and stirred, and there is no more time for weighing and

measuring; we must pour it out, all there is of it, with our tears, at

the feet that were pierced for love of us.

And what then? Has the flow grown gradually slower and shallower? Has

our Lord reason to say, My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,

and as a stream of brooks they pass away’? It is humiliating to have

found that we could not keep on loving Him, as we loved in that

remembered hour when Thy time was the time of love.’ We have proved

that we were not able. Let this be only the stepping-stone to proving

that He is able!

There will have been a cause, as we shall see if we seek it honestly.

It was not that we really poured out all our treasure, and so it

naturally came to an end. We let it be secretly diverted into other

channels. We began keeping back a little part of the price for

something else. We looked away from, instead of looking away unto

Jesus. We did not entrust Him with our love, and ask Him to keep it for

Himself.

And what has He to say to us? Ah, He upbraideth not. Listen! Thus saith

the Lord, I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine

espousals.’ Can any words be more tender, more touching, to you, to me?

Forgetting all the sin, all the backsliding, all the coldness, casting

all that into the unreturning depths of the sea, He says He remembers

that hour when we first said, Take my love.’ He remembers it now, at

this minute. He has written it for ever on His infinite memory, where

the past is as the present.

His own love is unchangeable, so it could never be His wish or will

that we should thus drift away from Him. Oh, Come and let us return

unto the Lord!’ But is there any hope that, thus returning, our

flickering love may be kept from again failing? Hear what He says: And

I will betroth thee unto Me for ever’ And again: Thou shalt abide for

Me many days; so will I also be for thee.’ Shall we trust His word or

not? Is it worthy of our acceptation or not? Oh, rest on this word of

the King, and let Him from this day have the keeping of your love, and

He will keep it!

The love of Christ is not an absorbing, but a radiating love. The more

we love Him, the more we shall most certainly love others. Some have

not much natural power of loving, but the love of Christ will

strengthen it. Some have had the springs of love dried up by some

terrible earthquake. They will find fresh springs’ in Jesus, and the

gentle flow will be purer and deeper than the old torrent could ever

be. Some have been satisfied that it should rush in a narrow channel,

but He will cause it to overflow into many another, and widen its

course of blessing. Some have spent it all on their God-given dear

ones. Now He is come whose right it is; and yet in the fullest

resumption of that right, He is so gracious that He puts back an even

larger measure of the old love into our hand, sanctified with His own

love, and energized with His blessing, and strengthened with His new

commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.’

In that always very interesting part, called a Corner for

Difficulties,’ of that always very interesting magazine, Woman’s Work,

the question has been discussed, When does love become idolatry? Is it

the experience of Christians that the coming in of a new object of

affection interferes with entire consecration to God?’ I should like to

quote the many excellent answers in full, but must only refer my

readers to the number for March 1879. One replies: It seems to me that

He who is love would not give us an object for our love unless He saw

that our hearts needed expansion; and if the love is consecrated, and

the friendship takes its stand in Christ, there is no need for the fear

that it will become idolatry. Let the love on both sides be given to

God to keep, and however much it may grow, the source from which it

springs must yet be greater.’ Perhaps I may be pardoned for giving, at

the same writer’s suggestion, a quotation from Under the Surface on

this subject. Eleanor says to Beatrice:–

I tremble when I think

How much I love him; but I turn away

From thinking of it, just to love him more;–

Indeed, I fear, too much.’

Dear Eleanor,

Do you love him as much as Christ loves us?

Let your lips answer me.’

Why ask me, dear?

Our hearts are finite, Christ is infinite.’

Then, till you reach the standard of that love,

Let neither fears nor well-meant warning voice

Distress you with “too much.” For He hath said

How much–and who shall dare to change His measure?

“That ye should love as I have loved you.”

O sweet command, that goes so far beyond

The mightiest impulse of the tenderest heart!

A bare permission had been much; but He

Who knows our yearnings and our fearfulness,

Chose graciously to bid us do the thing

That makes our earthly happiness,

A limit that we need not fear to pass,

Because we cannot. Oh, the breadth and length,

And depth and height of love that passeth knowledge!

Yet Jesus said, “As I have loved you.”‘

O Beatrice, I long to feel the sunshine

That this should bring; but there are other words

Which fall in chill eclipse. Tis written, “Keep

Yourselves from idols.” How shall I obey?’

Oh, not by loving less, but loving more.

It is not that we love our precious ones

Too much, but God too little. As the lamp

A miner bears upon his shadowed brow

Is only dazzling in the grimy dark,

And has no glare against the summer sky,

So, set the tiny torch of our best love

In the great sunshine of the love of God,

And, though full fed and fanned, it casts no shade

And dazzles not, o’erflowed with mightier light.’

There is no love so deep and wide as that which is kept for Jesus. It

flows both fuller and farther when it flows only through Him. Then,

too, it will be a power for Him. It will always be unconsciously

working for Him. In drawing others to ourselves by it, we shall be

necessarily drawing them nearer to the fountain of our love, never

drawing them away from it. It is the great magnet of His love which

alone can draw any heart to Him; but when our own are thoroughly

yielded to its mighty influence, they will be so magnetized that He

will condescend to use them in this way.

Is it not wonderful to think that the Lord Jesus will not only accept

and keep, but actually use our love?

Of Thine own have we given Thee,’ for we love Him because He first

loved us.’

Set apart to love Him,

And His love to know;

Not to waste affection

On a passing show;

Called to give Him life and heart,

Called to pour the hidden treasure,

That none other claims to measure,

Into His belovd hand! thrice blessd set apart’!

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter XII.

Our Selves kept for Jesus.

Keep my self, that I may be

Ever, only, all for Thee.’

For Thee!’ That is the beginning and the end of the whole matter of

consecration.

There was a prelude to its endless song,’–a prelude whose theme is

woven into every following harmony in the new anthem of consecrated

life: The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ Out of

the realized for me,’ grows the practical for Thee!’ If the former is a

living root, the latter will be its living fruit.

For Thee!’ This makes the difference between forced or formal, and

therefore unreasonable service, and the reasonable service’ which is

the beginning of the perfect service where they see His face. This

makes the difference between slave work and free work. For Thee, my

Redeemer; for Thee who hast spoken to my heart; for Thee, who hast done

for me–what? Let us each pause, and fill up that blank with the great

things the Lord hath done for us. For Thee, who art to me–what? Fill

that up too, before Him! For Thee, my Saviour Jesus, my Lord and my

God!

And what is to be for Him? My self. We talk sometimes as if, whatever

else could be subdued unto Him, self could never be. Did St. Paul

forget to mention this important exception to the all things’ in Phil.

iii. 21? David said: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within

me, bless His Holy Name.’ Did he, too, unaccountably forget to mention

that he only meant all that was within him, except self? If not, then

self must be among the all things’ which the Lord Jesus Christ is able

to subdue unto Himself, and which are to bless His Holy Name.’ It is

Self which, once His most treacherous foe, is now, by full and glad

surrender, His own soldier–coming over from the rebel camp into the

royal army. It is not some one else, some temporarily possessing

spirit, which says within us, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee,’ but

our true and very self, only changed and renewed by the power of the

Holy Ghost. And when we do that we would not, we know that it is no

more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.’ Our true self is the

new self, taken and won by the love of God, and kept by the power of

God.

Yes, kept!’ There is the promise on which we ground our prayer; or,

rather, one of the promises. For, search and look for your own

strengthening and comfort, and you will find it repeated in every part

of the Bible, from I am with thee, and will keep thee,’ in Genesis, to

I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation,’ in Revelation.

And kept for Him! Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you,

when it is only the fulfilling of His own eternal purpose in creating

us? This people have I formed for Myself.’ Not ultimately only, but

presently and continually; for He says, Thou shalt abide for Me;’ and,

He that remaineth, even he shall be for our God.’ Are you one of His

people by faith in Jesus Christ? Then see what you are to Him. You,

personally and individually, are part of the Lord’s portion (Deut.

xxxii. 9) and of His inheritance (1 Kings viii. 53, and Eph. i. 18).

His portion and inheritance would not be complete without you; you are

His peculiar treasure (Ex. xix. 5); a special people’ (how warm, and

loving, and natural that expression is!) unto Himself’ (Deut. vii. 6).

Would you call it keeping,’ if you had a special’ treasure, a darling

little child, for instance, and let it run wild into all sorts of

dangers all day long, sometimes at your side, and sometimes out in the

street, with only the intention of fetching it safe home at night? If

ye then, being evil, would know better, and do better, than that, how

much more shall our Lord’s keeping be true, and tender, and continual,

and effectual, when He declares us to be His peculiar treasure,

purchased (See 1 Pet. ii. 9, margin) for Himself at such unknown cost!

He will keep what thus He sought,

Safely guard the dearly bought;

Cherish that which He did choose,

Always love and never lose.

I know what some of us are thinking. Yes; I see it all plainly enough

in theory, but in practice I find I am not kept. Self goes over to the

other camp again and again. If is not all for Jesus, though I have

asked and wished for it to be so.’ Dear friends, the all’ must be

sealed with only.’ Are you willing to be only’ for Jesus? You have not

given all’ to Jesus while you are not quite ready to be only’ for Him.

And it is no use to talk about ever’ while we have not settled the

only’ and the all.’ You cannot be for Him,’ in the full and blessed

sense, while you are partly for’ anything or any one else. For the Lord

hath set apart him that is godly for Himself.’ You see, the for

Himself’ hinges upon the set apart.’ There is no consecration without

separation. If you are mourning over want of realized consecration,

will you look humbly and sincerely into this point? A garden enclosed

is my sister, my spouse,’ saith the Heavenly Bridegroom.

Set apart for Jesus!

Is not this enough,

Though the desert prospect

Open wild and rough?

Set apart for His delight,

Chosen for His holy pleasure,

Sealed to be His special treasure!

Could we choose a nobler joy?–and would we, if we might? [4]

But yielding, by His grace, to this blessed setting apart for Himself,

The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto Himself, as He hath

sworn unto thee.’ Can there be a stronger promise? Just obey and trust

His word now, and yield yourselves now unto God, that He may establish

thee to-day for a people unto Himself.’ Commit the keeping of your

souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator, being persuaded

that He is able to keep that which you commit to Him.

Now, Lord, I give myself to Thee,

I would be wholly Thine,

As Thou hast given Thyself to me,

And Thou art wholly mine;

O take me, seal me for Thine own,

Thine altogether, Thine alone.

Here comes in once more that immeasurably important subject of our

influence. For it is not what we say or do, so much as what we are,

that influences others. We have heard this, and very likely repeated it

again and again, but have we seen it to be inevitably linked with the

great question of this chapter? I do not know anything which,

thoughtfully considered, makes us realize more vividly the need and the

importance of our whole selves being kept for Jesus. Any part not

wholly committed, and not wholly kept, must hinder and neutralize the

real influence for Him of all the rest. If we ourselves are kept all

for Jesus, then our influence will be all kept for Him too. If not,

then, however much we may wish and talk and try, we cannot throw our

full weight into the right scale. And just in so far as it is not in

the one scale, it must be in the other; weighing against the little

which we have tried to put in the right one, and making the short

weight still shorter.

So large a proportion of it is entirely involuntary, while yet the

responsibility of it is so enormous, that our helplessness comes out in

exceptionally strong relief, while our past debt in this matter is

simply incalculable. Are we feeling this a little? getting just a

glimpse, down the misty defiles of memory, of the neutral influence,

the wasted influence, the mistaken influence, the actually wrong

influence which has marked the ineffaceable although untraceable

course? And all the while we owed Him all that influence! It ought to

have been all for Him! We have nothing to say. But what has our Lord to

say? I forgave thee all that debt!’

Then, after that forgiveness which must come first, there comes a

thought of great comfort in our freshly felt helplessness, rising out

of the very thing that makes us realize this helplessness. Just because

our influence is to such a great extent involuntary and unconscious, we

may rest assured that if we ourselves are truly kept for Jesus, this

will be, as a quite natural result, kept for Him also. It cannot be

otherwise, for as is the fountain, so will be the flow; as the spring,

so the action; as the impulse, so the communicated motion. Thus there

may be, and in simple trust there will be, a quiet rest about it, a

relief from all sense of strain and effort, a fulfilling of the words,

For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own

works, as God did from His.’ It will not be a matter of trying to have

good influence, but just of having it, as naturally and constantly as

the magnetized bar.

Another encouraging thought should follow. Of ourselves we may have but

little weight, no particular talents or position or anything else to

put into the scale; but let us remember that again and again God has

shown that the influence of a very average life, when once really

consecrated to Him, may outweigh that of almost any number of merely

professing Christians. Such lives are like Gideon’s three hundred,

carrying not even the ordinary weapons of war, but only trumpets and

lamps and empty pitchers, by whom the Lord wrought great deliverance,

while He did not use the others at all. For He hath chosen the weak

things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

Should not all this be additional motive for desiring that our whole

selves should be taken and kept?

I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever. Therefore we

may rejoicingly say ever’ as well as only’ and all for Thee!’ For the

Lord is our Keeper, and He is the Almighty and the Everlasting God,

with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. He will never

change His mind about keeping us, and no man is able to pluck us out of

His hand. Neither will Christ let us pluck ourselves out of His hand,

for He says, Thou shalt abide for Me many days.’ And He that keepeth us

will not slumber. Once having undertaken His vineyard, He will keep it

night and day, till all the days and nights are over, and we know the

full meaning of the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time,

unto which we are kept by His power.

And then, for ever for Him! passing from the gracious keeping by faith

for this little while, to the glorious keeping in His presence for all

eternity! For ever fulfilling the object for which He formed us and

chose us, we showing forth His praise, and He showing the exceeding

riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in the ages to come! He

for us, and we for Him for ever! Oh, how little we can grasp this! Yet

this is the fruition of being kept for Jesus!’

Set apart for ever

For Himself alone!

Now we see our calling

Gloriously shown.

Owning, with no secret dread,

This our holy separation,

Now the crown of consecration [5]

Of the Lord our God shall rest upon our willing head.

__________________________________________________________________

[4] Loyal Responses, p. 11.

[5] Num. vi. 7.

__________________________________________________________________

Chapter XIII.

Christ for Us.

So will I also be for Thee.’–Hos. iii. 3.

The typical promise, Thou shalt abide for Me many days,’ is indeed a

marvel of love. For it is given to the most undeserving, described

under the strongest possible figure of utter worthlessness and

treacherousness,–the woman beloved, yet an adulteress.

The depth of the abyss shows the length of the line that has fathomed

it, yet only the length of the line reveals the real depth of the

abyss. The sin shows the love, and the love reveals the sin. The Bible

has few words more touching, though seldom quoted, than those just

preceding this wonderful promise: The love of the Lord toward the

children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine.’

Put that into the personal application which no doubt underlies it, and

say, The love of the Lord toward me, who have looked away from Him,

with wandering, faithless eyes, to other helps and hopes, and have

loved earthly joys and sought earthly gratifications,–the love of the

Lord toward even me!’ And then hear Him saying in the next verse, So I

bought her to Me;’ stooping to do that in His unspeakable condescension

of love, not with the typical silver and barley, but with the precious

blood of Christ. Then, having thus loved us, and rescued us, and bought

us with a price indeed, He says, still under the same figure, Thou

shalt abide for Me many days.’

This is both a command and a pledge. But the very pledge implies our

past unfaithfulness, and the proved need of even our own part being

undertaken by the ever patient Lord. He Himself has to guarantee our

faithfulness, because there is no other hope of our continuing

faithful. Well may such love win our full and glad surrender, and such

a promise win our happy and confident trust!

But He says more. He says, So will I also be for thee!’ And this seems

an even greater marvel of love, as we observe how He meets every detail

of our consecration with this wonderful word. [6]

1. His Life for thee!’ The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the

sheep.’ Oh, wonderful gift! not promised, but given; not to friends,

but to enemies. Given without condition, without reserve, without

return. Himself unknown and unloved, His gift unsought and unasked, He

gave His life for thee; a more than royal bounty–the greatest gift

that Deity could devise. Oh, grandeur of love! I lay down My life for

the sheep!’ And we for whom He gave it have held back, and hesitated to

give our lives, not even for Him (He has not asked us to do that), but

to Him! But that is past, and He has tenderly pardoned the unloving,

ungrateful reserve, and has graciously accepted the poor little

fleeting breath and speck of dust which was all we had to offer. And

now His precious death and His glorious life are all for thee.’

2. His Eternity for thee.’ All we can ask Him to take are days and

moments–the little span given us as it is given, and of this only the

present in deed and the future in will. As for the past, in so far as

we did not give it to Him, it is too late; we can never give it now!

But His past was given to us, though ours was not given to Him. Oh,

what a tremendous debt does this show us!

Away back in the dim depths of past eternity, or ever the earth and the

world were made,’ His divine existence in the bosom of His Father was

all for thee,’ purposing and planning for thee,’ receiving and holding

the promise of eternal life for thee.’

Then the thirty-three years among sinners on this sinful earth: do we

think enough of the slowly-wearing days and nights, the heavy-footed

hours, the never-hastening minutes, that went to make up those

thirty-three years of trial and humiliation? We all know how slowly

time passes when suffering and sorrow are near, and there is no reason

to suppose that our Master was exempted from this part of our

infirmities.

Then His present is for thee.’ Even now He liveth to make

intercession;’ even now He thinketh upon me;’ even now He knoweth,’ He

careth,’ He loveth.’

Then, only to think that His whole eternity will be for thee!’ Millions

of ages of unfoldings of all His love, and of ever new declarings of

His Father’s name to His brethren. Think of it! and can we ever

hesitate to give all our poor little hours to His service?

3. His Hands for thee.’ Literal hands; literally pierced, when the

whole weight of His quivering frame hung from their torn muscles and

bared nerves; literally uplifted in parting blessing. Consecrated,

priestly hands; filled’ hands (Ex. xxviii. 41, xxix. 9, etc.,

margin)–filled once with His great offering, and now with gifts and

blessings for thee.’ Tender hands, touching and healing, lifting and

leading with gentlest care. Strong hands, upholding and defending. Open

hands, filling with good and satisfying desire (Ps. civ. 28, and cxlv.

16). Faithful hands, restraining and sustaining. His left hand is under

my head, and His right hand doth embrace me.’

4. His Feet for thee.’ They were weary very often, they were wounded

and bleeding once. They made clear footprints as He went about doing

good, and as He went up to Jerusalem to suffer; and these blessed steps

of His most holy life,’ both as substitution and example, were for

thee.’ Our place of waiting and learning, of resting and loving, is at

His feet. And still those blessed feet’ are and shall be for thee,’

until He comes again to receive us unto Himself, until and when the

word is fulfilled, They shall walk with Me in white.’

5. His Voice for thee.’ The Voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying,

Open to me, my sister, my love;’ the Voice that His sheep hear’ and

know,’ and that calls out the fervent response, Master, say on!’ This

is not all. It was the literal voice of the Lord Jesus which uttered

that one echoless cry of desolation on the Cross for thee,’ and it will

be His own literal voice which will say, Come, ye blessed!’ to thee.

And that same tender and glorious Voice’ has literally sung and will

sing for thee.’ I think He consecrated song for us, and made it a sweet

and sacred thing for ever, when He Himself sang an hymn,’ the very last

thing before He went forth to consecrate suffering for us. That was not

His last song. The Lord thy God … will joy over thee with singing.’

And the time is coming when He will not only sing for thee’ or over

thee,’ but with thee. He says He will! In the midst of the church will

I sing praise unto Thee.’ Now what a magnificent glimpse of joy this

is! Jesus Himself leading the praises of His brethren,’ [7] and we

ourselves singing not merely in such a chorus, but with such a leader!

If singing for Jesus’ is such delight here, what will this singing with

Jesus’ be? Surely song may well be a holy thing to us henceforth.

6. His Lips for thee.’ Perhaps there is no part of our consecration

which it is so difficult practically to realize, and in which it is,

therefore, so needful to recollect?–I also for thee.’ It is often

helpful to read straight through one or more of the Gospels with a

special thought on our mind, and see how much bears upon it. When we

read one through with this thought–His lips for me!’–wondering, verse

by verse, at the grace which was poured into them, and the gracious

words which fell from them, wondering more and more at the cumulative

force and infinite wealth of tenderness and power and wisdom and love

flowing from them, we cannot but desire that our lips and all the fruit

of them should be wholly for Him. For thee’ they were opened in

blessing; for thee’ they were closed when He was led as a lamb to the

slaughter. And whether teaching, warning, counsel, comfort, or

encouragement, commandments in whose keeping there is a great reward,

or promises which exceed all we ask or think–all the precious fruit of

His lips is for thee,’ really and truly meant for thee.’

7. His Wealth for thee.’ Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He

became poor, that ye through His poverty might be made rich.’ Yes,

through His poverty’ the unsearchable riches of Christ are for thee.’

Seven-fold riches are mentioned; and these are no unminted treasure or

sealed reserve, but all ready coined for our use, and stamped with His

own image and superscription, and poured freely into the hand of faith.

The mere list is wonderful. Riches of goodness,’ riches of forbearance

and long-suffering,’ riches both of wisdom and knowledge,’ riches of

mercy,’ exceeding riches of grace,’ and riches of glory.’ And His own

Word says, All are yours!’ Glance on in faith, and think of eternity

flowing on and on beyond the mightiest sweep of imagination, and

realize that all His riches in glory’ and the riches of His glory’ are

and shall be for thee!’ In view of this, shall we care to reserve

anything that rust doth corrupt for ourselves?

8. His treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ for thee.’ First, used for

our behalf and benefit. Why did He expend such immeasurable might of

mind upon a world which is to be burnt up, but that He would fit it

perfectly to be, not the home, but the school of His children? The

infinity of His skill is such that the most powerful intellects find a

lifetime too short to penetrate a little way into a few secrets of some

one small department of His working. If we turn to Providence, it is

quite enough to take only one’s own life, and look at it

microscopically and telescopically, and marvel at the treasures of

wisdom lavished upon its details, ordering and shaping and fitting the

tiny confused bits into the true mosaic which He means it to be. Many a

little thing in our lives reveals the same Mind which, according to a

well-known and very beautiful illustration, adjusted a perfect

proportion in the delicate hinges of the snowdrop and the droop of its

bell, with the mass of the globe and the force of gravitation. How kind

we think it if a very talented friend spends a little of his thought

and power of mind in teaching us or planning for us! Have we been

grateful for the infinite thought and wisdom which our Lord has

expended upon us and our creation, preservation, and redemption?

Secondly, to be shared with us. He says, All that I have is thine.’ He

holds nothing back, reserves nothing from His dear children, and what

we cannot receive now He is keeping for us. He gives us hidden riches

of secret places’ now, but by and by He will give us more, and the

glorified intellect will be filled continually out of His treasures of

wisdom and knowledge. But the sanctified intellect will be, must be,

used for Him, and only for Him, now!

9. His Will for thee.’ Think first of the infinite might of that will;

the first great law and the first great force of the universe, from

which alone every other law and every other force has sprung, and to

which all are subordinate. He worketh all things after the counsel of

His own will.’ He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven,

and among the inhabitants of the earth.’ Then think of the infinite

mysteries of that will. For ages and generations the hosts of heaven

have wonderingly watched its vouchsafed unveilings and its sublime

developments, and still they are waiting, watching, and wondering.

Creation and Providence are but the whisper of its power, but

Redemption is its music, and praise is the echo which shall yet fill

His temple. The whisper and the music, yes, and the thunder of His

power,’ are all for thee.’ For what is the good pleasure of His will’?

(Eph. i. 5.) Oh, what a grand list of blessings purposed, provided,

purchased, and possessed, all flowing to us out of it! And nothing but

blessings, nothing but privileges, which we never should have imagined,

and which, even when revealed, we are slow of heart to believe;’

nothing but what should even now fill us with joy unspeakable and full

of glory!’

Think of this will as always and altogether on our side–always working

for us, and in us, and with us, if we will only let it; think of it as

always and only synonymous with infinitely wise and almighty love;

think of it as undertaking all for us, from the great work of our

eternal salvation down to the momentary details of guidance and supply,

and do we not feel utter shame and self-abhorrence at ever having

hesitated for an instant to give up our tiny, feeble, blind will, to

be–not crushed, not even bent, but blent with His glorious and perfect

Will?

10. His Heart for thee.’ Behold … He is mighty … in heart,’ said

Job (Job xxxvi. 5, margin). And this mighty and tender heart is for

thee!’ If He had only stretched forth His hand to save us from bare

destruction, and said, My hand for thee!’ how could we have praised Him

enough? But what shall we say of the unspeakably marvellous

condescension which says, Thou hast ravished (margin, taken away) my

heart, my sister, my spouse!’ The very fountain of His divine life, and

light, and love, the very centre of His being, is given to His beloved

ones, who are not only set as a seal upon His heart,’ but taken into

His heart, so that our life is hid there, and we dwell there in the

very centre of all safety, and power, and love, and glory. What will be

the revelation of that day,’ when the Lord Jesus promises, Ye shall

know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me’? For He implies that we do

not yet know it, and that our present knowledge of this dwelling in Him

is not knowledge at all compared with what He is going to show us about

it.

Now shall we, can we, reserve any corner of our hearts from Him?

11. His Love for thee.’ Not a passive, possible love, but outflowing,

yes, outpouring of the real, glowing, personal love of His mighty and

tender heart. Love not as an attribute, a quality, a latent force, but

an acting, moving, reaching, touching, and grasping power. Love, not a

cold, beautiful, far-off star, but a sunshine that comes and enfolds

us, making us warm and glad, and strong and bright and fruitful.

His love! What manner of love is it? What should be quoted to prove or

describe it? First the whole Bible with its mysteries and marvels of

redemption, then the whole book of Providence and the whole volume of

creation. Then add to these the unknown records of eternity past and

the unknown glories of eternity to come, and then let the immeasurable

quotation be sung by angels and archangels, and all the company of

heaven,’ with all the harps of God, and still that love will be untold,

still it will be the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.’

But it is for thee!’

12. Himself for thee.’ Christ also hath loved us, and given Himself for

us.’ The Son of God … loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ Yes,

Himself! What is the Bride’s true and central treasure? What calls

forth the deepest, brightest, sweetest thrill of love and praise? Not

the Bridegroom’s priceless gifts, not the robe of His resplendent

righteousness, not the dowry of unsearchable riches, not the

magnificence of the palace home to which He is bringing her, not the

glory which she shall share with Him, but Himself! Jesus Christ, who

His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree;’ this same

Jesus,’ whom having not seen, ye love;’ the Son of God, and the Man of

Sorrows; my Saviour, my Friend, my Master, my King, my Priest, my Lord

and my God–He says, I also for thee!’ What an I’! What power and

sweetness we feel in it, so different from any human I,’ for all His

Godhead and all His manhood are concentrated in it, and all for thee!’

And not only all,’ but ever’ for thee. His unchangeableness is the seal

upon every attribute; He will be this same Jesus’ for ever. How can

mortal mind estimate this enormous promise? How can mortal heart

conceive what is enfolded in these words, I also for thee’?

One glimpse of its fulness and glory, and we feel that henceforth it

must be, shall be, and by His grace will be our true-hearted,

whole-hearted cry–

Take myself, and I will be

Ever, ONLY, ALL for Thee!

__________________________________________________________________

[6] The remainder of this chapter is printed in a little penny book,

entitled, I also for Thee, by F. R. H., published by Caswell,

Birmingham, and by Nisbet & Co.

[7] See A. Newton on the Epistle to the Hebrews, ch. ii. ver. 12.

__________________________________________________________________

SELECTIONS FROM

MISS HAVERGAL’S LATEST POEMS.

__________________________________________________________________

An Interlude.

That part is finished! I lay down my pen,

And wonder if the thoughts will flow as fast

Through the more difficult defile. For the last

Was easy, and the channel deeper then.

My Master, I will trust Thee for the rest;

Give me just what Thou wilt, and that will be my best!

How can I tell the varied, hidden need

Of Thy dear children, all unknown to me,

Who at some future time may come and read

What I have written! All are known to Thee.

As Thou hast helped me, help me to the end;

Give me Thy own sweet messages of love to send.

So now, I pray Thee, keep my hand in Thine;

And guide it as Thou wilt. I do not ask

To understand the wherefore’ of each line;

Mine is the sweeter, easier, happier task,

Just to look up to Thee for every word,

Rest in Thy love, and trust, and know that I am heard.

__________________________________________________________________

The Thoughts of God.

They say there is a hollow, safe and still,

A point of coolness and repose

Within the centre of a flame, where life might dwell

Unharmed and unconsumed, as in a luminous shell,

Which the bright walls of fire enclose

In breachless splendour, barrier that no foes

Could pass at will.

There is a point of rest

At the great centre of the cyclone’s force,

A silence at its secret source;–

A little child might slumber undistressed,

Without the ruffle of one fairy curl,

In that strange central calm amid the mighty whirl.

So, in the centre of these thoughts of God,

Cyclones of power, consuming glory-fire,–

As we fall o’erawed

Upon our faces, and are lifted higher

By His great gentleness, and carried nigher

Than unredeemd angels, till we stand

Even in the hollow of His hand,

Nay, more! we lean upon His breast–

There, there we find a point of perfect rest

And glorious safety. There we see

His thoughts to usward, thoughts of peace

That stoop in tenderest love; that still increase

With increase of our need; that never change,

That never fail, or falter, or forget

O pity infinite!

O royal mercy free!

O gentle climax of the depth and height

Of God’s most precious thoughts, most wonderful, most strange!

For I am poor and needy, yet

The Lord Himself, Jehovah, thinketh upon me!’

__________________________________________________________________

Free to Serve.’

She chose His service. For the Lord of Love

Had chosen her, and paid the awful price

For her redemption; and had sought her out,

And set her free, and clothed her gloriously,

And put His royal ring upon her hand,

And crowns of loving-kindness on her head.

She chose it. Yet it seemed she could not yield

The fuller measure other lives could bring;

For He had given her a precious gift,

A treasure and a charge to prize and keep,

A tiny hand, a darling hand, that traced

On her heart’s tablet words of golden love.

And there was not much room for other lines,

For time and thought were spent (and rightly spent,

For He had given the charge), and hours and days

Were concentrated on the one dear task.

But He had need of her. Not one new gem

But many for His crown;–not one fair sheaf,

But many, she should bring. And she should have

A richer, happier harvest-home at last.

Because more fruit, more glory and more praise

Her life should yield to Him. And so He came,

The Master came Himself, and gently took

The little hand in His, and gave it room

Among the angel-harpers. Jesus came

And laid His own hand on the quivering heart,

And made it very still, that He might write

Invisible words of power–Free to serve!’

Then through the darkness and the chill He sent

A heat-ray of His love, developing

The mystic writing, till it glowed and shone

And lit up all her life with radiance new,–

The happy service of a yielded heart.

With comfort that He never ceased to give

(Because her need could never cease) she filled

The empty chalices of other lives,

And time and thought were thenceforth spent for Him

Who loved her with His everlasting love.

Let Him write what He will upon our hearts,

With His unerring pen. They are His own,

Hewn from the rock by His selecting grace,

Prepared for His own glory. Let Him write!

Be sure He will not cross out one sweet word

But to inscribe a sweeter,–but to grave

One that shall shine for ever to His praise,

And thus fulfil our deepest heart-desire.

The tearful eye at first may read the line,

Bondage to grief!’ But He shall wipe away

The tears, and clear the vision, till it read

In ever-brightening letters, Free to serve!’

For whom the Son makes free is free indeed.

Nor only by reclaiming His good gifts,

But by withholding, doth the Master write

These words upon the heart. Not always needs

Erasure of some blessd line of love

For this more blest inscription. Where He finds

A tablet empty for the lines left out,’

That might have been’ engraved with human love

And sweetest human cares, yet never bore

That poetry of life, His own dear hand

Writes Free to serve!’ And these clear characters

Fill with fair colours all the unclaimed space,

Else grey and colourless.

Then let it be

The motto of our lives until we stand

In the great freedom of Eternity,

Where we shall serve Him’ while we see His face,

For ever and for ever Free to serve.’

__________________________________________________________________

Coming to the King.

2 Chronicles ix. 1-12.

__________________________________________________________________

Surely in what place my Lord the King shall be, whether in death or

life, even there also will thy servant be.’–2 Sam. xv. 21.

Where I am, there shall also my servant be.’–John xii. 26.

I came from very far away to see

The King of Salem; for I had been told

Of glory and of wisdom manifold,

And condescension infinite and free.

How could I rest, when I had heard His fame,

In that dark lonely land of death from whence I came?

I came (but not like Sheba’s queen), alone!

No stately train, no costly gifts to bring;

No friend at court, save One, that One the King!

I had requests to spread before His throne,

And I had questions none could solve for me,

Of import deep, and full of awful mystery.

I came and communed with that mighty King,

And told Him all my heart; I cannot say,

In mortal ear, what communings were they.

But wouldst thou know, go too, and meekly bring

All that is in thy heart, and thou shalt hear

His voice of love and power, His answers sweet and clear.

O happy end of every weary quest!

He told me all I needed, graciously;–

Enough for guidance, and for victory

O’er doubts and fears, enough for quiet rest;

And when some veiled response I could not read,

It was not hid from Him,–this was enough indeed.

His wisdom and His glories passed before

My wondering eyes in gradual revelation;

The house that He had built, its strong foundation,

Its living stones; and, brightening more and more,

Fair glimpses of that palace far away,

Where all His loyal ones shall dwell with Him for aye.

True the report that reached my far-off land

Of all His wisdom and transcendent fame;

Yet I believed not until I came,–

Bowed to the dust till raised by royal hand.

The half was never told by mortal word;

My King exceeded all the fame that I had heard!

Oh, happy are His servants! happy they

Who stand continually before His face,

Ready to do His will of wisest grace!

My King! is mine such blessedness to-day?

For I too hear Thy wisdom, line by line,

Thy ever brightening words in holy radiance shine.

Oh, blessd be the Lord thy God, who set

Our King upon His throne! Divine delight

In the Beloved crowning Thee with might,

Honour, and majesty supreme; and yet

The strange and Godlike secret opening thus,–

The kingship of His Christ ordained through love to us!

What shall I render to my glorious King?

I have but that which I receive from Thee;

And what I give, Thou givest back to me,

Transmuted by Thy touch; each worthless thing

Changed to the preciousness of gem or gold,

And by Thy blessing multiplied a thousand fold.

All my desire Thou grantest, whatsoe’er

I ask! Was ever mythic tale or dream

So bold as this reality,–this stream

Of boundless blessings flowing full and free?

Yet more than I have thought or asked of Thee,

Out of Thy royal bounty still Thou givest me.

Now I will turn to my own land, and tell

What I myself have seen and heard of Thee.

And give Thine own sweet message, Come and see!’

And yet in heart and mind for ever dwell

With Thee, my King of Peace, in loyal rest,

Within the fair pavilion of Thy presence blest.

__________________________________________________________________

The Two Paths.

Via Dolorosa and Via Giojosa.

[Suggested by a Picture.]

__________________________________________________________________

My Master, they have wronged Thee and Thy love!

They only told me I should find the path

A Via Dolorosa all the way!

Even Thy sweetest singers only sang

Of pressing onward through the same sharp thorns,

With bleeding footsteps, through the chill dark mist,

Following and struggling till they reach the light,

The rest, the sunshine of the far beyond.

The anthems of the pilgrimage were set

In most pathetic minors, exquisite,

Yet breathing sadness more than any praise;

Thy minstrels let the fitful breezes make

olian moans on their entrusted harps,

Until the listeners thought that this was all

The music Thou hadst given. And so the steps

That halted where the two ways met and crossed,

The broad and narrow, turned aside in fear,

Thinking the radiance of their youth must pass

In sombre shadows if they followed Thee;

Hearing afar such echoes of one strain,

The cross, the tribulation, and the toil,

The conflict, and the clinging in the dark.

What wonder that the dancing feet are stayed

From entering the only path of peace!

Master, forgive them! Tune their harps anew,

And put a new song in their mouths for Thee,

And make Thy chosen people joyful in Thy love.

Lord Jesus, Thou hast trodden once for all

The Via Dolorosa,–and for us!

No artist power or minstrel gift may tell

The cost to Thee of each unfaltering step,

When love that passeth knowledge led Thee on,

Faithful and true to God, and true to us.

And now, belovd Lord, Thou callest us

To follow Thee, and we will take Thy word

About the path which Thou hast marked for us.

Narrow indeed it is! Who does not choose

The narrow track upon the mountain side,

With ever-widening view, and freshening air,

And honeyed heather, rather than the road,

With smoothest breadth of dust and loss of view,

Soiled blossoms not worth gathering, and the noise

Of wheels instead of silence of the hills,

Or music of the waterfalls? Oh, why

Should they misrepresent Thy words, and make

Narrow’ synonymous with very hard’?

For Thou, Divinest Wisdom, Thou hast said

Thy ways are ways of pleasantness, and all

Thy paths are peace; and that the path of him

Who wears Thy perfect robe of righteousness

Is as the light that shineth more and more

Unto the perfect day. And Thou hast given

An olden promise, rarely quoted now, [8]

Because it is too bright for our weak faith:

If they obey and serve Him, they shall spend

Days in prosperity, and they shall spend

Their years in pleasures.’ All because Thy days

Were full of sorrow, and Thy lonely years

Were passed in grief’s acquaintance–all for us!

Master, I set my seal that Thou art true,

Of Thy good promise not one thing hath failed!

And I would send a ringing challenge forth,

To all who know Thy name, to tell it out,

Thy faithfulness to every written word,

Thy loving-kindness crowning all the days,–

To say and sing with me: The Lord is good,

His mercy is for ever, and His truth

Is written on each page of all my life!’

Yes! there is tribulation, but Thy power

Can blend it with rejoicing. There are thorns,

But they have kept us in the narrow way,

The King’s Highway of holiness and peace.

And there is chastening, but the Father’s love

Flows through it; and would any trusting heart

Forego the chastening and forego the love?

And every step leads on to more and more,’

From strength to strength Thy pilgrims pass and sing

The praise of Him who leads them on and on,

From glory unto glory, even here!

__________________________________________________________________

[8] Job xxvi. 15.

__________________________________________________________________

Only for Jesus.

Only for Jesus! Lord, keep it for ever

Sealed on the heart and engraved on the life!

Pulse of all gladness and nerve of endeavour,

Secret of rest, and the strength of our strife.

__________________________________________________________________

Vessels of Mercy, Prepared unto Glory.’

(Rom. ix. 23.)

Jer. xviii. 4.

Isa. xxii. 23, 24.

2 Tim. ii. 21.

2 Cor. iv. 5, 6.

Acts ix. 15.

Prov. xxv. 4.

Vessels of mercy, prepared unto glory!

This is your calling and this is your joy!

This, for the new year unfolding before ye,

Tells out the terms of your blessed employ.

Vessels, it may be, all empty and broken,

Marred in the Hand of inscrutable skill;

(Love can accept the mysterious token!)

Marred but to make them more beautiful still.

Vessels, it may be, not costly or golden;

Vessels, it may be, of quantity small,

Yet by the Nail in the Sure Place upholden,

Never to shiver and never to fall.

Vessels to honour, made sacred and holy,

Meet for the use of the Master we love,

Ready for service, all simple and lowly,

Ready, one day, for the temple above.

Yes, though the vessels be fragile and earthen,

God hath commanded His glory to shine;

Treasure resplendent henceforth is our burthen,

Excellent power, not ours but Divine.

Chosen in Christ ere the dawn of Creation,

Chosen for Him, to be filled with His grace,

Chosen to carry the streams of salvation

Into each thirsty and desolate place.

Take all Thy vessels, O glorious Finer,

Purge all the dross, that each chalice may be

Pure in Thy pattern, completer, diviner,

Filled with Thy glory and shining for Thee.

__________________________________________________________________

The Turned Lesson.

I thought I knew it!’ she said,

I thought I had learnt it quite!’

But the gentle Teacher shook her head,

With a grave yet loving light

In the eyes that fell on the upturned face,

As she gave the book

With the mark still set in the self-same place.

I thought I knew it!’ she said;

And a heavy tear fell down,

As she turned away with bending head,

Yet not for reproof or frown,

Not for the lesson to learn again,

Or the play hour lost;–

It was something else that gave the pain.

She could not have put it in words,

But her Teacher understood,

As God understands the chirp of the birds

In the depth of an autumn wood.

And a quiet touch on the reddening cheek

Was quite enough;

No need to question, no need to speak.

Then the gentle voice was heard,

Now I will try you again!’

And the lesson was mastered,–every word!

Was it not worth the pain?

Was it not kinder the task to turn,

Than to let it pass,

As a lost, lost leaf that she did not learn?

Is it not often so,

That we only learn in part,

And the Master’s testing-time may show

That it was not quite by heart’?

Then He gives, in His wise and patient grace,

That lesson again

With the mark still set in the self-same place.

Only, stay by His side

Till the page is really known.

It may be we failed because we tried

To learn it all alone,

And now that He would not let us lose

One lesson of love

(For He knows the loss),–can we refuse?

But oh! how could we dream

That we knew it all so well!

Reading so fluently, as we deem,

What we could not even spell!

And oh! how could we grieve once more

That Patient One

Who has turned so many a task before!

That waiting One, who now

Is letting us try again;

Watching us with the patient brow,

That bore the wreath of pain;

Thoroughly teaching what He would teach,

Line upon line,

Thoroughly doing His work in each.

Then let our hearts be still,’

Though our task is turned to-day;

Oh let Him teach us what He will,

In His own gracious way.

Till, sitting only at Jesus’ feet,

As we learn each line

The hardest is found all clear and sweet!

__________________________________________________________________

Sunday Night.

Rest him, O Father! Thou didst send him forth

With great and gracious messages of love;

But Thy ambassador is weary now,

Worn with the weight of his high embassy.

Now care for him as Thou hast cared for us

In sending him; and cause him to lie down

In Thy fresh pastures, by Thy streams of peace.

Let Thy left hand be now beneath his head,

And Thine upholding right encircle him,

And, underneath, the Everlasting arms

Be felt in full support. So let him rest,

Hushed like a little child, without one care;

And so give Thy belovd sleep to-night.

Rest him, dear Master! He hath poured for us

The wine of joy, and we have been refreshed.

Now fill his chalice, give him sweet new draughts

Of life and love, with Thine own hand; be Thou

His ministrant to-night; draw very near

In all Thy tenderness and all Thy power.

Oh speak to him! Thou knowest how to speak

A word in season to Thy weary ones,

And he is weary now. Thou lovest him–

Let Thy disciple lean upon Thy breast,

And, leaning, gain new strength to rise and shine.’

Rest him, O loving Spirit! Let Thy calm

Fall on his soul to-night. O holy Dove,

Spread Thy bright wing above him, let him rest

Beneath its shadow; let him know afresh

The infinite truth and might of Thy dear name–

Our Comforter!’ As gentlest touch will stay

The strong vibrations of a jarring chord,

So lay Thy hand upon his heart, and still

Each overstraining throb, each pulsing pain.

Then, in the stillness, breathe upon the strings,

And let thy holy music overflow

With soothing power his listening, resting soul.

__________________________________________________________________

A Song in the Night.

[Written in severe pain, Sunday afternoon, October 8th, 1876, at the

Pension Wengen, Alps.]

I take this pain, Lord Jesus,

From Thine own hand,

The strength to bear it bravely

Thou wilt command.

I am too weak for effort,

So let me rest,

In hush of sweet submission,

On Thine own breast.

I take this pain, Lord Jesus,

As proof indeed

That Thou art watching closely

My truest need;

That Thou, my Good Physician,

Art watching still;

That all Thine own good pleasure

Thou wilt fulfil.

I take this pain, Lord Jesus;

What Thou dost choose

The soul that really loves Thee

Will not refuse.

It is not for the first time

I trust to-day;

For Thee my heart has never

A trustless Nay!’

I take this pain, Lord Jesus;

But what beside?

Tis no unmingled portion

Thou dost provide.

In every hour of faintness

My cup runs o’er

With faithfulness and mercy,

And love’s sweet store.

I take this pain, Lord Jesus,

As Thine own gift;

And true though tremulous praises

I now uplift.

I am too weak to sing them,

But Thou dost hear

The whisper from the pillow,

Thou art so near!

‘Tis Thy dear hand, O Saviour,

That presseth sore,

The hand that bears the nail-prints

For evermore.

And now beneath its shadow,

Hidden by Thee,

The pressure only tells me

Thou lovest me!

__________________________________________________________________

What will You do without Him?

I could not do without Him!

Jesus is more to me

Than all the richest, fairest gifts

Of earth could ever be.

But the more I find Him precious–

And the more I find Him true–

The more I long for you to find

What He can be to you.

You need not do without Him,

For He is passing by,

He is waiting to be gracious,

Only waiting for your cry:

He is waiting to receive you–

To make you all His own!

Why will you do without Him,

And wander on alone?

Why will you do without Him?

Is He not kind indeed?

Did He not die to save you?

Is He not all you need?

Do you not want a Saviour?

Do you not want a Friend?

One who will love you faithfully,

And love you to the end?

Why will you do without Him?

The Word of God is true!

The world is passing to its doom–

And you are passing too.

It may be no to-morrow

Shall dawn on you or me;

Why will you run the awful risk

Of all eternity?

What will you do without Him,

In the long and dreary day

Of trouble and perplexity,

When you do not know the way,

And no one else can help you,

And no one guides you right,

And hope comes not with morning,

And rest comes not with night?

You could not do without Him,

If once He made you see

The fetters that enchain you,

Till He hath set you free.

If once you saw the fearful load

Of sin upon your soul;

The hidden plague that ends in death,

Unless He makes you whole!

What will you do without Him,

When death is drawing near?

Without His love–the only love

That casts out every fear;

When the shadow-valley opens,

Unlighted and unknown,

And the terrors of its darkness

Must all be passed alone!

What will you do without Him,

When the great white throne is set,

And the Judge who never can mistake,

And never can forget,–

The Judge whom you have never here

As Friend and Saviour sought,

Shall summon you to give account

Of deed and word and thought?

What will you do without Him,

When He hath shut the door,

And you are left outside, because

You would not come before?

When it is no use knocking,

No use to stand and wait;

For the word of doom tolls through your heart

That terrible Too late!’

You cannot do without Him!

There is no other name

By which you ever can be saved,

No way, no hope, no claim!

Without Him–everlasting loss

Of love, and life, and light!

Without Him–everlasting woe,

And everlasting night.

But with Him–oh! with Jesus!

Are any words so blest?

With Jesus, everlasting joy

And everlasting rest!

With Jesus–all the empty heart

Filled with His perfect love;

With Jesus–perfect peace below,

And perfect bliss above.

Why should you do without Him?

It is not yet too late;

He has not closed the day of grace,

He has not shut the gate.

He calls you! hush! He calls you!

He would not have you go

Another step without Him,

Because He loves you so.

Why will you do without Him?

He calls and calls again–

Come unto Me! Come unto Me!’

Oh, shall He call in vain?

He wants to have you with Him;

Do you not want Him too?

You cannot do without Him,

And He wants–even you.

__________________________________________________________________

Church Missionary Jubilee Hymn.

He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.’–Isa.

liii. 11.

Rejoice with Jesus Christ to-day,

All ye who love His holy sway!

The travail of His soul is past,

He shall be satisfied at last.

Rejoice with Him, rejoice indeed!

For He shall see His chosen seed.

But ours the trust, the grand employ,

To work out this divinest joy.

Of all His own He loseth none,

They shall be gathered one by one;

He gathereth the smallest grain,

His travail shall not be in vain.

Arise and work! arise and pray

That He would haste the dawning day!

And let the silver trumpet sound,

Wherever Satan’s slaves are found.

The vanquished foe shall soon be stilled,

The conquering Saviour’s joy fulfilled,

Fulfilled in us, fulfilled in them,

His crown, His royal diadem.

Soon, soon our waiting eyes shall see

The Saviour’s mighty Jubilee!

His harvest joy is filling fast,

He shall be satisfied at last.

__________________________________________________________________

A Happy New Year to You!

New mercies, new blessings, new light on thy way;

New courage, new hope, and new strength for each day;

New notes of thanksgiving, new chords of delight,

New praise in the morning, new songs in the night,

New wine in thy chalice, new altars to raise;

New fruits for thy Master, new garments of praise;

New gifts from His treasures, new smiles from His face;

New streams from the Fountain of infinite grace;

New stars for thy crown, and new tokens of love;

New gleams of the glory that waits thee above;

New light of His countenance, full and unpriced;

All this be the joy of thy new life in Christ!

__________________________________________________________________

Another Year.

Another year is dawning!

Dear Master, let it be

In working or in waiting,

Another year with Thee.

Another year of leaning

Upon Thy loving breast,

Of ever-deepening trustfulness,

Of quiet, happy rest.

Another year of mercies,

Of faithfulness and grace;

Another year of gladness

In the shining of Thy face.

Another year of progress,

Another year of praise;

Another year of proving

Thy presence all the days.’

Another year of service,

Of witness for Thy love;

Another year of training

For holier work above.

Another year is dawning!

Dear Master, let it be

On earth, or else in heaven,

Another year for Thee!

__________________________________________________________________

New Year’s Wishes.

What shall I wish thee?

Treasures of earth?

Songs in the springtime,

Pleasure and mirth?

Flowers on thy pathway,

Skies ever clear?

Would this ensure thee

A Happy New Year?

What shall I wish thee?

What can be found

Bringing thee sunshine

All the year round?

Where is the treasure,

Lasting and dear,

That shall ensure thee

A Happy New Year?

Faith that increaseth,

Walking in light;

Hope that aboundeth,

Happy and bright;

Love that is perfect,

Casting out fear;

These shall ensure thee

A Happy New Year.

Peace in the Saviour,

Rest at His feet,

Smile of His countenance

Radiant and sweet,

Joy in His presence!

Christ ever near!

This will ensure thee

A Happy New Year!

__________________________________________________________________

Most Blessed For Ever.’

(Though the date of these lines is uncertain, they are chosen as a

closing chord to her songs on earth.)

The prayer of many a day is all fulfilled,

Only by full fruition stayed and stilled;

You asked for blessing as your Father willed,

Now He hath answered: Most blessed for ever!’

Lost is the daily light of mutual smile,

You therefore sorrow now a little while;

But floating down life’s dimmed and lonely aisle

Comes the clear music: Most blessed for ever!’

From the great anthems of the Crystal Sea,

Through the far vistas of Eternity,

Grand echoes of the word peal on for thee,

Sweetest and fullest: Most blessed for ever.’

On this day…

• What if Jesus meant the stuff he said? – 2011
• Heroes of the Cross – 2011
• We didn’t dare them to take Jesus seriously – 2011
• Our King Forever – 2011
• The flesh, and the spirit – 2011
• God has done everything necessary to enthrall us with Himself – 2011
• Acknowledging our sin – 2011
• A decision for Jesus Christ – 2011
• Where worship doesn’t exist – 2011
• Waiting on God! – Andrew Murray – 2010