May
May / 77 dung," so worthless had he discovered them to be. He bids good-bye to his own gigantic ME, and cries out in language I wish we could all adopt, "I am crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20) This "no longer I' is one of those "swords of the Spirit" about which Paul speaks when he describes the Christian's armor, and I know none that is more effective in our conflict with the unruly giant ME. Not even a giant can resist the disintegrating process of an absolute and persistent resolution to ignore his existence; and if we will but adopt Paul's language, we cannot fail sooner or later to gain Paul's glorious victories.
Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life. (Prv 4:23) By whatever name philosophers may call this "heart" out of which flow the "springs of life,' commonsense would teach us that it means nothing more or less than the will; for certainly to my consciousness the will is the governing force in my nature and the spring of all my actions. It is out of the secret springs of our will that we bring forth the good or evil treasures of our
— lives. No one who will take a concordance and run their eyes down the long list of passages concerning the "heart" can fail to see that when God speaks of the "heart," he means something far different than that bundle of emotions which we usually call our hearts. We, too, often use the word heart in a far deeper sense. We speak, for instance, of getting "at the heart" of a _ matter, and we mean, not the feelings that accompany it, but the central idea that dominates it. In the same way when God
_ speaks of our "hearts," he means our true central self, that "ego"
- within us that dominates our whole being. The word is used in
78 / Daily He Leads Me the Bible more than one thousand times. The heart is said to understand and to be ignorant, to be wise and to be silly, to exercise good judgment or bad, to be stupefied, to grow fat, to resist the light, to be discouraged, to fluctuate in doubt, to be of the same mind with another, to seek knowledge, to work wickedness, to devise wicked imaginations, to be set to do evil, to be set to do good, to be astonished, to tremble, to be glad; it is said, in short, to do and to be exactly what the man himself is said to do and to be. In innumerable instances where the word
"heart" is used, it would not make sense to translate it by the affections or the emotions.
Burnt offering and sin offering thou hast not required. / J Then! said,"Lo,1come;/inthe roll of the book it is written of me; /I delight to do thy will, O my God." (Ps 40:6-7)
Fenelon says: "I do not ask from you a love that is tender and emotional, but only that your will should lean towards love.
The purest of all loves is a will so filled with the will of God that there remains nothing else." We "delight" to do the will of God, not because our piety is so exalted, but because we have the sense to see that his will is the best; and therefore what he wants we want also. This sort of delight may not be as pleasing to ourselves, but it is far more satisfactory to him than any amount of delight in joyous emotions or gratifying luminations.
Someone will ask whether we are not told to give up our wills.
To this I answer, yes, but in giving up our wills we are not meant to become empty of willpower, to be left poor, flabby, nerveless creatures who have no will. We are simply meant to substitute for our own foolish, misdirected wills of ignorance and immaturity the perfect and beautiful and wise will of God. It is not willpower in the abstract we are to give up, but our misguided use of that willpower. The will we are to give up is our will as it is misdirected and so parted from God's will, not our will when it is one with God's will. For when our will is in harmony with his will, when it has the stamp of oneness with him, it would be wrong for us to give it up.
May / 79 Behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Eccl 2:11)
A little exercise of commonsense would show us that this must be the inevitable result of everything that has ME and ME only for its center. There is never anything to be gained in it, but it is always a grievous loss, and it can never turn out to be anything but "vanity and a striving after the wind' or, as another translation puts it, "vexation of spirit." Have we not all discovered something of this in our own experience? You have set your heart, perhaps, on procuring something for the benefit or pleasure of your own great big ME; but when you have secured it, this ungrateful ME has refused to be satisfied and has turned away from what it has cost you so much to procure. Or you have labored to have the claims of this ME recognized by those around you and have reared with great pains and effort a high pinnacle, upon which you have seated yourself to be admired by all beholders. And lo! at the critical moment, the pinnacle has tottered over, and your glorious ME has fallen into the dust; and contempt, instead of honor, has become its portion. Never, under any circumstances, has it really in the end paid you to try and exalt your great exacting ME, for always, sooner or later, it has all proved to be nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit.
When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down ina place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited. ... Go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, "Friend, go up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all. (Lk 14:8, 10)
ME is a most exacting person, requiring the best seats and the highest places for itself, and feeling grievously wounded if its claims are not recognized and its rights considered. Most of the quarrels among Christian workers arise from the clamorings of this gigantic ME. "So and so is exalted above ME", "My rights have been trampled upon", "No one considers ME." How much
80 / Daily He Leads Me there is of this sort of thing, expressed or unexpressed, in every heart where ME is king! How few of us understand the true glory of taking our seats in the lowest rooms! And yet if we are to have real "honor in the presence of all," this is what we must do.
Likewise you that are younger be subject to the elders.
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (1 Pt 5:5) It seems very hard for Christians to take on this spirit of subjection to one another. The ME in them rebels mightily at any suggestion of such a thing. And yet in the kingdom of heaven it is the only road to greatness.
Our Lord tells us we do well to beware of people who "love salutations in the market-places, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost places at a feast", and our own
.instincts tell us the same.
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off. (Acts 2:38-39)
The Holy Spirit, like the sunlight, is free to all. The world is full of sunlight, but the plant in a cellar dwindles and dies for lack of it. What is needed is not a new outpouring of the sunlight, but the placing of the plant in the sunlight which is already poured out. It is not that God must give anything more, but that we must receive more of that which he has already given.
Be filled with that Spirit which fills all the earth around you.
Do not ask for more of the Spirit, but let the Spirit have more of you.
I 0 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God:
(1 Cor 6:19)
May / 81 This is in a sense true of all Christians, for on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to the church, "which is the house of God," to abide in her midst forever. But in individual experience, the power of it is not always known, and each soul needs to come to its own Pentecost. The conscious presence of the abiding Comforter is not realized by every Christian. All, of course, must have the Spirit, because the new birth is impossible without his presence and power. But to some souls there comes at a certain stage in their progress a wonderful experience, which they seem instinctively to call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and which lifts them up into a region of spiritual life that is as far above their former level, as the mountain top is above the valley, and from which but few ever descend. This baptism does for souls now, just what it did for the disciples on the day of Pentecost. It purifies; it transforms; it endues with power from on high; it satisfies; it comforts; it inspires; it controls. It bestows upon those who receive it, that "well of water springing up into everlasting life," for the soul's own comfort, and those "rivers of living water" flowing out for the blessing of others, which our Lord promised to all who should believe in him.
I Then Ephraim shall become like a mighty warrior,/and their hearts shall be glad as with wine. / Their children shall see it and rejoice, / their hearts shall exult in the Lord.
(Zc 10:7) To rejoice in the Lord is not a pious fiction, nor is it merely a religious phrase. Neither is it anything mysterious or aweinspiring. It is just good plain happiness and comfort. It is something people around us can see and be glad about. It smoothes away the frowns and shuts out the sighs. Long faces and gloomy tones of voice disappear in its presence. It is even full of innocent mirthfulness and lightheartedness. I remember my dear father, who was a saint on earth if ever there was one.
Once, during what was considered a very solemn occasion, something struck his sense of the ludicrous, and he gave a merry lighthearted laugh. A friend reproved him for laughing on sucha
82 / Daily He Leads Me "solemn occasion." He turned to me and said in his dear merry voice, calling me by my pet name, "Han, if people who know their sins are forgiven and that God loves them and cares for them cannot laugh, I don't know who can." I believe I have never since had a good laugh at anything, that it has not recalled to my mind my father's genuine happiness in knowing himself to be in the care and keeping of his Father in heaven.
I 2 Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." (Neh 8:10)
Joy is always a source of strength. When we are happy, we feel equal to anything; when we are cast down, everything is a burden. This is true on the earthly plane, and of course it is just as true on the spiritual plane, for the psychological laws that govern the two realms are the same. It seems, however, as if many Christians thought the laws of these two realms were exactly opposite to one another and that depression and discouragement were greater elements of strength in the spiritual life than joy could ever be. Consequently, depression and discouragement are looked upon as very pious and humble frames of mind, and joy is considered to be a sort of spiritual bon-bon, only to be partaken of at rare and uncertain intervals. wf Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you... and he will put a yoke of iron upon your neck, until he has destroyed you. (Dt 28:47-48)
Notice the use of the words "because" and "therefore" in these two passages. "Because" the Lord is not served with joyfulness and gladness, "therefore" there can be no fruit, and service becomes "a yoke of iron" upon our necks. This "because" and "therefore" are inseparably connected in the spiritual life. The
May / 83 "therefore" is not an arbitrary sentence of God, but the natural and necessary result of the "because." If we will not rejoice and be glad in heart in the Lord, then we shall inevitably be in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in want of all things elsewhere. For our souls are of such a divine origin, that no other joy but joy in God can ever satisfy them. It is like trying to satisfy a man of culture with the joys of a savage. He simply could not enjoy them. They would give him no pleasure, but would, instead, bore him and weary him beyond words; and this is why all thej soon fade. They cannot satisfy the soul that was made for God, I May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy! /
He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, / shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. (Ps 126:6) God who made the soul, made it for this high destiny, and his object, therefore, in all the discipline and training of life, is to bring us to the place where we shall find our joy in him alone.
For this purpose he is obliged often to stain our pleasant pictures and to thwart and disappoint our brightest anticipations. He detaches us from all else that he may attach us to himself; not from an arbitrary will, but because he knows that only socan we be really happy. Ido not mean by this that it will be necessary for all one's friends to die, or for all one's money to be lost; but I do mean that the soul shall find itself, either from inward or outward causes, desolate and bereft and empty of all comfort, except in God. We must come to the end of everything that is not God, in order to find our joy in God alone.
I Then] will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; / and I will praise thee with the lyre, O God, my
God. (Ps 43:4] To "go" to him is nothing mysterious. It simply means to turn our minds to him, to rest our hearts on him, and to turn away
84 / Daily He Leads Me from all other resting places. It means that we must not look at or think about and trouble over our circumstances, our surroundings, our perplexities, or our experiences. But we must look at and think about the Lord, and must ask ourselves, not,
"How do I feel about this?" but, "How does the Lord feel?" not, "How shall I manage it?" but, "How will He manage it?'
I But let all who take refuge in thee rejoice, / let them ever sing for joy;/and do thou defend them,/that those who love thy name may exult in thee. (Ps 5:11)
The Bible is full of declarations concerning rejoicing in the Lord. In order to fully understand the subject, we must have a clear comprehension of what spiritual joy and gladness really are. Some people seem to look upon spiritual joy as a thing, a sort of lump or package of joy, stored away in one's heart, to be looked at and rejoiced over. Now, as a fact, joy is not a thing at all. It is only the gladness that comes from the possession of something good or the knowledge of something pleasant.
Christian joy is simply our gladness in knowing Christ and in our possession of such a God and Savior. We do not on an earthly plane rejoice in our joy, but in the thing that causes our joy. On the heavenly plane it is the same. We are not to rejoice in our joy, but we are to "rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of our salvation." And this joy no man or devil can take from us, and no earthly sorrows can touch.
I Then he led forth his people like sheep, / and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. /He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid; / but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. / And he brought them to his holy land.
(Ps 78:52-54) One writer says that the spiritual life is divided into three stages: the stage of joyful beginnings, the stage of desolation, and the stage of joy in God alone. First, there is the state of beginnings, when the soul is full of sensible delights and when everything in our life seems to prosper. Then, as the soul
May / 85 advances in the divine life, there comes very often the stage of desolation, when the Christian seems to pass through a wilderness, and to suffer, it may be, the loss of all things, both inward and outward. If this period of desolation is faithfully traversed, there comes finally, on the other side of it, the stage of an unaltered and unalterable joy and gladness in God. All has been lost in the desert stage, that all may be found in God further on. The only danger is that the soul in this desert stage might faint and fail under the stress of desolation and turn back to the fleshpots of Egypt for its joy. One writer says that this desert is filled with the bodies of "frustrated saints", and I think we can understand what he means.
I For affliction does not come from the dust, / nor does trouble sprout from the ground; / but man is born to trouble / as the sparks fly upward. (Jb 5:6-7)
Trouble is an essential and inevitable thing in this stage of our existence. We are "born" to it. Our day-to-day life is full of it.
It is part of our universal environment. No one escapes it.
Commonsense would tell us, therefore, that there must be something bound up in trouble which is necessary for us, something without which we should suffer a grievous loss.
It cannot be, as so many seem to think, because of neglect on God's part that trouble should be so universal, for the Bible plainly teaches that it is a part of our birthright. "Man that is born of woman," we are told, "is of few days and full of trouble', and the psalmist, in considering this, declares that he knows
God's judgments to be right and that he has afflicted him in faithfulness.
It is very plain, therefore, that troubles come because of God's faithfulness and not, as so many seem to think, because of his unfaithfulness.
I Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was...
. Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there,
86 / Daily He Leads Me so that you may believe."
... Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
(Jn 11:5-6, 14-15, 21) He loved them, therefore he stayed away! It was his faithfulness, no this unfaithfulness, that permitted their sorrow to come upon them without hindrance from him. We may be sure that what was true of their sorrow is true of our sorrows also. We say in our ignorance, "If you had been here, this or that would not have gone wrong", but if we could see into the heart of the Lord, we should hear him saying in reply, "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there." "I am glad." Love can never be glad of Soe ee te thinner of the hurt some infinitely greater blessing. Therefore we may be sure, no matter how unlikely it it may seem, that iat hidden in every one of our sorrows is a blessing which it would be a most grievous loss for us s to miss. os For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. (Heb 12:6)
What are the blessings that sorrow and trial bear in their hands? What is the meaning of the trouble of which the world is so full?
The answer is to be found in this one sentence, "For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." The meaning of trouble is love. For trouble is not punishment in our sense of the word; it is chastening. To human thought the word punishment has a legal sense and means retribution or vengeance. But God's idea of punishment is the parental idea of chastening. According to Webster, chasten means "to inflict pain upon any one in order to purify from errors or faults." God's chastenings, therefore, are for purifying, not for vengeance. The meaning of trouble, therefore, is plainly that we may be made "partakers of God's holiness." In other words, it is for "character building," and character building i is to us the most important thing in the whole universe. What
May / 87 happens to me is of no account whatever compared to what Iam.
Therefore, no present ease, or comfort, or absence of trial is to be weighed for a moment against the building up of character for eternity.
2] He who spares the rod hates his son,/ but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. (Prv 13:24)
Hate punishes for vengeance, but love punishes for reformation. God has no feelings of vengeance to satisfy toward us, that he sends trouble upon us. But he has a heart of implacable love that cannot be satisfied until it sees us perfect. Let us be thankful, then, that our God loves us enough to chasten us, and let us learn to kiss the rod with which he smites. How thankful we ought to be that our Father in heaven loves us too much to spare the rod and that his love is wise enough to chasten us when we need it!
And | will put this third into the fire, / and refine them as one refines silver, / and test them as gold is tested. /
They will call on my name, / and I will answer them./I will say, "They are my people'; / and they will say, "The Lord is my God."
(Ze 13:9) To refine anything does not mean to punish it, but only to purify it; to get rid of all its dross and rubbish and to bring out its full beauty and worth. It is a blessing, not a curse. Instead of thinking of it as something God demands of us, it really is something we ought to demand of God. We have a right to be made as pure as God can make us. This is our claim upon him.
He created us, and we have a right to demand that he should make out of us the best he can, that he should do this refining work on the creatures he has called into being. It is his duty to burn up our dross and bring out our full beauty and worth. Love demands that he should.
George MacDonald speaks some strong words concerning this: "Man has aclaim on God, a divine claim for any pain, want,
88 / Daily He Leads Me disappointment, or misery that will help to make him what he ought to be. He has aclaim to be punished, and to be spared not one pang that may urge him towards repentance; yea, he has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side, to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep-dogs of the Great Shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he comes to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living
God within him; that nothing is good but the will of God; nothing noble enough for the desire of the heart of man but oneness with the eternal. For this, God must make him yield his very being, that he himself may enter in and dwell with him." ve Blessed is the man whom thou dost chasten, O Lord,/ and whom thou dost teach out of thy law / to give him respite from days of trouble. (Ps 94:12-13)
Besides the blessed chastening and refining work of sorrow and trouble, I believe it has often another purpose, and that is to thwart us in a course that our Heavenly Father knows would be disastrous and to turn us into safer and more successful paths.
Disappointments are often direct gateways to prosperity in the very things we have thought they were going to ruin for ever.
Joseph's story is an illustration of this. He had the promise of a kingdom, but instead he received slavery, and cruel treachery, and imprisonment, and it looked as if all hope of a kingdom was over for ever. But these very trials were the gateway into his kingdom, and in no other way could he have reached it. God's thwartings are often our grandest opportunities.
For the Lord will comfort Zion / he will comfort all her waste places, /and will make her wilderness like Eden,/ her desert like the garden of the Lord; / joy and gladness will be found in her, / thanksgiving and the voice of song. (Is 51:3}
We have often seen our deserts turn into the garden of the
Lord and have found beautiful trees coming 1 thought there were only thorns and briers. The marveiuus —__ is that we should ever let ourselves become so utterly cast down and overwhelmed when fresh trouble comes. I think it would be a good exercise of soul for us to write out a little record for our own private use of all the times when this marvelous transformation has happened in our experience. It might make us less ready to despair under our next trial. wi) 5 Will the Lord spurn for ever, / and never again be favorable: / Has his steadfast love for ever ceased? / Are his promises at an end for all time? / Has God forgotten to be gracious / Has he in anger shut up his compassion} (Ps 77:7-9)
The natural heart is continually asking such questions as these. Because we cannot see the hand of God in our affairs, we rush to the conclusion that he has lost sight of them and of us.
We look at how things seem instead of at the underlying facts.
We declare that, because God is unseen, he must necessarily be absent. This is especially true if we are conscious of having ourselves wandered away and forgotten him. We judge him by ourselves and think that he must have also forgotten and forsaken us. We measure his truth by our-falseness and find it so unfaithful. But there is neither commonsense in this nor divine revelation. How utterly foolish it is, 1 might even say idiotic, to make our feelings the test of God's actions; as if he came and went in response to the continual changes in our emotions! Such ideas would turn the omnipotent, ever-present
God, into a mere helpless puppet, pulled by the strings of our varying emotions! But this, of course, is both inconceivable and impossible; for the God revealed to us in the Bible is aGod who never, under any conceivable circumstances, leaves us, or forgets us, or neglects our interests. He is shown to us there as a tender Shepherd, who performs with the utmost fidelity all the shepherd's duties; who does not forsake his sheep in the cloudy and dark day, nor desert them when the wolf comes, but who
85 / Daily He Leads Me always draws nearer in every time of need and goes after each sheep that wanders until he finds it. The hireling flees when danger appears because he is a hireling, but the Good Shepherd only sticks closer than ever. oe By faith he [Moses] left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king; for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. (Heb 11:27) This is the vital point, to see "him who is invisible."
Everything hinges on this; and the difference between a triumphant Christian and a despondent one generally arises from the fact that the former has his eyes opened to the hidden
God in all things, while the latter is full of doubts as to his presence. But sin ice he has himself said, I will never | leave you nor forsake you," surely every one of us is bound to believe him and to assert boldly, in spite of every appearance to thec contrary, our unwavering confidence in the fact 0 f his abiding | presence and his unfailing ¢ care.
Lan) SmaSaee & 9 For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel. (Jer 51:5, KJV)
Even though their land was "filled with sin against the Holy One of Isrz Israel," still God did not forsake them. Through all the time of Israel's backsliding, although often unable to manifest himself because of their hardness of heart, still he was with them, their hidden caretaker and protector. The Book of Esther isa striking example of this. The name Esther means secret or hidden, and the whole book is a story of the hidden presence of i God in the midst of his people, at a time when their backsliding
~ had so blinded their eyes that they could not see him. Not once in the whole book is the name of God mentioned. Yet his overruling care and guidance were never more manifest than in the events here recorded. The children of Israel seemed to have forgotten God, and to have left him out of all their thoughts; and
May / 91 to them, no doubt, it must have seemed as if he had likewise ~~ providence, and by a series of apparently natural events, and 7 most unlikely means, using a drunken king, a deceiving woman,
, asleepless night, an upstart servant, and a malicious enemy as MN _ links in the chain, he brought to pass his will concerning them, and saved them in the time of their need. He does the same now
) for his people, watching over them the most tenderly at the very | moments when he seems the most hidden. This is the case even when the hiding has been caused by our own unfaithfulness or backsliding. We may forsake him, but he never forsakes us, no _ matter how much it may seem as if he has. y), Why do you say, O Jacob, / and speak, O Israel, / "My way is hid from the Lord,/ and my right is disregarded by my God": / Have you not known Have you not heard! / The Lord is the everlasting God,/ the Creator of the ends of the earth.
. (Is 40:27-28) When we say with Jacob, "My way is hid from the Lord," it is , because we do not know God. He is hidden from us, and we
5 think he is therefore absent; we do not see him and we think he / does not see us. Like a child in delirium that cannot see its
) mother, although she is holding it tenderly in her arms, and that | calls out in despair, "O mother, mother, come!" so we in the | delirium of our unbelief call out, "How long will you forget me,
\O Lord? For ever? How long will you hide your face from me?' All the time his arms are underneath us, and his love surrounds us on every side.
When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was round about the city. And the servant said,
"Alas, my master! What shall we do" He said, 'Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them."
(2 Kgs 6:15-16)
92 / Daily He Leads Me God may be hidden from us, but we can never be hidden from him. This scene in the life of Elisha illustrates this. The king of Syria was warring against Israel, but his designs were continually frustrated by Elisha. At last he determined to take Elisha captive, and sent an army to surround the prophet's city. When
Elisha's servant saw the forces arrayed against his master, he was dismayed. But Elisha prayed that the Lord would open the eyes of his servant. "So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and / chariots of fire round about Elisha." Were our eyes but opened,
') as were the eyes of the servant, we too should see in every time " of trial or danger, the mountains round about us full of the horses and chariots of God!
That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together,
Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. (Lk 24:13-16)
Now as then it often happens that the Lord is walking with his people, as he did with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. But, like them, we do not know him. We need to have our eyes opened that we may see him. These disciples saw with their bodily eyes, but we are to see with our spiritual eyes. Our seeing is to be by believing. Faith is the soul's eyesight. The word see is used not only of the sense of vision by which we perceive external objects, but also of that inward perception which gives us a certain knowledge of spiritual things. We say, for instance, of a mathematical problem, "I see it," meaning, not that our outward eyes see it worked out on a blackboard, but that our inward perception grasps it as an ascertained fact. It is in this sense that we shall come to see him who is invisible, not with our outward eyes, but with the inward eye of our deepest perceptions. In other words, if we would discover the hidden
God, we must simply believe, in spite of every appearance to the
May / 93 contrary, that he is with us and is watching over us and caring for us every minute of the day. Though we see him not, we must believe he is there, and, so believing, we shall surely "rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory!"
They that strive for the mastery are temperate in all things. (1 Cor 9:25, KJV) The law of temperance prescribes only moderation, but for many people the only possible way to moderation is by the vigorous practice of abstinence. However strange it may seem, it is found to be easier for many to abstain altogether than to permit a moderate indulgence. Therefore there is nothing to boast of in total abstinence. But for the sake of oneself, and also for the sake of others, the way of safety lies there. To be truly temperate and fully to meet the requirements of health of body, gives an ample field for will-training—a more ample field, it is to be feared, than most of us are cultivating. Few things, however, are a more severe test or a better training of the willpower of a man than fidelity to this trust of the body.
June We ace treated ___ as heving nothing, and yet possessing cverytams, (2 Cox 6S, The Agostic Paul goves us thas paradox 2s one of the FS possessing every,
a RET ITE A
AI TO Christicn Ife The ambition of most Christians is to have a vast mummies of thangs: and thee energies we all wasted m the vain fon to gt posession of these things. Some strive to possess — cesizas "experiences, some seck. cheer "ecstatic feclings', some , try to meake themacives rich mm theclogical "views and "dogmas", | some sone wp 2 long kat of works dome and results achieved
/ some seek to zequire "Tiaminations' or to accumulate 'gis _ cai swenie: Yeaving noir, and yet povecesing coeryinins, | il thets would be ae as end: For we would sec that the one thing
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96 / Daily He Leads Me own things, in order that we may be brought to depend on him for r everything; we should discover that his purpose is to bring us
'to the place where we have nothing apart from himself.
But to the tribe of Levi Moses gave no inheritance; the Lord God of Israel is their inheritance, as he said to them.
(Jos 13:33) "Lam thine inheritance." What an amazing saying!
No wonder the Levites were content to go without any other possessions!
Having nothing, they truly possessed all things, for God was their possession! How slow we are to see that this is our privilege now, just as truly as it was that of the Levites in those days of old. Apart from Christ we, in fact, have nothing, for moth and rust are sure to corrupt, and thieves to break through and steal all merely human possessions. But if God is ours, then all things are eternally ours, for what belongs to God must of necessity belong to us also according to our need and our measure.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spun blessing in the heavenly places. (Eph 1:3) '
It is here declared that all things have been given to us freely in Christ, but as a matter of fact we may not yet ourselves have taken possession of them all. When our hands are full of our own things, we cannot possibly take possession of the things of God. Only empty hands can grasp a gift; only empty vessels can receive the filling; and only the heart that is emptied of all its own things can receive the things of God. I mean, for instance, that if Christians are enjoying very ecstatic "experiences, "they cannot help resting in them and will feel no need to find their test in God alone. Therefore it is that God finds it so often and bereft of all that we have most valued. He dries up our
"fervors"; he deadens our "feelings", he spoils our "experiences";