Chapter II: Part 2

We read in the book of Samuel that the moment that David was crowned at Hebron, “All the Philistines came up to seek David.” And the moment we get anything from the Lord worth contending for, then the devil comes to seek us.

When the enemy meets us at the threshold of any great work for God let us accept it as “a token of salvation,” and claim double blessing, victory and power. Power is developed by resistance. The cannon carries twice as far because the exploding power has to find its way through resistance. The way electricity is produced in the power-house yonder is by the sharp friction of the revolving wheels. And so we shall find some day that even Satan has been one of God’s agencies of blessing.

FEBRUARY 10.

“I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live” (Gal. ii. 20).

Christ life is in harmony with our nature. A lady asked me the other day—a thoughtful, intelligent woman who was not a Christian, but who had the deepest hunger for that which is right: “How can this be so, and we not lose our individuality! This will destroy our personality, and it violates our responsibility as individuals.”

I said: “Dear sister, your personality is only half without Christ. Christ was made for you, and you were made for Christ, and until you meet you are not complete, and He needs you as you need Him.” I said: “Suppose that gas-jet should say, ‘If I take this fire in, the gas will lose its individuality.’ Oh, no; it is only when the fire comes in that the gas fulfils its very purpose of being. Suppose the snowflake should say, ‘What shall I do? If I drop on the ground I shall lose my individuality.’ But it falls and is absorbed by the soil, and the snowflakes are seen by-and-by in the primroses and daisies. Let us lose ourselves and rise to a new life in Christ.”

FEBRUARY 11.

“Strengthened with all might unto all patience” (Col. i. 11).

The apostle prays for the Colossians, that they may be “strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.” It is one thing to endure and show the strain on every muscle of your face, and seem to say with every wrinkle, “Why does not somebody sympathize with me?” It is another to endure the cross, “despising the shame” for the joy set before us.

There are some trees in the garden of the Lord which “shall not see when heat cometh”; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, nor cease from yielding fruit. Let us set our faces toward the sunrising and use the clouds that come, to make rainbows. Not much longer shall we have the glorious opportunity to rejoice in tribulation, and learn patience. In heaven we shall have nothing to teach long-suffering. If we do not learn it here, we shall be without our brightest crown forever, and wish ourselves back for a little while, in the very circumstances of which we are now trying so hard to get rid.

FEBRUARY 12.

“But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. vi. 33).

For every heart that is seeking anything from the Lord this is a good watchword. That very thing, or the desire for it, may unconsciously separate you from the Lord, or at least from the singleness of your purpose unto Him. The thing we desire may be a right thing, but we may desire it in a distrusting and selfish spirit. Let us commit it to Him, and not cease to believe for it, but let us, at the same time, keep our purpose fixed on His will and glory, and claim even His promised blessings, not for themselves or ourselves, but for Him. Then shall it be true, “Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” All other things but Himself God will “_add_.” But they must be ever _added_, never _first_.

Then shall we be able to believe for them without doubt, when we claim them for Him and not for ourselves. It is only when “we are Christ’s” that “all things are ours.”

Lord, help me this day to seek Thee first, and be more desirous to please Thee and have Thy will than to possess any other blessing.

FEBRUARY 13.

“Thy prayers are come up for a memorial before God” (Acts x. 4).

What a beautiful expression the angel used to Cornelius, “Thy prayers are come up for a memorial.” It would almost seem as if supplications of years had accumulated before the Throne, and at last the answer broke in blessings on the head of Cornelius, even as the accumulated evaporation of months at last bursts in floods of rain upon the parched ground. So God is represented as treasuring the prayers of His saints in vials; they are described as sweet odors. They are placed like fragrant flowers in the chambers of the King. And kept in sweet remembrance before Him. And later they are represented as poured out upon the earth; and lo, there are voices and thunderings and great providential movements fulfilling God’s purposes for His kingdom. We are called “the Lord’s remembrancers,” and are commanded to give Him no rest, day nor night, but crowd the heavens with our petitions and in due time the answer will come with its accumulated blessings.

No breath of true prayer is lost. The longer it waits, the larger it becomes.

FEBRUARY 14.

“He shall baptize you with fire” (Matt. iii. 11).

Fire is strangely intense and intrinsic. It goes into the very substance of things. It somehow blends with every particle of the thing it touches.

There are the severe trials that come to minds more sensitive, to the minds that have more points of contact with what hurts; so that the higher the nature the higher the joy, and the greater the avenues of pain that come.

And then there are deeper trials that come as we pass into the hands of God, as we pass from the physical and intellectual into the spiritual nature.

When they first come, we shrink back from their unnatural and fearful breath, and we say: “Oh, this cannot be from the hand of a loving Father! This cannot be necessary to me.”

And then come the pains and sufferings from God’s own hand, when He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver, when He lets it burn, until it seems that we must be burned to ashes, and we are, indeed, at last burned to ashes.

But we must get the victory through faith. The moment you cease to fear it, that moment it ceases to harm you. He says, “The flames shall not kindle upon you.”

FEBRUARY 15.

“Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (II. Tim. ii. 1).

How to enjoy this day. This will never come by trying to be happy and yet we are responsible for the conditions of real joy.

1. Be right with God; for “Gladness is sown for the upright in heart.” “It is His joy that remains in us that makes our joy to be full.”

2. Forget yourself and live for others; for “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

3. When you cannot rejoice in feelings, circumstances and states, “rejoice in the Lord,” and “count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations.”

Finally, obey the Lord and be faithful to your trust; and again and again will His blessed Spirit whisper to your heart, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord.”

“Not enjoyment and not sorrow
Is our destined end or way,
But to act that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

“Let us then be up and doing
With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”

FEBRUARY 16.

“We will give ourselves continually to prayer” (Acts vi. 4).

In the consecrated believer the Holy Spirit is pre-eminently a Spirit of prayer. If our whole being is committed to Him, and our thoughts are at His bidding, He will occupy every moment in communion and we shall bring every thing to Him as it comes, and pray it out in our spiritual consciousness before we act it out in our lives. We shall, therefore, find ourselves taking up the burdens of life and praying them out in a wordless prayer which we ourselves often cannot understand, but which is simply the unfolding of His thought and will within us, and which will be followed by the unfolding of His providence concerning us.

Want of faithfulness and obedience to the faintest whisper of His will will often hinder some blessing which He meant for us until after a while we may get so dull and negligent that He will not be able to trust us with His whispers and we shall thus stumble on in the darkness and miss His highest thoughts.

Lord, teach us to pray in the Spirit, to pray without ceasing and to lose nothing of Thy will.

FEBRUARY 17.

“Your life is hid” (Col. iii. 3).

Some Christians loom up in larger proportion than is becoming. They can tell, and others can tell, how many souls they bring to Christ. Their labor seems to crystallize and become its own memorial. Others again seem to blend so wholly with other workers that their own individuality can scarcely be traced. And yet, after all, this is the most Christ-like ministry of all, for the Master Himself does not even appear in the work of the church except as her hidden Life and ascended Head, and even the Holy Spirit is lost in the vessels that He uses. The vine does not bear the fruit, and even the sap is unseen in its ceaseless flow, and it is the little branches which bear all the clusters and seem to have all the honor of the vintage. And so the nearer we come to Christ the more we are willing to be lost sight of in our fruit, and let others be more prominent, while we are the glad and willing witnesses of our testimony and hold up their hands by the silent ministry of love and prayer. Lord, let me be like the veiled seraphim before the throne, who cover their faces and their feet, and hide themselves and their service while they fly to obey Thee.

FEBRUARY 18.

“Christ in you” (Col. i. 27).

How great the difference between the old and the new way of deliverance! One touch of Christ is worth a lifetime of struggling. A sufferer in one of our hospitals was in danger of losing his sight from a small piece of broken needle that had entered his eye.

Operation after operation had only irritated it, and driven the foreign substance farther still into the delicate nerves of the sensitive organ. At length a skilful young physician thought of a new expedient. He came one day without lancet and probes, and holding in his hand a small but powerful magnet, which he kept before the wounded eye, as close as it could bear. Immediately the piece of steel began to move toward the powerful attraction, and soon flew up to meet it and left the suffering eye completely relieved, without an effort or a laceration. It was as simple as it was wonderful. By a single touch of power the organ was saved and a dangerous trouble completely cured.

It is thus that God delivers us, by the simple attraction of Christ’s life and power.

FEBRUARY 19.

“As much as in me is I am ready” (Rom. i. 15).

Be earnest. Intense earnestness, a whole heart for Christ, the passion sign of the cross, the enthusiasm of our whole being for our Master and humanity—this is what the Lord expects, this is what His cross deserves, this is what the world needs, this is what the age has a right to look for. Everything around us is intensely alive. Life is earnest, death is earnest, sin is earnest, men are earnest, business is earnest, knowledge is earnest, the age is earnest; God forgive us if we alone are trifling in the white heat of this crisis time. Oh, for the baptism of fire! Oh, for the living coal upon the burning lips of love! Oh, for men God-possessed and self-surrendered grasping God’s great idea and pressing forward “for the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

All the world for Jesus
My prayer shall be,
And my watchword ever,
Himself for me.

All the world for Jesus,
Lord, quickly come,
Bring Thy promised kingdom,
And take us home.

FEBRUARY 20.

“Fear thou not, for I am with thee” (Isa. xli. 10).

Satan is always trying to weaken our faith by fear. He is a great metaphysician and knows the paralyzing effect of fear, that it is the great enemy of faith, and that faith is the great secret of help. If he can get us fearing he will stop our trusting and hinder the very blessing we need. Job found the peril of fear and gives us the sorrowful testimony, “I feared a fear and it came upon me.”

Fear is born of Satan, and if we would only take time to think a moment we would see that everything Satan says is founded upon a falsehood. He is the father of lies. Even his fears are falsehoods and his terrors ought rather be to us encouragements.

When Satan tells you, therefore, that some ill is going to come, you may quietly look in his face and tell him he is a liar, that instead of ill, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life, and then turn to your blessed Lord and say, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.” Every fear is distrust and trust is the remedy for fear. “What time I am afraid I will _trust_ in thee.”

FEBRUARY 21.

“Be not dismayed, for I am thy God” (Isa. xli. 10).

How tenderly God is always comforting our fears! How sweetly He says in Isaiah xli. 10, “Fear not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.” And yet again with still tenderer thoughtfulness, “I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee.” Not only does He say it once, but He keeps holding our right hand and repeating such promises.

The blessed Lord has condensed it all into one sweet monogram of eternal comfort in His message to the disciples on the sea of Galilee, “It is I; be not afraid.” He does not say, “It is over,” or “It is morning,” or “It is fine weather,” or “It is smooth water,” but He says, “It is I, be not afraid.” He is the antidote to fear; He is the remedy for trouble; He is the substance and the sum of deliverance. Therefore, we should rise above fear. Let us keep our eyes fastened upon Him; let us abide continually in Him; let us be content with Him; let us cling closely to Him and cry, “We will not fear though the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

FEBRUARY 22.

“He that hath entered into His rest hath ceased from his own works even as God did from His” (Heb. iv. 10).

What a rest it would be to many of us if we could but exchange burdens with Christ, and so utterly and forever transfer to Him all our cares and needs that we would not feel henceforth responsible for our burdens, but know that He has undertaken all the care, and that our faith is simply to carry His burdens, and that He prays, labors, and suffers only for us and our interests. This is what He truly invites us to do. “Come unto Me,” He says, “all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will rest you,” and then He adds, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.” He takes our yoke and we take His and we find it a thousand times easier to carry one of His burdens than to carry our own. How much more delightful it is to spend an hour in supplication for another than five minutes in pleading for ourselves. Are we not weary of carrying our wretched loads?

’Twas for this His mercy sought you, And to all His fulness brought you, By the precious blood that bought you, Pass it on.

FEBRUARY 23.

“For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. i. 21).

The secret of a sound body is a sound heart, and the prayer of the Holy Ghost for us is, that we “may be in health and prosper even as our soul prospers.”

We find Paul in the Epistles to the Philippians expressing a sublime and holy indifference to the question of life or death. Indeed he is in a real strait, whether he would prefer “to depart and be with Christ,” or to remain still in the flesh.

The former would indeed be his sweetest preference, but the latter would be at the same time a joyful service. His only object in wanting to live is to be a blessing. “To abide in the flesh is more needful to you.”

Having reached this state of heart, it is beautiful to notice how quickly he rises to the victorious faith necessary to claim perfect strength and health. Because it is more needful to you that I abide in the flesh, he adds, “I know that I shall continue with you all, for your furtherance and joy of faith.” Lord, help me to-day to “count not my life dear unto myself that I may finish my course with joy and the ministry that I have received of Jesus.”

FEBRUARY 24.

“Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. vi. 14).

The secret of Moses’ failures was this: “The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did.” And this was why his life work also came short of full realization. He saw but entered not the Promised Land. The founder of the law had to be its victim, and his life and death might demonstrate the inability of the law to lead any man into the Promised Land. The very fact, that it was for so slight a fault that Moses lost his inheritance, makes all the more emphatic the solemn sentence of the law. “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law to do them.”

But to the glory of the grace of God we can add that what the law could not do for Moses the Gospel did; and he who could not pass over the Jordan under the old dispensation is seen on the very heights of Hermon with the Son of Man, sharing His Transfiguration glory, and talking of that death on Calvary to which be owed his glorious destiny.

That grace we have inherited under the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

FEBRUARY 25.

“I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John xv. 5).

How can I take Christ as my Sanctifier, or Healer? is a question that we are constantly asked. It is necessary first of all that we get into the posture of faith. This has to be done by a definite and voluntary act, and then maintained by a uniform habit. It is just the same as the planting of a tree. You must put it in the soil by a definite act, and then you must let it stay put and remain settled in the ground until the little roots have time to fix themselves and begin to draw the sustenance from the soil. There are two stages, the definite planting and then the habitual absorbing of moisture and nourishment from the ground. The root fibers must rest until they reach out their spongy pores and drink in the nutriment of the earth. After the habit is established, then by a certain uniform law, the plant draws its life from the ground without an effort, and it is just as natural for it to grow as it is for us to breathe.

Lord, help me this day to abide in Thee, and to grow into the habit of drawing all my life from Thine so that it shall be true for me, “In Him I live and move and have my being.”

FEBRUARY 26.

“Make you perfect in every good work” (Heb. xiii. 21).

In that beautiful prayer at the close of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will,” the phrase, “make you perfect in every good work,” literally means, it is said, “adjust you in every good work.” It is a great thing to be adjusted, adjusted to our surroundings and circumstances rather than trying to have them adjusted to us, adjusted to the people we are thrown with, adjusted to the work God has for us, and not trying to get God to help us to do our work; adjusted to do the very will and plan of God for us in our whole life. This is the secret of rest, power and freedom in our life-work.

“Oh, fill me with Thy fulness, Lord.
Until my very heart o’erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word,
Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.

Oh, use me, Lord, use even me,
Just as Thou wilt, and when, and where;
Until Thy blessed face I see,
Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share.”

FEBRUARY 27.

“Stablish, strengthen, settle you” (I. Peter v. 10).

In taking Christ in any new relationship, we must first have sufficient intellectual light to satisfy our mind that we are entitled to stand in this relationship. The shadow of a question here will wreck our confidence. Then, having seen this, we must make the venture, the committal, the choice, and take the place just as definitely as the tree is planted in the soil, or the bride gives herself away at the marriage altar. It must be once for all, without reserve, without recall.

Then there is a season of establishing, settling and testing, during which we must stay put until the new relationship gets so fixed as to become a permanent habit. It is just the same as when the surgeon sets the broken arm. He puts it in splints to keep it from vibration. So God has His spiritual splints that He wants to put upon His children and keep them quiet and unmoved until they pass the first stage of faith.

It is not always easy work for us, “but the God of all grace who hath called you unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus after you have suffered awhile, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”

FEBRUARY 28.

“Count it all joy” (James i. 2).

We do not always feel joyful, but we are to count it all joy. The word “reckon” is one of the key-words of Scripture. It is the same word used about our being dead. We do not feel dead. We are painfully conscious of something that would gladly return to life. But we are to treat ourselves as dead, and neither fear nor obey the old nature.

So we are to reckon the thing that comes as a blessing. We are determined to rejoice, to say, “My heart is fixed, O God, I will sing and give praise.” This rejoicing, by faith, will soon become a habit, and will ever bring speedily the spirit of gladness and the spontaneous overflow of praise.

Then, “although the fig-tree may wither and no fruit appear in the vines, the labor of the olive fail and the fields yield no increase, the herd be cut off from the stall, and the cattle from the field, yet we will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of our salvation.”

“Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round, On Jesus’ bosom naught but calm is found; Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown, Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.”

MARCH 1.

“Wait on the Lord” (Ps. xxvii. 14).

How often this is said in the Bible, how little understood! It is what the old monk calls the “practice of the presence of God.” It is the habit of prayer. It is the continued communion that not only asks, but receives. People often ask us to pray for them and we have to say, “Why, God has answered our prayer for you, and you must now take the answer. It is awaiting you, and you must take it by waiting on the Lord.”

This it is that renews the strength, until we mount up with wings as eagles, run and are not weary, walk and are not faint. Our hearts are too vast to take in His fulness at a single breath. We must live in the atmosphere of His presence till we absorb His very life. This is the secret of spiritual depth and rest, of power and fulness, of love and prayer, of hope and holy usefulness. “Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

I am waiting in communion at the blessed mercy seat,
I am waiting, sweetly waiting, on the Lord;
I am drinking, of His fulness; I am sitting at His feet;
I am hearkening to the whispers of His word.

MARCH 2.

“That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost” (II. Tim. i. 14).

God gives to us a power within which will hold our hearts in victory and purity. “That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.” It is the Holy Ghost; and when any thought or suggestion of evil arises in our breast, the quick conscience can instantly call upon the Holy Ghost to drive it out, and He will expel it at the command of faith or prayer, and keep us as pure as we are willing to be kept. But when the will surrenders and consents to evil, the Holy Ghost will not expel it. God, then, requires us to stand in holy vigilance, and He will do exceeding abundantly for us as we hold fast that which is good, and He will also be in us a spirit of vigilance, showing us the evil and enabling us to detect it, and to bring it to Him for expulsion and destruction.

“O Spirit of Jesus fill us until we shall have room only for Thee!”

O, come as the heart-searching fire,
O, come as the sin-cleansing flood;
Consume us with holy desire,
And fill with the fulness of God.

MARCH 3.

“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous; nevertheless afterward” (Heb. xii. 11).

God seems to love to work by paradoxes and contraries. In the transformations of grace, the bitter is the base of the sweet, night is the mother of day, and death is the gate of life.

Many people are wanting power. Now, how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of countless wheels, and we asked our friend, “How do they make the power?” “Why,” he said, “just by the revolution of those wheels and the friction they produce. The rubbing creates the electric current.”

It is very simple, and a trifling experiment will prove it to any one.

And so when God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard rubbing. Some of us don’t like it. Some of us don’t understand, and we try to run away from the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the painful cause.

MARCH 4.

“They were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts ii. 4).

Blessed secret of spiritual purity, victory and joy, of physical life and healing, and all power for service. Filled with the Spirit there is no room for self or sin, for fret or care. Filled with the Spirit we repel the elements of disease that are in the air as the red-hot iron repels the water that touches it. Filled with the Spirit we are always ready for service, and Satan turns away when he finds the Holy Ghost enrobing us in His garments of holy flame. Not half-filled, but filled with the Spirit is the place of victory and power.

This is not only a privilege; it is a command, and He who gave it will enable us to fulfill it if we bring it to Him with an empty, honest, trusting heart, and claim our privilege in the name of Jesus and for the glory of God.

Holy Ghost, I bid Thee welcome;
Come and be my Holy Guest;
Heavenly Dove within my bosom,
Make Thy home and build Thy nest;
Lead me on to all Thy fulness,
Bring me to Thy Promised Rest,
Holy Ghost, I bid Thee welcome,
Come and be my Holy Guest.

MARCH 5.

“I have overcome the world” (John xvi. 33).

Christ has overcome for us every one of our four terrible foes—Sin, Sickness, Sorrow, Satan. He has borne our Sin, and we may lay all, even down to our sinfulness itself, on Him. “I have overcome for thee.” He has borne our sickness, and we may detach ourselves from our old infirmities and rise into His glorious life and strength. He has borne our sorrows, and we must not even carry a care, but rejoice evermore, and even glory in tribulations also. And He has conquered Satan for us, too, and left him nailed to the cross, spoiled and dishonored and but a shadow of himself. And now we have but to claim His full atonement and assert our victory, and so “overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.”

Beloved, are we overcoming sin? Are we overcoming sickness? Are we overcoming sorrow? Are we overcoming Satan?

Fear not, though the strife be long; Faint not, though the foe be strong; Trust thy glorious Captain’s power; Watch with Him one little hour, Hear Him calling, “Follow me. “I have overcome for thee.”

MARCH 6.

“Lean not unto thine own understanding” (Prov. iii. 5).

Faith is hindered by reliance upon human wisdom, whether our own or the wisdom of others. The devil’s first bait to Eve was an offer of wisdom, and for this she sold her faith. “Ye shall be as gods,” he said, “knowing good and evil,” and from the hour she began to know she ceased to trust. It was the spies that lost the Land of Promise to Israel of old. It was their foolish proposition to search out the land, and find out by investigation whether God had told the truth or not, that led to the awful outbreak of unbelief that shut the doors of Canaan to a whole generation. It is very significant that the names of these spies are nearly all suggestive of human wisdom, greatness and fame.

So in the days of Christ, it was the bondage of the Jews to the traditions of their fathers and the opinions of men, that kept them back from receiving Him. “How can ye believe,” He asked, “which receive honor from men, and seek not that which cometh from God only?”

Let us trust Him with all our heart and lean not to our own understanding.

MARCH 7.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts xx. 35).

How shall we know the difference between the earthly and the heavenly love? The one terminates on ourselves and is partly ourself seeking its own gratification. The other reaches out to God and others, and finds its joy in glorifying Him and blessing them. Love is unselfishness, and the love that is not unselfish is not divine. How much do we pray for others, and how much for ourselves? What is the center of our being? Ourselves, or our Lord and His people and work? The Lord help us to know more fully the meaning of that great truth, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “He that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake and the Gospel, shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Have you found some precious treasure, Pass it on. Have You found some holy pleasure, Pass it on. Giving out is twice possessing, Love will double every blessing, On to higher service pressing, Pass it on.

MARCH 8.

“Pray Ye therefore” (Luke x. 2).

Prayer is the mighty engine that is to move the missionary work. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.”

We are asking God to touch the hearts of men every day by the Holy Ghost, so that they shall be compelled to go abroad and preach the Gospel. We are asking Him to wake them up at night with the solemn conviction that the heathen are perishing, and that their blood will be upon their souls, and God is answering the prayer by sending persons to us every day who “feel that the King’s business requireth haste.”

Beloved, pray, pray, pray; and as the incense rises to the heavens, “there will be silence in heaven” by the space of more than half an hour, and the coals of fire will be emptied out upon the earth, and the coming of the Lord will begin to draw nearer. Pray till the Lord of the harvest shall thrust forth laborers into His harvest.

Send the coals of heavenly fire,
From the altar of the skies;
Fill our hearts with strong desire,
Till our pray’rs like incense rise.

MARCH 9.

“How ye ought to walk and please God” (I. Thess. iv. 1).

How many dear Christians are in the place that the Lord has appointed them, and yet the devil is harassing their lives with a vague sense of not quite pleasing the Lord. Could they just settle down in the place that God has assigned them and fill it sweetly and lovingly for Him there would be more joy in their hearts and more power in their lives. God wants us all in various places, and the secret of accomplishing the most for Him is to recognize our places from Him and our service in it as pleasing Him. In the great factory and machine there is a place for the smallest screw and rivet as well as the great driving wheel and piston, and so God has His little screws whose business is simply to stay where He puts them and to believe that He wants them there and is making the most of their lives in the little spaces that they fill for Him.

There is something all can do, Tho’ you’re neither wise nor strong; You can be a helper true, You can stand when friends are few, Some lone heart has need of you, You can help along.

MARCH 10.

“The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds” (Phil. iv. 7).

It is not peace with God, but the peace of God. “The peace that passes all understanding” is the very breath of God in the soul. He alone is able to keep it, and He can so keep it that “nothing shall offend us.” Beloved, are you there?

God’s rest did not come till after His work was over, and ours will not. We begin our Christian life by working, trying and struggling in the energy of the flesh to save ourselves. At last, when we are able to cease from our own work, God comes in with His blessed rest, and works His own Divine works in us.

Oh! have you heard the glorious word
Of hope and holy cheer;
From heav’n above its tones of love
Are lingering on my ear;
The blessed Comforter has come,
And Christ will soon be here.

Oh, hearts that sigh there’s succor nigh,
The Comforter is near;
He comes to bring us to our King,
And fit us to appear.
I’m glad the Comforter has come,
And Christ will soon be here.

MARCH 11.

“But ye are a chosen generation, a peculiar people” (I. Peter ii. 9).

We have been thinking lately very much of the strange way in which God is calling a people out of a people already called. The word _ecclesia_, or church, means called out, but God is calling out a still more select body from the church to be His bride—the specially prepared ones for His coming.

We see a fine type of this in the story of Gideon. When first he sounded the trumpet of Abiezer there resorted to him more than thirty thousand men; but these had to be picked, so a first test was applied, appealing to their courage, and all but ten thousand went back; but there must be an election out of the election, and so a second test was applied, appealing to their prudence, caution and singleness of purpose, and all but three hundred were refused; and, with this little picked band, he raised the standard against the Midianites, and through the power of God won his glorious victory. So, again, in our days, the Master is choosing His three hundred, and by them He will yet win the world for Himself. Let us be sure that we belong to the “out and out” people.

MARCH 12.

“They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way” (Ps. cvii. 4).

All who fight the Lord’s battles must be content to die to all the favorable opinions of men and all the flattery of human praise. You cannot make an exception in favor of the good opinions of the children of God. It is very easy for the insidious adversary to make this also all appeal to the flesh. It is all right when God sends us the approval of our fellow men, but we must never make it a motive in our life, but be content with the “solitary way” and the lonely “wilderness.”

All such motives are poison and a taking away from you of the strength with which you are to give glory to God. It is not the fact that all that see the face of the Lord do see each other.

The man of God must walk alone with God. He must be contented that the Lord knoweth that God knows. It is such a relief to the natural man within us to fall back upon human countenances and human thoughts and sympathy, that we often deceive ourselves and think it “brotherly love,” when we are just resting in the earthly sympathy of some fellow worm!

MARCH 13.

“Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 21).

Some time ago, we were enjoying a surpassingly beautiful sunset. The western skies seemed like a great archipelago of golden islands, the masses in the distance rising up into vast mountains of glory. The hue of the sky was so gorgeous that it seemed to reflect itself upon the whole atmosphere, as we looked back from the west to the eastern horizon. The whole earth was radiant with glory. The fields had changed to strange, red richness, and the earth seemed bathed with the dews of heaven.

And so it is, when the love of God shines through all our celestial sky, it covers everything below, and life becomes radiant with its light. Things that were hard become easy. Things that were sharp become sweet. Labor loses its burden, and sorrow becomes silver-lined with hope and gladness.

There are two ways of living in His love. One is constant trust, and the other is constant obedience, and His own Word gives the message for both. “If ye keep My commandments ye shall live in My love, even as I keep My Father’s, and live in His love.”

MARCH 14.

“We are His workmanship” (Eph. ii. 10).

Christ sends us to serve Him, not in our own strength, but in His resources and might. “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.” We do not have to prepare them; but to wear them as garments, made to order for every occasion of our life.

We must receive them by faith and go forth in His work, believing that He is with us, and in us, as our all sufficiency for wisdom, faith, love, prayer, power, and every grace and gift that our work requires. In this work of faith we shall have to feel weak and helpless, and even have little consciousness of power. But if we believe and go forward, He will be the power and send the fruits.

The most useful services we render are those which, like the sweet fruits of the wilderness, spring from hours of barrenness. “I will bring her into the wilderness and I will give her vineyards from thence.” Let us learn to work by faith as well as walk by faith, then we shall receive even the end of our faith, the salvation of precious souls, and our lives will bear fruit which shall be manifest throughout all eternity.

MARCH 15.

“Continue ye in My love” (John xv. 9).

Many atmospheres there are in which we may live. Some people live in an atmosphere of thought. Their faces are thoughtful, minds intellectual. They live in their ideas, their conceptions of truth, their tastes, and esthetic nature. Some people, again, live in their animal nature, in the lusts of the flesh and eye, the coarse, low atmosphere of a sensuous life, or something worse. Some, again, live in a world of duty. The predominating feature of their life is conscience, and it carries with it a certain shadowy fear that takes away the simple freedom and gladness of life, but there is a rectitude, and uprightness, a strictness of purpose, and of conduct which cannot be gainsaid or questioned.

But Christ bids us live in an atmosphere of love. “As My Father has loved Me, so have I loved you; continue ye in My love.” In the original it is, “Live in My love.” Love is the atmosphere that He would have us ever live in, that is, believing that He ever loves us, and claiming His sweet approval and tender regard. This is a life of love.

MARCH 16.

“The Lord will give grace and glory” (Ps. lxxxiv. 11).

The Lord will give grace and glory. This word _glory_ is very difficult to translate, define and explain; but there is something in the spiritual consciousness of the quickened Christian that interprets it. It is the overflow of grace; it is the wine of life; it is the foretaste of heaven; it is a flash from the Throne and an inspiration from the heart of God which we may have and in which we may live. “The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them,” the Master prayed for us. Let us take it and live in it. David used to say, “Wake up my glory.” Ask God to wake up your glory and enable you to mount up with wings as eagles, to dwell on high and sit with Christ in the heavenly places.

Mounting up with wings as eagles,
Waiting on the Lord we rise,
Strength exchanging, life renewing,
How our spirit heavenward flies.
Then our springing feet returning,
Tread the pathway of the saint,
We shall run and not be weary,
We shall walk and never faint.

MARCH 17.

“He hath remembered His covenant forever” (Ps. cv. 8).

So long as you struggle under law, that is by your own effort, sin shall have dominion over you: but the moment you step from under the shadow of Sinai, throw yourself upon the simple grace of Christ and His free and absolute gift of righteousness, and take Him to be to you what He has pledged Himself to be, your righteousness of thought and feeling, and to keep you in spite of everything, that ever can be against you, in His perfect will and peace, the struggle is practically over. Beloved, do you really know and believe that this is the very promise of the Gospel, the very essence of the new covenant, that Christ pledges Himself to put His law in your heart, and to cause you to walk in His statutes, and to keep His judgments and do them? Do you know that this is the oath which He sware unto Abraham, that He would grant unto us. “That we being delivered from the hands of our enemies, and from all that hate us, might serve Him without fear, in righteousness and holiness before Him all the days of our life.” He has sworn to do this for you, and He is faithful, that promised. Trust Him ever.

MARCH 18.

“Neither shall any plague come near thy dwelling” (Ps. xci. 10).

We know what it is to be fireproof, to be waterproof: but it is a greater thing to be proof against sin. It is possible to be so filled with the Spirit and presence of Jesus that all the shafts of the enemy glance off our heavenly armor; that all the burrs and thistles which grow on the wayside fail to stick to our heavenly robes; that all the noxious vapors of the pit disappear before the warm breath of the Holy Ghost, and we walk with a charmed life even through the valley of the shadow of death. The red hot iron repels the water that touches it, and the fingers that would trifle with it: and, if we are on fire with the Holy Ghost, Satan will keep his fingers off us, and the cold water that he pours over us will roll off and leave us unharmed: “for He that was begotten of God keepeth us, and that wicked one toucheth us not.”

It is said that before going into a malarious region, it is well to fortify the system with nourishing food. So we should be fed and filled by the life of Christ in such a way that the evil does not really touch our life.

MARCH 19.

“Launch out into the deep” (Luke v. 4).

Many difficulties and perplexities in connection with our Christian life might be best settled by a simple and bold decision of our will to go forward with the light we have and leave the speculations and theories that we cannot decide for further settlement. What we need is to act, and to act with the best light we have, and as we step out into the present duty and full obedience, many things will be made plain which it is no use waiting to decide.

Beloved, cut the Gordian knot, like Alexander, with the sword of decision. Launch out into the deep with a bold plunge, and Christ will settle for you all the questions that you are now debating, and more probably show you their insignificance, and let you see that the only way to settle them is to overleap them. They are Satan’s petty snares to waste your time and keep you halting when you should be marching on.

The mercy of God is an ocean divine,
A boundless and fathomless flood;
Launch out in the deep, cut away the shore line,
And be lost in the fulness of God.

MARCH 20.

“They which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life” (Rom. v. 17).

Precious souls sometimes fight tremendous battles in order to attain to righteousness in trying places. Perhaps the heart has become wrong in some matter where temptation has been allowed to overcome, or at least to turn it aside from its singleness unto God; and the conflict is a terrible one as it seeks to adjust itself and be right with God, and finds itself baffled by its own spiritual foes, and its own helplessness, perplexity and perversity. How dark and dreary the struggle, and how helpless and ineffectual it often seems at such times! It is almost sure to strive in the spirit of the law, and the result always is, and must ever be, condemnation and failure. Every disobedience is met by a blow of wrath, and discouragement, and it well nigh sinks to despair. Oh, if the tempted and struggling one could only understand or remember what perhaps he has learned before, that Christ is our righteousness, and that it is not by law but by grace alone, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” That is the secret of the whole battle.

MARCH 21.

“Casting all your care upon Him” (I. Peter v. 7).

Some things there are that God will not tolerate in us. We must leave them. Nehemiah would not talk with Sanballat about his charges and fears, but simply refused to have anything to do with the matter—even to go into the temple and pray about it. How very few things we really have to do with in life. If we would only drop all the needless things and simply do the things that absolutely touch and require our attention from morning till night, we would find what a small slender thread life was; but we string upon it a thousand imaginary beads that never come, and burden ourselves with cares and flurries that if we had trusted more, would never have needed to preoccupy our attention. Wise indeed was the testimony of the dear old saint who said, in review of her past life, “I have had a great many troubles in my life, especially those that never came.”

Trust and rest with heart abiding,
Like a birdling in its nest,
Underneath His feathers hiding,
Fold thy wings and trust and rest.
Trust and rest, trust and rest,
God is working for the best.

MARCH 22.

“Hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end” (Heb. iii. 6).

The attitude of faith is simple trust. It is Elijah saying to Ahab, “There is a sound of abundance of rain.” But then there comes usually a deeper experience in which the prayer is inwrought; it is Elijah on the mount, with his face between his knees, travailing, as it were, in birth for the promised blessing. He has believed for it—and now he must take. The first is Joash shooting the arrow out of the windows, but the second is Joash smiting on the ground and following up his faith by perseverance and victorious testing.

It is in this latter place that many of us come short. We ask much from God, and when God proceeds to give it to us we are not found equal to His expectation. We are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, and trust Him through it all.

Fainting soldier of the Lord,
Hear His sweet inspiring word,
“I have conquered all thy foes.
I have suffered all thy woes;
Struggling soldier, trust in Me,
I have overcome for thee.”

MARCH 23.

“He is a new creature” (II. Cor. v. 17).

Resurrected, not raised. There is so much in this distinction. The teaching of human philosophy is that we are to raise humanity to a higher plane. This is not the Gospel. On the contrary, the teaching of the cross is that humanity must die and sink out of sight and then be resurrected, not raised. Resurrection is not improvement. It is not elevation, but it is a new supernatural life lifting us from nothingness into God and making us partakers of the Divine nature. It is a new creation. It is an infinite elevation above the highest plane. Let us not take less than resurrection life.

I am crucified with Jesus,
And the cross has set me free;
I have ris’n again with Jesus,
And He lives and reigns in me.

This the story of the Master,
Through the cross He reached the throne,
And like Him our path to glory,
Ever leads through death alone.

Lord, teach me the death-born life. Lord, let me live in the power of Thy resurrection!

MARCH 24.

“And again I say, rejoice” (Phil. iv. 4).