THE KING’S BUSINESS
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grace that enables you to take the first step clear of self, clear of un belief, will hold you up till eternity’s end. There is no doubt about it. He who begins has, in the beginning, the pledge of the ending, for it is Christ who begins in us. What are we afraid of? Why is it that we doubt ? Why is it that we have no faith ? Again, I say, the Master’s word is “ Come;” and the great Day will show this—that all human speech has just run itself up into “ Yea, yea,” in an swer to Christ’s “ Come,” or a dour, dogged, hell-bound, “ Nay, nay.” All speech has that in it. “ Yes, O Lamb of God, I come,” or else, “ No” , kept back either by fear or whatever it be. One utter ance will be the re-echoing, the final utterance of that: ‘Come, ye blessed';” or else the thunder tone of the other word: “ Depart, ye cursed.”
uation, and grasp the skirts of this happy chance. As He comes past you, as you are toiling, moiling, swel tering, sinking, cry to Him, “ Blessed Master! Man ahoy! Come in ! Come in! come in!” Or, to put it the ac tive way, leave every mortal con sideration that would keep you back, and go right to Him, all things to the contrary notwithstanding. Say to your soul, “ There He is, and I am in the middle of an awful turmoil and conflict, and it just seems as though it were utterly impossible to do anything but to go down. But here He is. •Thou dost find thyself notwithstanding all these drawbacks, in the house of God, in the place of prayer, where Christ is with us. Soul, go to Him. Leave all and clutch Him. You will not stick in the middle as Peter did. One bold little push, man, and you are in His arms. Take the first step, and the
“Far Better” By H. C. G. MOULE, Bishop of Durham From His Commentary on Philippians
A S I write, the memory comes up of a beloved friend and kinsman called unexpectedly to die in his twenty-second year. Life to him was full of the strongest interests and most attractive^ hopes, alike in nature and in grace. He had no quarrel with life; it had poured out before him a rich store of social and mental blessings and a large wealth of surrounding love, and the Lord Jesus, taking early and decisive pos session o f the young man’s heart, had only augmented and glorified, not rebuked or stunted, every interest. But a slight fever was medically mis managed, and when perfect skill was summoned in, it was too late. His mother camé to her son on his sofa to tell him that h ewas not only very poorly; he was about to die. In a moment, without a change of color, without a tremor, without a pause, with a radiant smile, he looked up and answered, “Well, to depart and to be with Christ is far better.”
All purest joys of sense and soul, all present love and light; Yet bind His truth upon thy brow and clasp it to thy heart, And then nor grief nor gladness here shall claim too great a part— All radiance of this lower sky is to that glory dim ; “Yes, think of all things at the best; in one rich thought unite Far better to depart it is, for we shall be with Him.”
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