e costliest
delicacies while many of the common people were actually starving. They
thought that was the chief crime to be expiated at the guillotine.

What is necessary for one's strength moves on a sliding scale. As years
come, and the sort of work one does and his strength change, his needs
increase. What might at one time have been reckoned luxury is now a real
necessity for his best strength and work. _Whatever ministers to one's
strength is a necessity_. All above this becomes luxury, and so is both
hurtful to strength, and wrong in itself.

A missionary returning to his home-land, on furlough, noted on his first
return home that what had been considered luxuries before he left, were
now reckoned necessities; on his second furlough he noted again that what
had been reckoned luxury on his first return was now counted necessity.
And each return home found this condition repeating itself.

It reminded me of the experience of Sir John Franklin in one of his Arctic
explorations. His ship was hemmed in by an ice-field so that progress was
impossible. All he could do was to calculate his longitude and latitude,
and wait. The next day he was still hemmed in, and so far as he could see,
was exactly where he had been on the previous day. But on calculating
longitude and latitude again, he was surprised to find that the ship had
drifted several miles backward from the position of the previous day.

It would be a sensible thing for us to make frequent calculations, and
find out where we are, and prayerfully steer a changed course if we've
been drifting. But we can't decide such questions for each other, and they
can't be decided by what another does. They can only be decided alone on
one's knees with the Master, with the Book, and perhaps a map of the world
at hand. We need both the Word of God, and a view of the world of God to
shape our judgment. No, it's not a question of money primarily, nor of
missions, only of personal loyalty to our Lord Jesus, and to the passion
of His heart.

Grafted.

Have you noticed the significance of that word "abide" which our Lord used
on the night of His betrayal?[85] "Abide" means a grafting process; we
were branches in the vine, but we were broken off by sin. The only way to
abide in that vine is by being grafted in. "Abide" means grafted. But the
grafting process has two wounds. It means a knife used twice. It means a
wound in the vine-stock, and our Master flinched not there. I