t means
likewise a wound in the branch to be grafted in. Just as surely as the
knife must make the incision into the stock, it must also cut the end of
the branch before it can be grafted in. Our Master flinched not. How about
you and me when it comes to the knife, with its sharp cutting edge, and
slash and sting?

Perhaps this explains why there's so little life, so little sap-flow, so
little fruit. If you follow along the narrow road your progress is sure
to be barred by a knife thrust out across the path. And the whole
instinct of our nature is to shrink from the knife. The sacrificial knife
becomes the pruning, the grafting knife. There can be no life without that
knife. Failure to obey cuts off the supply of life.

I became greatly interested in a young man whom I met in Japan. He comes
of a noble, wealthy family. He attended a mission school to study English,
learned to read the Bible, became intensely interested, and then decided
to become a Christian. But his family was violently opposed, and pleaded
earnestly with him. He would in time be the head of his family, but if he
insisted now on being a Christian he would be disowned. He was to be
trained in the Imperial University, and could have chosen a public
national career including the probability of membership in the Imperial
diet, but he remained true to his decision. And he was disowned in
disgrace, cast adrift without a cent. Now he is devoting himself to
mission work in the city where I met him, working among the neediest and
lowest. I was told that the police gladly say that his mission has greater
power than they in preserving order in that worst quarter of the city.

The night I stood by his side, speaking through his interpretation, a
Japanese policeman dragged up a couple of youths who had been giving
trouble, and pushed them in, saying, "Here's the place for you; now listen
to that." And I have never been in a simple service where the quiet
intense power of God was more marked. This is what obedience meant to him.
And this too is what abiding meant. He yielded to the grafting knife, and
the life of the vine-stock came flowing freely through, bearing abundant
fruit.

A few years ago I read a simple story in "The Sunday-school Times" that
brought a lump in my throat. The writer told of a south-bound train
stopping at a station near Washington City. At the last moment, an old
negro with white hair came hurriedly forward and clambered on the last
coac