come sweetness,
and at the end of the way you will find a crown and life everlasting.

TALK TWENTY-THREE. THREE NECESSARY "RATIONS"

The soul, like the body, must have something to nourish and strengthen it,
to give it vigor and vitality. An army will have neither the strength nor
the courage to fight unless it has its rations. And if I may be allowed a
play on words, I may say that there are three rations which are very
needful to every Christian. Without these he must be weak and faltering
and of little service, but with them he may be a pillar of strength in the
temple of God.

The first of these "rations" is _aspiration_, or ardent desire. Strong
desire is one of the greatest incentives of life. To be contented as we
are is one of the most fatal hindrances to progress and activity. There is
nothing to stir us to action when desire is satisfied. The trouble with a
great multitude of people is that they are satisfied when conditions do
not warrant it. If we are to make progress in the Christian life or
accomplish anything for God, we must have strong aspirations. These are as
a spur to our energies. Aspiration is the cure for being "at ease in
Zion." Aspirations are good or bad according to the motive that prompts
them. Some are essentially selfish, and such are necessarily evil. If we
desire to be or do for selfish advantage, for glory and praise; if we
aspire to be leaders, as so many religious people do, only that they may
have authority or honor--our aspirations are evil. But each one of us owes
it to himself and to God to desire strongly to be and to do his best for
God.

What is the temperature of your spiritual aspirations today? Are you so
well satisfied that desire is cold and almost lifeless? or are you
reaching out to the things that are before with an eager yearning? No
matter how good or how holy you may be, if you look Christward until you
see the depths of his submission to the Father, the length of his love for
souls, the heights of his lofty purity and unworldliness, the tenderness
of his sympathy, the richness of his communion with the Father, his
self-abnegation, his humility, and his unswerving faithfulness, your soul
will feel itself so immeasurably beneath Christ that you can not help
longing to be more like him. It will create in your soul an inexpressible
aspiration to draw further away from this old world with its trifles and
its follies and to draw nearer to Christ, to be more l