od's Book its own proud place, the
premier place, in all his reading. It is instructive to compare the
effects of being filled with the Spirit and of being filled with the Word.
"Be filled with the Spirit; speaking _one to another in psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs, singing_ and making melody _with your heart to the
Lord_" (Eph. v. 18). "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all
wisdom; teaching and admonishing _one another with psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing_ with grace _in your hearts unto God_" (Col.
iii. 16).

Have we then, unhappily, through disobedience or neglect, lost the
blessing which once we possessed? Is there one saying, "Oh that I were
as in the months of old!"? (Job xxix. 2.) It may be "all joy" with you
again, for if you have lost the blessing, just go back and search for it,
and you will find it where you lost it! Just there and nowhere else. Have
you found the spot where your obedience failed? Yield and obey just there,
pick up your obedience where you dropped it, and there you may obtain the
blessing, again as you obtained it at the first; but _just there and
nowhere else_. An illustration of this is found in 2 Kings vi. The
Divinity Students of those days were going down to build a new Divinity
Hall on the banks of the Jordan, and they asked Elisha, the man of God,
to go with them. The story tells us that as one of the students "was
felling a beam, the axe-head fell into the water; and he cried and said,
Alas, my master! for it was borrowed. And the man of God said, Where fell
it? And he shewed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in
thither; and the iron did swim. And he said, Take it up to thee. So he
put out his hand and took it," and having re-fixed the axe-head on the
handle, he went on again with his felling (verses 5-7). Where was it that
the student got his lost axe-head? Where he lost it! in the very spot
where it fell into the Jordan's waters--it was just _there_ that he found
it. So if you lose the blessing, the only spot on earth where you need
look for it, if you wish to take it up to thee again, is _the very spot
where you lost it_. Let us all learn by root of heart what the student
did _not_ do. After the axe-head flew from the handle, he did not continue
at work chopping with an axe-handle. No; but as soon as he lost his
axe-head, he _stopped till he got it on again_. Oh that many a Christian
worker would read, mark, learn; and inwardly digest