n His eyes as He speaks the word, and the
tenderness and softness of deep emotion, and the earnestness of one who
has Himself been in the deep Jesus says anew to us to-day, "out into the
_deep_."

We are to be ambitious in service. Jesus was ambitious. He reached out for
all, those nearest, those farthest. He talked of all nations, of a world.
His follower must have a long reach to keep up. That word ambition has
been much abused. It has been used much in connection with selfish
self-seeking, until that meaning has become almost its whole meaning in
the thinking of many people. But with the purpose dominant in Jesus we can
properly use it in its old literal meaning. Originally it simply meant
going around, being used in the sense of going out among people soliciting
their favor or their votes.

It has the fine vitality of that word "go" in it. That for which a man is
ambitious decides the quality of the word. A pure, holy purpose makes the
intense reaching for it pure and holy too. An intense reaching out to the
farthest reach of the Master's word, that finds expression in the dominant
spirit of the life, in the service, in the giving, the sacrificing, the
praying--this is the true ambition.

Paul uses three times a word that has the force of our word ambition.[15]
The American Revision uses ambition in the margin for it. In advising the
group of followers in Thessalonica he says, "_Study_ to be quiet." The
practical force of the phrase there is this: be ambitious to be
unambitious in the world's abused meaning of ambitious. In writing the
second time to the friends at Corinth where his motives had been much
criticised he said, "I make it my aim (or ambition) to be well-pleasing
unto Him."

And later, in writing to the Christians at Rome, whom he had never seen,
he said that he had made it his aim or had been ambitious to preach the
Gospel where nobody had yet gone. The literal meaning of the word he uses
is something like this, striving from a love of honor. And we may find a
fine meaning in that which was doubtless used otherwise.

It was a matter of honor with Paul to do as he was doing. And he would
have the honor of having fully carried out his Master's wish. He coveted
earnestly the honor of being always pleasing to his Master both in life
and in the sort and reach of his service. Here are Paul's three ambitions:
to be wholly free of the fires of worldly ambitions; to be well-pleasing
to Jesus, his Lord; to r