en to all; instruction given _individually_ only;
the Teacher has had long _experience_ Himself on the earth, in the thick
of things.

Well, I said as I stood a moment in the thick crowd, "Master, you know
where they are. Please take me to them. Maybe I should have been more
careful about the appointment, but I was tired at the start. Please--thank
you." And in less time than it takes to tell you I met them right in the
thick of the great crowd. And I felt sure that Peter got his putting of it
straight when he said of the Master, "_He has you on His heart_."

Paul's Prison Psalm.

Did Paul follow his own rules? The best answer to that is this little
four-chaptered epistle where the rules are found. Philippians is a prison
psalm. The clanking of chains resounds throughout its brief pages. At one
end is Philippi; at the other Rome. Here is the Philippian end. In the
inner dungeon of a prison, dark, dirty, damp, is a man, Paul. His back is
bleeding and sore from the whipping-post. His feet are fast in the stocks.
His position is about as cramped and painful as it can be. It is midnight.
Paul would be asleep for weariness and exhaustion, but the position and
the pain hinder.

Does no temptation come to him? He had been following a _vision_ in coming
over to Philippi. This is a great ending to the vision he's been having.
Did no such temptation come? Very likely it did. But Paul is an old
campaigner. He knows best what to do. He begins singing. His music is
pitched in the major too. Most likely he is singing one of the old Hebrew
psalms that he knew by heart. It was a psalm of praise. That is one end of
this epistle.

At the other end Paul is a prisoner at Rome. As he sits dictating his
letter, if he gets tired and would swing one limb over the other for a
change, a heavy chain at his ankle reminds him of his bonds. As he reaches
for a quill to put a loving touch to the end of the parchment, again the
forged steel pulls at his wrist. That is the setting of Philippians, the
prison psalm. What is its key word? Is it patience? That would seem
appropriate. Is it long-suffering? More appropriate yet. Some of us know
about short-suffering, but we are apt to be a bit short on long-suffering.
The keyword is _joy_, with its variations of rejoice, and rejoicing.

And notice what joy is. It is the cataract in the stream of life. Peace is
the gentle even flowing of the river. Joy is where the waters go bubbling,
leaping with