ost highly favored in
the privilege of service accorded them. Many others have been left free of
the necessity of earning bread and home and clothing and so have a rare
opportunity of devoting themselves to the going, as the Spirit of Jesus
guides. Many are given the talent to earn easily, and so, if they will,
may give much strength to service.
The great majority everywhere and always are absorbed for most of the
waking hours of the day in earning something to eat, and something to
wear, and somewhere to sleep. Yet where there is the warm touch with Jesus
there will come the yearning for purity, and the life of service. With
these as with all there may be the service, strong and sweetly fragrant.
There is always some bit of spare time, with planning, that can be used in
direct service in church, or school, or mission. And the secret life of
prayer will give a steadiness that will guard against the over-use of
one's strength.
There can be a personal going to some in words tactfully spoken. There is
the life of sweet purity and gentle patience always so winsome, that
speaks all the time in musical tones to one's circle. There is an
enormous, unconscious aggressiveness about such a life. Then there can be
the going through gold. And the entire planet can be brought under one's
thumb of influence through the strangely simple power of prayer.
I have been running across some new versions of this last word of Jesus. A
sort of re-revisions they are. I have not found them in the common print,
but printed in lives, the lives of men. The print is large, chiefly
capitals, easily read. These lives are so noisy as to quite shut out what
the lips may be saying. There are variations in these translations.
Sometime the message is made to read like this: "All power hath been given
unto Me, therefore go ye, and make--coins of gold--oh, belong to church of
course--that is proper and has many advantages--and give too. There are
advantages about that--give freely, or make it seem freely--give to
missions at home and abroad. That is regarded as a sure sign of a liberal
spirit. But be careful about the _proportion_ of your giving. For the real
thing that counts at the year's end is how much you have added to the
stock of dollars in your grasp. These other things are good, but--merely
incidental. This thing of getting gold is the main drive."
Please understand me, I never heard any of these folks talk in this blunt
way with their _ton
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