DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 313, 2 December 1933, Page 11

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

Prayer: Our Father Who art in heaven, help us to lift up our hearts to Thee. Free us from the weights that drang us down. Deliver us from the hard grip of self. Bring us into the largeness and freedom of life in Christ. Give us heavenly aspirations, and fulfil them by Thy indwelling Spirit. Forgive us for the narrow and stinted way in which we receive Thy boundless gifts. Help us more richly and fully to take the cup of salvation. May our peace be as a river, and our righteousness as the waves of the sea : and make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. We ask, and wait, in the Name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. — Amen. Reading: 1 Cor. 3. 1 DIVINE GUIDANCE. (Psalm 25 : 9.) A lonely way, a lowly patlr, We may be called to tread, But with the Saviour as our guide Safely wo shall be led. Let our poor lives show forth the grace Of Him whose name we bear; The Spirit of the Lord indite Our daily praise and prayer. We cannot do the things we would, But we by grace can speak So as to comfort mourning ones, And help the poor and weak. Our humble lives may honour God; His word by us confessed, Its holy purpose must fulfil, And many will be blest. —Alfred Comber.

FIVE ONE THINGS. One thing lacking in the worldling Mark 10. 21. One thing needful in the worker, Luke 10. 42. One thing I know in witnessing, John 9. 25. One thing I do in winning, Phil. 3. 13. One thing have I desired in waiting, Psa. 27. 4. MOST SATISFIED. Has Christ become to us such a living; bright reality that no post of duty shall be irksome, that ns His witnesses we can return to'the quiet homeside, or to the distant service among the heathen, with hearts more than glad, more than satisfied, and most glad, most satisfied, when most sad and most stripped, it may be, of earthly friends and treasures? Let us put all our treasures into His hand'; then He will never need to take them from us on account of heart idolatry; and if in wisdom and love He remove them for a time, He will leave no vacuum, but Himself fill the void, Himself wipe away the tear. —J. Hudson Taylor. WINDING A HUMAN CLOCK. Mr Mark Guy Pearse used to relate that many years ago he sat with Mr Charles H. Spurgeon on the platform at Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, and in an interval during the meeting lie whispered to Mr Spurgeon : ‘-'When 1 was a young fellow in London I used to sit over there and hear you preach, and you will never know how much good you did me.” “I cannot forget,” said Mr Pearse, “the bright light that came into his face as lie turned to me and said, ‘You did?’” “Yes,” replied Mr Pearse, “and I am so glad to have the chance of telling you of it. You used to wind me up like an eight-day clock. I was bound to go right for a week after hearing you.” The great precalier put out his hand and took that of Mr Pearse, and the tears brimmed to his eyes as he said, “God bless you! I never knew that.”

‘•'THAT IN ALL THINGS HE MIGHT HAVE THE PREEMINENCE.” (Colossians i. 18). In all things the pre-eminence, The first and foremost place: To live my daily life within The sunshine of His face; To go where He would have me go, Where He would have me stay, To look to Him for His commands, To let Him plan each day. To read that only upon which My Lord’s approval rests: To speak as lie shall give me words, Obeying His behests; To write as He shall guide my pen, His messenger to be; To work as He shall give me power And opportunity. To give my waking thoughts to Him, To His glad service rise: At night to rest my soul in Him, And let Him close my ey.es; So shalt Thou have pre-eminence, And all the world shall see In all my words, in all my life. Naught, blessed Lord, but Thee! M. E. Markham. In the Gospel, God —perfectly glorified about sin in the death of Christ —rends the veil, and comes out in love to seek the sinner; brings him to His presence in righteousness, within the veil, and as a priest and a worshipper 1 MARY MAGDALENE. When poor Mary Magdalene lost Christ, she lost her all in this world. She had nothing to relieve her, or fall back upon. Her character was gone. She was a degraded tiring. But the blessed Lord had taken hex up. He had spoken friendly to her, when the world -would have thought well to neglect and reproach her. He was in this way everything to her, and when she lost Him she lost her all.

. How could she then hut weep at the sepulchre? But these tears tell rather what He was than what she was. They speak the peculiarity of His grace, if they tell of the fondness of her heart. They speak this praise bestowed on Him by Mary (as another like her once expressed it): “I am too bad for any but Jesus.” Precious thought! And according to all this, I may further say, the highest dignities in Heaven can associate with the lowest materials among men, when Jesus is common to both. Angels, for instance, made the beggar at the gate their charge; and shining ones, whose raiment was whiter than snow, talked with poor trembling women just because they were seeking Jesus (see Luke xvi; 'Matt, xxviii). Jesus, after this most blessed manner, annihilates the distance between earth and Heaven, or is the centre between such ones as Gabriel and Lazarus!