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every issue affecting man in the death of Christ? That is the

positive side. Have I been through the delivering teaching of

the epistle to the Romans? Have I emerged from it into the

liberty of chapter 8? It is a wonderful course of things, but a

challenging course of things. Such a person is capable of

“stretching” and understanding things. How man is constituted,

morally and spiritually, is apprehended to some extent, and we

begin to see how an answer may arise to the severe difficulty.

But we shall never see an answer arising to a severe difficulty

if we have not, with help from God, faced the constitutional

difficulties of our own history. It is that that enables us to

stretch ourselves. I see in it a constitutional idea that there is

something in the servant that can reach out in such wise as to

cover the immediate situation and bring the word of God to

bear upon it. How often this is needed, beloved brethren, and I

trust the use of this scripture will strengthen our concern to rise

in exercise and prayerfulness with a desire for such a

strengthening as we see in the prophet.

He “cried to Jehovah and said, Jehovah, my God, I pray thee,

let this child’s soul come into him again!” You see, the child is

all wrong inwardly; it is his soul. These are the most severe

cases. If we speak of individual histories, where in a sense the

reality of death has involved the loss of the soul, you might say

it relates to the inward part of the being which is of such vital

import in divine things. What a grave case this was! “And

Jehovah heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child

came into him again, and he lived”—he lived. What a point that

is for each! What a

touch of divine comfort!— he lived. What it was for this

woman, and what it was for the prophet, that that child, so

severely affected, now lived. Dear brethren, God is able for

these things, even in our severe matters, and there are severe

matters in persons and in private. He would build us up. How

we need the upbuilding of divine truth in all these things so