EXERCISE

EXERCISE

There is a difference between exercise of soul and self-occupation. With the reception of every gift of God to me, that is everything proposed by Him as His mind and way for me, as set forth in Scripture, there is the sense that I have received from Him; light has come in about it. I see my position, standing, gain and walk in accordance with it. I am exercised as to the maintenance and enjoyment of these as conferred and appointed of God. It is exercise to comprehend and maintain what He confers and calls me to. I am pressing on to the measure revealed to me in His word; I do not wait to see how far I have reached to the measure, but I keep nothing else before me. It is the greatness of the measure, the height of it, which is ever before me in my exercise, and, as a high mountain, which appears inaccessible when I am at a great distance from it, becomes greater and higher and apparently unreachable as I get to its base, so is the divine measure. As I am exercised to reach up to it, I am like the child who surveys with delight his father’s height, and in his efforts or exercise to reach up to it, jumps on to the table that he may for a moment in a supposititious way reach it! He is ^[p. 136] evidently occupied with the measure he desires to attain to; he has the measure before him. It is in fact the way every one learns - you see something done or attained, and then you labour to reach it. The head copy line is the best copper plate, and the young student labours, is exercised, to write as well as the head line. As he tries, he finds that there is a measure of skill in him, and the more he tries or is exercised the more is the skill developed. If he were to say, I see the head line, it is easily done, and never attempt to write it, he would have no exercise, and I need hardly say, he would never know how to write! On the contrary, it is the one who has taken the most pains (taking into account his natural skill) who writes best. With the saint there is the new nature, the skill; but it is a creature and needs development. The head line is Christ, I must be occupied with Him to be like Him. I make a great many attempts, like children at the head line of their copy-books, but I am not occupied with any line except the head line, and the nearer I come, after repeated exercise, to the symmetry and perfection of the head line, the more I see the perfectness of its execution; and the more does my eye rest on it as unparalleled and unique. Now it is plain that if there be no exercise, there is really no pressing on, no real delight in the standard, and no sense of the responsibility to be like the head line, or to do things in the symmetry and order in which Christ does them. Exercise takes place always because of the standard and the desire and labour to reach to it; and hence the occupation is with, and the eye is on, the standard. But with self-occupation the eye is on oneself. The child that is self-occupied sits in the corner pining and whining that he is not as tall as his father. The young student is always saying that it is no good for him to write, that he never will be able, he sees he is very far away from the head line, but instead of being occupied with it and devoting ^[p. 137] himself to attain to it, he watches his own performance in order to derive comfort and pleasure from what he is in himself. Thus would it be for a christian who looks at himself instead of seeing simply that he possesses in Christ what is altogether beautiful and perfect; and that He is his delight always, and not any likeness to Him that through grace may be produced in himself. Surely the exercised one values every likeness to Christ in himself, not so much that it is in himself as that it is of Christ, on whom the eye of the true heart always rests; and nothing short of it could satisfy him; whereas progress satisfies the self-occupied one. The soul that is without exercise has not his eye on Christ. Paul sees the mark, Christ in glory, and he presses towards it, he forgets the things which are behind - take him on earth or going to glory - the measure is Christ; the head line is the one thing before his mind, on earth that he might die like Him; in glory, that he might be with Him and enjoy the prize. The rationalistic mind has no exercises, the ritualistic mind is self-occupied.