NEW CIRCUMSTANCES REQUIRE NEW GRACE
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES REQUIRE NEW GRACE
Every new circumstance requires a new grace. If there be new demands on you, there are ever new temptations to evade or overlook the demands.
Where all are on a moral level, as you three sisters are, there is a danger of either a great declension, each yielding to the other, and thus finding excuse for oneself in the levity of the others (this is when there is no restraint), or there is a self-surrender in each, to promote a common good. Where all are equal, there is no acknowledged right to rule but as there is spiritual power; and there is no spiritual power to influence others, but as oneself is controlled by it. The less natural right we have to control any one, the more must we [p. 381] walk in increasing self-restraint, if we seek to have any moral influence with them. Thus where we are most at home naturally, we require the more to be guided, and in sensible support from the Lord to help and direct us; so that the circumstances which seem to be the easiest, entail on us the most watchfulness lest we should only please ourselves. He that is least among you is the greatest. Where service is most needed, the one who most renders it is necessarily the greatest.
This new circumstance should be a great chapter in your history. Like the locusts who “have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands” (Proverbs 30: 27), able to keep rank. They had not a double heart. Some can get on very well when alone, or under the influence of one who has a claim, who would find it a very different thing to be placed with his equals. If he seeks himself there, his influence is injurious, and nothing can check him then but the grace in his fellows to deny themselves where they might gratify themselves. I look upon you now as on a new form of the school of God. If you can walk in self-control where there is no rein ostensibly, how easy it will be for you when in harness and under rein.
The Lord grant that you may have a very profitable time. “If thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things” (Proverbs 23: 15, 16). The Lord bless you each and all abundantly.