THE SERVICE OF VISITING
THE SERVICE OF VISITING
I hope you visit some one every day. It is the most useful occupation when really done to the Lord, and I am very glad you are so highly favoured as to have the opportunity for it without the numerous obstacles which exist in other places. It is not so much what or how you contribute in word or in deed, but that you will see what is needed, and you will know how far you are able to meet it. Many think they can get on very well until they try. You may think it easy to minister comfort to a tried soul, or peace to an anxious one, and you may know very well the way and manner in which the Lord has comforted and cheered yourself, yet when you come to offer help to another you will find how insufficient you are, and the sense of this throws the visitor back on God, and he finds his real level.
A young artist thinks he can paint, but when unapproved he is undeceived and mortified. The sense of inefficiency does not damp true energy, it only makes one humble and more reliant on the Lord. What spoils people’s work is that they have not a true sense of what efficiency is. A daub may pass for a painting when the original is unknown, but when we feel that the only merit in any moral [p. 249] picture is the likeness to Jesus, we are kept humble as to ourselves and as to our greatest services to others. The more you see in visiting that which needs care and help, the more you will find how inefficient you are, but it will not discourage you from making another effort; you will have to ask yourself, in order to preserve a good conscience — Have I the colour — the likeness to Jesus that I feel this or that poor woman needs? and if I have not how can I skilfully impart to her what I am deficient in myself? So I say — visit, not so much to do good, as to get good, and so to be better qualified for doing good. Be satisfied with nothing but a good likeness — every divine colour in its true place. Himself as He walked down here is what you have to express; set your heart for this, and the imperfections of others will lead you to watch and to judge yourself, while their perfections will stimulate and encourage you, for what grace has done for one it can do for another.