THE MARK OF A GOOD SERVANT

THE MARK OF A GOOD SERVANT

The mark of a good servant is that he gives the household meat in due season; we are called to a variety of services, and were we to confine ourselves to one routine, like a horse in a mill, we should soon wear out, and we should lose the fresh energies of life as well as its usefulness. We all require to be more even. The greatest proof of divine power in a servant is that he is even. Do not go into extremes.

How little we know the depths of Christ’s interest in His own, and, on the other hand, the way He regards the dislocation and paralysis of what is so dear to Him. M any speak of Christ as He was or as He will be, but few of what He is — His present feelings about His own. “Why persecutest thou me?” That is Christ in the present. When a loved one is removed, the only way to demonstrate affection for the absent one is to love and care for any remnant of his here. Thus David felt for Jonathan. Thus we should feel for what is of Christ here now in His ^[p. 250] absence. You can never know the fulness of Christ’s heart, you cannot comprehend what He can confer all round until you have gone in company with Him as His bondsman and become His friend. Then you enter into His feelings about His own, and then you are made sensible of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, and what it really means that the Christ should be at home in your heart by faith. He, the Christ, must be domiciled in your heart before you can comprehend His domain. May the Lord fit you every day more for Himself and His service. The more we are in His interests the less tied we are by other interests, and yet the better are all other interests which are subject to Him promoted.

If you would be perfectly happy, live entirely for Christ here. I feel that if I were to be absolutely in the current of His mind my joy would be unspeakable. May you be led into and kept in this blessed association.