John R. Macduff

Third Day.

DEVOTEDNESS TO GOD.

“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”—Luke, ii. 49.

“My meat and my drink are to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.” That one object brought Jesus from heaven—that one object he pursued with unflinching, undeviating constancy, until He could say, “It is finished.”

However short man comes of his “chief end,” “Glory to God in the highest” was the motive, the rule, and exponent of every act of that wondrous life. With us, the magnet of the soul, even when truest, is ever subject to partial oscillations and depressions, trembling at times away from its great attraction-point. His never knew one tremulous wavering from its all-glorious center. With Him there were no ebbs and flows, no fits and starts. He could say, in the words of that prophetic psalm which speaks so preËminently of Himself, “I have set the Lord always before me!”

Reader! do you feel that in some feeble measure this lofty life-motto of the sinless Son of God is written on your home and heart, regulating your actions, chastening your joys, quickening your hopes, giving energy and direction to your whole being, subordinating all the affections of your nature to their high destiny? With pure and unalloyed motives, with a single eye, and a single aim, can you say, somewhat in the spirit of His brightest follower, “This one thing I do”? Are you ready to regard all you have—rank, name, talents, riches, influence, distinctions—valuable, only so far as they contribute to promote the glory of Him who is “first and last, and all in all”? Seek to feel that your heavenly Father’s is not only a business; but the business of life. “Whose I am, and whom I serve,”—let this be the superscription written on your thoughts and deeds, your employments and enjoyments, your sleeping and waking. Be not, as the fixed stars, cold and distant; but be ever bathing in the sunshine of conscious nearness to Him who is the sun and center of all happiness and joy.

Each has some appointed work to perform, some little niche in the spiritual temple to occupy. Yours may be no splendid services, no flaming or brilliant actions to blaze and dazzle in the eye of man. It may be the quiet, unobtrusive inner work, the secret prayer, the mortified sin, the forgiven injury, the trifling act of self-sacrifice for God’s glory and the good of others, of which no eye but the Eye which seeth in secret is cognizant. It matters not how small. Remember, with Him, motive dignifies action. It is not what we do, but how we do it. He can be glorified in little things as well as great things, and by nothing more than the daily walk, the daily life.

Beware of any thing that would interfere with a surrender of heart and soul to His service—worldly entanglements, indulged sin, an uneven walk, a divided heart, nestling in creature comforts, shrinking from the cross. How many hazard, if they do not make shipwreck, of their eternal hopes by becoming idlers in the vineyard; lingerers, like Lot; world-lovers, like Demas; “do-nothing Christians,” like the inhabitants of Meroz! The command is, “Go, work!” Words tell what you should be; deeds tell what you are. Let those around you see there is a reality in walking with God, and working for God!

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”