CHAPTER XXI.

THE POWER TO DO GOOD.

AND do not let us excuse ourselves for discontent and discouragement by saying, Oh, but if I were great or rich I could do so much more good. It is not so. The good and evil men do is measured not by their possessions and powers, but by their heart and by their will. What men do depends on what men are. Much of the best good ever done in the world has been done by men of lowly rank and humble intellect. The mighty impulse given of late years to education is traceable back ultimately not to statesmen, prelates, or nobles, but to a poor Plymouth cobbler, John Pounds. The man who shook in ruins down to its foundations the colossal system of slavery in America—his honoured name was William Lloyd Garrisondid his work as a youth living on bread and water, with a single negro lad, in a single dingy,

squalid, and ink-bespattered room.

George

Whitfield, who fanned into life the dead white embers of a selfish religionism, was once a tapster in the Bell Inn at Gloucester. Dr. Marshman, who began the mighty work of evangelisation in India by translating the Bible into many languages, once sat down with a heavy load of books in Westminster Abbey, weeping, to think that all his life he could only be a bookseller's shopman. Yes, believe me, more has been done for the world's amelioration, more to widen the confines of light and narrow the many, the commonplace, the insignificant, who had but the one talent, than by the small handful to whom in this world have been entrusted the ten. Did all the twelve deified Cæsars do as much for the world's good as the poor lame slave Epictetus? Which was the enviable man, Socrates the pauper, or Callias the millionaire ? Which would you rather have been, Bunyan the Bedford tinker, or Villiers the profligate favourite of kings?

This, then, is the lesson for us all-the lesson

without which we cannot adequately fulfil our work in life. Look at eternity; have your treasure in heaven; fix your eyes on Christ; and you will shake off this ignoble dejection of a disappointed egotism. You are poor, you have no status in the world, you have no ability, you do not possess a single accomplishment; you will lie in a nameless and soon-forgotten grave; you don't know what will become of your wife and children when you are dead; and, as you trudge on drearily among the undistinguished crowd, through summer dust and winter mire, you wonder of what use is your life, or why God placed you here. Well, I will tell you why God placed you here. It was simply that you might keep His law. It was that you might serve Him now, and enjoy Him for ever in Heaven hereafter. Do your duty humbly and cheerfully in that state of life to which God has called you; try to be faithful to His will, be kind and courteous to all about you; omit no opportunity of helping and cheering the souls of others; in every sorrowful and heavy-laden moment listen

to the music of the voice which says to you, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest;" and how soon you will learn that the soul which He has given you is of more worth than the crowns of all kings, though into them were packed Golconda and Ophir and Potosi-all earth's jewels and all earth's gold!

Thus, then, would I sum up what should be to every true Christian his object in life.

To those who by God's grace have never wandered wholly from His fold, it is "Keep innocency, and do the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last."

To those who have gone far astray it is-to arise and go to their Father, and say unto him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy hired servants."

Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., Belle Sauvage Works, London, E.C.