thing if only we could learn the secret of successful effort?

The earnest soul asks itself, "Have I found the line of life in which I can do most ?" "Have I strength for any broader work than that which now occupies my time?"

It is plain that to work successfully we must find first, what we can do best, then satisfy ourselves that our weakness is not a bar to success; and learn, if we can, how the little tin saw we are set to manage can be charged with the diamond dust of divine power.

First, let us see what God would have done. We set our watches by the jeweler's chronometer because we want them right. It tells us where the sun is, and only the sun can give us standard time. If we would have right notions of God's work, the Sun of Divine Rightness must give us our standard. We must turn to the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

We can be thoroughly useful only when we work the works of God. And what are they? To the Word and to the Testimony. From God's imperishable Record alone we may learn to what service we are to devote ourselves. Let us read carefully.

We find the stupendous miracle of creation

chronicled in a few lines, while chapter after chapter is given to warning, exhortation, and entreaty that wandering souls may be rescued from ultimate loss and death.

How simple is the story of the genesis of light, that wonderful effluence that makes possible all growth and beauty! How marvelous its movements! It puts its shoulder beneath all living things and lifts them toward the heavens in spite of the tremendous downward tug of gravitation. It brings note of suns so far away that a quarter of the life-time of the globe is needed to transmit the report. It pries into the minutest organism. It shows us the shuttles of life at work, weaving the living tissue; yet, marvelous as it is, the story of its birth is given us in a half-dozen words, though there is ample space to detail the penitence of a crucified thief, or the gratitude of a pardoned Magdalen.

We can be genuinely useful only when we work in line with the purpose of God. He renders the best service who does most to hasten the coming of the kingdom, be it by the conquest of an empire or the conversion of a child.

In seeking broad usefulness many blunder fatally. They mistake éclat for achievement, reputation for character, the huzzas of the crowd for the "Well done" of God. And they generally

find what they seek. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, they have their reward." They climb up where the altitude is more lonely, the landscape more drear, and they become only a better mark for the peltings of the envious. They have a few years of pampered egotism and then an eternal stumbling upon the dark mountains of banishment from God.

Greatness usually comes to the door a prince in disguise. We keep the door closed and wait for the chariot and outriders that never come.

If we try to build for ourselves a pedestal that shall lift us into consequence, like children making cob palaces, our careless haste is constantly throwing down what we have set up; while, if we take some simple, humble work, and make of it all we possibly can, God working in us and with us, before we dream of such a thing it has grown to a height that lifts us into consideration.

In our personal salvation, we are forever

Xstumbling over the simplicity of God's methods.

We must have some marvelous revealment of the divine glory, some unbearable ecstasy, instead of the peace of Christ, the quiet faith that believes his Word. Our diamond must blaze forth a Koh-i-noor, a mountain of light, and we push it aside with our foot, because it seems to

our dull eyes only a common pebble. So our opportunity comes to us, not as a glorifying, but as a plain, unwelcome duty-a cross.

The line of life marked out for us by infinite wisdom is, of necessity, the very best possible.

Our weakness is not a bar to successful effort. The statement of the most logical and exact inspired writer is that God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. Not that he uses them when he can get no others, or when they are thrust in his way and he can not push them aside; but of all instruments, they are his choice; and the reason. follows, "That no flesh may glory in his presence." He does not choose the weak because the strength of the strong is in his way, for the strongest are weak enough. These things are hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes, because the wise and prudent will not take the attitude so natural and easy for the babes.

Tin is chosen instead of the richer metals to hold the diamond dust on account of its very poverty.

God always uses means utterly inadequate to the result to be produced, that it may be thoroughly understood that the excellency of the power is not of men, but of himself. Then

needy souls will know that to him alone they must look as the source of help and strength. and not to the servants that do his bidding.

God's use of inadequate means may be seen in the material world.

When he makes an oak, he does not speak it into being by a word of power; he wraps the embryo in an insignificant nut, and drops it upon the ground. A foot presses it into the soil. The frost gnaws at its shell. Life touches the germ and sets the "bioplasts" at work. They begin to weave an oak, and presently its tiny leaflets push their way through the ground, and up toward the light. The nip of a lambkin might destroy the little vegetable, but, guarded by the law of the survival of the fittest, it climbs away upward till its forehead is among the clouds. That immense, upright column of wood is all from the tiny embryo.

When God would send a river forth on its mission of power and use and beauty, he does not open one of the earth's great arteries, and pour a mighty flood down the mountain side. A few drops trickle from beneath a stone. A baby's touch might turn the runlet this way or that. It slips away through grass and mosses till it catches a song in its heart, and dances over a pebbly bed, a thing of beauty and of gladness.