Quiet Talks on Service

by S. D. Gordon

Do you remember that prayer in blank verse of the old Scottish preacher and poet and saint, Horatius Bonar? He said:

"Oh, turn me, mould me, mellow me for use.

Pervade my being with Thy vital force,

That this else inexpressive life of mine

May become eloquent and full of power,

Impregnated with life and strength divine.

Put the bright torch of heaven into my hand,

That I may carry it aloft

And win the eye of weary wanderers here below

To guide their feet into the paths of peace.

I cannot raise the dead,

Nor from this soil pluck precious dust,

Nor bid the sleeper wake,

Nor still the storm, nor bend the lightning back,

Nor muffle up the thunder,

Nor bid the chains fall from off creation's long enfettered limbs.

But I can live a life that tells on other lives,

And makes this world less full of anguish and of pain;

A life that like the pebble dropped upon the sea

Sends its wide circles to a hundred shores.

May such a life be mine.

Creator of true life, Thyself the life Thou givest,

Give Thyself, that Thou mayst dwell in me, and I

in Thee."

An Active Life of Service.

The third life is a life of active service, of aggressive earnestness in winning men. I say aggressive. That word does not mean noise and dust, shuffling of feet, and bustling confusion. It means rather the steady, steady movement of the sun which noiselessly, dustlessly, moves onward, hour after hour, day in and day out, regardless of any storms, or disturbances. It means the quiet, peaceful, but resistless uninterrupted movement of the moon rising night after night, and going through its circle of action. Earnestness means the burning of the inner spirit. Its fires dim not, for they are fed continually from secret sources.

This third life is spoken of directly: "Go ye and make disciples." The going is to be continued until folks farthest away have heard. Some people are bounded by the horizon of the town where they live, some by the particular church to which they belong, some the denomination, some the state, or even the nation. Jesus fixes the horizon of His follower as that of the world. Jesus was visionary. He talked about all nations, a race, a world.

All are to go. They are to go to all. Some may be made wholly free, by arrangement with their fellow-followers, to give their full strength and time to the direct going and telling. These are highly favored in privilege. Some of these may go to deserted darkened places in the home land. Some may go to the city slum, which in its dire need is of close kin to the foreign-mission land. These are yet more highly favored in privilege.

Some may go to those far distant lands where Jesus is not known, where the need of Him is so pathetically great. These are the most highly favored in the privilege of service accorded them. Many others have been left free of the necessity of earning bread and home and clothing and so have a rare opportunity of devoting themselves to the going, as the Spirit of Jesus guides. Many are given the talent to earn easily, and so, if they will, may give much strength to service.

The great majority everywhere and always are absorbed for most of the waking hours of the day in earning something to eat, and something to wear, and somewhere to sleep. Yet where there is the warm touch with Jesus there will come the yearning for purity, and the life of service. With these as with all there may be the service, strong and sweetly fragrant. There is always some bit of spare time, with planning, that can be used in direct service in church, or school, or mission. And the secret life of prayer will give a steadiness that will guard against the over-use of one's strength.

There can be a personal going to some in words tactfully spoken. There is the life of sweet purity and gentle patience always so winsome, that speaks all the time in musical tones to one's circle. There is an enormous, unconscious aggressiveness about such a life. Then there can be the going through gold. And the entire planet can be brought under one's thumb of influence through the strangely simple power of prayer.

I have been running across some new versions of this last word of Jesus. A sort of re-revisions they are. I have not found them in the common print, but printed in lives, the lives of men. The print is large, chiefly capitals, easily read. These lives are so noisy as to quite shut out what the lips may be saying. There are variations in these translations.