The Test of Tendency

“I press toward the mark.’”’ — Purt. iii. 14.

THaT is the primary matter — where are we tending? For, after all, we are always tending somewhere. Life is never stationary. We are always in motion. The choice is not offered to us as to whether we will move or not move. We are bound to move: we are all the children of tendency, and the direction is left to the decision of the personal will.

Now the main tendency of a life is revealed in its apparently smaller concerns, as well as in the greater. A straw shows the direction of the current. Our dominant trend can be inferred from our trifles. Our leading ambition is manifest in everything. Everything is carried in the primary enthusiasm, as the loose things on a railway track are caught in the rush and Sweep of a passing train. In a truly consecrated life even ‘“‘the bells upon the horses are holiness unto the Lord.”” The Apostle Paul swept his tent-making into the common passion of his devotion to the Lord. His very salutations became part of his worship, and dull conventionalities burned with the altar-fires of God. He had his mark, and that mark settled the trend of everything.

It is imperative, therefore, if we would be in the Apostle’s fellowship, to determine our trend, and we determine our trend when we have chosen our mark. In our life we either drift or steer. To what shall we steer? What shall be our haven? What shall be our goal? What is the choice of the great Apostle? “I press toward the mark, for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus!’ The Apostle chose what the good Lord had chosen for him. It was his holy ambition to apprehend. that for which he had been apprehended by Christ Jesus. The Lord had called him to holiness, to a perfected salvation, to the liberty of the glory of the children of God!

And the Apostle’s “mark” was an upward calling. Once he surrenders himself to the mark everything in his life will feel the power of the heavenly gravitation. Our mark is always our magnet. If it is the Lord who is “‘ lifted up,” He will draw everything in our life unto Him, Ordinary conversation will have the savour of divine communion. Common work will have something of the life and elevation of worship. Even in our many bewilderments ‘we shall be moving surely toward the light. Let us choose our mark, ‘“‘ The high calling of Jesus,” and our life, in all its strangely mingled experiences, will have one trend, one goal, one final glory.