Music for the Soul: Daily Readings for a Year

This do in remembrance of Me. — i COR. xi. 24,

January 1. Jesus.’* Do this in remembrance of Christ, or, as Paul expresses it, discerning the Lord’s body,” not only because you are in danger of forgetting but do this because you remember. Do this, not only in order that your reminiscences may be strengthened, but do it because they are strong. Seeing the Lord’s body, discerning His presence, loving that which you discern — do this! And, in like manner, “Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Do all, that is to say, for the sake of the character, as revealed to you, of Him whom you love; do it all, giving thanks unto God and the Father by Him. And then, in the parallel passage, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily,” — that is one principle; and next, as the foundation of all real heartiness, do it “as to the Lord.” This is the foundation, and the limitation as well; for it is only when we do it “heartily, as to the Lord,” that earnestness is kept from degenerating into absorption, and that a man, whilst working with all his might, and “diligent in business,” shall also be ‘* fervent in spirit.” The motive is the same: in the Communion it is the remembrance of the Lord; in the ordinary life it is “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Is that sacred motive one which is kept for select occasions, and for what we call special acts of worship? It is to be feared that the most of Christian people do with that Divine reason for work, “the love of Christ constraineth me,” as the old Franks (to use a strange illustration) used to do with their long-haired kings — they keep them in the palace at all ordinary times, give them no power over the government of the kingdom, only now and then bring them out to grace a procession, and then take them back again into their reverential impotence. That is very like what Christian people do, to a very large extent, with that which ought to be the rule of all their life and the motive of all their work. We sit down to the communion, and we do it “in the name of the Lord Jesus “; we commemorate Him there. When we come to pray, we speak to Him and in His Name. Our high tides of devotion do not come so often as the tides of the sea; and then for the rest of our time there is the long stretch of foul, oozy, barren beach when the waters are out, and all is desolation and deadness. That is not what a Christian man ought to be. There is no action of life which is too great to bow to the influence of “This do in remembrance of Me “; and there is no action of life which is too small to be magnified, glorified, turned into a solemn sacrament, by the operation of the same motive.

Stretching forward to tht things which are before, I press on towards the goal. — -Phil. iii. 13, 14.

January 2. CHILDHOOD is the prophecy of maturity. “The child is father of the man”; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the existence of another state where all that is here in the germ shall be fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which alone wdll correspond to the power that works in us. Think of the ordinary Christian character. The germ is there, and more than the germ. As one looks at the crudity, the inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of others, or of one’s self, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect exhibition is all that so Divine a principle has been able to achieve in this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we shall be all which the transforming power of God’s Spirit can make us. True, the very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong a reason for believing in the perfect life of heaven as their purities and virtues. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work after Christian souls — the power of the Cross, the power of love essaying to obedience, the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious and Divine is somewhere and some time to bring forth something better than these few poor half-developed flowers, something with more lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic here; does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and richer soil where it will be at home?

There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings, stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man. “Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests.” They fit exactly and correspond to their “environment.” But a man! — there is an enormous amount of waste faculty about him if he is only going to live in this world. There is a great deal in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, which is like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked ‘* Not wanted on the voyage.” These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God, I have got much in me that is ‘* not wanted on the voyage”; and the more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round about me in proportion as I am brought into harmony with the things beyond.

“Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,” shall be able to break that tie and banish the child from the conscious grasp of a Father’s hand. Dear brother and sister, can you say, Now am I a child of God “?

Then you may patiently and peacefully firont that dim future.

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