1 Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.

This touches one of the first features of the service to which we are called by the gospel. That service is a service in which we are expected to increase and enlarge. We are not to be like some who have no enterprise and give themselves no concern as to the affairs of God in the earth. The true servants do not belong to the stagnation class or the fearful.

They are industrious and enterprising traders in the things of God, not with the object of common traders, but that the name of God may be brought into increasing honour, and the poor among men may be increasingly comforted by the consolation of Israel in prospect.

The Lord's parables illustrate the point. It was the servant who laid bye his talent in a napkin, who was rejected. Such is the man who receives the truth, puts it in his pocket, and goes on his way, attending to his personal advancement, without a care or a thought how the work of God is to be done. Such a man's example is to be shunned as the deadly miasma.

What we must aim at is to be able to say,

"Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds."

Let our motto be found in those other words of Paul:

"Be ye steadfast and immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord"

—"always"—no cessation, no tiring, no curtailing, but widening and expanding as the greatness of the matter in hand demands. There will be no difficulty about this where faith exists. It is only those who are uncertain that falter and flag. Such would be better at home than impeding the exertions of those who are certain their labour is not in vain.

"More and more" is the motto of the service and the servants who are such in more than name, even to the point of "taking pleasure," like Paul, "in distresses, in afflictions, in necessities." It is God's arrangement that the first stage of His work should be done in circumstances of deprivation. The Lord himself is an example, being without where to lay his head. The sham servants turn away in disgust before the hardships.

Sunday Morning 62

The Christadelphian, 1875

7 For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.

The old man says, "Why should not I have the liberty that everybody takes?" "Why should not I please myself also? Why should not I indulge in these pleasing diversions that chase away the dullness of life and open to me the solace and refreshment that the world has in all directions?"

There is an answer to the old man which the old man does not like, and which it inflicts the highest pain on him to receive. That answer is: The Law of God forbids. God says,

"Ye are called to holiness;"

"Be ye holy in all manner of conversation-holy both in body and spirit."

"Without holiness no man shall see the Lord."

...In all things, there is but one course for every true lover of Christ, and that is, to bear him company in the garden of Gethsemane, and say with him,

"Not my will but Thine be done."

The conflict may be painful for the time being; but it never can be so painful as that through which he went in prospect of the prolonged agony that ended in the "loud cry" at the ninth hour. And however painful, it prepares a sweetness of victory that no language can exaggerate. Even in this present life, the results of conformity to the will of God are most precious, most noble.

Bro Roberts - Not as I will, but as Thou wilt