Take Your Own Measure

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 9, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 15.

Take Your Own Measure.

THERE are people—you have seen them, and I have seen them—who are never happier than when they see a fair opportunity of taking somebody's measure. It is wonderful how many opportunities they find—their neighbor, their pastor, their lawyer, and even "their dearest friend."

They are never at loss for a place, in the church, on the street, at home, anywhere, in fact, where a scrap of humanity is to be seen. But the most wonderful thing about these people is that they never take their own measure.

No; with the exact weight of Mr. B's, Miss C's, and Mrs. D's brains at their finger's end, they yet know nothing of their own worth.

Carelessly they drift on through life, a looker-on here, a hanger-on there, indifferent apparently to the responsibility which, in a great or small measure, God has placed before every soul, a responsibility which each one is called upon to lift, shoulder, and carry.

You may find them in every walk, in every calling of life, men who can, without a quibble, point the finger of patronizing pity at their brother; men who take it lightly upon themselves to analyze the worth of, and then judge one of God's sacredly veiled images.

Horrible indeed must be the responsibility of the man who thus dares to don the mantle of Omnipotence.

Our judgeship apprenticeship must begin and end with ourselves; our Maker holds the key; ours is the fac-simile, which, if properly inserted, will enable us justly and accurately to take our own measure.—Sel.