(From Sunday School Times) We must give up the lower for the higher. An artist's pupil was sketching a landscape bathed in the glow of the setting sun. A large barn stood in the foreground. The artist watched his pupil in silence for a time, and then said to him impressively, “If you spend so much time painting the shingles on that barn, you will never have time to paint the sunset.” In all our work we must choose between shingles and sunsets, between pearls and goodly pearls and the noblest pearl. If we will win the higher things, we must give up the lower. The easy way is not to trouble ourselves about the better things, the better spiritual attainments, the better service, the winning of other souls. “Nobody will ever thank you for it,” one said, in speaking of certain exhausting work and costly self-sacrifice. “Nobody will ever thank you for it.” But the Christlike man or woman toils not for human thanks, never thinks of human gratitude or ingratitude. His one thought is, “What is my Master bidding me to do? How can I do most for Him?” The love of Christ impels us to our holiest, our bravest, and our best. The Master's face looks into ours; and in the gentle stillness there is a voice that calls us upward, upward, tho with bleeding feet and weary step, to the higher things, to the highest. Let us follow unafraid, undismayed. We shall lose nothing by giving up ease, or pleasure, or gain, or life; for what we shall receive in exchange will be a thousand times better possession and treasure than what we have sacrificed. “O Master, point Thou out the way,
Nor suffer Thou our steps to stray;
Then in the path that leads to-day
We follow Thee. “Thou hast passed on before our face;
Thy footsteps on the way we trace;
O keep us, aid us by Thy grace;
We follow Thee.”