HOW MUCH BELONGS TO GOD?
By CHAS. C. LEWIS
I have somewhere heard a person talk like this: “I attended Sabbath-school regularly for three years, missing scarcely a Sabbath, and I think I might be excused from attending this year.” This brings up an important question—Can we do enough for God in one day or year to merit a play-spell during the next? We are apt to say within ourselves, when, by the help of the Lord, we have succeeded in performing some good deed, “There! I have done a good thing for God: surely I am entitled to a little rest.” But does the example of Christ teach us such a lesson? Most assuredly it does not. On the contrary, we find Christ doing good ceaselessly. Every day he is about his Father’s business. Now, we find him preaching to the eager multitude the words of eternal life; again, he pauses at the well to do personal work for the woman of Samaria. To-day, the sick are brought to him, and he heals them; to-morrow, he says to the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, “Take up thy bed and walk.” At all times and in all places we see him doing good. Christ is our example. If we follow him, we shall find no time to take our ease, or to shirk responsibilities. This same lesson is taught in other portions of the Bible. In Gal. 6:10, Paul says, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.” We have opportunities every day. Luke touches this point in the seventeenth chapter and tenth verse, as follows: “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” The work we can do in any day is all demanded for that day; and each night, as we look over the day’s work, we shall find no surplus which can be used to cancel any part of the morrow’s labor. Each day the love of Christ demands our all. The poet beautifully expresses this thought in the following well-known words:— “Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a tribute far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”