DON'T HINDER THE LORD'S WORK.
The Lord's work is too often hindered because His professed people stand as obstacles in His way. The Gospel work in the earth is the Lord's own work; the controversy with Satan is the Lord's own controversy. The enemy of souls is trying to destroy men simply because he wants to destroy Christ's work, and thereby destroy Him. The Lord takes His people into fellowship in the controversy because He wants them to be partakers with Him in the glorious victory. He could destroy the adversary in a moment, and burn up the effects of sin any day, but that is not all of His great purpose. Out of the sin-stricken race He is working to redeem a people for His name, wherewith to populate the earth after He shall have purified it of sin and made it new. The new earth and its redeemed people will be His eternal monument before the universe of His power to put down all foes, and of His unselfish, self-sacrificing love for His creatures. But men, after accepting the honor of fellowship in the great work of salvation, are prone to imbibe the notion that the work is theirs, and begin to devise ways of their own for its conduct. When we forget that the battle is the Lord's, and that His Word is the great "Regulations" for His soldiers, we are very sure to hinder effective operations. This principle is enunciated by the Lord through the psalmist: "O that My people would hearken unto Me, that Israel would walk in My ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and turn My hand against their adversaries." Ps. 81:13, 14. The Lord would soon do the work, if His people would not insist on injecting ways and doctrines of their own. The consequence of such a course is stated in the previous verses: "I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt; open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people hearkened not to My voice; and Israel would none of Me. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, that they might walk in their own counsel." Now the law of cause and effect is just the same to-day as it ever was. The history of Israel's rejection anciently is too well known to need repetition here, and a like course on the part of God's people to-day will just as surely produce a like result. Will the professed disciples of Christ heed the lesson?