to its amount. 'What she could'--not _half_ of
what she could; not what she _conveniently_ could. That is the
measure of acceptable service.

Then, still further, may we not learn from Persis the spring of all
true Christian work? She 'laboured much in the Lord,' because she
_was_ 'in Him,' and in union with Him there came to her power
and desire to do things which, without that close fellowship, she
neither would have desired nor been able to do. It is vain to try to
whip up Christian people to forms of service by appealing to lower
motives. There is only one motive that will last, and bring out from
us all that is in us to do, and that is the appeal to our sense of
union and communion with Jesus Christ, and the exhortation to live in
Him, and then we shall work in Him. If you link the spindles in your
mill, or the looms in your weaving-shed, with the engine, they will
go. It is of no use to try to turn them by hand. You will only spoil
the machinery, and it will be poor work that you will get off them.

So, dear brethren, be 'in the Lord.' That is the secret of service,
and the closer we come to Him, and the more continuously, moment by
moment, we realise our individual dependence upon Him, and our union
with Him, the more will our lives effloresce and blossom into all
manner of excellence and joyful service, and nothing else that
Christian people are whipped up to do, from lower and more vulgar
motives than that, will. It may be of a certain kind of
inferior value, but it is far beneath the highest beauty of Christian
service, nor will its issues reach the loftiest point of usefulness
to which even our poor service may attain.

Persis seems to me to suggest, too, the safeguard of work. Ah, if she
had not 'laboured in the Lord,' and been 'in the Lord' whilst she was
labouring, she would very soon have stopped work. Our Christian work,
however pure its motive when we begin it, has in itself the tendency
to become mechanical, and to be done from lower motives than those
from which it was begun. That is true about a man in my position. It
is true about all of us, in our several ways of trying to serve our
dear Lord and Master. Unless we make a conscience of continually
renewing our communion with Him, and getting our feet once more
firmly upon the rock, we shall certainly in our Christian work,
having begun in the spirit, continue in the flesh, and before we know
where we are, we shall be doing work from habit, becau