undless. There is nothing
that a Christian man may not reach, in the way of victory over his worse
self, and ejection of his most deeply-rooted faults, if only he will be
true to Jesus, and use the gifts that are given to him. There are many
of us whose daily life is pitched in a minor key; whose whole landscape
is grey and monotonous and sunless; who feel as if yesterday must set
the tune for to-day, and as if, because we have been beaten and baffled
so often, it is useless to try again. But remember that the field on
which the Stone of Help was erected, to commemorate the great and
decisive victory that Israel won, was the very field on which the same
foes had before contended, and _then_ Israel had been defeated.

So, brethren, we may win victories on the very soil where formerly we
were shamefully put to the rout; and our Christ with us will make
anything possible for us, in the way of restoration, of cure of old
faults, of ceasing to repeat former sins. I suppose that when a spar is
snapped on board a vessel, and lashed together with spun yarn and
lanyards, as a sailor knows how to do, it is stronger at the point of
fracture than it was before. I suppose that it is possible for a man to
be most impregnable at the point where he is naturally weakest, if he
chooses to use the defences that Jesus Christ has given.

III. Take another lesson--the greatness of little service.

We do not hear that this John Mark ever tried to do any work in the way
of preaching the gospel. His business was a very much humbler one. He
had to attend to Paul's comfort. He had to be his factotum, man of all
work; looking after material things, the commissariat, the thousand and
one trifles that some one had to see to if the Apostle's great work was
to get done. And he did it all his life long. It was enough for him to
do thoroughly the entirely 'secular' work, as some people would think
it, which it was in his power to do. That needed some self-suppression.
It would have been so natural for Mark to have said, 'Paul sends Timothy
to be bishop in Crete; and Titus to look after other churches;
Epaphroditus is an official here; and Apollos is a great preacher there.
And here am I, grinding away at the secularities yet. I think I'll
"strike," and try and get more conspicuous work.' Or he might perhaps
deceive himself, and say, 'more directly religious work,' like a great
many of us that often mask a very carnal desire for prominence under a
very