oved, cut the Gordian knot, like Alexander, with the sword of decision.
Launch out into the deep with a bold plunge, and Christ will settle for
you all the questions that you are now debating, and more probably show
you their insignificance, and let you see that the only way to settle them
is to overleap them. They are Satan's petty snares to waste your time and
keep you halting when you should be marching on.

The mercy of God is an ocean divine,
A boundless and fathomless flood;
Launch out in the deep, cut away the shore line,
And be lost in the fulness of God.

MARCH 20.

"They which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall
reign in life" (Rom. v. 17).

Precious souls sometimes fight tremendous battles in order to attain to
righteousness in trying places. Perhaps the heart has become wrong in some
matter where temptation has been allowed to overcome, or at least to turn
it aside from its singleness unto God; and the conflict is a terrible one
as it seeks to adjust itself and be right with God, and finds itself
baffled by its own spiritual foes, and its own helplessness, perplexity
and perversity. How dark and dreary the struggle, and how helpless and
ineffectual it often seems at such times! It is almost sure to strive in
the spirit of the law, and the result always is, and must ever be,
condemnation and failure. Every disobedience is met by a blow of wrath,
and discouragement, and it well nigh sinks to despair. Oh, if the tempted
and struggling one could only understand or remember what perhaps he has
learned before, that Christ is our righteousness, and that it is not by
law but by grace alone, "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye
are not under the law, but under grace." That is the secret of the whole
battle.

MARCH 21.

"Casting all your care upon Him" (I. Peter v. 7).

Some things there are that God will not tolerate in us. We must leave
them. Nehemiah would not talk with Sanballat about his charges and fears,
but simply refused to have anything to do with the matter--even to go into
the temple and pray about it. How very few things we really have to do
with in life. If we would only drop all the needless things and simply do
the things that absolutely touch and require our attention from morning
till night, we would find what a small slender thread life was; but we
string upon it a thousand imaginary beads that never come, and burden
ourselves