ut best, all the splendid powers with
which we are endowed. When we are not gripped by the great purpose planned
for us we swing off into smaller, meaner purposes.

I mean, of course, those of us who are awake. Many people are habitual
somnambulists. All their walking and moving about is done in a state of
sleep. Some men never wake up. They go through the motions of life so far
as they must. The mechanism of habit keeps certain motions going, but the
real man within is asleep or dozing, with occasional spells of being
sleepily awake.

But men who are awake, and doing something, find a vent for their energy
on some lower level. The God-given energy will move out and stir itself to
action. But, having somehow missed the real purpose planned for them, they
allow the lower purposes to grip them. They organize great affairs, or
less great, industrial, intellectual, political, fraternal, social, and
spend their energy on these. It is the response they make to the call of
their natures for some great gripping purpose. But it looks very much like
another case of meeting a request for bread with cold hard stones.

These things in themselves are right, of course; so far as they are
right. They belong in the scheme of life. They should be given full place
in one's life. But that place is always a distinctly secondary place. They
belong in as number two.

A Christian business man gives most of the day and year to his business,
and gives of the best of his thought and strength to it. But if he have
gotten his bearings straight, his business is not in first place. It is
made to serve something higher. It earns the gold with which to finance
the great purpose of Jesus' life, and of his own life, namely, the purpose
of winning men, and of winning a whole world of them. How it would sweeten
business and fraternal and social contacts and friendships, if the salt of
this great purpose seasoned them!

<u>Living Broad Lives in Narrow Alleys.</u>

We need the <i>bigness</i> of this great purpose. So many lives are dwarfed by
their very littlenesses. We are bothered with being short-sighted. The
eyeglasses of the Master's purpose for us would wondrously widen out our
scope of vision. And through the new eyes would come broader, farther,
clearer views, and changed action. The littleness of our ideas would be
amusing if it were not so distressing.

I recall one day riding on a Fort-Wayne train through Indiana. I chanced
to overhea