upation of it is total; no other has any
right to an inch of it; it is his affair thenceforth what crops to
arrange for and how to make the most of it. But his practical occupation
of it may not appear all at once. There may be waste land which he will
take into full cultivation only by degrees, space wasted for want of
draining or by over fencing, and odd corners lost for want of enclosing;
fields yielding smaller returns than they might because of hedgerows too
wide and shady, and trees too many and spreading, and strips of good soil
trampled into uselessness for want of defined pathways.

Just so is it with our lives. The transaction of, so to speak, making
them over to God is definite and complete. But then begins the practical
development of consecration. And here He leads on 'softly, according as
the children be able to endure.' I do not suppose any one sees anything
like all that it involves at the outset. We have not a notion what an
amount of waste of power there has been in our lives; we never measured
out the odd corners and the undrained bits, and it never occurred to us
what good fruit might be grown in our straggling hedgerows, nor how the
shade of our trees has been keeping the sun from the scanty crops. And
so, season by season, we shall be sometimes not a little startled, yet
always very glad, as we find that bit by bit the Master shows how much
more may be made of our ground, how much more He is able to make of it
than we did; and we shall be willing to work under Him and do exactly
what He points out, even if it comes to cutting down a shady tree, or
clearing out a ditch full of pretty weeds and wild-flowers.

As the seasons pass on, it will seem as if there was always more and more
to be done; the very fact that He is constantly showing us something more
to be done in it, proving that it is really His ground. Only let Him
_have_ the ground, no matter how poor or overgrown the soil may be, and
then 'He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the
garden of the Lord.' Yes, even _our_ 'desert'! And then we shall sing,
'My beloved has gone down into _His_ garden, to the beds of spices, to
feed in the gardens and to gather lilies.'

Made for Thyself, O God!
Made for Thy love, Thy service, Thy delight;
Made to show forth Thy wisdom, grace, and might;
Made for Thy praise, whom veiled archangels laud:
Oh, strange and glorious thought, that we may be
A