gues_. So far as I can hear, they are saying something
quite different. But what their tongues are saying is made indistinct and
blurred by some noise near by.

Other translations I have run across have this variation: "Make a place
for yourself, in your profession, in society. Make a comfortable
living;--with a wide margin of meaning to that word 'comfortable'--belong
to the church, become a pillar, or at least move in the pillar's circle,
give of course, even freely in appearance, but remember these are the dust
in the scale, the other is the thing that weighs. All of one's energies
must be centered on the main thing."

May I ask you to listen very quietly, while I repeat the Master's own
words over very softly and clearly, so that they may get into the inner
cockles of our hearts anew? "All power hath been given unto Me; therefore
go ye, and _make disciples of all nations_." These other translations are
wrong. They are misleading. _The one main thing is influencing men for
Jesus_.

The Perspective of True Service.

It is not the only thing by any means. There is a multitude of things
perfectly proper and that must be done and well done. But through all
their doing is to run this one strong purpose. These other things are
details, important details, indispensably important, yet details. The
other is the one main thing toward which the doing of all the others is to
bend and blend.

Please mark keenly that there are three lives here; three in one. The
secret life of prayer, the open life of purity, the active life of service
Not one, nor the other, not any two, but all three, this is the true
ideal. This is the true rounded life. And note sharply that this gives the
true perspective of service. The service life grows up out of the other
two. Its roots lie down in prayer and purity. This explains why so much
service is fruitless. It isn't rooted. There is no rich subsoil.

It seems to be a part of the hurt of sin that men do not keep the
proportion of things balanced, and never have. In former days men shut
themselves up behind great walls that they might be pleasing to God. They
shut out the noise that they might have quiet to pray. They thought to
shut out the sin that they might be pure, forgetting that they carried it
in with them.

In our day things have swung clean over to the other extreme. Now all is
activity. The emphasis of the time is upon doing. There is a lot of
running around, and rushing arou