Our Solitude with Him. Jesus does not take us alone and expound things to us all the time; He expounds things to us as we can understand them. Other lives are parables. God is making us spell out our own souls.

It is slow work, so slow that it takes God all time and eternity to make a man and woman after His own purpose. The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves! We do not know envy when we see it, or laziness, or pride. Jesus reveals to us all that this body has been harbouring before His grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look in with courage?

We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves, it is the last conceit to go. The only One Who understands us is God. The greatest curse in spiritual life is conceit. If we have ever had a glimpse of what we are like in the sight of God, we shall never say - "Oh, I am so unworthy," because we shall know we are, beyond the possibility of stating it.

As long as we are not quite sure that we are unworthy, God will keep narrowing us in until He gets us alone. Wherever there is any element of pride or of conceit, Jesus cannot expound a thing. He will take us through the disappointment of a wounded pride of intellect, through disappointment of heart. He will reveal inordinate affection - things over which we never thought He would have to get us alone.

We listen to many things in classes, but they are not an exposition to us yet. They will be when God gets us alone over them.

Christ Jesus, in His humanity, felt the need of complete solitude—to be entirely by Himself, alone with Himself. Each of us knows how draining constant interchange with others can be and how it exhausts our energy. As part of humankind, Jesus knew this and felt the need to be by Himself in order to regain His strength. Solitude was also important to Him in order to fully realize His high calling, His human weakness, and His total dependence on His Father.

As a child of God, how much more do we need times of complete solitude—times to deal with the spiritual realities of life and to be alone with God the Father. If there was ever anyone who could dispense with special times of solitude and fellowship, it was our Lord. Yet even He could not maintain His full strength and power for His work and His fellowship with the Father without His quiet time. God desires that every servant of His would understand and perform this blessed practice, that His church would know how to train its children to recognize this high and holy privilege, and that every believer would realize the importance of making time for God alone.

Oh, the thought of having God all alone to myself and knowing that God has me all alone to Himself! ANDREW MURRAY

Lamartine, the first of the French Romantic poets and a writer of the nineteenth century, in one of his books wrote of how his mother had a secluded spot in the garden where she spent the same hour of each day. He related that nobody ever dreamed of intruding upon her for even a moment of that hour. It was the holy garden of the Lord to her.

Pity those people who have no such Beulah land! (Isaiah 62:4.) Jesus said, “Go into your room, close the door and pray” (Matthew 6:6), for it is in quiet solitude that we catch the deep and mysterious truths that flow from the soul of the things God allows to enter our lives.

My soul, practice being alone with Christ! The Scripture says, “When he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” (Mark 4:34). Do not wonder about the truth of this verse, for it can be true of your life as well. If you desire to have understanding, then dismiss the crowd, just as Jesus did. (Matthew 14:22.) Let them “go away one at a time . . . until only Jesus [is] left” (John 8:9) with you. Have you ever pictured yourself as the last remaining person on earth, or the only person left in the entire universe?

If you were the only person remaining in the universe, your every thought would be, “God and I . . . ! God and I . . . !” And yet He is already as close to you as that. He is as near as if no heart but His and yours ever beat throughout the boundlessness of space.

O my soul, practice that solitude! Practice dismissing the crowd! Practice the stillness of your heart! Practice the majestic song “God and I! God and I!” Let no one come between you and your wrestling angel! You will receive conviction yet pardon, when you meet Jesus alone! GEORGE MATHESON

God may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you always see yourself to be His love-slave, He will awaken in you a jealous love and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.

I can still believe that a day comes for all of us, however far off it may be, when we shall understand; when these tragedies that now blacken and darken the very air of heaven for us will sink into their places in a scheme so august, so magnificent, so joyful, that we shall laugh for wonder and delight. ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

Will not the end explain The crossed endeavor, earnest purpose foiled, The strange bewilderment of good work spoiled, The clinging weariness, the inward strain? Will not the end explain?

Meanwhile He comforteth Them that are losing patience. ’T is His way: But none can write the words they heard Him say, For men to read; only they know He saith Sweet words and comforteth.

Not that He doth explain The mystery that baffleth; but a sense Husheth the quiet heart, that far, far hence Lieth a field set thick with golden grain Wetted in seedling days by many a rain.

The end—it will explain.

GOLD CORD