It is not what we say or do, so much as what we are, that influences others. We have heard this and very likely repeated it again and again, but I do not know anything which, thoughtfully considered, makes us realize more vividly the need and the importance of our whole selves being kept for Jesus. Any part not wholly committed and not wholly kept must hinder and neutralize the real influence for Him of all the rest. If we ourselves are kept all for Jesus, then our influence will be all kept for Him, too. If not, then, however much we may wish and talk and try we cannot throw our full weight into the right scale. And just insofar as it is not in the one scale, it must be in the other; weighing against the little which we have tried to put in the right one and making the short weight still shorter. So large a proportion of it is entirely involuntary while yet the responsibility of it is so enormous that our helplessness comes out in exceptionally strong relief while our past debt in this matter is simply incalculable.
Are we feeling this a little?—getting just a glimpse, down the misty defiles of memory, of the neutral influence, the wasted influence, the mistaken influence, the actually wrong influence which has marked the ineffaceable although untraceable course? And all the while we owed Him all that influence. It ought to have been all for Him. We have nothing to say. But what has our Lord to say? "I forgave thee all that debt.”
True-hearted! Savior, Thou knowest our story;
Weak are the hearts that we lay at Thy feet,
Sinful and treacherous! yet for Thy glory,
Heal them, and cleanse them from sin and deceit.
Half-hearted! Master, shall any who know Thee
Grudge Thee their lives, who hest laid down Thine own?
Nay; we would offer the hearts that we owe Thee—
Live for Thy love and Thy glory alone.