"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."—John viii. 31, 32.
FAITHFULNESS is the secret of success. It makes the seeker, a finder; the asker, a receiver. The promise attached to it in the above Scripture is, — "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Hitherto, in the old religious beliefs, we have, perhaps, been exhorted too much to be rather than truly told how, and what to be faithful in. These creeds and exhortations, like the Pharisees of old, "Bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." I remember being greatly perplexed in earlier years, when the demands of the church, to which I belonged, called for more labor and devotion than I had strength to give. It seemed right and just that this work should be done. My sense of Scripture and of the commands of Jesus, made it seem to be but "'our reasonable service," and yet I could not meet these demands, because of what seemed physical inability. My religion, strange to say, had nothing to do with removing this inability, but must, on the contrary, stand helpless before it, while the acknowledged "work of the Lord" went undone.
