Now all this has a most pressing and important application to us in the management of our lives. It may not seem 0, but it has. gospel in the large cities only. So he had to let the villages go. He saw he could not do here to Mission work, keel won't ere if a great application
pursue I will take it of us ordinary people, in our ordinary life. And as we look into it, we shall see that there are a great many things, quite good, against which no objection can be urged on the ground of essential prin-@ple from the Christian point of view, but which, being indulged in without due regard to limit, become engines of destruction. We have to keep in mind the chief end of life, and remembering that we, like our Lord, have only a certain amount of time and ability, see to it that we draw the line, often even at good things, to enable us to give due attention to other good, or even better things.
For instance, we are always being pestered with questions, whether this or that is Christian or not. When I was young it used to be seriously debated in Mutual Improvement Societies whether novel reading was right or not. It actually was, I have known people who wouldn't have a novel in the house. And then there is dancing, and card playing, whist and bridge and all the rest of them and going to the theatre, and then there was sport. O what debates on that! And good people used to turn to the New Testament. There they got no light at all. The debated subjects are never named. Even teetotalism has no direct sanction. And the "Prodigal" was welcomed home with dancing. It used to be a difficulty for many Nonconformists that Mr. Gladstone, whose devoutness they were always praising, went to the theatre; he actually did.
GuvTrons ror One THING.
Now here is where the principle, that our Lord followed comes in. It is a case in most of these matters of too much. People will not draw the line. They are gluttons for some one thing; it cuts out everything else. Thus it is folly. There is bridge. I do not play it. From what I hear it is no more unchristian than whist, which alas, has been killed by bridge. But*this is what I have seen of bridge. I have been told that a great many people don't thank you to ask them to dinner and to have a musical evening after dinner; they are bored to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.