Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn

Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing?by George Tybout Purves, et al

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Title: Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn
Author: George Tybout Purves

Release Date: July 25, 2007 [eBook #22141]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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JOY IN SERVICE.
FORGETTING, AND PRESSING ONWARD.
UNTIL THE DAY DAWN.
REV. GEORGE T. PURVES, D.D., LL.D.
The Teacher and Pastor.
Prest. F. L. Patton, D.D., Ll.D.

[Illustration: Copyright 1900 By F. Gutekunst.
Hand written signature: George T. Purves]

American Tract Society 150 Nassau Street, New York
Copyright, 1901, by American Tract Society.

CONTENTS
PAGE
JOY IN SERVICE, 7
"Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."
FORGETTING, AND PRESSING ONWARD, 45
"Forgetting these things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
"UNTIL THE DAY DAWN," 83
"The things which are not seen are eternal."
* * * * *
THE TEACHER AND PASTOR, 87
Address of Dr. F. L. Patton, at the funeral of Dr. Purves.

JOY IN SERVICE.
"Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."--JOHN 4:34.

JOY IN SERVICE.
This is one of the sentences that dropped from the lips of Christ, which let us into his personal spiritual life and in some measure lay bare his mind. To be permitted thus to share his confidence is one of our greatest privileges. Viewing him from a distance, we may admire his character; viewing him in history, we may confess his incomparable power; viewing him when convincing us of our own sin, we may adore him as our Saviour; but we desire, and may have, a still more intimate acquaintance. He tells us about himself. He describes here and there his personal inner life. He permits us to share his secrets, and all that we otherwise feel of reverence, admiration, and gratitude gives new value to these disclosures of the spiritual life of the God in man.
Now, in the words before us, Christ describes his joy in the service of the Father. They reveal a devotion so complete as to entirely control his mind. They reveal a soul so absorbed in doing the Divine will as to be insensible for the time to ordinary physical needs. They reveal a self-consecration which is absolute, and yet which is so spontaneous and glad as to be self-sustaining; so that Christ needed no other support in serving the Father than simply the opportunity of such service. We, on the contrary, require support to enable us to serve. We must be rewarded for our work, must be encouraged by sympathy, must be fed with promises and spiritual gifts, in order to be strong enough to do our duty. Christ found duty its own reward, service itself joy, obedience a source of renewed strength. His will was one with the Father's; and thus he discloses the, to us, marvelous spectacle of one who could truly say, Not my desire or my duty, or my purpose is, but my meat--my food--my source itself of life and strength--is to do the will of God, and to finish his work.
And yet our Lord Jesus was a very genuine man. He did not impress observers with the common insignia of holiness. It was the Pharisees, not Christ, who stood at the corners of the streets to make long prayers, who enlarged the borders of their phylacteries and chose the chief seats in the synagogues. It was the Baptist, not Jesus, who clothed himself in a garment of camel's hair and ate locusts and wild honey. Jesus, on the contrary, lived the outward life of other men, consorted with them in their usual places of resort, dressed and spake as they did; so that, in outward manner, it was impossible to distinguish him from the common mass in which he moved. All the more precious, therefore, is this revelation of his inner life. What a soul was his! The thought uppermost in his mind was devotion to the Father's will. The joy which most gladdened his lonely life was the joy of