This is consecration, and I cannot tell you the blessedness of it. It is not the least use arguing with one who has had but a taste of its blessedness, and saying to him, 'How can these things be?' It is not the least use starting all sorts of difficulties and theoretical suppositions about it with such a one, any more than it was when the Jews argued with the man who said, 'One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.' The Lord Jesus does take the life that is offered to Him, and He does keep the life for Himself that is entrusted to Him; but until the life is offered we cannot know the taking, and until the life is entrusted we cannot know or understand the keeping. All we can do is to say, 'O taste and see!' and bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ, and set to our seal that we have found Him true to His every word, and that we have proved Him able even to do exceeding abundantly above all we asked or thought. Why should we hesitate to bear this testimony? We have done nothing at all; we have, in all our efforts, only proved to ourselves, and perhaps to others, that we had no power either to give or keep our lives. Why should we not, then, glorify His grace by acknowledging that we have found Him so wonderfully and tenderly gracious and faithful in both taking and keeping as we never supposed or imagined? I shall never forget the smile and emphasis with which a poor working man bore this witness to his Lord. I said to him, 'Well, H., we have a good Master, have we not?' 'Ah,' said he, 'a deal better than ever _I_ thought!' That summed up his experience, and so it will sum up the experience of every one who will but yield their lives wholly to the same good Master.
I cannot close this chapter without a word with those, especially my younger friends, who, although they have named the name of Christ, are saying, 'Yes, this is all very well for some people, or for older people, but I am not ready for it; I can't say I see my way to this sort of thing.' I am going to take the lowest ground for a minute, and appeal to _your_ 'past experience.' Are you satisfied with your experience of the other 'sort of thing'? Your pleasant pursuits, your harmless recreations, your nice occupations, even your improving ones, what fruit are you having from them? Your social intercourse, your daily talks and walks, your investments of all the time that remains to you over and above the absolute duties God may have given you, what fruit that shall remain have you from all this? Day after day passes on, and year after year, and what shall the harvest be? What is even the present return? Are you getting any real and lasting satisfaction out of it all? Are you not finding that things lose their flavour, and that you are spending your strength day after day for nought? that you are no more satisfied than you were a year ago--rather less so, if anything? Does not a sense of hollowness and weariness come over you as you go on in the same round, perpetually getting through things only to begin again? It cannot be otherwise. Over even the freshest and purest earthly fountains the Hand that never makes a mistake has written, 'He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again.' Look into your own heart and you will find a copy of that inscription already traced, '_Shall thirst again_.' And the characters are being deepened with every attempt to quench the inevitable thirst and weariness in life, which can only be satisfied and rested in full consecration to God. For 'Thou hast made us _for Thyself_, and the heart never resteth till it findeth rest in Thee.' To-day I tell you of a brighter and happier life, whose inscription is, '_Shall never thirst_,'--a life that is no dull round-and-round in a circle of unsatisfactorinesses, but a life that has found its true and entirely satisfactory centre, and set itself towards a shining and entirely satisfactory goal, whose brightness is cast over every step of the way. Will you not seek it?