1.03.000. Book 3: Prefaces
NOTE TO FIRST EDITION The vows of God are on me, and I may not stay To play with shadows, or pluck earthly flowers Till I my work have done, and rendered up account.
While this MS. was being written, and afterwards before it was posted, a little group of missionaries waited upon God about it, and one of them prayed:-"Lord, we know that it will go to those who have left home and all for Thy sake. If it must wound-bathe it in tenderness, Lord." With this prayer we send it out: "If it must wound-would that it need not-but if it must-bathe it in tenderness, Lord!"
DISENTANGLED No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."- 2 Timothy 2:4.
SEPARATED
"When man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto Lord: He shall separate himself from wine, and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried. All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk:’- Numbers 6:2-4.
CROWNED
"Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, . . . for the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him."- Leviticus 21:12.
NOTE TO THIRD REPRINT
IT is a surprise that such a book has been wanted again. If criticism fair, and perhaps sometimes otherwise, could have killed it, it would have been dead long ago. Its fortunes have been varied. It has been tossed into the fire, flung across bungalows, torn into fragments and thrown into waste-paper baskets, dissected, misquoted, written against in "opposition tracts," used as a foil for opposite thought in at least one missionary training-college, and sometimes all but smothered by too appreciative affection. And yet it refuses to die. As it goes out again, it goes with prayer for forgiveness for anything amiss in it, and with longing that it may help some young soul (it was not written for old souls) a little nearer its goal. "To which end we also pray for you that our God may count you worthy of His calling and fulfil every desire of goodness, and every good work of faith, with power."
NOTE TO FIFTH REPRINT THIS little book has gone out very quietly; and now very quietly it goes out again. May the Lord, at whose feet every page was laid as it was first written, carry it whithersoever He will.
A. C.
DOHNAVUR FELLOWSHIP.
O PRINCE OF GLORY O Prince of Glory, who dost bring Thy sons to glory through Thy Cross, Let me net shrink from suffering, Reproach, or loss. The dust of words would smother me; Be all to me anathema That turns me from Gethsemane, And Golgotha.
If Thy dear Home be fuller, Lord. For that a little emptier My house on earth, what rich reward That guerdon were. And by the borders of my day The river of Thy pleasure flows, The flowers that blossom by the way Who loves Thee knows.
God’s Missionary
We beseech Thee, O Lord, to renew Thy people inwardly and outwardly, that as Thou wouldest not have them to be hindered by bodily pleasures, Thou mayest make them vigorous with spiritual purpose; and refresh them in such sort by things transitory, that Thou mayest grant them rather to cleave to things eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Leonine A.D. 440.