March 19

"Whose heart the Lord opened."—Acts 16:14.

LORD, it is Thou—Thou alone—who must open my heart. I need Thy victorious, irresistible, effectual grace. I cannot save my own soul or repair my own ruin. Helpless, I look up to Thee. Lost and dying, I confide in Thee. I am a beggar who knocks, penniless and starving, at the gate of Thy heaven. It is my great encouragement that, when I am at my wit's end, I am nearest Thy salvation.

And it is my heart, my Lord, that Thou must open. Not the outworks of my nature—the understanding, the intellect, the memory, the imagination; but the very citadel itself. Into the innermost room enter now, my King of mercy; and from that curtained shrine reign over all the courts of the temple. Mine is a heart too long desecrated and profaned; but Thou wilt not despise it—Thou wilt transfigure it into Thy Holy of holies.

And it is that I may attend to the glorious truths of Christ's gospel that Thou dost require to work. They are indeed familiar to me from my childhood; yet I do not grasp them, hold them, rejoice in them, until Thy Spirit teaches me. They are not a personal possession. They are vague, pointless, inefficient, as if I steered by a sky and not by a star. Thou must give them force and pricelessness. Thou must make them a light, a guide, a solemn warning, a sweet consolation.

But I can help. I can be in the place where prayer is wont to be made. I can seek the Lord while He is to be found, and call upon Him while He is near. So in my own measure I may co-operate with Him. When He sees that I am myself in thorough earnest, He will not fail to meet me and to crown me with His blessing.