I have been running across some new versions of this last word of Jesus.  A sort of re-revisions they are.  I have not found them in the common print, but printed in lives, the lives of men.  The print is large, chiefly capitals, easily read.  These lives are so noisy as to quite shut out what the lips may be saying.  There are variations in these translations.

Sometime the message is made to read like this:  “All power hath been given unto Me, therefore go ye, and make—­coins of gold—­oh, belong to church of course—­that is proper and has many advantages—­and give too.  There are advantages about that—­give freely, or make it seem freely—­give to missions at home and abroad.  That is regarded as a sure sign of a liberal spirit.  But be careful about the proportion of your giving.  For the real thing that counts at the year’s end is how much you have added to the stock of dollars in your grasp.  These other things are good, but—­merely incidental.  This thing of getting gold is the main drive.”

Please understand me, I never heard any of these folks talk in this blunt way with their tongues.  So far as I can hear, they are saying something quite different.  But what their tongues are saying is made indistinct and blurred by some noise near by.

Other translations I have run across have this variation:  “Make a place for yourself, in your profession, in society.  Make a comfortable living;—­with a wide margin of meaning to that word ’comfortable’—­belong to the church, become a pillar, or at least move in the pillar’s circle, give of course, even freely in appearance, but remember these are the dust in the scale, the other is the thing that weighs.  All of one’s energies must be centered on the main thing.”

May I ask you to listen very quietly, while I repeat the Master’s own words over very softly and clearly, so that they may get into the inner cockles of our hearts anew?  “All power hath been given unto Me; therefore go ye, and make disciples of all nations.”  These other translations are wrong.  They are misleading. The one main thing is influencing men for Jesus.

The Perspective of True Service.

It is not the only thing by any means.  There is a multitude of things perfectly proper and that must be done and well done.  But through all their doing is to run this one strong purpose.  These other things are details, important details, indispensably important, yet details.  The other is the one main thing toward which the doing of all the others is to bend and blend.

Please mark keenly that there are three lives here; three in one.  The secret life of prayer, the open life of purity, the active life of service Not one, nor the other, not any two, but all three, this is the true ideal.  This is the true rounded life.  And note sharply that this gives the true perspective of service.  The service life grows up out of the other two.  Its roots lie down in prayer and purity.  This explains why so much service is fruitless.  It isn’t rooted.  There is no rich subsoil.