But the literal abandonment of life to the ideal of poverty is clearly not what our Lord contemplated for the universal practice of His followers.  He nowhere indicates that all gainful labour is to be abandoned, or that having gained enough for food and raiment we are to idle thereafter, or even give ourselves to some ungainful work.  The Kingdom of heaven does not appear to be society organised on the lines of socialism or otherwise.  Our Lord contemplated life going on as it is, only governed by a new set of motives.  It has as the result of the acceptance of the Gospel a new Orientation; and as a result of that it will view “possessions” in a new way.  The acceptance of the Gospel means the self surrendered utterly to the will of God, and all that self possesses held at the disposal of that will.  We may expect that God’s will for us will be manifested in the events of life and its opportunities, and we shall hold ourselves alert and ready to embrace that will.  It may be that the call will come to sell all, and we need to beware lest the thoroughness of the demand terrify us into the repudiation of our Lord’s service; lest the thought of the sacrificed possessions send us away sorrowing.  Ordinarily the call is less searching than that; or perhaps the mercy of God spares us from demands that would be beyond our strength.  In any case, the truly consecrated self will regard luxury as a dangerous thing, replete with entanglements of all kinds, that it were well to avoid at the expense of any sacrifice.  One does well to hold “possessions” in a very loose grip, lest the hold be reversed, and we become their servants rather than they ours.  And it is well to emphasise again that the mere size of possessions is of small importance.  There is a not very rational tendency to think of this as being a matter of millions, for the man of moderate income to think that there is no problem for him.  The problem is as pressing for him as for any man.  His minimum of comfort may be as tightly grasped as the other man’s maximum.  The only solution of the problem will be found in the converted self.  Those who have really given themselves to God hold all things at His disposal.  They are not thinking how they can indulge self but how they can glorify God.

Egypt to many will stand for another sort of abandonment which much perplexes the immature Christian:  that is, the sort of isolation in which the new Christian is quite likely to find himself when first he attempts to put Christian principles into practice.  We imagine one brought up in the ordinary mixed circles of society, where there are unbelievers and lax Christians mingled together, and where there are no principles firmly enough held to interfere with any sort of enjoyment of life which offers.  Such an one—­a young woman, let us suppose—­in the Providence of God becomes converted to our Lord, and comes to see that the lax and indifferent Christian life she had been leading was a mere mockery of Christian living.