Gifts are God’s summons to work, and our first response to the summons should be our scrutiny of our gifts with a distinct purpose of using them for the great end for which we received them.  It is well to take stock of the loaves that we have, if the result be that we bring our poor provisions to Him, and put them in His hands, that He may give them back to us so multiplied as to be more than adequate to the needs of the thousands.  Such just estimate of our gifts is to be attained mainly by noting ourselves at work.  Patient self-observation may be important, but is apt to be mistaken; and the true test of what we can do is what we do do.

The just estimate of our gifts which Paul enjoins is needful in order that we may ascertain what God has meant us to be and do, and may neither waste our strength in trying to be some one else, nor hide our talent in the napkin of ignorance or false humility.  There is quite as much harm done to Christian character and Christian service by our failure to recognise what is in our power, as by ambitious or ostentatious attempts at what is above our power.  We have to be ourselves as God has made us in our natural faculties, and as the new life of Christ operating on these has made us new creatures in Him not by changing but by enlarging our old natures.  It matters nothing what the special form of a Christian man’s service may be; the smallest and the greatest are alike to the Lord of all, and He appoints His servants’ work.  Whether the servant be a cup-bearer or a counsellor is of little moment.  ’He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.’

The positive aspect of this right estimate of one’s gifts is, if we fully render the Apostle’s words, as the Revised Version does, ’so to think as to think soberly.’  There is to be self-knowledge in order to ‘sobriety,’ which includes not only what we mean by sober-mindedness, but self-government; and this aspect of the apostolic exhortation opens out into the thought that the gifts, which a just estimate of ourselves pronounces us to possess, need to be kept bright by the continual suppression of the mind of the flesh, by putting down earthly desires, by guarding against a selfish use of them, by preventing them by rigid control from becoming disproportioned and our masters.  All the gifts which Christ bestows upon His people He bestows on condition that they bind them together by the golden chain of self-control.

MANY AND ONE

   ’For we have many members in one body, and all members have
   not the same office:  5.  So we, being many, are one body in
   Christ, and every one members one of another.’—­ROMANS xii. 4, 5.