WHAT GOD WANTS OF US.
ONE day a good Christian man was driving a nail in his study to hang something on. When he had done pounding it in, he said to himself, "I want to make use of that nail, and the only way in which it can make itself useful is by just staying still where I have fixed it, and holding on to what I put on it. If that nail could think and speak, and should say to itself, 'I don't like to be staying here all the time. I think I could be more useful in some other place'—than where I have driven it in—and should go flying off all over the house, making a busybody of itself, where it was not wanted, and doing what it was not asked to do, I should be very much put out with that nail." And then the good man went on to say to himself, "Well, are not men and women, and boys and girls like living nails? Does not the Bible speak of Jesus as 'a nail fastened in a sure place'?
And are we not all like nails that God has fastened just where he wants us to be? And is there any better way for us to make ourselves useful than just to stay quietly where God puts us, and try to hold whatever he hangs upon us?"
—Christians Weekly.
As a rill from a fountain increases as it flows, rises into a stream, swells into a river, so, figuratively speaking, are the origin and course of a good name. At first its beginning is small; it takes its rise from home, its natural source, extends to the neighborhood, stretches through the community, and finally takes a range proportioned to the qualities by which it is supported,—its talents, virtue, and usefulness.