ONE hot day last June, I stood waiting near St. Ives for the motor-bus. Cornish roads are kept in most splendid condition, but the best things down here soon show signs of decay, so even these thoroughfares often need repairing. My waiting time under a broiling sun proved most interesting, as I watched a gang of men who were mending the Penzance high road. The Cornish method differs somewhat from that of the farther coast of England, where tar is often sprayed on to prepared blocks of wood. In St. Ives, chips of the local granite, already mixed with tar, are brought in huge carts, and then shot out from the back of these, on to the road.
I watched those men as they spread this sticky composition over the highway. On one side of the road was a small furnace, in which were several spades. When a man started work, he took one of the hot spades with which to shovel the tarry mixture, and he used it as long as it held sufficient heat. When the spade cooled down he returned it to the fire, and took another hot one for his use. As soon as the second one cooled, he returned that in like manner to the brazier, again selecting another hot one, and so on. It was apparent that a cool instrument was useless to him. Heat was essential for his work. If the spade had been able to keep a diary, its entry for the day would have been, “furnace—service; furnace—service; furnace—service.”
In a flash my thoughts flew to 1 Peter 1:7,7That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: (1 Peter 1:7) “Your faith... though it be tried with fire.” Sometimes the Lord’s discipline is so incessant that we are apt to “weary” of it: it is so oft repeated that we “faint” under it. We wonder why? forgetting that a cool instrument is useless to Him. He can only use a hot one, and well he knows how often we need the furnace to re-kindle our affections, which—alas—so soon get cold. The Lord hates luke-warmness, as Revelation 3:1616So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:16) shows us.
His discipline is never to incapacitate us from service, but rather to fit us for it more fully. “Fruit,” “more fruit,” “much fruit,” were the Lord’s own comparative words in John 15 His only aim is that we may each one be a “vessel meet for the Master’s use.”
E. R. M.