THE WRITING ON THE WALL

YOU FROM YOUR GOD.

Who wrote them? I never found out. One thing was clear, namely, they had not been recently written there; they had been there for a long time and I had frequently seen them indistinctly and without reading them. I knew that the house had changed hands just before I went to stay there and hence I could not find
out who had occupied the room before me. But the words themselves – what an important statement they expressed! “Separate yourself from that which separates you from your God.” Was this a message from some unknown friend to me? I regarded it as such. I have often since thought of this message. Would that I had always obeyed it! The child of God has many privileges; one is that, by the Holy Spirit’s aid, he may live very near to his Father, experiencing the sunshine of His countenance and rejoicing in the realization of His love; but how many things are apt to intervene, and interfere with the enjoyment of that privilege! The world with its engagements and cares; the flesh with its temptations and snares; how often they come between the child of God and his Father’s face and cause him to walk in shadow and in gloom. “Separate yourself from that which separates you from your God.” It is not always sin, something which is clearly unlawful, which thus separates. By Divine grace the child of God is kept from that; but it is something, perhaps, which, though perfectly lawful in itself, engrosses his heart too much and fixes his attention upon things below instead of raising it towards things above. An old divine says in one of his letters, “Satan often harasses the child of God about things which are perfectly legitimate when he cannot harass him about things that are illegitimate and tries to make them a source of vexation and of temptation, weakness and peril to him.” Well said the inspired apostle, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.” “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” Oh! for grace continually to say, and not merely to say, but to act in accordance with the saying of the Psalmist, “When wilt Thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes; I will not know a wicked person.”

Is there a thing beneath the sun

Which strives with Thee my heart to share?

Oh! tear it thence, and reign alone,

Supreme, without a rival there.

Gospel Magazine, 1893.