Joshua 13:1

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." Jos 13:1

This is no threat. This is no sentence of discouragement. This indeed is inspiration. It is true of every department of life. It is true, for example, of a man's own individuality: every man is not yet master of his entire self: some men have possessed themselves of their whole reason who have yet left their imagination unchastened and unsubdued. Many men are chaste who are not generous. Many men are generous who are not just. Many men are impulsively good who are not rationally benevolent. Such men may say to themselves, "There is yet very much land to be possessed." It is true with all intellectual education. He knows best how much land is yet to be conquered who has conquered the most. The advanced student is the most modest. The wisest man is most assured of his ignorance. Sir Isaac Newton said that he was like a child on the seashore who gathered a few pebbles, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him. It is true with regard to the spread of the kingdom of Christ. Take a map of the world, and show where Christianity has made progress, and where it is unknown; and even the imagination will be appalled by the extent of land yet to be covered. We need not rest because there is no more to be done. We do not obliterate what is to be done by closing our eyes and resolutely refusing to look upon it. The infinite darkness is still round about us, and is not at all decreased by the closing of our eyes. But instead of the text being a discouragement, it is an encouragement; the land is there in order that it may be possessed; it is not afar off and inaccessible, but is immediately in front of us, and is intended for our use; we may have to obtain possession through battle and even through suffering, but the battle and the suffering do not destroy the possibility of possession. What is worth holding that has not to be secured through suffering and loss of a temporary kind? The kingdom of heaven itself lies at the end of a strait road; but the very straitness of the road gives some hint of the value of the kingdom. The Church must enter into a full realisation of the fact that the work yet to be done is greater than any work that has yet been accomplished: it is not an acre that awaits conquest, but a whole continent; not a whole continent only, but a whole world. The work to be done enlarges in proportion to the work that is done. If the work were superficial only, it might be completed with comparative ease, but it is cubic, solid, through-and-through work, and, therefore, it is difficult, but its difficulty is an indication of its glory.