Because ye belong to Christ.—Mark ix. 41.

It is uncertain as yet how the matter will be settled, but it does not trouble me. I have placed it in the Lord’s hands. I trust all will be arranged for our good and for His glory. The believer is not his own; we belong to Christ, and all that concerns us He will arrange in His own most loving way. What concerns us equally concerns Him. Why then should we be careful for anything? How close the connection between Christ and the saint, and yet how little do we enter into the blessedness of the relation! How lightly we think of it. How much happier should we be did we see the exalted state and the mighty privilege of a believer in Jesus. Despised and thought but little of by the world, and yet dear to Christ and beloved by God Himself. This, so far from creating pride, rather humbles and lays us low at His feet, while it dissolves the heart into deep contrition for sin. And shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid! When the believer is brought to see that God is in every circumstance, small and great, connected with the saints, it contents and quiets the mind, and allays all that discomposed and worried it.