This is the literal rendering of the words translated in our version—"Give thyself wholly to them" (1 Tim. 4:15). It is an even more vivid description of that total absorption in an object which is of all importance.

Who is the successful man? In the main it is the one who is in the object that commands his life.

The successful merchant is the man who is in his business. He thinks it, talks it, is engaged in it.

The successful lawyer is not the one who has just routinely read the prescribed course and passed the necessary examinations. This was only the beginning of his work. The whole framework of law, its history, its development in various nations, its applications in its different branches of civil, criminal, military, political, corporate and national law engage his absorbed attention. No time for research is considered wasted, no labor grudged in this mastering work—to know and to apply in a capable way that to which he has devoted his life.

The same is true of the physician, the teacher, the historian, the artist. The great business of their life is ever before them. The artist is constantly seeing material for widening and deepening his knowledge. The varied effects of lights and shade, of landscape and marine views—portraits, groups, colors, poses—everything is eagerly looked into, and its contributions to his one object assimilated.

What is a "successful Christian?" Can we not reply in a similar vain? "Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible" (1 Cor. 9:25). If our soul is controlled, absorbed with the things of Christ, will there not be a corresponding fruit to His praise? Most blessed it is to remember that "all things are of God," who worketh both the willing and the doing, to His good pleasure. "To me to live is CHRIST."

—Selected