How far is Christ filling that region of the heart in which the heart's time is spent? Is it spent in Christ or in the empty vanities of the world? Oh, to have the free flowing of the Spirit in us. What springs up when we meet one another? Whatever is in the heart. Is it the springing forth of the fountain of Christ? "Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man" (Ephesians 3:16), Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, we realize His presence; and, amid the thousand things we have to do in this world, Christ comes out.

Of course, if a man has not Christ at the bottom, he is no Christian at all. But I mean even where Christ is in a man, and you may find him walking outwardly blameless, yet if you speak to him of Christ, there is not an echo in his heart, though his life goes on smoothly. Is Christ at the bottom and a fair Christian walk at the top of your heart, and yet between these two, a hundred and fifty things that Christ has nothing to do with at all? If so, your life is practically lived without Christ. This will not do. It is the terrible levity of the heart that goes on without Christ, until it becomes the highway of whatever the world pours into it. "What harm is there in these things," do you say? If they have occupied your heart and thus made you in any degree slight God, that is the harm.

—J.N. Darby