the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our
force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which 'by reason of
use is exercised,' not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us
to serve Him, being divine, is subject to no weariness, and neither
faints nor fails. The bush that burned unconsumed is a type of that
Infinite Being who works unexhausted, and lives undying, after all
expenditure is rich, after all pouring forth is full. And of His
strength we partake.

Whensoever a man puts forth an effort of any kind whatever--when I
speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of
muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every
effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that
needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong
to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical
nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of
things in which work is not death, nor effort exhaustion, nor is there
loss of power in the expenditure of power.

That sounds strange, and yet it is not strange. Think of that electric
light which is made by directing a strong stream upon two small pieces
of carbon. As the electricity strikes upon these and turns their
blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their substance while it
changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the lamp by
which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of the
beam, and so the light continues without wavering and blazes on. The
carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam
is the swift energy of God, which makes us 'light in the Lord.' For the
one, decay is the end of effort; for the other, there is none. 'Though
our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.'