1 Chronicles 1:54

"Handfuls of Purpose,"

For All Gleaners

"These are the dukes of Edom." 1 Chronicles 1:54 .

Of how small consequence is this announcement to the men of to-day! Importance, however, is not to be denied simply because it is limited. Every man must look upon his importance from his own point of view, a father may be important in a family, and yet may be nobody in the state; a man may be of some importance in one state, and hardly known in the next province. Then there is an importance which is limited by time. Men walked according to the light they had. We are not to blame the dukes of Edom because they were not as intelligent as the children of this day. If they walked according to the degree of light which was given to them, they faithfully fulfilled their responsibilities. The great lesson teaches the transitori-ness of all human dignity and glory. Where are the dukes of Edom now? Who knows the names of Timnah, Aliah, Jetheth? Yet we must not mock these names because we do not know them. How far are our own names known? What will be thought of them in the next century? Men are not to be estimated by their renown, but by their personal goodness and their local usefulness. Not every man can handle a state, yet the man who can help us to carry our daily burden may be quite as useful to us as if he had been entrusted with genius of the highest order. All our words should tend to the encouragement of simplicity, modesty, local utility, and should show the hollowness of mere fame, or splendour, or titular elevation. In the Christian Church we have come to a higher order of names than was ever known in secular history. Men may now be called the sons of God, saints, slaves of Jesus Christ, inheritors of the world of light: let us aspire after these higher titles, for they never perish; we are not born to their enjoyment; verily, these are not hereditary dignities, but we are introduced to them by the right of the new birth, by the creation of a spiritual aristocracy. The titles which men give soon expire: the titles which God confers are vital with his own eternity. It would be a poor thing to have been a duke of Edom as compared with being a child of pious parentage, if in the one case the dignity has been but a name, and in the other has been a discipline and a stimulus. Aim after the highest designation.