It would be a sensible thing for us to make frequent calculations, and find out where we are, and prayerfully steer a changed course if we've been drifting. But we can't decide such questions for each other, and they can't be decided by what another does. They can only be decided alone on one's knees with the Master, with the Book, and perhaps a map of the world at hand. We need both the Word of God, and a view of the world of God to shape our judgment. No, it's not a question of money primarily, nor of missions, only of personal loyalty to our Lord Jesus, and to the passion of His heart. Grafted. Have you noticed the significance of that word "abide" which our Lord used on the night of His betrayal?[85] "Abide" means a grafting process; we were branches in the vine, but we were broken off by sin. The only way to abide in that vine is by being grafted in. "Abide" means grafted. But the grafting process has two wounds. It means a knife used twice. It means a wound in the vine-stock, and our Master flinched not there. It means likewise a wound in the branch to be grafted in. Just as surely as the knife must make the incision into the stock, it must also cut the end of the branch before it can be grafted in. Our Master flinched not. How about you and me when it comes to the knife, with its sharp cutting edge, and slash and sting? Perhaps this explains why there's so little life, so little sap-flow, so little fruit. If you follow along the narrow road your progress is sure to be barred by a knife thrust out across the path. And the whole instinct of our nature is to shrink from the knife. The sacrificial knife becomes the pruning, the grafting knife. There can be no life without that knife. Failure to obey cuts off the supply of life. I became greatly interested in a young man whom I met in Japan. He comes of a noble, wealthy family. He attended a mission school to study English, learned to read the Bible, became intensely interested, and then decided to become a Christian. But his family was violently opposed, and pleaded earnestly with him. He would in time be the head of his family, but if he insisted now on being a Christian he would be disowned. He was to be trained in the Imperial University, and could have chosen a public national career including the probability of membership in the Imperial diet, but he remained true to his decision. And he was disowned in disgrace, cast adrift without a cent. Now he is devoting himself to mission work in the city where I met him, working among the neediest and lowest. I was told that the police gladly say that his mission has greater power than they in preserving order in that worst quarter of the city.