“Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel.”——Deut.XXXiii.I.

The man of God! How much the name means! A man who comes from God, chosen and sent of Him. A man who walks with God, lives in His fellowship and carries the mark of His presence. A man who lives for God and His will; whose whole being is pervaded and ruled by the glory of God; who involuntarily and unceasingly leads men to think of God. A man in whose heart and life God has taken the right place as the All in All, and who has only one desire, that He should have that place throughtout the world.

Such men of God are what the world needs; such are what God seeks, that He may fill them with Himself, and send them into the world to help others to know Him. Such a man Moses was so distinctly that men naturally spoke of him thus—Moses the man of God! Such a man evry servant of God ought to aim at being—a living witness and proof of what God is to him in heaven, and is to him on earth, and what He claims to be in all.

In a previous chapter we spoke of Intercourse with God as what man had been created for, as the privilege of daily life, as what was to be our first care in the morning watch. What was there said had chiefly reference to our personal need, and the power of a godly happy life influencing others. The name, Moses the man of God! and the thought of a man being so closely and manifestly linked to God that men as by instinct gave this as his chief characteristic—the man of God!—leads us farther. It brings us out into public life, it suggests the idea of the impression we make upon men, and the power we can have of so carrying the sign of God's holy presence wiht us that when men see us or think of us, the name shall at once suggest itself—THE MAN OF GOD!

These are the men the world and God equally need. And why? Because the world, by sin, has fallen away from God. Because in Christ the world has been redeemed for God. And because God has no way of showing men what they ought to be, of awakening and calling and helping them, but through men of God, in whom His life, His spirit, His power are working. Man was created for God, that God might live and dwell and work and show forth His glory in him and through him. God was to be His all in all. The indwelling of God was to be as natural and delightful as it is true, strange and incomprehensible. When the redemption of Christ was completed in the descent of God the Holy Spirit into the hearts of men, this indewelling was restored, God regained possession of His home. And where a man gives himself up wholly to the presence fof the Holy Spirit, not only as a power working in him, but as God dwelling in him(John xiv.16, 20,23; I John iv.)he may become, in the deepest meaning of the word, A MAN OF GOD！

Paul tells us that it is through the power of Holy Scripture that “the man of God is complete.” This suggests that with some the life is imperfect, and needs to be made perfect. “Every scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely to every good work." This brings us agin to the morning watch as the chidef time for personal Bible study. It is as we yield heart and life to the Word, for God through its teaching, its reproof, is correction, its instruction to search and form our whole life, and we thus come under the direct operation of God, and into full intercourse with Him, that the man of God will be complete—furnished to every good work.

Oh! for grace to be truly a man of God! A man that knows and proves these three things; God is all; God claims all; God works all. A man that has seen the place God has in His universe and in men—He is the All in all! A man who has understood that God askes and must have all, and who only lives to give God His due and His glory! A man who has discovered the great secret that God works all, and seeks, like the Son of God, to live in the unceasing blessed dependence that the Father in Him speaks the word and does the work.

Brother! seek to be a man of God! Let God in the morning watch be all to thee. Let God during the day be all to thee. And let thy life be devoted to one thing, to bring men to God, and God to men, so that in His Chruch, and in the world , God may have the place due to Him.

“If I be man of God, let fire come down from heaven.”Thus answered Elijah when the captain called him to come down. The true God is the God who answers by fire. And the true man of God is he who knows how to call down the fire, because he has power with the God of heaven. Whether the fire be that of judgment or the Holy Spirit, the work of the man of God is to bring fire down to earth. What the world needs is the man of God who knows God's power, and his power with God.

Do believe that it is in the secret prayer habit of daily life that we learn to know our God, and His fire, and our power with Him. Oh!to know what it is to be a man of God, and what it implies.

In Elijah as in Moses we see how it just means a separation from every other interest, an entire identification with the honour of God, no longer a man of the world, but A MAN OF GOD.

There is a secret feeling that all this brings more strain and sacrifice, difficulty and danger, than we are ready for. This is only true as long as we have not seen how absolute God's claim is, how unuttterably blessed it is to yield to it, and how certain that God Himself will work it in us.

Turn back now and look at Moses the man of prayer, Moses the man of the word, and see how out of these there grew—Moses the man of God. See the same in the life of Elijah—the harmony between our hearing God's word and His hearing ours, and the way in which it becomes Divinely possible to be and live —A MAN OF GOD. And study then the application.