This sort of thing grew more marked with our Lord Jesus as the end drew on, the tragic end. The crowds thickened about Him those last months. They liked good bread, and plenty of it, and healed bodies, pain gone. And He liked to give them these. He helped just as far as they would let Him. But He wanted to give them more. He knew this other was only temporary. He was more concerned about healing the spirit of its disease, and giving the more abundant life. And full well He knew that only the knife could help many. And the knife had to be freshly sharpened, and used with strong decisive hand, if healing and life were to come.

And men haven't changed, nor the diseases that hurt their life, nor the Master, nor the tender love of His heart. But there's more than knife; there's fulness of life following. He would have us get the life even though it means the knife. Most times—every time, shall I say?—the life comes only through the knife. Yet when the life has come, with its great tireless strength, and its deep breathing, and sheer delight of living, you are grateful for the knife that led the way to such life.

One day our Lord entered a vigorous protest against the wrong sort of salt,[47] saltless salt, the sort that seemed to be salt, and you used it and depended on it, and then found how unsalty it was, for the thing you depended on it to preserve, had gone bad. The great need is for salty salt. There still seems to be a great lot of this saltless salt in use. It's labelled salt, and so it's used as salt, but it befools you. The saltiness has been lost out, and the man using it wakes up to find out how great is the loss, loss of what he thought he had salted, and loss of time, character and time, the character of that salted with saltless salt, and the time spent.

It would be an immense clearing of the religious situation to-day on both sides of the Atlantic, if the saltless salt could be got rid of, either by removing the unsaltiness in it—though that seems a hopeless task, it's so unsalty, and there is so much of it, and such a large proportion of it, and it's so well content with being just as unsalty as it is. Or, the only other thing is put very simply and vigorously by the Lord in a short intense sentence, "Cast it out." Out with it. And lots of it is out so far as preservative usefulness is concerned.

And yet with wondrous patience He puts up with a great deal of salt that seems to have nearly reached the utterly saltless stage, hoping to get rid of the unsaltiness, and then to give it a new saltiness. For, be it keenly marked, when the saltiness has quite gone out of the salt, when the preservative quality has quite gone out from that body of people which He has placed in the world as its moral preservative,—then look out. Aye, "look up,"[48] for that's the only direction from which any help can relieve the desperateness of the situation. And "lift up your heads," for then comes a new preservative to the rotting earth-life. But some of us will smell the smell of the decay before the new salt begins to work.



The Thing in Us That Wants Things.

It was along toward that tragic end, when the tension was tightening up to the snapping point, the bitter hatred of the leaders yet more bitter, the crowds yet denser, the terms of discipleship yet more plainly put with loving, faithful plainness, that a characteristic incident happened.[49] A young man of gentle blood and breeding, and influential position, came eagerly, courteously elbowing his way through the crowd that gathered thick about. Our Lord had just risen from where He had been sitting teaching, when this young man, in his eagerness, came running to Him. With deep reverence of spirit he knelt down in the road, and began asking about the true life, the secret of living it. Our Lord begins talking about being true in all his dealings with his fellow-men. The young man earnestly assured Him that he had paid great attention to this, and felt that there was nothing lacking in him on this score. The utter sincerity and earnestness of his spirit was so clear that the Master's love was drawn out to him. And He showed His love in a way characteristic of Him in dealing with those who want to go to the whole length of the true road. That is, He talked very plainly to him. There were four things to do beforehand, He said, four starting steps into this life he was so eager to enter. Four words tell the four steps: "go," "sell," "give," and "come."

"Go" meant the decisive starting in on this way; "sell" meant putting everything into the Father's hand for His disposal as He alone might choose. "Give" meant using everything, everything you are, and have, and can influence, as He bids you. "Come" meant this new man, this decisive, emptied, now trusted man, trusted as a trustee, coming into a new personal relation with the Lord Jesus.

The first three things were important because they revealed the man. But the thing was that the man, this new-emptied and now God-trusted man, should come into personal touch with the Lord Jesus. The things he had and held on to came in between. When they no longer came in to separate, then, and only then, was he ready to get "in behind" and "follow" along the "same road." For this is the friendship road. Only friends are allowed here, inner friends, those who come in by that gateway. There must be the personal touch. Things that stand in the way of that must be straightened out.

It was rather a startling answer. The young man was startled tremendously. The way to come in is first to go out. The way to get is first to give. The way to buy what you want is to sell what you have. That is to say, the way for this young man to get what he was so eager for was to get rid of what he already had. And yet it wasn't getting rid of the things the Master was thinking about, but getting rid of the thing in him that wanted the things, getting rid of their hold upon him. Our Lord Jesus wanted, and wants, free men, emptied men. He wants the strength in the man that the emptying and selling process gives. This is the laboratory where the unsaltiness is being burned out, and the new salty saltiness being generated, put in.

This young fellow couldn't stand the test. So many can't. No, I'm getting the words wrong. He wouldn't stand it; so many won't. The slavery of things was too much. The thing in him that wanted the things was stronger than the thing that wanted the true life. He was too weak to make that "go" decision. He belonged to the weakly fellowship of the saltless ones. They are not wholly saltless, but that's the chief thing that marks them. It's a long-lived fellowship, continuing to this day, with a large membership in good and regular standing.

I think the real trouble with this fine-grained lovable young man was in his eyes, the way they looked, what they saw. It was a matter of seeing things in true perspective. He didn't get a good look at the Man he asked his question of. He was looking so intently at the things that he couldn't get the use of his eyes for a good look at the Man. This is a very common eye-trouble. He was all right outward, toward his fellows, but he wasn't all right upward toward the Father.

And yet even that statement must be changed. For a man cannot be right with his fellows who is not right with God. When God doesn't have the passion of the heart, our fellows don't have all they should properly have from us; there is a lack. The common law may be kept, the pounds and yards may weigh and measure off fully what is due them from us, but the uncommon law, the love-law is not being kept. The warm spirit that should breathe out through all our dealings is lacking. It's been checked by the check in the upper movement. Only the spirit that flows freely up, ever flows freely out.

That young Indian aristocrat we spoke of elsewhere got a sight of Jesus. That settled things for him, including even such sacred things as human loves. This young Jewish aristocrat couldn't get his eyes off of the things. So many "thing"-slaves there are, so much "thing"-slavery. If only there were the sight of His face! His face; torn? yes; scarred? yes again, but oh, the strength and light and love in it!

Do you remember that other young Jewish, university-trained aristocrat? He got a look, one good long look-in-the-face look of that face, one day, on the road up to the northern Syrian capital. The light of it flooded his face, and strangely affected him. He said "when I could not see for the glory of that light."[50] He couldn't see things for Him. The sight of Him blurred out the things. The great need to-day is for a sight of Him. Lord Jesus, if Thou wouldst show us Thy "hands and feet" again, and torn face, even as in the upper room that resurrection evening,[51] for that's what we are needing. And yet, Thou art doing just that, but the things so hold our vision! And the Master's answer is the same as to the young Jew. We need the decisive "go"; the incisive, inclusive "sell"; the privileged "give"; the new-meaninged "come" into His presence. And then we may get "in behind" Him, and follow close up in the "same road," with eyes for naught but Himself.



Outstanding Experiences.

I want to follow the Master's plan, and ask you to take a good look at His "Follow Me" road. You remember that we have had one talk together about the characteristics of our Lord Jesus' life. Now we want to talk a little about the experiences of His life. And I do not mean that we are to try to imitate these experiences, or any of them. The meaning goes much deeper than this, and yet it marks out a simpler road for our feet. I mean that as we actually go along with this Master of ours, these experiences will work out in our lives.

As we let Him in as actual Lord, and get our ears trained for His quiet voice, there will come to us some of the same things that come to Him.

The same Spirit at work within us, and the same sort of a world at work without, will so work against each other as to produce certain other results, now as then. It is not to be an attempt at imitation; it's far more. It is to be obedience on our part, a real Presence within on His part, and a bitter antagonism without on the world's part; rhythmic full glad obedience, a sympathetic powerful real Presence, a tense and intensifying subtle, relentless, but continually-being-thwarted opposition. The key-note for us is simple, full obedience.

There were certain great outstanding experiences in our Lord Jesus' life. Let us briefly notice what these were and group them together. There was the Bethlehem Birth. That was a thing altogether distinctive in itself. It was a supernatural birth, the Spirit of God working along purely human lines, in a new special way, for a special purpose. It was a rare blending of God and man in the action of life. It was followed by the Nazareth Life; that was a commonplace life, lived in a commonplace village, but hallowed by the presence of the Father, and sweetened by the salt of everything being done under that Father's loving eye. The Father's presence accepted as a real thing became the fragrance of that commonplace daily life. And this life covered most of those human years.

Then our Lord turned from the hidden life of Nazareth to the public ministry. At its beginning stands the Jordan Baptism of Power. In the path of simple obedience He had gone to the Jordan, taken a place among the crowds, and accepted John's baptism. And in this act of obedience, there comes the gracious act of His Father's approval, the Holy Spirit came down upon Him in gracious, almighty power. And from this moment He was under the sway of the Spirit of Power. This was the special preparation and fitting for all that was to follow.

At once the Spirit driveth Him into the Wilderness. And for forty days He goes through the great experience of the Wilderness Temptation. In intensity and in prolonged action, it was the greatest experience thus far in His life. He suffered, being tempted. It was a concentration of the continuous temptation of the following years of action. But the Wilderness spelled out two words, temptation and victory; temptation such as had never yet been brought, and met, and fought; victory beyond what the race had known. Temptation came to have a new spelling for man, v-i-c-t-o-r-y. It came to have a new spelling for the tempter, d-e-f-e-a-t.

After His virtual rejection by the nation as its Messiah,[52] and the imprisonment of him who stood nearest Him as Messiah,—John the Herald, there followed the Galilean Ministry. For those brief years He was utterly absorbed in personally meeting and ministering to the crying needs of the crowds. Compassion for needy men became the ruling under-passion. He was spent out in responding to the needs of men. It was not restricted to Galilee, but that stands out as the chief scene of this tireless unceasing service. The Galilean ministry meant a life spent in meeting personally the needs of men.

In the midst of that, made increasingly difficult by the ever-increasing opposition, there came the experience of the Transfiguration Mount. It comes at a decisive turning point, where He is beginning the higher training of the Twelve for the tragic ending, so surprising and wholly unexpected to them. For a brief moment the dazzling light within was allowed to shine through the garments of His humanity. What was within transfigured the outer, the human face and form. And the overwhelming outshining light was evidence to those three men of the divine glory, the more-than-human glory hidden away within this human man.

Then within a week of the end came the Gethsemane Agony. That was the lone, sore stress of spirit under the load of the sin of others. In Gethsemane He went through in spirit what on the morrow He went through in actual experience. Gethsemane was the beginning, the anticipation of Calvary, so far as that could be anticipated. Anticipation here was terrific; yet less terrific than the actual experience.

And then came the climax, the overtopping experience of all for Him, as for us, the Calvary Cross. There He died of His own free will. He died for us. He died that we might not die. He took upon Himself what sin brings to us, while the Father's face was hidden. So He freed us from the slavery of sin, made a way for us back to real life, and so touched our hearts by His love that we were willing to go back.

And close upon the heels of that came the burial in Joseph's tomb. The burial was the completion of the death. The tomb was the climax of the cross. He was actually dead and buried. The corn of wheat had fallen down into the ground and been covered up. There was nothing lacking to make full and clear that Jesus had died.

Then came the stupendous experience of the Resurrection Morning. Our Lord Jesus yielded to death fully and wholly. Then He seized death by the throat and strangled it. He put death to death. Then He quietly yielded to the upward gravity of His sinless life and rose up. He lived the dependent life even so far as yielding to death, and now the Father quietly brought Him back again to life, to a new life.

And after waiting a while on earth among men, long enough to make it quite clear to His disciples that it was really Himself really back again, He quietly yielded further to the upward gravity, and entered upon the Ascension Life, up in the Father's presence. That life is one of intercession. He ever liveth to make intercession for us.[53] He is our pleading advocate at the Father's right hand.[54] Thirty years of the Nazareth life, three and a half years of personal service, nineteen hundred years, almost, of praying. What an acted-out lesson to us on prayer, the big place it had and has with Him, the true proportion of prayer to all else!

These are the experiences of our Lord Jesus that stand out clear above the mountain range of His life. It was all a high mountain range; these are the great peaks jutting sharply up above the range.



At the Loom.

Now these peaks, these outstanding experiences, as you look at them a bit, seem to fall naturally into three groups. There were certain experiences of power and of privilege, the Bethlehem Birth, the Jordan Baptism, the Nazareth Life, and the Galilean Ministry.

There were experiences of suffering and sacrifice, the Wilderness Temptation, the Gethsemane Agony, the Calvary Death, and the Joseph's Tomb of Burial.

And then there were certain experiences of gladness and great glory, the Transfiguration Mount, the Resurrection Morning, the Ascension Life, and, we shall find a fourth here also, a future experience, the Kingdom Reign and Glory.

These outstanding events, while distinct in themselves, are also representative of continual experiences. The Jordan Baptism stands not only for that event, but for the power throughout those forty and two months. The same sort of suffering that came in Gethsemane had run all through His life, but is strongest in Gethsemane. So each of these experiences is really like a peak resting upon the mountain range of constant similar experience. And these three groups of experience continuously intermingled, interlaced and interwoven, made up the pattern of that wondrous life.

Now these same experiences of His are also the great experiences that will characterize the "Follow Me" life, for every one who will follow fully. It will always remain true that these experiences were distinctive of Him. They meant more to Him than they will or can mean to any other. But it is also true that they will come to us in a degree that will mean everything to us.

I want to change the figure of speech here. I think it will help. This invitation, "Follow Me," is the language of a road, the picture of one walking behind another in a road. And that will remain in our minds as the chief picture of this pleading call. But there's another bit of picture talking that will help. That is the picture of a weaver's loom, with the warp threads running lengthwise, the shuttle threads running crosswise, and the cross beam (or batten) driving each shuttle thread into place in the cloth with a sharp blow.

These three groups of experiences are like so many hanks of threads in the loom, in which the pattern of life is being woven. The experiences of power and privilege are the warp threads running lengthwise of the loom, into which the others are woven. These make up the foundation of the fabric.

The other two groups make up the shuttle threads, running crosswise, being woven into the warp. The experiences of suffering and sacrifice are the dark threads, the gray threads, sometimes quite black, and the red threads, blood red. The experiences of gladness and glory are the bright threads, yellow, golden, sunny threads.

And the daily round of life, the decisions, the actual step after step in living out the decisions, the patient steady pushing on, is the beam that with sharp blow pushes each thread into its place in the fabric being woven.

As we allow the same Spirit that swayed our Lord's life to control us, He will work out in us certain of these same experiences. And the enmity aroused, and working against that Spirit's presence and control, will bring certain other experiences. Our part will be simple obedience, listening, looking, studying quietness so as to insure keener ears and eyes—it's the quiet spirit that hears what He is saying—then obeying, using all the strength of will, and all the grace at our disposal, simply to hold steady and true, and to obey, no matter what threatens to come, or what actually does come. This will be found to be like weaving.

Probably you have often heard of how the weavers work in the famous Gobelin tapestry factories in Paris. They know nothing of the beauty of the pattern being woven. They work on the "wrong" side, the under side of the web. They miss the inspiration of seeing the rare beauty they themselves are making. All the weaver sees is the apparent tangle of many coloured threads and thread ends, while he thrusts in his needles according to the card of instructions. The more faithfully and skilfully he can follow the directions the better a piece of weaving work is done.

We simply obey. We use all the strength we have, and the skill we can acquire, in obeying. We are not to depend on what we can see or feel for inspiration, only on the Master Looms-man; on His word, written, and spoken in our hearts, and on His answering peace within. Obedience is the one key-note for all the music. Surrender is the first act of full obedience. Obedience is the habitual surrender. Our part is to hear right and do what He bids.

Some day we shall be fairly swept off our feet by the beauty of the pattern He has been weaving—if we've let Him have His way at the loom.



2. The Main Road—Experiences of Power And Privilege



The Bethlehem Birth.

There were four of these experiences in our Lord's life. At the very beginning came the Bethlehem Birth. That meant for Him a birth out of the usual course of nature, yet working within nature's usual processes. It was something more-than-the-natural coming down into the natural. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon the pure gentle maiden of Nazareth and a new human life was begotten by Him within her, and in due course came to the maturity of birth. This was a distinctive thing with Jesus.

Now, in quite a different sense, but in a very real sense, there will be for us, too, a Bethlehem Birth. The Holy Spirit will come in and begin a new life within us. This is the only beginning of the "Follow Me" life for any of us. There's a something on the Spirit's part before there can be a beginning on my part. Yet that hardly tells the whole story. My part is really first; I open the door for Him to come in. When I accept Jesus as my Saviour, that's opening the door. The Spirit comes in and begins the new life within me. And yet there's another first before that first act of mine. He woos me with His patient, tender love. That is the first first. Then I open the door: at once He comes in, and does the thing which only He can do. So begins the "Follow Me" life. This is the real, the only beginning.

And yet there's more here of the practical sort than we have thought of, most of us. It means that there is within us a life higher than the natural life, and this higher life is to be higher, it is to be the controlling life. It is to hold the upper hand over the natural life. The control is to be from above. That is to say, the motives and desires of the upper life are to be dominant in my daily round. It is the Father-pleasing life as contrasted with the natural life, of which we talked a while ago. Wherever the two come in conflict, the upper is to rule.

Now, I know this rather runs across the grain of a good deal of our so-called Christian life. There are a good many people who, let us really believe, have been "born again," to use the familiar phrase, yet they seem to have stayed in the being-born stage, the infancy stage. That which was "born again" in them seems not to have been developed. It has never been allowed to grow. The under life has been given the upper hand, and the upper life kept strictly down. The salt isn't salty. The common round of life is seasoned wholly by the old seasoning.

Our Lord's "Follow Me" becomes a radical, decisive thing at the very start. It means that we will allow this new life of the Spirit to grow into lusty vigour, and to become the controlling life So it will be the chief thing. All the life shall be directed and controlled from above. This is a result that will come of itself if we really follow. Obedience, and back of that the quiet time on the knees with the Book, will give food and air and growing space to this new life, and its growth will crowd down the other.



The Jordan Baptism of Power.

Then there was a Jordan Baptism of Power in our Lord's life. This stood at the beginning of His leadership, His life-work, His service among men. As He came up out of the Jordan waters He stood waiting in prayer. He was expecting something. His whole being was absorbed in the expectancy of what had been promised.[55] And that expectancy was not disappointed. None that wait on God shall be put to confusion by any disappointment.[56] The blue above was rift through, the Holy Spirit as a gentle dove came, and remained upon Him, and the Father's voice of pleased approval spoke to His grateful, obedient heart. From that time the whole control of His life was absolutely in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

This does not mean an inert passivity on Jesus' part; it meant a strong, intelligent yielding to the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that His natural faculties of mind and will and heart were held down, not to be used. It means that they were actively, studiously used in discerning the Holy Spirit's leading, and in doing as He directed. And it means that so there came a fulness of life, an increasing life, into His faculties, mind and will and heart. Our Lord Jesus used all His powers in yielding to the inspiration and direction and control of the Holy Spirit, keeping ever open to His suggestion, and making that suggestion the law of His own action.

And the Spirit of Omnipotence, working with the gentleness of a dove, breathed upon those yielded powers, and breathed through them, even as had been planned with the first breathing of this sort, in Eden. So from the Wilderness clear up to the last Olivet command to the disciples, everything was done at the bidding, the direction of this Spirit. And so the almighty power was breathed into every word and action and bit of suffering. The one key-note of the Master's action was obedience; the result was the flooding of the Spirit's omnipotence through His obedient faculties and life.

Now, as we follow, this same sort of experience will be ours. What a tremendous thing to say! Yet the road was being beaten down for our feet. The Son of Man was simply showing to His brother-men the road we were all meant to go, showing it by going in it. All the power that came into Jesus' life will come into ours, if He is given His way. For the Holy Spirit is not measured out, either to Him or to us,[57] but poured out without stint.[58] As we follow we shall be led along behind the Man going before.

There will need to be instruction, for we're so new to this road. And human teachers are sent by the Holy Spirit to help us understand, teachers in print, and teachers in shoes. There will need to be the initial act of full surrender to the Lord Jesus as Lord indeed, for most of us have been going another way than this. There will need to be a house-cleaning time, for we have let in so much of another sort.

A soft, but very honest, searching light will come flooding in through the sky-light windows. And as we instinctively go to our knees and faces because of what that light brings to light, there will be a wondrous cleansing, both by blood and by fire. Then will come a filling of our very being by this wondrous Spirit of God.

How shall we know this filling, do you ask? There will be a quiet, deep peace, at times a great joy that sings, but ever the deep peace that holds you, a new hunger for the old Book, and a new soft light on its pages. There will be an inner drawing to talk with God, and an intense desire to please Him, to find out what He wants you to do, and then to do it.

There will come other things too, of a less pleasant sort, temptation will come anew, and a sense—sometimes very acute—of sin, a feeling that there's a something within you fighting you, the new you. There will be an increased sensitiveness to sin, and an intense hatred of it. This is what the filling means. These things will tell you that He, the Spirit, has taken possession of what you surrendered, and that He is now at work within. These are His finger-prints.

Then there will be the outflowing side of this filling. A passion that all men may know this compassionate God, will come as a fire burning in your bones. Its flames will envelop and go through everything you are and have and can do. But under all will be the passion for pleasing the Lord Jesus. Obedience will become the chief thing, holding everything else in check, obedience to Him, pleasing Him, doing His will.

The Bethlehem Birth is the beginning of a new, a supernatural life within; this will be the actual life itself, in full vigour and power. That is the supernatural birth, this the supernatural life. That is, there is at work within you, very quietly and simply, a power more than the natural, working through the natural order, and sometimes upsetting what we may have grown to think of as the natural order. This is the Jordan Baptism of Power, the Holy Spirit taking charge, and you living a Spirit-controlled life. There's a new sign hung out over your life, "this life is being conducted under new management." You won't say it; it won't be shouted out. It'll be louder yet. Your life will be telling it continually.



Power Is in the Current.

The word to emphasize here is control. You will find new meanings, that you had not thought of, gradually working out of it. If the Holy Spirit had control of us as He had of—Philip, for instance. He picked Philip up out of the midst of the Samaritan crowd, where he was the human centre of things, and put him down away off here in the desert,—strange contrast!—and with one lone traveller, greater contrast yet![59] If He were free to pick you and me up like that, out of these surroundings, congenial and pleasant, and set us down where we had no thought of going, and never would have gone of our own choice, and we sing as we are picked up, and keep on singing where we find ourselves amidst the uncongenial perhaps, the strange, the unprecedented and hard,—if He were free to control like that these days, there would be a present-day Pentecost beside which the Acts-Pentecost was but the beginnings of the throbbings of power.

There are some peculiarities of this "Follow Me" road here. There comes a strangely new sense of proportion. As you follow close up behind the Man ahead, you will grow smaller, and He will grow larger. No, that's not an accurate statement; you won't grow any smaller, you will only find out how small you are. He won't grow any larger, you will simply be finding out, and then finding out more, how large He is. It'll seem strange to most of us, finding out our real size, or lack of the size we always supposed we were. But it will come with a great awing, heart-subduing sense, to find how marvellous in size this great Man is; and yet He is our brother, as well as so immensely more.

You come to find out that power, that thing that used to be so much talked about, and defined, and yet chiefly wondered about, that power is a matter of position. The man close in behind the Lord Jesus doesn't need to be concerned about power. In fact he isn't concerned about it, only concerned with keeping close in touch. All the rest comes without our being concerned. It comes from him, the Man ahead. There is far more power, the very power of God, softly flowing and flooding its way in and through and out, than you are ever conscious of. Others will know more of the power than you. You are thinking about the Man ahead, keeping in touch, pleasing Him. Obedience has become a new word to you. It's the music of keeping step, keeping step with Him.

Have you noticed how much the current of the stream will do for you if you are out in a row-boat? All you need to do is to keep up enough motion to hold the boat within the sweep of the current. Then your chief task is steering. You're not concerned about power; only about the steering. There's more power in the current than you can ever use. Your one concern is to keep out of the shallows and sucking side-eddies, away from snag and rock, and in the current. The power's in the current. Right steering brings all that power to bear on your little boat.

Now, power here is a matter of steering, so far as our part is concerned. We steer to get into the current of our Lord Jesus' will, and, by His grace, we use all our will power in keeping in that current, and out of the shallows and suction-eddies at the side. The Lord Jesus, once spit upon and crucified, now seated "far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named," and at work on earth through His Holy Spirit,—this Lord Jesus, free to do as He chooses,—this is power. He is power.

Power is the Lord Jesus in action, and the action is always through some man's life. We steer so as to keep in touch. He acts through the man in touch. And the hungry, needy crowds know a something coming to them, with irresistible grateful sweep.



Living a Nazareth Life.

There was a third experience in this group. Our Lord Jesus lived the Nazareth Life. In actual order of time this came before the baptism of power. I have changed the order here, and named it third simply for the practical help in the change. With the Lord Jesus, the whole of the life was under the sway of the Holy Spirit from birth on, through the earliest conscious years, and all the years. With us, in actual experience, we are all free to confess that it has not been so from our Spirit-birth on.

That baptism of power at Jordan was without doubt a baptism of power for leadership and service. Service and leadership ever need the time of special waiting on God, and the fresh anointing by the Holy Spirit's touch, the fresh consciousness of Himself, as the only source of power in the service and leadership.

In our actual experience the Holy Spirit, coming in power, has had much to do in changing our habits, ourselves, and our lives, as well as in our service. There has been so much service that has not been backed up by the life, that many have come to feel, and to feel very deeply, that the power in service must have its roots in the human side, deep down in the daily habit of life. With our Lord Jesus that Jordan experience made no difference of this sort in His life. There was nothing needing to be changed. That Nazareth life had been lived continuously under the control of the Holy Spirit.

Look a moment at that Nazareth life of His. It means simply a commonplace, treadmill round of life lived under the hallowing touch of the Father's presence. This was according to the original plan. It is God's presence recognized that hallows what is common. It is the absence of His presence, that is, the leaving of Him out, that makes common things common; that is, it makes the familiar thing and round seem and feel common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and seen through a God-freshened eye.

Now Jesus lived this commonplace round of life, and lived it under the ever-freshening touch of His Father's presence. It isn't the thing you do, nor the things that surround you, that make your life, but the spirit that breathes out of you in the midst of the things. It's the you in you that makes the life, regardless of surroundings. The outer things are the accidents, you, the spirit that breathes out of you,—this is the real thing.

Jesus lived it. That is the tremendous fact that Nazareth stands for. He lived what He taught, and He lived it first, and He lived it far more deeply and really than it could be taught to others. This was the basis of those few service years. Nazareth lies under the Galilean ministry. There were thirty years under the three-and-a-half-years. And the thirty years crop up into and out of the three-and-a-half. The life lived was the great fact at work, as the Man went about doing good. The hidden life of Nazareth lies open in the Galilean ministry.

When you are reading the wonderful works among the needy throngs, you are reading the biography of the Nazareth years, in their outer reach. The life you live is the thing that tells! This is the meaning of the thirty hidden years. The Father said, "My Son shall spend most of His years down there living, just living a true, simple Eden life; living with Me in the midst of home and carpenter shop and village." This is what the world needs so much to be taught, how to live. And the teaching must be by living, teaching by action. The message must be lived.

If we men might live Jesus! That's what the world needs. At one of the smaller meetings of the Edinburgh Conference, in 1910, a Christian gentleman from India, native of that land, said, "We don't need more Bibles in India." And then to this surprising statement, he added, "We have enough Bibles. If the Christians in India would live the Bible, India would be converted." And I thought, that will do for America, and England, and for all the world. Jesus lived it. As a man in His decisions and actions, His habits and daily round, He lived the truth.

The story is told of a missionary in some part of Africa who had not had much success in his work. He was in the habit of explaining some portion of the New Testament to the people at His house. One day the portion contained the words, "give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away."[60] The people asked him if this meant what it said. He told them that it did. One of them said he would like to have the table, pointing to it; another asked for a chair, another for the bed, and so on. The missionary was rather startled at such literal taking of his teaching. He told them to come again on the morrow, and he would give his answer.

When they had gone, he and his wife had rather a heart-searching time together. They felt they had not reached the hearts of the people yet. But to do as they asked meant real sacrifice of a very personal sort. At last with much prayer they decided to meet the people where they had opened the way. And so the next day they gave their answer, and soon the house was literally bare of all its furnishings. And that night they slept on the floor, yet with a sweet peace in their hearts in the midst of this strange experience.

The next day the people came back, carrying the furniture. They had really been testing these new-comers. "Now," they said, "we believe you. You live your Book. We want you to teach us." And with open hearts they listened anew to the Gospel story, and many of them accepted Christ.

The little incident reveals the unity of the race. Those Africans said what England and America and all the world is saying, "Live it." Is your religion livable? What the world needs to-day is a Jesus lived, not simply taught, nor preached about, but lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. How the fire, the holy fire, of that sort of thing would catch and spread! Oh, yes, it might mean sleeping on the bare floor! That's what living-it means, the actual life overriding any mere thing that stands in the way.



Live It.

I stood one day on the abrupt edge of a little hill in a Southern Japanese city. There, in a great tree hanging out over the edge, had hung the bell that called together the faithful retainers of the lord of the province, when they were needed. There, nearly thirty years ago, a little band of Japanese youth, of noble families, had gone out at break of day one Sabbath morning, and solemnly covenanted to follow the Lord Jesus, and to devote their lives to making Him known throughout their land. Boys still in their tender teens most of them were. And that covenant was not lightly made, for already the fires of persecution had been kindled, and these fires burned fiercely but could not compete with the fire in their hearts. And as one goes up and down the island empire of the Pacific to-day, he can find traces of their lives cropping up everywhere, like gold veins above the soil.

And as I sought to trace the hidden springs of the power at work behind all this, I found it was in the life of one young man, a simple, holy life burning with a passion for Jesus. In this life could be found the kindling of the tender flames burning so hotly in these young hearts. He was a young American officer engaged, by the feudal lord of the province, to teach military tactics and English. He dared not teach Christianity; that would have meant instant dismissal. So for two years he lived the message, so simply and lovingly that he won the love of his pupils. Then they came Sundays to his house to hear him read the English Bible, because they loved him. As he prayed the tears would run down his face, and they laughed to think a man would weep, but they came because they loved him. He really loved them into the Christian life. I was reminded of the line in Hezekiah's song of thanksgiving after his illness, "Thou hast loved my soul up from the pit."[61] This young teacher lived his pupils to the Lord Jesus. The latter part of his life was a sad one, but nothing can change the record of those earlier years.

I saw recently a news item telling how many million copies of the Bible are being printed every year. The item slurringly remarked that the statisticians didn't seem concerned yet with figuring up how many of them were read. But, I thought, what these Bibles need is a new binding. This Bible I carry is bound in the best sealskin, with kid-lining. It is supposed to be the best binding for hard wear. But there's a much better sort of leather than that for Bible binding; I mean shoe leather. The people want the Bible bound in shoe leather. When we tread this Bible out in our daily walk, when what we are becomes an illustrated copy of the Bible, the greatest revival the earth has known will come. With utmost reverence let me say that our Lord Jesus wants to come and walk around in our shoes, and live inside our garments, and touch men through us.

I remember something in my early Christian life that was a sore temptation to me. There were some Christian leaders who had helped me greatly by their preaching and writings. Then it chanced that I was thrown into personal contact with them, now one, now another. And I had a sore disappointment. It's hard to find that your idol has clay feet. It's doubtless wrong to have idols. Yet youth is the time of such idol worship. The disappointment was a very sore one. Then out of it I was led to see that the Master never disappoints. And there was a drawing nearer to Himself alone.

And then a questioning arose: was some one perhaps looking at me? And a burning desire came to be more in life than in speech, not only for the sake of some one, perchance looking; but for the sake of that other One, the Man with eyes of flame, His looking. I need hardly tell you that it has been my blessed privilege to have had personal contact with leaders whose fragrant lives are so much more than word or act.

The Nazareth life means that the Lord Jesus lived His message, amid commonplace surroundings, in the midst of what is called the dull monotony of the daily round. That is, in the place where it is hardest to do it, He lived every bit of what He taught. And as we follow, simply, obediently, the Spirit will lead us along this same road. The same experience will happen to us. Could there be a greater evidence of the power of this Holy Spirit than to do such a thing with such as we know ourselves to be? Yet He will, if we let Him. A big "if" you say? But not too big to be taken out of the way, out of His way. He will live out through us what He puts into us, by and with our constant consent.

This is the meaning of the Nazareth life. Our part is obedience, simple, intelligent, strong obedience to Him. The result will be this same experience, a Nazareth life of purity and power lived by the Spirit's power.

This was the thought in the mind of Horatius Bonar, as he wrote of the unnamed woman who anointed our Lord's head, and of whom Jesus said that what she had done should be told as a memorial of her, wherever the Gospel should be preached.

"Up and away like dew in the morning, Soaring from earth to its home in the sun, So let me steal away, gently and lovingly, Only remembered by what I have done.

My name and my place and my tomb all forgotten, The brief race of time well and patiently run, So let me pass away peacefully, silently, Only remembered by what I have done.

Gladly away from this toil would I hasten, Up to the crown that for me has been won, Unthought of by man in reward and in praises, Only remembered by what I have done.

Up and away like the odours of sunset That sweeten the twilight as darkness comes on, So be my life—a thing felt but not noticed, And I but remembered by what I have done.

Yes, like the fragrance that wanders in freshness, When the flowers that it comes from are closed up and gone, So would I be to this world's weary dwellers, Only remembered by what I have done.

I need not be missed if my life has been bearing, As the summer and autumn move silently on, The bloom and the fruit and the seed of its season; I still am remembered by what I have done.

I need not be missed if another succeed me, To reap down these fields that in spring I have sown; He who ploughed and who sowed is not missed by the reaper; He is only remembered by what he has done.

Not myself but the truth that in life I have spoken, Not myself but the seed in life I have sown, Shall pass on to ages—all about me forgotten, Save the truth I have spoken, the things I have done.

So let my living be, so be my dying, So let my name be emblazoned, unknown,— Unraised and unmissed I shall still be remembered, Yes,—but remembered by what I have done."



The Galilean Ministry.

The fourth experience in this group was the Galilean Ministry. Our Lord Jesus gave Himself up to helping those in need. He devoted Himself to personal service among men. After John's imprisonment He withdrew to Galilee and ministered to the needy.

There were crowds of them. They were in sorest need of body and spirit. And He gave Himself freely out to them in glad helpful service. He met their need. He did whatever their condition called for. He ministered to their bodily needs. He mingled among them freely as an older brother or friend, holding their children on His knees while He talked with them over their concerns and troubles. But He didn't stop there. Having won their hearts, He met their deeper needs. He comforted their hearts, talked to them one by one, drawing out their hearts, and speaking of the Father.

And as the crowds thickened, He taught and preached to the multitudes. He was a preacher, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. He was a teacher, bit by bit, line upon line, patiently teaching and explaining to them about the Father's love, and about the true life and how to live it. Three words are used several times to characterize that Galilean ministry, teaching and preaching and healing.[62]

He warned against sin, patiently wooing erring men and women away from their sin into lives of purity, and strengthening the young and earnest in their purposes. The need of the crowd swept Him like a strong wind in the young trees. He couldn't resist their plea. The presence of a man in need, of either body or spirit, took hold of His heart. Over and over we are told that He was "moved with compassion." What a life it was! What a heart He had!

Now our Lord Jesus calls us along this bit of the road. That is to say, the Holy Spirit within us will make our hearts tender and compassionate, even as our Lord Jesus was. The crowds always moved Him tremendously. He couldn't stand the great dumb cry that the mere presence of a multitude rang in His ears. The mere presence of some one in need, earnestly seeking, played upon the strings of His heart.

Does the crowd get hold of your heart as you elbow your way through them, or look down into their faces? Is it just a crowd to you? Or is it a great company of hungry hearts, half-starved lives, so needy for what only this Lord Jesus can give? The dumb cry of the crowds, in crowds and one by one, comes up in our ears to-day. Do you hear it? I say "dumb," for they don't know themselves what it is they need. They feel the need. Restless and chafing, they feel without knowing just what it is they lack and need.

When the Spirit that swayed the Lord Jesus comes in, He mightily affects your heart. You feel with something of our Lord's feeling. And you must help. You know that the one thing, the only thing, that can really radically meet their need is this Saviour Jesus. You must do something to get them really to know Him. And that something comes to be everything. Service isn't a pastime; it's a passion. That "must" sends you out on glad unheralded errands to help in any way you can, and in every way by which the Jesus message can get to them.

The "must" of His tender passion within keeps you steadily pushing ahead, regardless of not being understood by some, nor your efforts appreciated by others. The flame of that "must" takes hold of time and strength and possessions. It becomes the delight of your life to minister to the needs of men, even as He did. You see them through His eyes. You feel their need through His heart. And—this is a great and—if you really follow as simply and fully as He leads, you will find the same power working out through your effort as through His, though there will be immensely more of it than you will know about.

But—there's a "but" that needs to be put in here—the key-note will not be service, but obedience. The need will not be the controlling thing. It will move you tremendously; it will kindle a sweet fever in your heart, a fever to help; it will take hold of your heart strings and play upon them until you almost lose control. But it must not be allowed to control. That belongs to Him alone.

The key-note is not need, nor service to meet the need, but obedience. There is a Lord to the harvest. His plans are worked carefully out. He takes Philip away from the crowded meetings in Samaria to talk with one man. It was doubtless a strategic move to touch lives in Africa, as well as to meet this one man's need. He feels the need more than you ever do or can. His ears are keener, His heart more tender. He is in command. You do as He bids. So you help most in meeting the need.

He Himself when down here left the crowds, when they were so great that the towns were overwhelmed and they had to be taken out to the country places. He would leave these crowds and go off quietly to get alone with His Father.[63] All that tireless ministry was under the direction of Another. He went off for close touch, and fresh consultation with His Father.



The Father's Image in the Common Crowd.

Have you ever wondered what there was in those common crowds to attract our Lord Jesus? Perhaps if you have ever walked in those narrow crowded alleys called streets, in China or Japan, you may have wondered, sometimes. Tired, dirty, pinched faces, eyes vacantly staring, or else fired with low passion, high-keyed voices bickering and jangling,—all this crowds in and out on every hand. Dirt, disease, low passion, selfishness, apparent absence of anything noble or refined, are all tangled inextricably up with these in human form.

And our Lord Jesus lived in an Oriental world. Is there any world quite like it, except indeed it be the slums of our western world cities, European and American? City slums seem to be our western point of contact with the greater part of the eastern world. What was there to attract the Lord Jesus to these crowds? Their need, you answer. Yes, no doubt, their terrible need did move Him with compassion, to the hurting point.

But was there more than this? Something He said one time has made me think there was something more, a pathetic, tremendous more, that took hold of His heart. Could it be that He saw some lingering trace of the Father's face in these faces? His eyes were very keen. He had seeing eyes. And these men have all been made in the Father's image. Has that image ever been wholly lost?—terribly blurred and scarred by sin, yes; but wholly lost? Do you think so? I think not.

Those wondrous eyes of His looking into men's tired, pinched faces, disfigured with passion or sorrow, or with sheer weariness of existence—did He see something of the Father's face looking appealingly up to be helped out of their sad plight? I wonder. Was it as though the Father's face cried out to Him out of these poor beaten faces? I think so. Do you remember that time when our Lord Jesus associated Himself so closely with just such men and women, in talking of a coming day? He says "inasmuch as ye did it to one of these My brethren, these least, ye did it unto Me."[64] Listen to those words, "My brethren"! He is thinking of just such crowds as He Himself ministered to, and as you find to-day in Oriental city and in European and American slum. What is done for them is done to Him. Their need is His need; their cry, His. It's Jesus coming to us in these crowds. Their need is Jesus Himself appealing to us. And the Jesus within us will answer with heart and life to this Jesus coming to us in the pitiable need of the crowds.

I do not mean to use that word "pitiable" chiefly in the bodily sense, though there's so much of that. But it has a deeper meaning. Here is this fair young face turned to yours in the social group, here this strong young man needing nothing that money can buy, but yet very needy, both of them. In their young, eager faces the hidden away image, the not-yet-touched-into-new-life image of the Father looks out asking for help, help out into growth amidst so much that holds back. Inasmuch as your light, tactful touch is given here, it is done unto Jesus. Jesus is helped into the life, the God-image crowded back within is helped to get out into free expression.

You may not be sent to some distant field as young Borden was. Your personal place may be at home. But the crowd, the need, is everywhere; at home, in the social circle, and among the men driven by the passion for business and for pleasure, in this dangerously prosperous land of ours. Need of body even here, and deeper need of spirit. Much more tact is required, Spirit-born tact and patience and alertness, to touch and help these.

But the Spirit will guide. He has a passion for men in their need. He has exquisite tact in touching men under all circumstances. He will take command of your life here as elsewhere. He will lead you into a life of personal service in helping men. And He will lead you in that service. This is the Galilean Ministry which will work out in your experience as the Holy Spirit has control. This is a bit of the "Follow Me" roadway.

These are the four experiences of power and privilege. They are as the great underlying experiences of our Lord's career. The other experiences grew up out of these. These were the warp threads in the loom of His life. The others were woven into these. This is the main road that He trod. It is the main road of this "Follow Me" journey. It is along this road, between its beginning and end, that we shall run down into the valley-road stretches, and run up to the stretches along the hilltops.



3. The Valleys—experiences of Suffering And Sacrifice



The Never-absent Minor.

Here the road begins to drop down into the valleys. It runs sharply down, and on, through some wild gulches and ravines thick with lurking danger, with the upper-lights almost lost in the deep black darkness. It is darkness that can be felt more than the Egyptian darkness ever was. It proves to be the valley of the shadow of death, then—of death itself, before the upward turn comes.

The weaver we were speaking of finds some strange shuttle-threads to be woven into the pattern, gray black, ugly black threads, and red threads almost wet and sticky in their blood-like redness.

Yet this is part of the road that was trodden, and that is still waiting to be trodden by feet sturdy and bold enough to go on down into the shadows, before the upward turn is reached again. And these threads will work out a rare beauty in the pattern being woven.

Is there perfect music without the underchording of the minor? Not to human ears. For they are attuned to life as it has really come to be. And the minor chord is in real life, never quite absent; and the minor chord is in the true human heart, never wholly absent. And only the music with the minor blended in is the real music of human life. Only it can play upon the finest strings of the human heart.

But this sort of thing, the getting of beauty out of ugly threads, the getting of music where there is discord, the upward turn again of the valley road, all this is a bit of the touch of God upon life, where the hurt of sin has come in. Only the Lord Jesus can make music where sin had brought in and wrought out such discord. Only He can change the weaving into beauty, where the ugly slimy sin-threads have come in. He can lead up again out of the depths, but only He. His blood, Himself, is the thing added that makes music where no melody had ever been a possible thing; and gives the weaver's threads the transforming touch that works beauty where there was only the ugly; and pulls you up again to the higher levels. The good never comes out of bad. It comes only by something radically different coming in and overcoming the bad.

In Seoul they showed us the great bell hung at the crossing of certain chief streets there. And then they told us the bell's legend. In early twilight times an artisan had made a great bell at the king's command, but the tone of it was not pleasing to the royal ears. So a second one was made, and a third, but neither was satisfactory. Then the king said that if the man did not make a bell with pleasing tones his life should be forfeited for his failure. This was very distressing for the poor unfortunate bell-moulder.

His daughter, a young girl in her teens, either had a vision, or felt within herself that a sacrifice was the thing needful to give the bell its true tone. And so she resolved to give herself to save her father, and with rare fortitude one night she plunged into the great pot of molten metal. And the tone of the bell was so sweet and musical that the king was delighted. And the maker, instead of being killed, was highly honoured. So ran the simple bit of Korean folklore.

We ran across legends quite like it in other parts of the Orient. They all seemed to point, with other similar evidence, to the feeling deep down in human consciousness of the need of sacrifice. Is it a bit of an innate instinct in our common human nature, that only through sacrifice can the hurt of life be healed? However this be, it certainly is true, that the touch of Him who gave His life clear out for men, that touch is the thing, and the only thing, that can make music where there was only discord. It is only His pierced hand upon weaver and web that touches ugly threads into beauty as they are woven into the fabric of life. Only He can lead us up out of the valley of death up to the road of life along the high hilltops.



The Wilderness.

You remember, there were four experiences of suffering and sacrifice in our Lord Jesus' life. The first of these was the Wilderness Temptation. That rough road He took led straight to and through a wilderness. He was tempted. He was tempted like as we are. He was tempted more cunningly and stormily than we ever have been.

It was a pitched battle, planned for carefully, and fought with all the desperateness of the Evil One at bay against overwhelming forces. It was planned by the Holy Spirit, and fought out by our Lord in the Spirit's strength. For forty full lone days it ran its terrific course. But our Lord's line of defence never flinched. The Wilderness and Waterloo, those two terrific matchings of strength, the one of the spirit, the other of the physical, both were fought out on the same lines. Wellington's only plan for that battle was to stand, to resist every attempt to break his lines all that fateful day. The French did the attacking all day, until Wellington's famous charge came at its close.

Our Lord Jesus' only plan for the Wilderness battle was to stand, having done all to stand, to resist every effort to move Him a hair's breadth from His position. That battle brought Him great suffering; it took, and it tested, all His strength of discernment, and decision, of determined set persistence, and of dependent, deep-breathed praying. And through these the gracious power of the Spirit worked, and so the victory, full joyous victory, came.

Now it comes as a surprise to some of us to find that the "Follow Me" road leads straight to the same Wilderness. No, it is not just the same, none of these experiences mean as much to us as they did to Him. They are always less. But then they mean everything to us! We will be tempted. So surely as one sets himself to follow the blessed Master, there's one thing he can always count upon—temptation. Sooner or later it will come, usually sooner and later. So the Evil One serves notice to contest our allegiance to the new Master.

The tempter sees to it that you are tempted. That belongs to his side of the conflict. And quickly and skilfully, and with good heart he goes at his task. Through the weak or evil impulses and desires within us, and through every avenue without, those dearest to us, and every other, he will begin and continue his cunning approaches. It is well to understand this clearly, and so be ready. The closer you follow this Man ahead, the more, and the more surely, will you be tempted. It is one of the things you can count on—temptation.

But, steady there, steady! the tempter can't go a step beyond attacking, without your help. He can't make a single break in your lines from without. The only knob to the door of your life is on the inside. Temptation never gets in without help from within. I have said that the Wilderness spelled two words for our Lord Jesus, temptation and victory. We may use His spelling if we will. A temptation is a chance for a victory. Begin singing when temptation comes; out of it, resisted, comes a new steadiness in step, and a new confidence in the victorious Man of the Wilderness.[65]

But let me tell you how the victory comes. It comes through our Lord Jesus. And it comes by His working through your decision to resist to the last ditch.



"Lead Us Not."

The Lord Jesus gave us two special temptation prayers to make. The one is: "Lead us not into temptation."[66] That petition has been a practical puzzle to many of us, and the explanations not always quite clear. Would God lead us into temptation? we instinctively ask. And the answer seems to be both "yes" and "no."

The "yes" means that character can come only through right choice. We must decide what our attitude toward wrong shall be. It is only temptation resisted that makes the beginnings of strength. Before temptation comes there may be innocence but never virtue. Innocence resisting temptation becomes virtue. The temptation is the intense fire in which the raw iron of innocence changes into the toughened, tempered steel of virtue. It is essential to character that it resist the wrong. It is choice that makes character. The angels in the presence of God are continually choosing to remain loyal to Him. Choice includes choosing not to choose the evil, to refuse it. Adam was tempted; the temptation was bad, only bad; but it could have been made an opportunity to rise up into newness of strength. Job was led into temptation, and he failed when the fires grew in heat, and touched him close enough; and then he learned new dependence on God alone instead of on his own integrity.

That's the "yes" side of the answer. We must decide what we will do with evil. The presence of evil forces choice upon us. The one thing God longs for is our choice, free and full choice. Freedom of choice is the image of God in which every man is made. We are like Him in power, in the right to choose; we become like Him in character when we choose only the right. God would lead us into opportunity for the choice on which everything else hinges. The prayer says: "Lead us not into temptation." The prayer becomes the choice. It reveals the decision of your heart. The man who thoughtfully makes the prayer makes the choice.

And with that goes the "no" side. Certainly God would not lead us into the temptation to do wrong.[67] And so He has made a way—it's a new way since our Lord Jesus was here—a way by which we can have the full opportunity for choice, and yet be sure of always choosing the right, and so growing into His image in character. To pray, "Lead us not into temptation," is practically saying, "I will go as Thou leadest. Lead me. I am willing to be led. I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path, but now—but now, lead Thou me on. Here I am, willing to be led. I put out my hands for Thee to grasp and lead where Thou wilt. I'll sing, 'Where He may Lead, I'll Follow." This is the only safe road through the Wilderness. We yield wholly to His control.

May I say reverently, this was the way our Lord entered and passed through the Wilderness, wholly under the control of Another—the Holy Spirit. He chose to yield to that control. The Spirit acted through His yielding consent, and flooded in the power that brought the victory. Even He in His purity needs so to do. How much more we in our absence of purity, and so absence of strength. "Lead us not" means practically, that we get in behind this victorious Lord Jesus. We refuse to go alone.

The Wilderness spells only defeat for the man who goes alone. We must yield wholly to this great lone Man who went before. We lean upon Him. We trust Him as Saviour from the sin that temptation yielded to has already brought. We will trust His lead wholly now as temptation comes. We will stick close and be wholly pliant in His hands. This is the first temptation prayer our Lord gives us. It means our utter surrender to His leadership.

Then there is a second prayer for temptation use: "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation."[68] This goes with the other. It is the partner prayer. Be ever on the watch, and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. Guard prayerfully against acting independently of your Leader. Watch against the temptation. Watch yourself lest you be inclined to go off alone, to break away from His lead. For there will be only one result then, defeat. These two prayers together show the way to turn temptation into victory,—"lead not," "enter not." A temptation is a chance for a victory if you never meet it alone, but always under the lead of the great Victor of the Wilderness.

Then it may help to put the thing in another way. There are two steps in victory over temptation. The first is recognition. To recognize that the thing coming for decision is a temptation to something wrong,—that's the first step in victory. It pushes the temptation out into the open. You say plainly, "This is something to be resisted." The second step as you set yourself to resist is to plead the blood of the Lord Jesus. That means pleading His victory over the tempter. That's the getting in behind Him and depending wholly upon Him.

"Follow Me" takes us into the Wilderness, and leads us into victory there. There we will learn more about prayer, and music, and the Master, and get new strength and courage on this stretch of the valley road.



Gethsemane.

At the farther extreme of the service years, there came to the Lord Jesus the other three of these dark experiences, all three close together. On the night of the betrayal came the Gethsemane Agony. That was a very full evening. Around the supper table they had gathered and talked, and the Lord Jesus had made His last, tender but fruitless effort to touch Judas' heart by touching his feet. There was the long quiet heart-talk in the supper room after Judas had gone out, "and it was night" for poor Judas.[69]

Then the talk continued as they walked across the city within view of the great brass vine on Herod's temple, so beautiful in the light of the full moon. And then, as they walk through the narrow, shadowed streets, the shadows come into the Lord Jesus' spirit and words.[70] Now they are outside the wall of the city, out in the open, under the blue, and with upturned face, the great pleading prayer is breathed out.[71] Now they are across the Kidron, and now in among the shadows of the huge olive trees of the garden called Gethsemane.

It's quite dark and late. He leaves the disciples to rest under the trees, and with the inner three He pushes a bit farther on. And now He pushes on quite alone in the farther lone recesses of the woods. And now the intensity of His spirit bends His body as He kneels, then is prostrate. And the agony is upon Him. He is fighting out the battle of the morrow. He is sinless, but on the morrow He is to get under the load of a world's sin; no, it was yet more than that, He was to be Himself reckoned and dealt with as sin itself. All the horror of that broke upon Him under those trees, more intensely than it had yet. The brightness of the full moon made the shadows of the trees very dark and black, but they seemed as nothing to this awful inky black shadow of the sin load that would come, no longer in shadow but actually, on the morrow.

The agony of it is upon Him as He falls prostrate on the ground, under the tense strain of spirit. Out of the struggle a bit of prayer reaches our awed ears, "If it be possible let this cup pass away from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt." And so tense is the strain that an angel comes to strengthen. With what reverent touch must he have given his help. Even after that the great drops of bloody sweat came. But now a calmer mood comes. The look full in the face of what was coming, the realizing more clearly how the Father's plan must work out, these help to steady Him. Again a bit of prayer is heard, "Since this cannot pass away; since only so can Thy plan for the world be accomplished Thy—will—be—done." The load of the world's sin almost broke His heart that dark night under the olives. It actually did break His heart on the morrow. This is the meaning of Gethsemane, intense suffering of spirit because of the sin of others.

And at first thought you say, surely there can be no following for any of us in this sore lonely experience of His. And there cannot. He was alone there as on the morrow. None of us can go through what He went through there. For, it was for us, and for our sin that He went through it. And yet there is a following, if different in degree and in depth of meaning, yet a very real following. While Gethsemane stands a lone experience for Jesus, yet there will be a Gethsemane for him who follows fully where He asks us to go.

There will be a real suffering of spirit because of the sin of others. We will see the world around us through those pure, seeing eyes of His. We will feel the ravages of sin in those we touch, with something of the feeling of His heart. Close walking with Christ brings pain and it will bring it more, and more acutely. We will see sin as He does, in part. We will feel with our fellow-men toiling in its grip and snare as He did, in part. There will be sore suffering of spirit. This is the Gethsemane experience, and it will not grow less but more.

"'O God,' I cried, 'why may I not forget? These halt and hurt in life's hard battle Throng me yet. Am I their keeper? Only I? To bear This constant burden of their grief and care? Why must I suffer for the others' sin? Would God my eyes had never opened been!'

And the Thorn-crowned and Patient One Replied, 'They thronged Me too. I too have seen.'

'But, Lord, Thy other children go at will,' I said, protesting still. 'They go, unheeding. But these sick and sad, These blind and orphan, yea and those that sin Drag at my heart. For them I serve and groan. Why is it? Let me rest, Lord. I have tried—'

He turned and looked at me: 'But I have died!'

'But, Lord, this ceaseless travail of my soul! This stress! This often fruitless toil These souls to win! They are not mine. I brought not forth this host Of needy creatures, struggling, tempest-tossed— They are not mine.'

He looked at them—the look of One divine; He turned and looked at me. 'But they are mine!'

'O God, I said, 'I understand at last. Forgive! And henceforth I will bond-slave be To thy least, weakest, vilest ones; I would not more be free.'

He smiled and said, 'It is to me.'"[72]

The word Gethsemane has not been used accurately sometimes. And it is not good that it is so, for it keeps us from appreciating what the real meaning is. In poetry and otherwise it has been used for some great experience of sorrow in which the soul has struggled alone. But there are two things in the Gethsemane experience that give it a meaning quite different from such. The Gethsemane sorrow is on account of the sin of others, and it comes to us through our own consent, of our own action. We need not go through the Gethsemane experience save as we make the choice that comes to include this. It is only as we choose to follow fully, close up to His bleeding side, where the Lord Jesus is leading, that this experience of pain will come.

Moses knew what this meant. As he came from the presence of God in the mount the sin of the people seemed so terrible, that the fear that possibly it could not be forgiven unless he made some sacrifice sweeps over him and came out as a great sob.[73] The sight of their sin brought sorest pain to his spirit. Paul tells us there was a continual cutting of a knife at his heart because of his racial kinsfolk, their sin, their stubbornness in sin, the awful blight upon their lives.[74] There was sore, lone, unspeakable pain of spirit because he felt so keenly the sin of others. This is the Gethsemane experience. Have you felt something like this as you have come in touch with the sin, the blighted lives, the wreckage of lives among both poor and rich, lower class and better? You will if you follow where He leads.



Calvary.

Then came the morrow. The experience of Calvary came hard on the heels of Gethsemane. The pain of spirit became both pain of body and pain of spirit, intensified clear beyond what the night before had anticipated. How shall I trust myself to speak of that morrow, or you to listen? Yet, let us hold still, and, for a great purpose, look at it again, if only for a moment, that the meaning of it, the flame of it may take fresh hold, and consume us anew.

Gethsemane was followed by a sleepless night, while bitter hate brought its utmost iniquity and persistence to hound this Man to death. Nine, of the next morning, found Him hanging, nailed on the cross, crowned with the cruel mocking thorn crown. From nine till three He hung, while the strange darkness came down over all nature from noon till three, the blackness of midnight shutting out the brightness of noon. The Father's presence was withdrawn. This tells the bitterness of the cross for Jesus as does nothing else.

It was out of a breaking heart that the cry was wrung, "My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake Me?" When you can penetrate that darkness you may be able to tell how really Jesus took our place, and suffered as sin for us,—not before. Then with a great shout of victory He gave up His life. His great heart broke. He died. He died literally of a broken heart. The walls of that muscle were burst asunder by the terrific strain on His spirit.

He died for us. He who so easily held off the murderous mob with their stones, now holds Himself to that cross,—for us. This is the Calvary experience. It can be felt, but never explained fully; words fail. It can be yielded to until our hearts are melted to sobs, but never fully told in its tenderness and strength to others. It can bring us down on knees and face at His feet as His love-slaves for ever,—so is its story best told to others. That breaking heart breaks ours. That pierced side pierces through all our stubborn resistance. That face haunts us. Its scars tell of sin, ours. Its patient eyes tell of love, His. Was there ever such sin? Was there ever such love? Was there ever such a meeting of sin and purity, of love and hate, of God's best and Satan's worst?

Surely there can be no following here! And, strange to say, the answer is both a "no," with a double underscoring of emphasis, and a "yes," that will come to have a like emphatic underlining. No, there can be no following. Here, He is the Lone Man who went before. And He remains the Lone Man in what He did, and in the extent of His suffering. There is only one Calvary. There was only the One whose death could settle the sin score for us men. It is only by His death for our sin that there is any way out of our sore plight of sin, and sin's own result. There the Lord Jesus did something that had to be done, for the Father's sake; there He broke the slavery of our sin; there He broke our hearts by His love. There He stands utterly alone in what He did. Calvary has no duplicate, nor ever can have. That is the emphatic "no" side of the answer. There can be no following on that road.

And yet,—and yet, there can be. There is a "yes" side to the true, full answer. There will be a Calvary experience for every one who really follows. His was the Calvary experience, ours is a Calvary experience. It does not mean what His meant for the world. But it enters into the marrow of our very being, and means everything to us. It means that as I really follow there will come to me experiences of sacrifice that will take the very life of my life—if I do not pull back, but persist on following the beckoning hand. And it means too, that there will be in a secondary, a minor sense, a redemptive value in my suffering. That suffering will be a real thing in completing the work of some man's redemption.

Listen to Paul. He has been writing to the Corinthian Christians in much detail, of the suffering he has been going through of both body and spirit, and then he adds, "so then death working in me worketh life in you."[75] The same thought underlies that wonderful bit of tender, tactful pleading in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the same letter. The same thing is put in a rather startling way in the epistle to the Colossians,[76] "I ... fill up on my part, in my flesh, that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake, which is the Church."

This fits in with the thought in that word "began" in the beginning of the book of Acts.[77] In a very real sense our Lord depends upon our faithful following to supplement among men the great thing which only He could do. Paul knew a Calvary experience, and Peter and John, and so has, and will, every one who follows the pierced hand that beckons. Ask Horace Tracey Pitkin at Paotingfu if he understands this. And the China soil wet with his blood gives answer, and so do the lives of those who were won to Christ through such suffering throughout China. Ask David Livingstone away in the inner heart of Africa, and those whom no man can number in every nation, who have known this sort of thing by a bitter, sweet experience, some by violence, some by the yet more difficult daily giving out of the life in hidden away corners.



The Underground Road.

And hard following this came the Burial in Joseph's Tomb. "Christ died for our sins and ... He was buried."[78] "Joseph took the body, ... and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb."[79] "The chief priests and the Pharisees ... went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard (of Roman soldiers) being with them."[80]

Out of that sealed tomb comes with the emphasis of action, the emphasis of death, this word, "except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone."[81] The only pathway of life is the underground road. For our Lord, Joseph's tomb made the death clear beyond doubt. The tomb was the climax of the death. He was dead and buried. For him who follows it means this, a burial clear out of sight in the soil of the need of men's lives. He who simply gets in behind and faithfully follows will find himself actually being buried in the needs of men. And only where there is such a burial can there come resurrection power into the life.

I remember a friend in Philadelphia, a young man who resigned an influential position to go out as a missionary in India. And another friend not at all in sympathy remarked sneeringly in my hearing, "He's gone to bury himself in India." He spoke more aptly than he knew. The years since have told what a blessed burial that was. For scores of lives in Southern India have known the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus through his service.

Do you remember when the Greeks came to Philip with their great plea, "Sir, we would see Jesus"?[82] Whether really from Greece, or Greek-speaking people from elsewhere, or simply non-Jewish people, they represented the outer, non-Jewish world coming to Jesus. The Jew door was slammed violently in His face, but here was the great outer-world door opening. And He had come to a world! But instantly, across the vision so attractive to His eyes, there came another vision, never absent from His spirit those last weeks, the vision black and forbidding, of a cross. And He knew that only through this vision of a cross could the vision of a world coming be realized. And out of the sore stress of spirit, that for a few brief moments shook Him, came the quietly spoken, tense words, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone."

The road to Greece is not over the sea here to the west, not the overland caravan route up north through Asia Minor; it is the road down through Joseph's tomb. That was true for Him. It was by that road that He so marvellously reached the Greeks and all the world. And this is true for us. It is only by this road that we can reach out to the crowds with the reach-in that touches heart and life.

These are the four experiences of suffering and sacrifice. This is the dip-down in the "Follow Me" road where it runs through a darkly shadowed valley. These are the dark and red shuttle-threads being woven into the web, by repeated sharp blows of the batten-beam. These are the minor chords that, coming up through the strains of music, give a peculiar sweetness to it.



What Is Sacrifice?

Now you will note that the chief thing in all this is sacrifice. The chief thing in all of our Lord's life, clear from Bethlehem to Calvary and the tomb, was sacrifice. It runs ever throughout; it finds its tremendous climax in the cross. And the word to put in here in quietest tone—the quietest is tensest, and goes in deepest—the word is this: Following means sacrifice. It means sacrifice as really for the follower as for the Lone Man ahead.

That word "sacrifice" has practically been dropped out of the dictionary of the Christian Church of the western world. It has not been wholly lost. There is much real sacrifice, no doubt, under the surface. But, in the main, it is one of the lost words in our generation of the Church. We are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing that we cannot provide by the lavish use of money; so we think. And the loss of that word explains the loss from our working dictionaries of another word, power. For the two words always go together.

But please note what sacrifice means. For we may get confused in the use of words, and like the Hebrews in Isaiah's day call things by the wrong names.[83] Sacrifice does not merely mean suffering, though there may be much suffering included in it. But there may be suffering where there is no sacrifice. It does not mean privation, though there may be real painful privation in it. But again there may be much privation and pain without any element of sacrifice entering in.

The heart of sacrifice is that it is voluntary, and that it really costs you something. It is something that would not come to you unless you decide to let it come. It is wholly within your power to keep it away, and it brings with it real pain or cost of some kind. Sacrifice means doing something, or doing without something, that so help may come to another, even though it costs you some real personal suffering of spirit, or of body, or both, or lack of what you should have and would enjoy.

And please note that sacrifice is not the key-note of the "Follow Me" life. We are not to seek for sacrifice. Perhaps that is quite a needless remark. We are not likely to seek for it. No one loves a cross any more than did Peter, when he had the hardiness to rebuke his Master.[84] And yet we remember those earnest souls in earlier times, who shut themselves up behind monastic walls, and inflicted pain upon themselves by privation and by bodily self-infliction. And we cannot help admiring their earnestness and saintliness, even while we see how morbid was their conception of life, and how completely they got the true order reversed. And there can be found some here and there, among us to-day, with the same idea.

But the key-note of the true life is not sacrifice. It is obedience. Sacrifice is something coming in the pathway of obedience. There come the places and times where you cannot obey without making a sacrifice. Obedience involves sacrifice. And the sacrifice may be of the very real, cutting, hurting sort, personally. The whole instinct of one's being is against it. This seems to be carrying things quite too far, we think. And so the test is on. The sacrifice is not sought. It is shrunk from with all the vigour of one's nature. Obedience means that you go steadily on, no matter how it cuts, or how much it costs.

And the motive under the obedience is usually the decisive thing. If that motive be a personal passion for the Lord Jesus, then you only wait long enough to be quite clear of His leading, of what He would have you do. And then you go on, regardless of the personal loss or pain to yourself. The key-note of the "Follow Me" music is obedience, simple, sane, poised, full obedience.



How Much It Cost God.

One day out in Illinois, while visiting a small church college, I was told this story of one of the students. He had felt very deeply the need of the foreign mission lands, and the plea being made for men to volunteer to go out as missionaries. And after much thought and prayer he had decided to volunteer. But he felt he must first get his mother's consent. So he wrote of his purpose and asked if she were willing that he should go. In due time the reply came back. It was a mother's letter to her son, full of a mother's endearments. But the paper was marked with tear-stains. She gave her consent. She said, "I'm glad my boy wants to go, and I'm glad to have you go, but"—and here the writing was blurred with the teardrops that had plainly fallen as she wrote—"I never knew before how much it cost God to give His Son."

There was the whole story of sacrifice as it came to that mother. There was the sore need of the people in foreign lands for the Gospel of Christ. That need had not been met. The need in its sore pressure had become an emergency, largely an unappreciated emergency. The tragedy of an unmet emergency had moved the son's heart to action, under the touch of the Holy Spirit, and then it came to the mother's heart. The decision rested with her. Her inner heart told her the Master's desire. She obeyed, with exquisite pain in her heart over the separation, maybe separation for life, from her son. The key-note is obedience, even though it may mean cutting pain.

The whole test of love and of life is in sacrifice yielded to as the need may come. In God's first plan of life there is no sacrifice. God never chooses sacrifice as His first choice for any one, not even for His Son. But sin is here, an abnormal, foreign thing. Life is shot through and through with its ugly markings. You can't go a foot's length down the pathway of obedience without finding the keen edge of a knife, freshly sharpened, held across the path with its cutting edge toward you, challenging your advance, doing its utmost to hold you back.

And only as the breast is bared to the cutting until a bit of your red life stains the knife, only so can there be any of the power of God in, or through, or out of, your life. But turn that sentence around, and smile in your heart as you remember this, as you do push quietly on past the cutting knife, and say never a word about the knife or the sharp pain—the best folks never talk about their sacrifices, they are too intent on the Man just ahead,—as a man so does, there come into his life a fire and a fragrance that burns and breathes out wherever he goes.

It is sin that makes sacrifice. Sin did the carpenter work on the cross, our sin. Sin grew the thorns, and then served as weaver to make the mocking, cutting crown—our sin, yours and mine. Love yields to the sacrifice, His love for us, His love in us for the others. Sin is everywhere. Its finger-print is in nature, and its scar on human life. And sin's ravages make cruel need, and need intensified makes emergency, and these involve sacrifice as we rise to meet need and emergency.

And love is everywhere. That is, it would be, it will be, if it can find human feet to carry it. It will be if our Lord may have His way. Sacrifice is Love's healing shadow. Sacrifice is love giving the oil and wine of its own life to bind up the wounds that sin has made. The "Follow Me" road is marked red, so you trace His footprints who went ahead, and theirs who follow.



What Obedience Has Meant for Some.

But, no one can decide for another what obedience may mean for him. You may not tell me, nor I you. It is intensely interesting to note what obedience has meant to some. It led Paul to give up inheritance and family prestige, social standing, fellowship in university circles, a home life of scholarly quiet and research, and to be reproached and ostracized, to be homeless having no certain abiding place, dependent on his own hands for daily bread, as he went burning like a flame from end to end of the Roman world. And at the end it meant a prison, and block and axe.

I met a rare Christian nobleman in London, of an old, honoured family, of whom a friend told me this. This nobleman had a large inheritance. Among other things a certain estate. He felt led to place the estate on the market, get the best possible return for it, and then with his shrewd business sense, prayerfully to place the proceeds where he felt they would help best the cause of Christ. And to a friend who expressed appreciation and approval of such unusual action, he quietly said, "I want no praise for this; if the poor Jew had to give one-tenth, surely a rich Christian can do very much more." That was what obedience, at that point, meant to him.

I knew a Canadian woman who had been led to a higher level in her Christian life. A friend put into her hands a bit of manuscript, to which she had access, thinking it would help her in her new life. The manuscript was read, and returned through the friend to its writer. He had intended having it published with some others, if a publisher could be found willing to accept it. Then he had felt that he would do nothing with it until very clear leading came. He did not want to do anything, except as he was led. If the Master wanted to use the writing, it was there if He chose to give the word for its use.

Sometime after as the woman was busy with her nursing work she was on night duty, and had her quiet time in an interval of the night's round. As she was reading her Bible and praying, she said, "A voice said to me very quietly, 'Send Mr. Blank twenty-five dollars to publish ——'" [naming the title of the article she had read]. Twenty-five dollars taken out of her frugal savings would leave quite a hole. But the impression that came with the message was unmistakable. And so the money was sent. And it was received by the writer of the manuscript as the Master's answer for which he had been waiting. And that was the beginning of some little books whose messages have been graciously used to bring help to many lives. Her bit of obedience was a link in the chain, and so a bit of her life is in the printed messages the Master has been using. The tracing of red was on the gold, and on the messages sent out. That was what obedience meant that time to her. And obedience usually has its hardest time when its struggle is over a bit of gold.

A friend took us driving one day up in Scotland, and told this story as we passed through a beautiful estate. A few generations back it belonged to one who followed fully. And in response to the clear inner leading the estate was sold, and the proceeds used in sending the message of a crucified, risen Christ, out to the farther ends of the earth.

It was at the same time that a like incident came personally to me of another Scottish friend of our Lord Jesus. The beckoning call was so distinct, and the answering need so clear in its echo, that he planned a moderate annuity for the remainder of his life, and loosed out all the rest of his wealth on the same sort of errand. I do not say you should do something of this sort. And you may not tell me what I shall do. Only the Master has that privilege. But we can urge each other to have trained ears, and soft heart, and obedient will; ears for what the Master is saying, a heart softened by the warmth of His, a will gladly obedient to His slightest wish.



Necessity—Luxury.

And our Lord Jesus speaks very distinctly, though so quietly. His meaning is unmistakably plain to listening ears. He is quite apt to take you off for a little walk and talk. What kind of a house do you live in? What proportion of your income do you spend on yourself? What is in those safety-deposit boxes? How much would it mean to Him if your signature at the bottom of legal papers put some property at His disposal? Take a look through your wardrobe; who and what controls there? No, I'm not talking about money, nor about missions, only about a personal passion for the Lord Jesus, and about the passion in Him for His world.

"But," you say to yourself, "there's danger of going to extremes here, is there not?" Yes, there is; you are quite right. Extremes are bad, we should be on our guard against them. There is nothing more desirable in these days than sane, poised judgment, a sound mind. And be it keenly marked that the man who is really swayed by the Holy Spirit is peculiarly a sane, well-balanced man. That is one mark of the Spirit's presence.

Yet there's more to be said. Our Lord Jesus went to extremes. He went to a great extreme on the cross, did He not? Is there any extreme like that of Gethsemane? and Calvary? It is because He went to such extremes, and the West knows about it, that the West is so radically different from the East, and that you and I are redeemed from the slavery of sin, with a sweet peace in our hearts, and so much happiness in our lives.

The distressing thing is that there is so much of going to extremes. Go through the Christian homes of the western world to-day, and you find home appointments, wardrobes, safety-deposit boxes, bank books, title deeds, all spelling out one word, spelled in capital letters, EXTREMES. But that key-note, named several times already, gives the only safe way—obedience. We need to be on our guard, not so much lest we go to extremes at either extreme, but that we obey our Lord Jesus. That, and that only, leads to the wise, well-balanced judgment and action. Obedience to Him means true sanity.

Where do you draw the deciding line between necessity and luxury? How do you define those two words? What is necessity? And what is luxury? Simple definitions help much in getting clear ideas. The dictionary says, a necessity is something you must have. And a luxury, in its root meaning, is an extravagance, something "wandering beyond the proper boundary." The trouble is to know how to draw the line when it comes to one's own affairs. There is such a big difference between what you want and what you need. And often we don't want to go into such distinctions. They might bother our consciences a bit. It seems difficult to keep one's poise in such things. Some godly people go to extremes in not providing sufficiently for real needs. Most of us go to the other extreme. Where does the true dividing line come in?

Well, I think you can say truly that whatever keeps up and adds to your strength can properly be called a necessity. All beyond that line is luxury. It is the part of wisdom to provide carefully and well for necessities. Luxury is bad, for it really saps our strength. It makes a man less vigorous in every way. And yet more can be said. The question of need comes in. Luxury is wrong because of the crying need of men for what the money spent in luxury would bring to them. I think chiefly now of the need of their lives for what can come only through a knowledge of Christ. The bitter cry of the common people against Louis XVI, at the time of the French Revolution, was that the royal family lived on the costliest delicacies while many of the common people were actually starving. They thought that was the chief crime to be expiated at the guillotine.