爱的服事：门徒洗基督的脚The Service of Love, or The Disciple Washing Christ's Feet

屋大维·温斯洛Octavius Winslow · 来源Source GraceGemsGraceGems · 选粹excerpt · 原址Original · 长文长文

THE TREE OF LIFE by Octavius Winslow

The Service of Love, or The Disciple Washing Christ's Feet

"A certain immoral woman heard Jesus was there and brought a beautiful jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them." Luke 7:37-38

We have considered one of the most instructive and impressive acts of our Lord's life. His washing the disciples' feet. Scarcely less so is that one which is now to engage our study, and which we place by its side- the disciple washing the lord's feet. The incident is one of those occurrences which illustrates the reciprocal interest which exists between Christ and His people. On His part, redeeming love and condescending grace; on theirs, the warmest affection and the most unreserved service.

We need not speculate upon the identity of the woman who stole into Simon's house to perform this act of love to her Savior. But little is known of her history. The only event recorded of importance to know is, her true conversion to Christ, and this fact will contribute to the praise of Jesus and the glory of God when the annals of the world and the exploits and pomp of the great will be buried in eternal oblivion.

How indistinctly do we understand the nature, or estimate the importance of conversion. It is the only event in our history worthy of a thought. It is the one event of our present life, which moulds and colors all our endless future. All other events are band impertinences in comparison of this one. Converted or unconverted ! is the grand question. Converted- "life eternal!" Unconverted- "eveslasting punishment!" So spoke Him who is eternal truth.

Let us turn to the woman who washed the Savior's feet. We are not to identify her with Mary, sister of Lazarus, who was of Bethany, nor with Mary Magdalene, who is supposed to have acquired this appellation because she was born in Magdala, an unimportant town of the tribe of Manasseh. But she, doubtless, resided in the city of Nain, and is described as "a woman in the city," where in His walks of usefulness Jesus met her, to whom He preached the gospel of His grace -a gospel of glad tidings for poor, lost sinners- and who by His Spirit He drew to Himself in penitence, faith, and love.

And now we are to view her as sitting at His feet, bathing them with her warm tears of affection, and illustrating the sweet service of love. She is described as a sinner. Was she a sinner above all that dwelt in the city of Nain? Was she by nature viler than us? No, in the strong language of Scripture, "All have sinned, and have come short of the glory of God." "There is none righteous, no, not one." We are all included in man's fall from original righteousness; all are conceived in sin and born in iniquity; all are by nature wholly depraved and universally tainted. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." This is the first lesson we learn in grace, the first stage we take in conversion- the lesson of our sinnership.

If, my reader, the Lord is for the first time setting you to learn this lesson, if the fact has burst upon your mind as with electric power, startling you from a profound slumber, yes, awakening you from the sleep of death, hail with joy this new-born revelation of yourself to yourself, as the dawn of that day of grace which will assuredly terminate in an eternity of glory. Oh, it is a grand thing to learn spiritually and experimentally that we are sinners! To know it not merely in the judgment, but from the heart. To acknowledge it not only with the lip in the public service of the sanctuary, but to confess it in the private devotion of the closet, with the mouth in the dust, beneath the cross of Immanuel.

Be assured of this, as of a most vital truth, that Christ will have no gracious dealings with you in the way of pardon, but in your capacity as a sinner. "He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." "He came to seek and to save that which was lost." "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptaance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." "Sinners, of whom," says Paul, "I am chief." The Pharisee despised this poor woman because she was a sinner, but Jesus threw around her the shield of His sin-forgiving love.

But she was more than a sinner- she was a penitent sinner. God had given her a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and this had humbled her at His feet. Has He, my reader, wrought this grace in your soul? The world thinks meanly of a man who thinks meanly of himself; but God's estimate of self-abhorrence and man's estimate are essentially and widely different. The world passes him by as a being beneath its notice and regard, but God says, "To this man will I look, even to him who is of a broken and humble spirit, and who trembles at my word."

Make a personal and serious application of this truth to yourself, my reader. Has your proud spirit been humbled? Has the inmost and hidden fountain of evil been unveiled to your eye! Has Jesus, by His Spirit and truth and ministers, met you pacing along the highway of sin and rebellion, and shown to you the leprosy of sin, as, like a pestilential and fatal plague, it touched and tainted all within! Solemn, momentous questions!

But how sweet and blessed is the grace of repentance! To lie in the dust before God is at once the most humiliating and the most exalting condition; it is the bitterest and yet the sweetest experience of the believers life. There is no sweetness tasted of pardoning grace until this bitter. Like the little book which John received from the angel's hand and ate, which was "to the belly bitter, but in the mouth sweet as honey," so godly grief for sin is at first bitter as gall, but afterwards sweet as honey, in the experience into which it brings the soul of God's forgiving love.

She was also a pardoned, saved sinner. Her sins had been great, but the blood of Jesus had proved greater, and had prevailed to wash them all away. We too much overlook this assured truth- and its oversight is the secret cause of much spiritual despondency- the present salvation of a child of God. Salvation is always referred to in the divine Scriptures of truth in the present tense. "By grace you are saved." "He has saved us." We shall never be more really saved than we now are if we believe in Jesus. Our salvation is not a past or a future blessing to be enjoyed, but a present one. Our sins are now all pardoned- "Who has forgiven you all trespasses."

Our persons are now fully justified- "Accepted in the Beloved." We are now adopted- "Now are we the sons of God." Oh, let us not sink below the level of this precious and sanctifying truth, but rise to its highest reach and its fullest realization and enjoyment. We lose one of the most powerful incentives to holiness, and with this, one of the sweetest springs of happiness, when we lose sight of our present and complete salvation.

How should our songs of praise wake the sweet echoes of every valley, and of every mountain, and of every plain, along which we travel home to God, for this great salvation which God has provided, which Christ has wrought, and which the Holy Spirit has applied, and which faith has freely received and is privileged fully to enjoy.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." Rest not until you know that you are saved. It is attainable- others have attained it, and so may you. The blood sprinkled, the Spirit's seal impressed, peace with God experienced, the Savior's preciousness felt, and holiness breathed after, will leave not the shadow of a doubt upon your mind as to your present and eternal safety.

How blessedly will this experience bear you through the trials and sufferings and sorrows of your pilgrimage! It will extract poignancy from grief, will blunt the keen edge of affliction, will sweeten the cross, and fringe with gold and purple hues the dark and gloomy clouds which often drape the path we tread.

And mark the place where this loving disciple stood. It was at the feet of Jesus. "And stood at His feet behind Him." How suggestive is this feature of her history. This is the true place of every believer- at the feet of Christ. Everything which attaches to us as believers, and all the dealings of God, point to Christ's feet as our true place. All is designed to bring us there. Nor could we seek a place this shady side of heaven so favored, appropriate, or blessed as this. That we may feel that this is the privilege of all, and that it is accessible to all, let us see what some of the errands are that brings us there.

In the first place, spiritual ignorance brings us to the feet of Jesus. The Lord Jesus is the great Prophet of His Church, her only Divine and authorised Teacher! All God's children are taught of Him, and their great Teacher is Christ the Anointed One. Thus spoke the Lord, "It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that has heard, and has learned of the Father, comes unto me." And again, "Neither knows any man the Father, except the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son wills reveal him." There is a remarkable ignorance of this truth in the present day.

Among the many and marked denials of Christ in high places, the denial of His prophetical office is not the least one. Men are setting themselves up everywhere as God-sent teachers of Divine truth, but who give undeniable evidence that they are but Satan-sent emissaries of human error- and, what is most lamentable and alarming, people love to have it so. But what is our safety? what is our true position? The answer is- humbly sitting at the feet of Jesus. Oh, honored place! Oh favored position of a poor sinner deeply sensible of his spiritual ignorance, and ardently desirous of being taught the truth as it is in Jesus. To this place we must bring all those mysteries of revelation, and apparently inexplicable truths, and discrepant statements, and things hard to be understood, which have perplexed and confounded us. The Bible can only be properly studied in the light of Christ and at the feet of Christ. If we read it merely as a history, or as a poem, or as a system of philosophy, and not as a Revelation of Christ only, we shall fail of compassing the grand end for which the Divine revelation was given. Or, if we sit at the feet of a human Gamaliel, and not at the feet of Jesus only, receiving in humility and faith the gracious words that proceed out of His lips, we shall most assuredly err, not understanding the Scriptures.

Let your place of learning, then, my reader, be at the feet of Jesus. Are you perplexed about a doctrine, or an ordinance, or a question of conscience, or a path of duty? Take your place here, and seek instruction from Him, and in His light you shall see light.

Human reason must come there, the pride of intellect must lie there, preconceived opinion must yield there- sitting there as a little child, desiring the sincere milk of the word- as a humble disciple anxious to know the truth that quickens, sanctifies, and saves. Thus surrendering yourself entirely to Divine teaching, Jesus will show you the way of life, will enlighten your mind, resolve your doubts, and unfold to you more clearly the blessed truth that He Himself is "the Truth," whom to know is life eternal!

I cannot sufficiently reiterate the averment that the Bible can only be clearly understood as it is studied in the light of the Sun of Righteousness, with one intent and aim only to know the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the Old and the New Testament unitedly testify. Thus the very closing book of the sacred canon, the Revelation of John- mystical and symbolical as it is, is termed "the Revelation of Jesus Christ", not the revelation by Jesus Christ merely, but the revelation concerning Jesus Christ Himself. In other words, it does not mean so much Christ the Revealer, as Christ the Revealed.

And so is Christ the revealed Messiah, Savior, Redeemer of the entire Scriptures of truth. Jesus Christ is the same in the "yesterday" of the Old Testament, in the "today" of the New, and in the "forever" of our endless study. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." "Search the Scriptures," said He to whom gave all the prophets witness, "for they are they which testify of Me."

At the feet, then, of this Divine, skillful, gentle Teacher, humbly take your place as a sincere learner, as a loving disciple, and in His light you shall see light upon all that is essential you should know as a sinner on your way to the judgment. He will open your understanding as He did that of the disciples of old, that you may understand the Scriptures concerning Himself. Let us imitate Mary of Bethany, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word. Affection brings us to the feet of Christ. Love ever delights to be near the object of its preference and regard- In nothing does this sentiment find a truer, or more sacred illustration as in the experience of the believer. Christ is the Object of his supreme affection. He loves Christ more than he loves all other beings, single or combined.

"Do you love Me more than these?" awakes the ready and earnest response from every Christian's heart, "Lord, you know that I love you." It is his supreme happiness, his heaven on earth, to be close to the Savior who sacrificed His life for him, who called him by His grace, and has told him that where He, the Lord, is, there he the disciple shall be.

This sensible realization of the Lord's personal presence constitutes the life and nourishment of daily personal religion. There are many religious professors who do not know what the absence of Christ is, because they know nothing experimentally of His presence. We cannot miss a joy we have never felt, nor pine for a blessing we have never possessed. We must experimentally and personally know Christ, and love Him, and walk with Him, to be conscious of the cold, dreary blank- a blank no creature-good can fill- which the withdrawment of His sensible presence creates. Oh happy soul, so living in the sunshine of the Divine presence as to be sensible of the slightest cloud that veils it! who, wont to walk side by side and in face-to-face communion with the Lord, are more sensitive to any disturbance of your holy joy than the compass is to the slightest variation of the needle.

Behold, then, the true place of love to Christ- His sacred feet. Prove your love to the Savior, my reader, by being often there. Allow no creature to come between you and Jesus. Let not the world allure you from so dear a Friend. Be loving to His person, loyal to His cause, steadfast in His faith, valiant for His truth, holding fast your Christian profession without wavering.

Let sensible nearness to Christ be the life of your religion and the characteristic of your walk. It is the happiest as it is the holiest life on earth. It is one remove only from the life of heaven. There, "in His presence is fulness of joy," and only there. We know the joy in part now when we feel our Lord near to us; but we shall know the "fulness of joy" then when standing in His beatific presence unshared by an object, unshaded by a cloud. Let the cold-hearted intellectualist call this the religion of sentiment if he may. I desire no other.

To walk with God is the loftiest reach of the sanctified intellect, the highest and noblest desire of the human mind. We can only properly employ our thoughts upon God as we move in the orbit of His presence; and no object of contemplation and research, no theme of meditation and discourse, gives such development and expansion to the intellectual powers, as the study of God revealed in His Word and manifest in His Son- Christ Jesus. "This is life eternal, to know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

How do we best become acquainted with the mental and moral qualities of an individual but by frequent, close, and confiding communion. Thus is it that in the Enoch-like walk of the child of God he gets to understand God's revealed mind and Christ's unveiled heart, and so his soul revolves near to the Divine, Eternal, and blessed Center.

Not less does the discipline of sorrow bring us to the feet of Jesus. It is sent, indeed, by our blessed Lord for this purpose. Sorrow always brings Christ to our people, and to our homes; and, when sanctified, brings us to His feet in a closeness of acquaintance and fellowship, perhaps, unknown before. We become better acquainted with Him who Himself was acquainted with grief. Oh how near to Christ, our Friend and Brother, does one trial, a single affliction, a solitary sorrow, bring us. We seem scarcely to have known Him before. The stars we admired, the moon we worshiped of created attraction, have withdrawn their light, and the Sun of Righteousness takes their place, and we fall before Him with a depth of adoration and an intensity of love such as no Persian idolater ever felt in the worship offered to his god.

What a volume on the hallowed benefits of affliction might the personal history of each child of God supply! Would not this one stand first and foremost in the catalogue- "I have known more of Christ in this season of suffering, in this hour of sorrow, in the discipline of this one trial, than I ever knew in all my previous experience!" Truly is that sorrow a blessing when we can bless the Refiner for the sorrow, a sorrow that has brought us into the possession of a blessing like this. Oh, how we shrink from the discipline of trial as though some strange and needless thing happened unto us! How we recoil from this assimilation into which it brings us to Jesus, just as if the disciple must be above his Lord; the servant above his Master; the bride a wife of pleasure while the Bridegroom was a man of grief.

O no! we wish it not. We would be like our Lord, and in nothing is the resemblance more complete than in the sacred sorrow which often drapes the spirit and crushes the heart. It is thus we "have fellowship with Him in His sufferings," and are made "partakers of the afflictions of Christ," drinking of the cup He drank, baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized, and treading the path He trod. And all this we come into the experience of when sorrow brings us to His feet.

This, perhaps, in a measure, is a new place in our Christian experience. We have known something of the head of Christ, for we have felt the power of His truth; we have known something of the heart of Christ, for we have tasted the sweetness of His love; but little have we known of the blessing of lying down at the feet of Christ, chastened and humbled, emptied and weaned, willing that He shall be now, and in all future time, our all in all.

For this the discipline has been sent. Your heart, perchance, has wandered far away from the Lord; your walk with Him has been distant, your communion shy. Your mind has grown worldly, and your heart idolatrous; your confidence has become timid, and your love has chilled. The Lord, whose eye has not for a moment lost sight of you, has seen it all, and, loving you, in love has sent the chastening that has brought you back to Himself, and once more you find your heaven at His feet. And then you sing,

"Trials make the promise sweet;

Trials give new life to prayer;

Trials bring me to His feet,

Lay me low, and keep me there."

There, tried and sorrowful believer, bring your grief. Those feet once pierced for you will now hide and soothe you within their very wounds, those wounds at once your healing and your shelter. It is a holy and costly sorrow that brings us closer to Christ. We never learn so much what He is as then. And when we arrive in heaven and fall down before His throne, how fully shall we the sentiment of the Christian poet realize,

"Blessed, there, with a weight of glory,

Still the path I'll never forget,

But, exulting, cry, It led me

To my blessed Savior's feet.

Sweet affliction,

Which has brought to Jesus feet!"

Once more. The feet of Christ is the only place of real safety. There is much in the history of each saint of God to jeopardize his well-being. David was a giant in grace, compared with whom the tallest of us are but dwarfs- and yet listen to his petition, "Hold me up and I shall be safe." Paul was a veteran in the holy war- compared with whom the most valiant of us are but raw recruits- yet listen to his exhortation, "Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."

Ecclesiastical pinnacles are dizzy and dangerous places for a man of God. Have we ever met with one advanced to distinguished preferment who has not had need to seek a double portion of God's Spirit to rest upon him? I received this holy acknowledgment once from the lips of a prelate whom in earlier years I had known and labored with as the humble pastor of a village parish, but who since then had been advanced to one of the most important sees in the English Church; and God, I believe, gave him the request that he asked. The divine discipline, moreover, through which he subsequently passed, out of which fiery tribulation Christ took him to glory, brought him yet closer to the Master's feet, from where Jesus raised him to that bright world of bliss "where the wicked cease from troubling and where the weary are at rest.''

Here, then, is our true place of safety, wandering from which we are as "a bird that wanders from her nest." Peter had not denied his Lord but for this. Following his Master afar off, the enemy found room to come between him and Jesus; and thus, effecting a momentary separation of the disciple from the Lord, accomplished his downfall. Here, then, is our safety. "He that is down need fear no fall." He that lies "low in a low place" is safe.

Here at the feet of Jesus the world is renounced, self is loathed, sin is forsaken. Satan flies, and God draws near, and we sit and bask in the sunbeams of His smiles. Oh that wherever we are, and with whatever we possess, to the place where this loving woman sat may we repair. Have you talents? bring them here. Have you honors? renounce them here. Have you wealth? deposit it here. Are you useful? lay it at the feet of Jesus. Accumulate, cluster, and concentrate all you are and all you have around those feet that trod for you Gethsemane's garden, and were nailed for you to Calvary's cross, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence.

We now reach an interesting and instructive part of this narrative- the disciple washing Christ's feet: "And washed His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head." Those tears! who can analyze them? Where shall we find pearls so priceless, or stones so precious and of fairer colors? Away with the notion that true religion is the foe of sensibility, that the gospel of Christ is the patron of stoicism. The religion of Christ is the only religion that unseals the fount of feeling, while it chastens and sanctifies the tears it bids us shed. The divine Author of that religion wept. What more do we need. Let us turn to the weeping disciple.

She washed Christ's feet with the tears of penitence. There are no tears in Christ's view more costly or precious than these. This woman was poor in spirit, humble and contrite, and as she stood behind her sin-forgiving Savior, her tears of godly sorrow for sin rained fast upon his feet. Have you, my reader, wept for sin? Does the recollection of past transgression make you sorry? Does the memory of the sins of your youth, the transgressions of riper years, the sinful infirmities of old age, humble you in the dust? Holier and more precious tears were never shed than those wept for having sinned against God at Christ's feet. "And Peter went out and wept bitterly." "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Good words these for penitent souls!

She washed Christ's feet with the tears of faith. Is faith, then, you ask, an emotional grace? Most surely so. "With the heart man believes unto righteousness." And again it is written, "They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn." It is faith that looks to a crucified Savior, and the sight of the eye melts the heart, and the believing penitent weeps. A humble penitent, this woman was a true believer. These are twin graces in the experience of the saints. Repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ constitute the two cardinal principles of experimental religion. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus, my reader? The Bible does not ask if you work, or if you strive, or if you pray; its great inquiry is, "Do you believe?" "To him that believes is the reward not reckoned of works but of grace." Do you believe in Jesus? Has your faith received Him? Are you willing to be nothing- to cast your deadly doings down, yes, down at Jesus' feet, accepting Him as "made of God unto you wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? Come and wash the Savior's feet with the tears that flow from a believing sight of Him whom you have pierced. Faith in Jesus will be as the rod of Moses smiting the rock and causing the waters to flow.

She washed Christ's feet, too, with the tears of grateful love. Jesus had pardoned all her sins, had absolved her from their guilt, and had released her from their power. How natural was the feeling of gratitude, how appropriate this service of love! The most evangelical and genuine contrition for sin flows from a sense of its forgiveness. Nothing breaks the heart so thoroughly as the experience of God's pardoning love, love flowing from a sight of the cross.

Sinai terrifies, but Calvary subdues. The law petrifies, but the gospel melts; terrors repel, but love wins.

"Law and judgment do but harden,

All the time they work alone,

But a sense of blood-bought pardon

Soon dissolves the heart of stone."

Let your love be a weeping love, then it will be a practical love, bathing the feet of Him who virtually bathes yours in the condescending acts of His grace, by which He is among us still as Him that serves.

In lending ourselves to acts of Christian kindness, beneficence, and sympathy, we are still washing the feet of Jesus in the lowly service of love offered in His name to His saints. This fact is much overlooked- Christ as represented by, and as recognized in, His people. We but little reflect that when in any way we wound, or neglect, or despise a true disciple of Christ, we turn our back upon Christ Himself- such is the oneness, the essential, undeniable oneness of the Lord Jesus with His people. Oh how sweet it will be to hear Him say, when He comes in His glory to receive to Himself and to present to His Father His elect Church, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto Me." Then will the cup of cold water given; the soothing administered at the sick-bed; the visit to the house of mourning- be acknowledged and rewarded before an assembled world!

Then followed her holy caress and the sacred annointing. "And kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment." This mode of courtesy, prevalent among the Jews, and also among the Greeks and Romans, received a peculiar and impressive significance in this instance. The kiss was her confession of Christ, the seal of her love to His person, the expression of her gratitude for His great and distinguishing grace towards her.

The Church of old aspired to kiss the lips of Christ- "let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth" -but this disciple was content to kiss His feet! It is our happiness to know that the Lord will accept the lowliest service and the feeblest expression of faith in, and love to, Him. "If I may but touch the border of His garment," is the highest ambition of humble faith; if I may but kiss His feet, is the ardent desire of lowly love. Judas soiled the face of Jesus with the kiss of perfidious treachery- this humble disciple anointed His feet with the sacred kiss of admiring and grateful love. Whose place would we prefer? Lord, let me kiss Your feet, worship at Your feet, keep close to Your feet, until, springing from Your footstool on earth, I find myself adoring, praising, loving You at Your feet in glory.

"That blessed interview, how sweet!

To fall transported at His feet,

Raised in His arms to view His face,

Through the full beamings of His grace.

"Yet, with this prospect full in sight,

I'll wait Your signal for my flight,

For, while Your service I pursue,

I find my heaven begun below."

This narrative impressively illustrates the true service of love. Never did purer love offer a more grateful service to the Savior than that which this sin-pardoned disciple presented. We behold the model of what Jesus desires and expects at our hands. We are Christ's servants if we are Christ's disciples- "for we serve the Lord Christ." Our consecration to the service of Jesus is an evidence of our true love to Him. Love is not an inactive, selfish, indolent grace. "Faith," which is the root of every other grace, "works by love." What will not mere creature-love do and suffer for the object of its regard! See its power in a mother's heart, bending night after night in sleepless watching over her sick and suffering babe! See its power in a father's heart nerving him for toil, and constraining him to plough stormy seas, imperiling life in distant and unhealthy climates, for love of that home-circle around which his untravelled heart still clings.

But infinitely more potent, as divinely more precious, is the love which constrains the disciple of Jesus to consecrate his service to the Lord. Our Christian profession involves a service, as our Christianity imposes a cross. An inactive, indolent disciple of Christ is a contradiction of terms. The moment we become the Lord's, we submit our necks to a yoke, and our backs to a burden, and love makes the one to be easy and the other to be light. Christ's service has many fields and various departments- all may find employment here. There is a sphere for every servant, work for every laborer, employment for every gift. "Son, go work today in my vineyard," is Christ's command to every believer, even to him of but one talent only. There is a field for the evangelist, a sphere for the teacher, scope for the visitor, work for male and female.

Oh, how much is to be done for this fallen, sinful world, speeding to the judgment! What countless, goodly pearls are to be found! what hidden sheep are to be sought! what wandering children are to be brought home of the innumerable seed given of the Father to the Son, for whom He travailed in the sorrow of Gethsemane, the ingathering of whom He shall yet behold with infinite satisfaction, delight, and glory! To aid Him in this work of recovery, He asks our consecrated service, He bids us come to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. And shall we, wearing the badge of the Christian disciple, renounce the livery of the Christian servant? Redeeming love, forbid it! We are the Lord's. Henceforth we bind ourselves to acknowledge no Master but Him, to wear no yoke, and to engage in no service but His. Oh impressive thought "Whose I am, and whom I serve!"

Up, then, my Christian reader, to the service of your Lord and Master. Awake you that sheep! Rouse up from selfishness and indolence, and disinter your buried talent. Go to the cross, where, in tears and blood, in suffering and death, your hell was extinguished and your heaven won, and before that cross blush that you should for one moment have hesitated to yield your ransomed powers, gifts, time, and possessions entirely, freely, and supremely to the Savior. From this solemn hour let love constrain you to a simple, self-denying, unfaltering devotion to Him who sacrificed His life for you, and who, at His second coming in glory and majesty, will make you sit down at the marriage banquet, and serve you. "Where I am, there shall also My servant be."

Weary, suffering, persecuted servant of Christ, take heart, for the Master is coming, and rich will be your reward. Bind to your heart His yoke more firmly, His burden more closely, His cross more fondly, for a glittering crown, and a snow-white robe, and a waving palm, and a golden harp await you in glory. Living or dying, be your place and posture that of the loving disciple we have been considering- at the feet of Jesus! There you are happy and safe; there you will derive strength for duty, and grace for trial; and whatever clouds may shade other spots in life, this will be bathed in undimmed and eternal sunshine.