that if he really wished to become a disciple, he must not even go back to bid his relations farewell. "If any man come to me," said Christ, "and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."

These are hard sayings. What are we to understand by them? He could not possibly have intended that they were to be always literally obeyed. He could not possibly have meant, for example, to ignore or depreciate the family affections as such. The very essence of Christianity is to show love and kindliness to all men. Christ could not, therefore, intend that those who had the strongest claims upon us should be treated with harshness and discourtesy. What He wished to teach was, that the family

affections must be subordinate to the religion. When a man could not be loyal to an earthly love without being disloyal to Christ, then the earthly love must be suppressed. This explanation will help us, I think, to understand all similar injunctions. Christ spoke vehemently in order to startle men into attention. He was determined to be followed only by enthusiasts,—by men who were prepared, if need be, to sacrifice everything for His sake. Commands and exhortations, like those I have quoted, constituted His winnowing-fan, with which He got rid of half-hearted followers. At one time He was enormously popular. It was when He was being followed by a large multitude that He insisted on the necessity of their counting the cost, before making any profession of discipleship. No one, He intimated, need attempt to follow Him who would be unwilling, if occasion arose, to forsake all that he had.

But what is the significance for us of these and similar words? The Dean of St Paul's, in his valuable lectures on the Gifts of Civilisation,' says that they meant more for those days than for ours. I would rather prefer to put it in this way,-not that they meant more, but that they were oftener susceptible of a literal

B

obedience. They seem to me only strong and passionate modes of enjoining men to seek first the kingdom of God; and this injunction is as binding to-day as ever. Christ requires of His followers now, as then, a willingness to give up whatever clashes with His claims on them. The only difference is, that formerly they had more frequently to prove this willingness by the actual forsaking of everything. To be a Christian then, was to put one's self in opposition to society and to the State. Christianity could only be procured a footing in the world by the fidelity, even unto death, of large numbers of its early propagators. The call of Christ, which always demands the same spirit of self-denial, involved then, as a rule, severer actual sacrifices. His religion would have died almost as soon as it was born, but for the sufferings and martyrdoms of its evangelists, which proved its power by showing what it was capable of helping men to endure. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." But for them the name of Jesus of Nazareth would have been unknown to-day, or known only to the curious student of Jewish antiquities. At the present time, Christian missionaries are the only persons who occupy the same kind of position as the early

disciples.

Missionaries frequently have, in the most literal sense, to forsake everything out of regard for their work. We cannot, however, all be missionaries. It is not desirable that we should. And therefore the need is not likely to arise in our case of forsaking everything for Christ. But the need is certain to arise of

forsaking much. Nay more, Christ requires even from us the willingness, if need be, to forsake all. Unless we feel for Him an enthusiasm sufficient to give Him the first place in our hearts, we cannot, He says, be His disciples, and we have no business to make any profession of Christianity.

And enthusiasm, which is thus requisite to start us on the Christian career, is needed throughout the whole of its course. For Christian morality is not merely negative, it is positive in the highest degree. You will see better what I mean if you contrast Christianity with Judaism. A man did not require enthusiasm to make him a good Jew. There was enthusiasm, doubtless, among the psalmists and prophets, among the wiser and nobler portions of the nation, as there always is among the good and great. But this was not necessary to make them Judaically religious. The requirements of

Judaism were few and simple: they consisted merely in abstaining from certain clearly defined sins, and offering certain clearly defined sacrifices. But Christ's redeeming work is something very different. It consisted in the creation within His disciples of a passionate devotedness to the welfare of their fellow-men.1 A man might be a good Jew, to all outward appearance at any rate, against the grain; but no one ever in this way bore the slightest resemblance to a Christian. The ideal Jew is a man who never injures his neighbours. The ideal Christian is the man who is always doing them good. And for this, what

but enthusiasm can suffice? It would be easier for an imbecile to become a philosopher than for a cold-hearted man to live the Christian life.

If," says the author of Ecce Homo,' "there sometimes appear in the history of the Church instances of a tone which is pure and high without being enthusiastic, it will probably be found that all that is respectable in such a mood is but the slowly subsiding movement of an earlier enthusiasm, and all that is produced by the lukewarmness itself is hypocrisy and corrupt conventionalism. Christianity is an enthusiasm, or it is nothing."

1 See sermon on Redemption, p. 218.