^ I am to think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd who speaks to me. He calleth His own sheep by name. If I will, I can hear His voice in words spoken from the pulpit, in the conversation of friends, in the reading of devout books. Sometimes He speaks in sweet thoughts which come to me, in the tender touches of the Spirit of God in the soul. If He speaks to me, I must listen. How am I to listen for the Divine voice ? To listen for Him I must hold the powers of my soul in restraint. I must keep my- self in calmness and peace. External things are in movement. Without, is the noise of the world. If this noise is filling my soul, I cannot hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. The danger of excessive pleasure, excessive business, excessive work, is this — the powers of the soul become dissipated. I must keep some time for retirement, for watching over myself, for listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd ; then — by His Holy Spirit — He will guide me. If He find me quiet, attentive, listening, then Jesus will teach me. " Speak, Lord ; for thy servant heareth." I must follow His teachings, and obey His voice, if I am indeed to be " the lost sheep " found. I must be ready and generous, willing to make ventures, strong to make sacrifices. Sometimes He may call me to trial — I must endure it ; to silence — I must refrain my lips ; to speech — I must speak out. Dear Shepherd, whether the way Thou callest me to be smooth or rough, give me grace to follow. Alas ! how often have I failed in this ! How different would my spiritual state be, had I only obeyed. Obedience to the voice is better than sacrifice, but sacrifice must, indeed, often be the duty to which I am called if I practise obedience.^
^ Obedience is not an easy thing to learn. We do not learn it by singing beautiful hymns about it; by repeating with ^ Canon Knox Little, Treas'ui-y of Meditation.
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devotion " Thy way, not mine, 0 Lord," or " My God, my Father, while I stray " ; nor by hearing exhortations about it ; but by practising it. Christ learned obedience by the things that He suffered ; and we can learn in no other way.^
(3) Ke reveals self-sacrifice as the only secret of the fulness of life. — The restoration of the soul which Christ begins in us by forgiveness and the faith that we are the children of God, and which He makes so keen and quick by the example of His obedience and service — this restoration. He tells us, is perfected only through self-sacrifice. That is a discipline which has always been ready to suggest itself. Most moral systems inculcate it; and there never was a man in whose heart, however obscure or ignorant, the thought of it did not arise as a resource in danger or as compensa- tion for sin. It has been preached by religion as penance ; and many a man feeling the world to be intrinsically bad, or his own body very evil, has forsaken the one or mutilated the other. But to Jesus self-sacrifice was never a penalty or a narrower life. It was a glory and a greater life. He called men to it not of fear, nor for the purpose of appeasing the Deity, or of having their sins forgiven; but in freedom and for love's sake. He urged it not that men might save a miserable remnant of life by resigning the rest, but that through self-denial they might enter a larger con- ception of life, and a deeper enjoyment of their possibilities as sons of God. " He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life shall find it."
^ Francis of Assisi was no truer follower of Jesus Christ in poverty and simplicity of life than was David Hill. They are kindred spirits indeed in their sweetness, purity, and loving- kindness, and in different ages and in different climes they were both possessed by the same dominant idea, to follow Jesus literally, and to witness for Him to men ; and in this fact is the explanation of their similarity. A self-denying life is often called an ascetic one ; the two things are different, though related. Self- denial is a means to an end, asceticism is an end in itself. The monastic conception of holiness was of purity attained by rigid self-discipline, and there it stopped. The New Testament ideal of holiness is of a perfect love — a love that denies self in order to bless others. The Lord Jesus Christ left His Father's throne, and came into this world, and lived the life of a poor working-man for ^ Bishop G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Foioer, 86.
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our sakes, but He was no ascetic. Following Him, David Hill lived a life of poverty and self-denial, and his beautiful and holy renunciation was not practised in order to obtain saintliness for himself, but that he might win the Chinese to be saints.^
^ When, after his great breakdown in health. Bishop Lightfoot returned for too short a time to work, he made a statement on the subject, in a public speech, of almost sublime manliness. He then hoped that he had regained, or would regain, his old vigour ; but he said, boldly and frankly, that if his overwork had meant a sacrifice of life, he would not have regretted it for a moment : " I should not have wished to recall the past, even if my illness had been fatal. For what, after all, is the individual life in the history of the Church ? Men may come and men may go — individual lives float down like straws on the surface of the waters till they are lost in the ocean of eternity ; but the broad, mighty, rolling stream of the Church itself — the cleansing, purifying, fertilizing tide of the River of God — flows on for ever and ever." That is really the secret of happiness — to dare to subordinate life and personal happiness and individual performance to an institution or a cause, and to be able to lose sight of petty aims and selfish considerations in the joy of manly service.^