1 gave My life for thee. My precious blood I shed,
That thou might'st ransora'd be, And quicken'd from the dead.
I gave My life for thee; What hast thou given for Me? Miss Havergal was staying with a German divine, in whose study was a picture of our crucified Saviour, beneath which was placed the motto : " I did this for thee ; what hast thou done for Me ? " She had come in weary, and, sitting down in front of the picture, the Saviour's eyes seemed to rest upon her. She read the motto, and the lines of her hymn flashed upon her, and she at once wrote them in pencil on a scrap of paper. Looking tliem over she thought them so poor that she tossed them on the fire, but they fell out untouched. Some months afterwards she showed them to her father, who encouraged her to preserve them, and he wrote the tune " Baca " specially for them. The hymn was published in Good Words, and becoming a favourite soon found its way into the hymn-books of the Christian Church.^
in.
A Consecrated Lipe.
1. God bestows so many blessings upon us that we can in one sense of the word return absolutely nothing to Him for His gifts. V
^ Canon J. Duncan, Popular HyTmis, 215.
39i WHAT SHALL I RENDER?
^Tlie Psalmist's words imply this : I can bring Thee no great gift, I can lay no priceless offering at Thy feet, I have nothing that is not already Thine own, for all has come from Thee. I will take the cup of salvation. I will accept Thy bounteous mercy with a thankful heart. I will seek to link all my life to Thee. This thought helps us to meet a very common temptation. A
J man may realize something of the goodness of God. He may ' say to himself : " If 1 had very large means like some men, how much 1 would try to do in return ! I would build a stately cathedral for the service of God, a noble house of prayer for all time. I would endow a hospital to minister to human suffering. I would put the liighest education within the reach of the poorest man. But I have so little income, it scarcely overlaps my own pressing wants." Then, because he cannot do great things, he sinks back and does nothing at all. He would reform an empire, but does not order his own house. He dreams of cleans- ing a city, but never sweeps before his own door. - The Psalmist teaches us the true lesson, and shows us what we may all do. y [ We may give ourselv^es first of all, and then the avenues of service ' will open out before us according to His will.
^ Any dreams which she may have harboured of literary dis- tinction, she had pat resolutely away from her. " Oh God," she had written in her diary at Cairo, " Thou puttest into my heart this great desire to devote myself to the sick and sorrowful. I offer it to Thee. Do with it what is for Thy service." ^
2. Taking the cup of salvation, in its simple, full meaning, expresses the pledging of our personality to God, the consecra- tion of ourselves to His service. We recognize Him as Redeemer, Deliverer, and Friend, and acknowledge ourselves His in life and death. Our trustful heart, our acquiescent will, our obedient life, our whole personality must be surrendered in the power of love. Christ Himself gave us not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when He " took the cup and gave thanks." And now for us common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skilfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvulion drunk in remembrance of Him. If we carried tiiat spirit * Sir Ed waul Cook, The Life of Florenoe Nightingale, i. 95.
PSALM cxvi. 12-14 393
with us into all our small duties, sorrows, and gladnesses, how
different they would all seem !
^ " Salvation " can scarcely be taken in its highest meaning in our text, both because the whole tone of the psalm fixes its reference to lower blessings, and because the word is in the plural in the Hebrew. " The cup of salvations " expresses, by that plural form, the fulness and variety of the manifold and multi- form deliverances which God had wrought and was working for the Psalmist. His whole lot in life appears to him as a cup full of tender goodness, loving faithfulness, delivering grace. It runs over with Divine acts of help and sustenance.^
3. Many cups may be offered us as we go through life. We may for the moment be dazzled by the gemmed and sparkling cup of earthly pleasure, or the cup of worldly aims and ambitions. Let us put them aside. Let each one say, " I will take the cup of salvation." I will accept and use all God's offered mercy. The chalice of redeeming love shall be my chiefest treasure. I will take it — I will seek to be God's true child, the grateful son of so loving a Father. I will endeavour in all things to do His will, hoping to be guided ever by His grace and shielded ever by His protecting care.