TJ You remember that wonderful parable in the Peer Gynt of Ibsen. The worn-out wanderer, grown hoary in selfishness, a past-master in self-seeking, in a rare moment of reflection takes an onion in his hand, and begins to strip it, scale by scale, and the fancy takes him that each scale or flake or lobe or fold repre- sents some experience of his past, some relation in which he has stood to others in the long and chequered experience of life. This one is Peer Gynt tossed " in the jolly-boat after the wreck." This is Peer Gynt a steerage passenger sailing westward over the Atlantic. This is Peer Gynt the merchant, this Peer Gynt as he 1 J. M. Gibbon, Iv the Days of Youth, 60.
ST. MATTHEW xvi. 24 335
played the prophet. What a host of parts he has played ! What a host of folds lie around the central core or kernel of the onion ! When he comes to the actual centre, that will stand for Peer Gynt himself, his inner self, apart from all the parts he has played, apart from all the relations to others he has held. And he strips and strips, smaller and smaller are the onion-Hakes as he nears the centre. What will the centre be? And in his im- patience he tears half a dozen away at once.
There seem a terrible lot of flakes,
To get to the core what a time it takes !
Yes, gramercy, it does, one divides and divides;
And there is no kernel : it's all outsides !
That is the parable as the great Scandinavian dramatist has written it. And it is a parable which may be variously applied. Strip away from your life, your soul, every relation in which you stand to other lives, other souls, than your own. You may think thereby to reach at last your own very life or soul ; but you will find that there is no self there. You live only in your relations to others than yourself. Annihilate these and you are yourself annihilated.1
II.
Cross-Bearing.
"And take up his cross."
1. Cross-bearing is usually regarded as the bearing of burdens, or the enduring of trials in Christ's service, or for Christ's sake. It is impossible to give ourselves up to Christ without suffering some loss or trouble. In early days the consequence might be martyrdom ; in our own day it always involves some sacrifice. Now, the cross which the Christian has to bear is not inevitable trouble, such as poverty, sickness, or the loss of friends by death. These things would have been in our lot if we had not been Christians. They are our burdens, our thorns in the flesh. They are sent to us, not taken by us. But the cross is something additional. This is taken up voluntarily ; it is in our power to refuse to touch it. We bear it, not because we cannot escape, but because it is a consequence of our following Christ ; and the good 1 R. A. Armstrong. Memoir and Sermons, 223.
326 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
of bearing it is that we cannot otherwise closely follow Him. He, then, is the true Christian who will bear any cross and endure any hardship that is involved in loyally following his Lord and Master.
When Jesus found His disciples expectant of honours in His service as the Messiah, and longing for places nearest Him when He should be uplifted in His Kingdom, He told them that they little knew what they were asking. His first uplifting was to be on a cross. Would they be willing to share that experience with Him ? " Ye know not what ye ask," He said. " Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink ? " It costs something, He suggested, to be My follower. A man who enlists in My service must do so with a halter round his neck. If he cares more for his life than for Me, he is unfitted to be one of My disciples. " If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not [in comparison with me] his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple."
Tf Tertullian, speaking to us out of the second century, tells us how the Christians of his day were wont to carry about with them everywhere the sign of the cross, at every step, at every movement, sealing themselves with it. It is now honoured and consecrated ; our very churches are built in its shape and orna- mented with its figure. But then, to those poor Galileans, who had left all to follow Christ, who dimly dreamed of kingliness and victor pomp, of thrones on the right and thrones on the left, and the fulfilment of patriotic dreams — taking up the cross, it was a thing strange and abhorrent, and contrary to their religious con- victions, " Cursed is every one that hangeth on the tree." *
*[| The idea of these words, says Buskin, "has been exactly reversed by modern Protestantism, which sees in the Cross, not a furca to which it is to be nailed ; but a raft on which it, and all its valuable properties, are to be floated into Paradise." We need but superficial knowledge of current ways of speaking and writing among some religious people to know that there is much that goes a good way to excuse or to justify this very severe criticism.2