1 W. F. Anderson.
ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 381
Kingdom must go near to Him at the bottom, to uphold and minister to all that they may or can uphold and minister unto.1
2. Now in order to appreciate the significance of that life of service, we must take into account the introductory words, " The Son of man came." They declare His pre-existence, His voluntary entrance into the conditions of humanity, and His denuding Him- self of the glory which He had with the Father " before the world was." We shall never understand the Servant-Christ until we understand that He is the Eternal Son of the Father. His service began long before any of His acts of sympathetic and self-for- getting lowliness rendered help to the miserable here upon earth. His service began when He laid aside, not the garments of earth, but the vesture of the heavens, and girded Himself, not with the cincture woven in man's looms, but with the flesh of our humanity, and " being found in fashion as a man," bowed Himself to enter into the conditions of earth. This was the first, the chief, of all His acts of service, and the sanctity and awfulness of it run through the list of all His deeds and make them unspeakably great. It was much that His hands should heal, that His lips should comfort, that His heart should bleed with sympathy for sorrow. But it was more that He had hands to touch, lips to speak to human hearts, and the heart of a man and a brother to feel with as well as for us. " The Son of man came."
^| Scientists tell us that, by the arrangement of particles of sand upon plates of glass, there can be made, as it were, percep- tible to the eye, the sweetness of musical sounds ; and each note when struck will fling the particles into varying forms of beauty. The life of Jesus Christ presents in shapes of loveliness and symmetry the else invisible music of a Divine love. He lets us see the rhythm of the Father's heart. The source from which His ministrations have flowed is the pure source of a perfect love. Ancient legends consolidated the sunbeams into the bright figure of the far-darting god of light. And so the sunbeams of the Divine love have, as it were, drawn themselves together and shaped themselves into the human form of the Son of Man who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.2
Tj Sir Walter Scott says that the most beautiful scenery in Scotland is where the Highlands and the Lowlands meet. Not in
1 George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts, 299. ' A. Maclaren, Christ's Musts, 57.
382 THE MINISTERING MASTER
the Highlands, nor yet in the Lowlands, but at the meeting of the two. And it is as true in the spiritual kingdom, when the beaten track becomes the highway of God, and the heavenly places in Christ Jesus are connected with the common duties and everyday business of life.1
3. He came to minister. His service was to be utterly un- stinted. He would go the whole length with it. He saw that we should demand from Him all that He had ; that we should use up His very life ; that our needs and necessities would press upon Him so sorely, so urgently, that He would spend Himself, and be spent, in this hard service ; that we should never let Him stop, or stay, or rest, while we saw a chance of draining His succouring stores. He foresaw no light and easy giving, no grateful and pleasant ministry ; He saw that it would cost Him His very life. And yet He came : even that He would lay down for our profit ; even that He would surrender at our demands. And just because the work of the faithful service would indeed involve this surrender of life, which is the final and utter proof of all loyal and unselfish devotion, He had found it a joy and gladness to enter a world that would isk so much of Him. In this hope He came. " The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister " ; yes, and so to minister, so to serve, that He would " give his life a ransom for many."
^| Christ had always found His happiness and His honour in serving others and doing them good ; but the supreme illustration of the principle on which He conducted His life was still to come — His final service was to consist in giving His life a ransom for many. This image of a ransom does not appeal to our minds as forcibly as it would to those of the disciples, because the experi- ence of being ransomed, in the natural sense, is much rarer in modern than it was in ancient times. In the British Isles at present there do not probably exist a hundred persons who have ever been ransomed, whereas in the ancient world there would be such wherever two or three were met together. War was never a rare experience to the countrymen of Jesus, and in war the process of ransoming was occurring continually, when prisoners were exchanged for prisoners, or captives were released on the payment by themselves or their relatives of a sum of money. Similarly, slavery was a universal institution, and in connexion