^ One afternoon in the year 1210, as Pope Innocent ill., surrounded by a sumptuous retinue of prelates, was walking on the terrace of the Lateran, a company of mendicants laid at his feet the articles of a new association. At their head was a young man who, but a few years before, had been foremost in every scene of merriment; he had been a "successful merchant, a gallant soldier, and one of the most popular of the sons of Assisi." But, while seeking military service and adventure, he had endured a protracted sickness ; and when, upon his recovery and his return, his friends gathered at the gates of Assisi to welcome him, and merrily placed in his hand the sceptre of frolic, to their astonish- ment he remained grave in the midst of their festivities, as one not of them ; and, suddenly breaking loose from his companions, he proceeded to the church, and before its high altar there was witnessed a wedding which has been celebrated by Italy's great poet, and is still represented in the same Cathedral by Giotto's art; and at the wedding of St. Francis the name of the bride was Poverty. The solemn espousal of poverty by this youth of Assisi was no meaningless ceremony. To him the vow of his soul before that high altar meant emptied coffers, surrender of the comforts of life, patient endurance of evil, and even self-torture, and withal a love of all created things so joyous and overflowing that, as he wandered among the mountains or over the plains of Italy, he
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would speak of the beasts of the field as his brethren, and the twittering swallows as his little sisters. The vow of self-sacrifice, and his espousal of poverty, meant the unflinching prosecution of a work of moral purification for which Europe for at least two generations was better, and the founding and resolute administra- • tion of an order of missionary monks whom, it has been justly said, the violent learned to love and fear, the rich to respect, and the poor to love. The command of Christ, " Come, take up the cross, and follow me," was understood by St. Francis of Assisi to mean a life given up as entirely to a noble aim as the bow gives up the swift arrow to the mark.^
2. All is mysterious, all is repulsive, all is terrific to the hearer — one word alone lights up the darkness ; one word alone /^ blends severity with goodness — Follow me ! Be my companion
as I tread the way of homelessness and poverty, of reproach and ignominy, at last of torture, murder, martyrdom ; share my reviling, desertion, and repudiation by mine own ; soothe with thy companionship sorrows which thou canst not partake in; listen day by day to my teaching, drink in my revelation of a life above and beyond this life; print my likeness upon thee, that thou mayest represent and reproduce it when I am unseen. This shall be the present recompense of the self-devotion which I ask of thee. A thousandfold now in this time it shall be to thee for all that thou sacrificest — riches and lands, kinsfolk and friends, honours and affections ; with — yes, I hide it not — with persecu- tions, and in the world to come, just out of sight, just beyond death, in the world to come — promise above all promise — eternal life.
^ Now I will give you an impossible illustration of what I mean. One of you elder girls is to take a little brother out for a walk through Kensington Gardens, and see the boats and the flowers and all the rest of it. But when you get there you put him on a chair and you fasten him into the chair with a strap, and then by-and-by you take him home, and when you are asked whether he enjoyed the walk, you say, " Oh, no ; you see, I had to spend all my time in seeing that he did not tumble into the Eound Pond." What an idea ! " Why," they would say, " if you had only taken him to look at the flowers and the birds you need not have troubled about the Eound Pond at all." ^
3. In the Divine order sacrifice is the means, and the blessedness of God the end. The Cross of Christ on earth is for
^ Newman Smyth. ' C. Silvester Home.
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274 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
the joy of heaven ; it was not borne for its own sake, as though God could have pleasure in beholding suffering. Let us then ask the question whether every day our lives are held truly under that law of sacrifice, whether, when that supreme Character may appear before us in some supreme hour, we shall go away grieved to our possessions, or follow Christ to Jerusalem. This is a question not so much of the quantity of our gifts, though that may help to determine it, but of the spirit of our giving. And by giving I do not mean merely giving money. I mean personal giving, often including money, but above all personal giving, like Christ's giving of Himself to the world. I mean giving which begins in the heart, and becomes a power of the character, and, working from within as a new birth of the love of God in the soul, sweeps all obstructions of habit and obstacles even of in- herited temperament before it, and is the outflow of the life, the influence of the man, filling his whole possible opportunity of good, — even like that virtue of which we read, that it went out from Jesus and healed the suppliant who touched the hem of His gar- ment. How much of that inward sacrificial virtue is there in our characters ready to respond to the slightest touch upon us ? How much consecrated personal power is there in our churches, flowing out in all possible ways upon the city, and into this world for which Christ, in the glory of God, went up to Jerusalem to die ? ^ ^ In his essay " Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature," Bacon says, " ' Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor, and follow me.' But sell not all thou hast, except thou come and follow Me ; that is, except thou have a vocation, wherein thou mayest do as much good with little means as with great; for otherwise in feeding the streams thou dries'" the fountain."