^ The mother consecrates herself for her infant. She devotes herself in self-forgetting love. The motive is strong, the strongest we know — mother-love. This emotion throbbing in the mother- heart finds expression in a thousand acts of loving care ; but the child grows up and needs a mother's care less; still the care subsists. Some mythical relation arising out of motherhood seems to grow up in the mother's heart which delights in self-giving. The average mother has it, without any special gifts of intellect. The exceptional mother controls this natural emotion by foresight and educated taste. It is only the unnatural mother that has it not. And yet, though it is common, it is never learned from the outside. It springs up instinctively in answer to the infant's need.
» 0. W. Whittaker.
ST. JOHN XVII. 19 299
It is spontaneous and almost unthinking, and yet it is the most beautiful love in life, for it gives all and asks nothing. What a lyric life becomes to the mother in her joy ! Her thoughts run to poetry and her horizon is filled with her helpless child. It is all the world to her. Something of this mother-love there must be in all consecration. We must love some one, some community, some race, in self-abandoning, self-effacing love before we can consecrate ourselves for their sakes. This is one standard of our capacity for such an enterprise. Can we love others better than ourselves so as to serve them ? Otherwise the service will at the moment of pressure seem to us less important and less demanding than our own comfort and we shall throw it up in petulance or despair.^
^ Dante, writing his poetry, never forgot Beatrice. He perfected that poetry in thought, in word, in spirit, in movement, hoping that it would receive public recognition and bring him honour. But he perfected it and sought recognition and honour because burning in his soul was love for his idealized Beatrice, at whose shrine and to whose praise he intended to offer all the recognition and honour that he might possibly win. Beatrice was a vision beckoning him on to industry and skill. In a far holier, higher way Christ had His beckoning vision. It was the whole world that beckoned Him to endeavour and development. Perhaps from that hill behind Nazareth He watched the ships of all nations going up and down the Mediterranean, and the world with all its kingdoms stood out before His thought. Certain it is that when the hour of temptation came to Him, and all the kingdoms of the world were made to pass before Him, He recognized them, and they appealed to Him because He had thought of them so often, so lovingly, so devotedly. Yes, the supreme vision of Christ was " others." Never at any period of His life was He without it. He unrolled the scroll of the Scriptures, and what He read was that He should open the door to the imprisoned, should bind up the broken-hearted, and should give deliverance to the enslaved. He used saw and hammer in the shop, making box, wheel, or door, and His eyes, His thought, His being, could not stop with them ; His vision was peering far out into all the earth, and He was seeing thousands upon thousands of hearts appealing to Him for help.^
1. For us, as for Christ, sanctification is separation for use. — It is in this sense that our Lord immediately goes on to say, " For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth." To sanctify is to set apart. " The Lord hath
^ Alexcmder Tomory, 66. ^ James G. K. McClure, Loyally, 214.
300 THE MASTER'S CONSECRATION
set apart him that is godly for himself " (Ps. iv, 3). In this sense the vessels of the Temple and of the Tabernacle were sanctified when they were set apart for a holy use. In this thought of separation the idea of the intrinsic character of the person or thing sanctified does not come into view in the first instance. Our Lord Himself, being perfectly holy, needed no moral renova- tion, but He did need to be set apart, to be devoted to the performance of the Father's will. " For their sakes I sanctify myself," that is, I set myself apart to do always the things that please Him. He came upon earth as a servant. " I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me " (vi. 38). He came as separated unto God, not in any spirit of Pharisaism, but in the spirit of whole-hearted devotion. He came to do but one thing — " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work " (iv. 34), and this high aim is certainly, by virtue of his calling, also set before every Christian.
^ In the wonderful system of the telephone the whole complex communication depends at each point on the little film of metal which we call a transmitter. Take that little disk out of the mechanism, and it becomes insignificant and purposeless : but set the transmitter where it belongs, in the wonderful mechanism of the greater system, and each word that is spoken into it is repeated miles and miles away. So stands the individual in the vast system of the providence of God. He is a transmitter. Taken by himself, what can be more insignificant than he ? Yet, at each point the whole system depends on the transmissive power of the individual life. It takes its place in the great order, saying to itself, " For their sakes I sanctify myself " ; and then, by the miracle of the Divine method, each vibration of the insignificant but sanctified life reaches the needs which are waiting for its message far away.^