2 COR. & GAL, — 31
482 THE MARKS OF JESUS
appropriate, if referred to the second of these classes. Such a practice at all events cannot have been unknown in a country which was the home of the worship of Cybele. A temple slave is mentioned in a Galatian inscription. The brands of which the Apostle speaks were doubtless the permanent marks which he bore of persecution undergone in the service of Christ.^
^ In the Eoman Empire when a slave ran away, if he was caught, his owner might have him stripped, the irons heated, and the letters " FVG. " (fugitivus) branded upon him. Perhaps the owner's initials might be burnt on the slave, too. The practice long survived in France, where convicts were branded " V " (voleur), or " TF " (travail forcd), and people took their children to see it done as a lesson in virtue. The historian, Herodotus, tells us that in Egypt, if a slave were dissatisfied with his master, he might go to the temple of Herakles and take on him the stigmata of the god, and be free for ever of his master and belong to the god. Such marks were indelible.*
^ The branding was a mark of shame. No man was branded of his own free will — apart from slaves taking on them such a brand as that of Herakles, which was to exchange one servitude for another. To be the slave of Jesus Christ had not been Paul's intention. The shame of bearing Christ's name — of being " made as the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things " (1 Cor. iv. 13) — the loss of home and family and friendships, of everything (Phil. iii. 8) — the squalid life of privation, insult, persecution and danger — humiliation from beginning to end — no man would have chosen it, and Paul did not choose it. It was a vocation : *' Necessity is laid upon me ; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel ! For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward : but if against my will, I am entrusted with a stewardship " (1 Cor. ix. 16, 17). A steward was very often a slave, if not always. Paul is at the beck and call of another whom he never chose to make his Master. He must have no will of his own. " Go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do " (Acts ix. 6), — so far was he from choosing a vocation, he has to wait for his orders.
The two responsibilities go together — the servant is responsible to the Master, and the Master to the servant. The very stigmata themselves become so many promises. The body is marked all over with signs of the Master's use, as a favourite book, which a man reads often, shows most signs of wear — pencilled in here and
* J. B. Liglitfoot, St. PauVs Epistle to the Galatians, 225.
• T. R. Glover, Vocation, 36.
GAL. VI. 17 483
there, crushed, worn and shabby, and in all these things identified with the reader who cannot do without it. The battered body and the tried and weary spirit are reminders themselves to Paul that " Christ liveth in me." ^
I.
Outward Marks.
Every Christian man or woman ought to bear in his or her body, in a plain, literal sense, the tokens that he or she belongs to Jesus Christ. You ask how ? " If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee." There are things in our physical nature that we have to suppress ; that we have always to regulate and coerce; that we have sometimes entirely to cast away and do without, if we mean to be Jesus Christ's at all. The old law of self-denial, of subduing the animal nature, its passions, appetites, desires, is as true and as needful to-day as it ever was ; and for us all it is essential to the loftiness and purity of our Christian life that our animal nature and our fleshly constitution should be well kept down under heel and subdued. If we are not living a life of self-denial, if we are not crucifying the flesh with its affections and lusts, if we are not " bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body," what tokens are there that we are Christ's slaves at all ?
^J The marks of Christ are brands burnt into the very body, so no outward thing will satisfy; nothing that your hands have done, nothing that the world can measure, for it is beneath all the dress and apparel of a so-called religious life, of which the world takes cognizance. They are part and parcel of yourself, so they can be nothing which can be taken up and laid down at will. They are inseparable, like flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. You may be stripped of all else, like a body washed ashore, but by these shall it be known whether you are Christ's or no.^
^ At the Cross, Bunyan tells us, Christian received four gifte from the angels — peace, new raiment, a mark, and a sealed roll. The mark, like the raiment, has to do with the outward appear- ance, but it is more intimately connected with the individuality of the man than the new garments. It seems to stand for some- thing distinguishable by others, which is in a stricter sense » T. R, GloTer, Vocation, 37. ^ Canon Furs©.