(6) Jesus Christ invites His disciples to a similar life of self-surrender. That is seen outwardly in the call of the Twelve, which leads each to give up his work and his liome in order to follow Christ. At Cffsare.a Philippi the underlying principle is made a rule of universal application when our Lord says, ' If any man would come after me, let liim deny himself {aTraprriadcrBa ^oi/rii'), and take up liis cross, and follow me ' (Mk 8", Mt 16", Lk 9"— Luke has ' take up his cross daily '). Plainly, this means much more than what we commonly under- stand by self-denial, i.e. the giving up of certain of the conveniences of life. The essential difference is that it involves the abandonment of self altogether as the end of life (see Swete, St. Mark, in loc. ). The word rendered ' deny ' {i-rapvioimi, stronger than ipvloiun, and meaning a more thorough abandonment, suggested by the prefix iirb) is used for St. Peter's denial of Christ (Mk H**) and for the denial in the presence of the angels of those who deny Christ on earth (Lk 12"). But while the absoluteness of the surrender is thus demanded, certain mistaken forms of self-denial are excluded. The notion does not involve asceticism or any form of self-torture. Primarily it is negative ; it is requisite as a preliminary condition to following Christ, which is the real object to be aimed at, not commended as a meritorious act on its own account. Self must be renounced in order that Christ may be followed. Further, there is no idea of the abandonment of the ego in the destruction of the personality, or the fusing of the individual in the aniversal being of God. Christ's teaxihing
does not tend in this pantheistic direction. Tlie very appeal to the act of self-renunciation brings in the idea of the will that is to perform it (el m 8i\ei), and that will is equally requisite for the following of Christ, which is to be the subsequent aim of His servant. The disciple is to follow Christ as an individual personality, walking after his blaster, though in the Master's footprints ; not to merge his own consciousness and activity in the being and life of Christ. But while the individu- ality of the ego is to be thus preserved, thesurrender of the will in submission and obedience is to be unconditional and complete. Probably we should regard our Lord's hard sayings on the subject of riches in the light of this primary condition. That He did not lay down a rule of poverty as a uni- versal condition of discipleship is proved by the fact that some of His disciples who possessed pro- perty were not required to sacrifice it, e.g. Zacchaeus, the Bethany household, the mother of St. Mark — in whose house the Church met after the resurrec- tion. Therefore the difficulty of a rich man in entering the kingdom of Goa, concerning whioli Jesus spoke with great emphasis, must be found in the entanglement of worldly goods hindering the complete surrender of will, and not in the hard necessity of giving up all the possessions. The case of tlie young ruler, who, when asked what he should do to obtain eternal life, was told to sell all he possessed and give it to the poor, stands by itself : we have no other instance of such a demand, and therefore it is just to conclude that it had a specific application to this man, his wealth being his fatal hindrance, and a career of discipleship being open to him if he would abandon all his worldly goods to follow Christ with the peasants and fishermen. Thus riches may be classed with the hand, or foot, or eye that is to be cut off or plucked out if the member offend. Poverty />ers6 IS no more required as a condition of membership in the kingdom of God than mutilation. But if any hindrance is found in what seems most valu- able and our own by right — even a limb of the body — so that the precious thing must be aban- doned rather than that the life should be mined, much more must this process be followed in the case of what is so extraneous as material wealth. For a full discussion of this position see Wendt, Lehre Jesu, pp. 376-389 [Eng. tr. ii. 58 ff.].
While absolute surrender to the will of God is thus required by Christ at any cost, pure altruism is not demanded. The ' golden rule,' which may be regarded as the primary law of Christian ethics, enjoins that we should do to others as we would wish them to do to us, on the principle that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, where some self-regarding thought is allowed, since this is expressly named as the measure of our feelings and actions towards others. Still it is to be ob- served that the more advanced teaching of the Fourth Gospel carries us beyond this line of measurement >vith the ' new commandment,' — perhaps new in contrast with the old command- ment about love to our neighbour, — inculcating love like Christ's {'even as I have loved you,' etc., Jn 13**), because His love involved complete self-sacri- fice for the saving of others. In the same way Jesus spoke of the necessity of bearing the cross, not meaning the endurance of some hardship, but the readiness to face death, like the condemned man who carries his cross to the place of execution { and He laid Aovra the great principle contained in the words, ' Whosoever would (or rather wishes to, BiXj]) save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, shall save it' (Mk S" etc.). Confusion has come into the interpretation of this passage through the two senses of the word f tixi), as life and soul, being