The Pulpit Commentary — Luke — Volume 1 — Section 247

"Whosoever wills to lose bis life for Christ's sake "-to subordinate all considerations merely personal to the commanu of a supreme affection-may incur shame, may suffer many things, but, in the nobler sense, he shall realize the truth of his existence, he shall receive the crown of his life. Ah I wonderfully suggestive are tbr. sharp antitheses of Jesus' saying. What, then, is the abiding reality of the Christian type of manhood? of the true martyr-life? Shall we say that the abiding reality is a r,a,pacity of self- forgetfulness P Undoubtedly, there is this capacity. We recognize the man of gen11ine goodness at once. With him there is no part-acting. He is not one who stands before rni1Tors, studying attitudes and effects; in what he does there is thP. absence of the feeling of self. "Whither the spirit that is in him is to go, he goes straight forwanl." A great enthusiasm always removes the action, if not from the shadow, at least from "the corrosive power," of selfishness. Certainly, Chri.,t looked forward to a love that could bold the closest affections as only second to it; that could sacrifice all in which the self is most bound up; that, as against the very pleadings of nature, would close with a higher vision, "Here am I; send me." And, more or less, this is always a. characteristic of the martyred soul. "If," says Thomae a. Kempis, " a man should give all hie substance, yet is it nothing. And if he should practise great repentance, still it is little. And if he sh,uld attain to all knowledge, he is still afar off. And if he should be of great virtue, and of fervent devotion, yet there is much wanting; especially one thing which is most necessary for him. And what is that? That leaving all, he forsake himself, and go wholly from himself, and retain nothing out of self-love," But, when we speak of self-forgetfulness, we speak of only half the trnth. The question remains-Whence the inward pressure which causes this self-forgetting spirit? We cannot be self-denying by the mere resolution to be so. We may subject our1Jelves to the most rigid of· disciplines, and the result only be that we assert self in one aspect to deny self in another aspect. There must be some force in tl,e so,:1, sr,n·,e obligation which, once discerned, becomes an irrc,istiLle spiritual pc•wer. Take, e._r;., one of the purest forms of sclf-tlevotion. The mother's love is not an affair of rea.soui11g. There is no calculation of quantity in it. When the child is stricken with sickness she watches by the bed and mii,bters to the 11·ants of the sufferer, <lenyi1,g herself hy day and night, and never stupping to ask what is the limit to be observed. The action is the consequence of an obligation inlaid in the relation of mother to child. 'l'his rela ti, ·n takes her out of self. She '' goes wholly from herself, and retains nothing out of self- love." She loses her life in the child. And thus with self-sacrifice, through itg diversity of forms. Its root is, some relation into which one mind enters with another, or with a higher and vaster issue whose vision has dawned on it. The relation supplies at once the motive, and the food which nourishes the motive. It is in the mind an omnipotent "I must." Remember, self-sacrifice may be a power for evil as well a.s J!Ood. The devil's. martyrs far outnumber God's martyrs. For what is evil, or for ends that are "not of the Father, but of the world," persons spend themselves with a zeal and persistence which may well put Christians to shame. Self-consecration is not necessarily a Christian virtue. It is the character of the alliance into which the soul enters which makes the virtue. "He that loscth his lhe for my sake the same shall save it." This was the new thing which came into the world through Jesus Christ. Truthfulness as between man and man was no new thing. The sanctions of morality were no new thing. Through the religions and philosophies of paganism there came gleams of an ethic pure and spiritual. But an obligation to One unseen, yet ever- present, One to whom the life was bound, and in whom the life was hidden; an obliga.- tion that regulated all aims, that was sovereign over all the action, to deny which, or be false to which, was the soul's damnation ;-that was the new thing. And that new thing was the secret of the Christian martyr-life. And it was this Chri~tian martyr- life which lifted the individual man from his obscurity, as a mere unit in the mass of humanity, and invested him, be ho bond or be he free, with the inalienable glory of the cruling-• an heir of Gud, and a joint-heir with Christ." And from that d:iy to this there has echoed back, from a great multitude which no mau can number, the sweetly constraining "For my sake." The cross of Jesus. bas re~lly gone before. the ages. Its spirit has eutered into the conditions of human life, has mflue~ced ~he mmds and hel\lts of men fur more widely than we can estimate. \Ve tr~ce its w1tn~;;s far outui,le the circlo of his pruf,~ing foll0wcrs. But where the responso to him 1s con•  248 THE GOSrEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. [on. IX. 1-&2.