Here is found the spirit in which a man may live all the day long, wherever his feet may tread, in the fierce competition of trade, or in the deadly enervation of some society circles.  Out of such a man shall breathe, all unconsciously to himself, an atmosphere fragrant as a mountain breeze over a field of wild roses.  This is the first life Jesus bids us live.

An Open Life of Purity.

The second life we are to live is the exact reverse of this.  It is indeed the outer side of this:  an open life of purity lived among men for Jesus.  Note again the logic of that good-by word.  Your chief business is to be down there in the thick of the crowd, winning men out of the dust and dirt up into a new life of purity.  It is the hardest job any man ever undertook.  It is practically impossible unless you have a power quite more than human.  Jesus quietly says, “I have the power that will do it.”

Again you feel that He must say next, “I will go.”  The thing must be done.  It is the one thing worth while.  It will require a power we haven’t. He has it.  You feel as though He must do the going.  “No,” He says, with great emphasis. “You go.  You be I; you live my life over again, down there among men.”  The “Ye” and “Me” in that sentence are meant to be interchangeable words.

He is asking us to live His life over again among men.  No, it is more than that.  He is asking us to let Him live His life over again in each of us.  The Man with the power that men can’t resist would reach out to them through us. He would be touching them in us.  Jesus said, “As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”  He said again, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”  Jesus embodied the Father to men.  He asks us to take His place and embody Himself to men.

Paul understood this thoroughly.  In writing to the friends throughout Galatia, whom he had won up to Jesus, he says, “I have been crucified with Christ.”  There is an old dead “I.”  “Nevertheless I live.”  There is a new living “I.”  “Yet not I—­the old I—­but Christ liveth in me.” He was the new I. There was a new personality within Paul.  I never weary of recalling what Martin Luther said about that verse in the comment he made on Galatians.  You remember he said, “If somebody should knock at my heart’s door, and ask who lives here, I must not say ’Martin Luther lives here.’  I would say ‘Martin Luther—­is—­dead—­Jesus—­Christ—­lives—­here.’”

I wonder if any of us has ever been taken for Jesus.  I wonder if anybody has ever mistaken any of us for Him.  You remember, He used to move among men after the resurrection, and while they would feel the gentle winsomeness of His presence and talk, they did not recognize Him.  Has somebody run across you or me sometime, and been with us a little while, and then gone away saying to himself, “I wonder if that was Jesus back again in disguise.  He seemed so much like what I think Jesus must have been—­I wonder.”