a time to do specific work and get wages for it; but it means ‘a bond-slave,’ a chattel owned by another.  All the ugly associations which gather round the word are transported bodily into the Christian region, and there, instead of being hideous, take on a shape of beauty, and become expressions of the deepest and most blessed truths, in reference to Christian men’s dependence upon, and submission to, and place in the household and the heart of, Jesus Christ, their Owner.

And what is the centre idea that lies in this metaphor, if you like to call it so?  It is this:  absolute authority, which has for its correlative—­for the thing in us that answers to it—­unconditional submission.  Jesus Christ has the perfect right to command each of us, and we are bound to bow ourselves, unreluctant, unmurmuring, unhesitating, with complete submission at His feet.  His authority, and our submission, go far, far deeper than the most despotic sway of the most tyrannous master, or than the most abject submission of the most downtrodden slave.  For no man can coerce another man’s will, and no man can require more, or can ever get more, than that outward obedience which may be rendered with the most sullen and fixed rebellion of a hating heart and an obstinate will.  But Jesus Christ demands that if we call ourselves Christians we shall bring, not our members only as instruments to Him, in outward surrender and service, but that we shall yield ourselves, with our capacities of willing and desiring, utterly, absolutely, constantly to Him.

The founder of the Jesuits laid it down as a rule for his Order that each member of it was to be at the master’s disposal like a corpse, or a staff in the hand of a blind man.  That was horrible.  But the absolute putting of myself at the disposal of another’s will, which is expressed so tyrannously in Loyola’s demand, is the simple duty of every Christian, and as long as we have recalcitrating wills, which recoil at anything which Christ commands or appoints, and perk up their own inclinations in the face of His solemn commandment, or that shrink from doing and suffering whatsoever He imposes and enjoins, we have still to learn what it means to be Christ’s disciples.

Dear brethren, absolute submission is not all that makes a disciple, but, depend upon it, there is no discipleship worth calling by the name without it.  So I come to each of you with His message to you:—­Down on your faces before Him!  Bow your obstinate will, surrender yourselves and accept Him as absolute, dominant Lord over your whole being!  Are you Christians after that pattern?  Being freemen, are you Christ’s slaves?

It does not matter what sort of work the owner sets his household of slaves to do.  One man is picked out to be his pipe-bearer, or his shoe-cleaner; and, if the master is a sovereign, another one is sent off, perhaps, to be governor of a province, or one of his council.  They are all slaves; and the service that each does is equally important.