It seems to me that the only merit that could live before God, is the merit of Jesus—­who of himself, at once, untaught, unimplored, laid himself aside, and turned to the Father, refusing his life save in the Father.  Like God, of himself he chose righteousness, and so merited to sit on the throne of God.  In the same spirit he gave himself afterward to his father’s children, and merited the power to transfuse the life-redeeming energy of his spirit into theirs:  made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.  But it is a word of little daring, that Jesus had no thought of merit in what he did—­that he saw only what he had to be, what he must do.—­I speak after the poor fashion of a man lost in what is too great for him, yet is his very life.—­Where can be a man’s merit in refusing to go down to an abyss of loss—­loss of the right to be, loss of his father, loss of himself?  Would Satan, with all the instincts and impulses of his origin in him, have merited eternal life by refusing to be a devil?  Not the less would he have had eternal life; not the less would he have been wrapt in the love and confidence of the Father.  He would have had his reward.  I cannot imagine thing created meriting aught save by divine courtesy.

I suspect the notion of merit belongs to a low development, and the higher a man rises, the less will he find it worth a thought.  Perhaps we shall come to see that it owes what being it has, to man, that it is a thing thinkable only by man.  I suspect it is not a thought of the eternal mind, and has in itself no existence, being to God merely a thing thought by man.

          For merit lives from man to man,
    And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

The man, then, who does right, and seeks no praise from men, while he merits nothing, shall be rewarded by his Father, and his reward will be right precious to him.

We must let our light shine, make our faith, our hope, our love, manifest—­that men may praise, not us for shining, but the Father for creating the light.  No man with faith, hope, love, alive in his soul, could make the divine possessions a show to gain for himself the admiration of men:  not the less must they appear in our words, in our looks, in our carriage—­above all, in honourable, unselfish, hospitable, helpful deeds.  Our light must shine in cheerfulness, in joy, yea, where a man has the gift, in merriment; in freedom from care save for one another, in interest in the things of others, in fearlessness and tenderness, in courtesy and graciousness.  In our anger and indignation, specially, must our light shine.  But we must give no quarter to the most shadowy thought of how this or that will look.  From the faintest thought of the praise of men, we must turn away.  No man can be the disciple of Christ and desire fame.  To desire fame is ignoble; it is a beggarly greed.  In the noble mind, it is the more of an infirmity.  There is no aspiration