became concentrated upon himself, the saving of his soul, the winning of his salvation.  That seat in heaven seems to burn so before his eyes that he cannot be satisfied for a moment with any thought that draws him away from it, and he presses forward that he may be saved.  But by and by, as he enters more deeply into that life, the self-forgetfulness comes to him again and as a diviner thing.  By and by, as the man walks up the mountain, he seems to pass out of the cloud which hangs about the lower slopes of the mountain, until at last he stands upon the pinnacle at the top, and there is in the perfect light.  Is it not exactly like the mountain at whose foot there seems to be the open sunshine where men see everything, and on whose summit there is the sunshine, but on whose sides, and half way up, there seems to linger a long cloud, in which man has to struggle until he comes to the full result of his life?  So it is with self-consecration, with service.  You easily do it in some small ways in the lower life.  Life becomes intensified and earnest with a serious purpose, and it seems as if it gathered itself together into selfishness.  Only then it opens by and by into the largest and noblest works of men, in which they most manifest the richness of their human nature and appropriate the strength of God.  Those are great and unselfish acts.  We know it at once if we turn to Him who represents the fulness of the nature of our humanity.

When I turn to Jesus and think of Him as the manifestation of His own Christianity—­and if men would only look at the life of Jesus to see what Christianity is, and not at the life of the poor representatives of Jesus whom they see around them, there would be so much more clearness, they would be rid of so many difficulties and doubts.  When I look at the life of Jesus I see that the purpose of consecration, of emancipation, is service of His fellow-men.  I cannot think for a moment of Jesus as doing that which so many religious people think they are doing when they serve Christ, when they give their lives to Him.  I cannot think of Him as simply saving His own soul, living His own life, and completing His own nature in the sight of God.  It is a life of service from beginning to end.  He gives himself to man because He is absolutely the Child of God, and He sets up service, and nothing but service, to be the ultimate purpose, the one great desire, on which the souls of His followers should be set, as His own soul is set, upon it continually.

What is it that Christ has left to be His symbol in the world, that we put upon our churches, what we wear upon our hearts, that stands forth so perpetually us the symbol of Christ’s life?  Is it a throne from which a ruler utters his decrees?  Is it a mountain top upon which some rapt seer sits, communing with himself and with the voices around him, and gathering great truth into his soul and delighting in it?  No, not the throne and not the mountain top.  It is the cross.  Oh, my brethren, that