Religion has to do with facts:  the facts of what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost have done, and are doing, for us; the facts of what we have to do, to make the finished work of Christ our own.

Here, as always, our Lord Himself gives us the highest illustration.  Neither as God, nor yet as perfect Man, was there an actual need for Him to pray; yet His whole life was punctuated with prayer:  first because the glory of the Father required it, and next because His chosen Apostles must be taught by example as well as precept.

Let the same mind dwell in us.  It is for the glory of God that I should have salvation; therefore by the help of God I will discipline my spirit.

For suggested Meditations during the week see Appendix.

V

=Discipline through Obedience=

FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT

St. Luke xxii. 19

  “This do in remembrance of Me.”

Our subject of to-day flows quite naturally out of what we said last week.  Religion rests on facts, and its object is God’s glory, not merely our profit.  Our duty, therefore, is an absolute submission to those facts—­in other words, implicit obedience.

This is being illustrated on all sides in regard to the War.

The facts are indisputable.  Lord Selborne put the matter in a nutshell when he said:  “The task in front of us is colossal.  We are fighting for nothing less than our lives, in circumstances which make it the duty of every Englishman to put everything in the world he possesses, everything that he values, into the scale to ensure success, and I am sure there is not one of us, whatever his position, who would flinch in the slightest from the duty he owes to his country and to his deepest self.”

The response to the facts has been obedience, immediate and unquestioning, on the part of a vast number.  True, not all have yet been reached who ought to come forward, and some are even now crying out for that compulsory service which may yet prove inevitable.  They forget that the obedience of one free man is worth more than the forced submission of many.  Let us wait hopefully, energetically; losing no opportunity of pressing the stern logic of facts wherever we may.

And those who have joined the services have come at once under a discipline totally different from that of the sternest school or the strictest house of business.  The surrender has been made voluntarily, and it has placed the whole life in each detail under the claim of an absolute obedience.

The disposal of every moment of time belongs to the authorities.  The private in high social position must obey the orders of a young lance-corporal just as exactly as he expected his own commands to be carried out in his business or his household.

Who can estimate the immense development of moral fibre that surely must take place in succeeding generations from the fact that so vast a number, in all ranks of society, are now under obedience?  Not because they were driven to it, but because they embraced it by an initial act of obedience.