Looking-Glass humility.

We ought to work humility out into our lives.  Jesus lived an humble life—­a life of the truest and deepest humility.  Not a humility conscious of itself and ever gazing at itself through the fancied eyes of others, but a humility that was real and unaffected.

A Christlike man.

The writer has in mind a man of deep and earnest piety, a scholar, a successful preacher and author.  With all his learning and scholarship he is as humble as a child, and one can not look at him without feeling, “There is a Christ-man.”  Often as the pen flies quickly across the page, or as the lips are moving in the delivery of a sermon, or as an altar service is in progress, the slight, thin figure of that man flashes to the brain, and the eye grows dim and the heart-prayer rises, “Lord, make me an humble man.”  There are so many great men, eloquent men, learned men, dignified men, but so few humble men.  God, increase their number in the land!

Activity.

Another thing in Jesus’ life which sanctified people ought to learn to imitate was His activity.  His days, and even His nights, frequently, were filled with service.  After long days of teaching and preaching, He would seek out some quiet nook and spend the still and lonely hours of night in prayer to the Father.

The individual vision.

Men who come into close touch and communion with Christ are impelled irresistibly to earnest and ceaseless service.  They see needs which no one else seems to see.  They hear the plaintive voices of dying men, and the tearful cries of despondent women, and the helpless moans of unloved children.  They have visions which others never understand, and dream of things with which their dearest friends can not sympathize.  They have given their all that they may know Christ, and He has rewarded them by disclosing His heart to them.  They know why His face is tearful, and His voice is filled with sadness.  They know why He is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”  They are baptized into a baptism of love for souls, and compassion for the sorrowing, similar to that in which He is plunged.  It is for this reason that men hear the voice of God calling them away from the hearth-stone out into the desolate earth.

St. Telemachus.

St. Telemachus heard the voice of God, and straightway “followed the sphere of westward wheeling stars,” and journeyed on to Rome muttering, “The call of God!  The call of God!” Not on a foolish errand did he go, for, after his visit to the Eternal City, gladiatorial combats ceased.

“He that WARRETH”

Brethren, be true to Christ.  Let not even those who love you best draw you from a steadfast purpose to spend your life and all for the Galilean.  Flee ease and luxury and comfort, and impose hard tasks upon yourselves.  Your friends may seek to hinder you with cries of, “Rest!  Tarry!” but like Christian in Bunyan’s dream stop your ears and go quickly on your journey.