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.
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