If the cross comes, I welcome the cross, and look
upon it with joy, if, by my death upon the cross in any way, I may echo
the salvation of my Lord and save them. Independent of them? Surely. And
yet their servant? Perfectly. Was ever man so independent in Jerusalem
as Jesus was? What cared He for the sneer of the Pharisee, for the
learned scorn of the Sadducee, for the taunt of the people and the
little boys that had been taught to jeer at Him as He went down the
street, and yet the very servant of all their life? He says there are
two kinds of men--they who sit upon a throne and eat, and they who
serve. "I am among you as he that serveth." Oh, seek independence.
Insist upon independence. Insist that you will not be the slave of the
poor, petty standards of your fellow-men. But insist upon it only in the
way in which it can be insisted upon, by becoming absolutely the servant
of their needs. So only shall you be independent of their whims. There
is one great figure, and it has taken in all Christian consciousness,
that again and again this work with Christ has been asserted to be the
true service in the army of a great master, of a great captain, who goes
before us to his victory, that it is asserted that in that captain, in
the entrance into his army, every power is set free. Do you remember the
words that a good many of us read or heard yesterday in our churches,
where Jesus was doing one of His miracles, and it is said that a devil
was cast out, the dumb spake? Every power becomes the man's possession,
and he uses it in his freedom, and he fights with it with all his force,
just as soon as the devil is cast out of him.
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