ou Me."

It is not easy to explain certainly the import of Christ's reply. Some
have interpreted it as meaning Christ's coming in death. But this can
hardly be, for He would as certainly come to Peter dying amid the agony
of martyrdom, as to John dying in a peaceful old age. Surely the
period referred to must have been the fall of Jerusalem, only forty
years distant, and to which our Lord so often referred as one phase at
least of His coming. Then the old economy would fall and pass away;
Christianity assume a world-wide importance, and the cross become one
of the mightiest factors of human history.

When those words were repeated to them, some of the disciples
interpreted them as meaning that John should not die, but they did not
convey that meaning to John himself; he only saw in them a general
intimation that his lot was in his Master's hands, and in any case
would be a very different one from Peter's.

I. OUR LIFE-PLAN IS FASHIONED BY THE WILL OF CHRIST.--What royalty
there is in those words, _If I will_! If Jesus were less than Divine,
how blasphemous they would appear! What arrogance to suppose that He
could regulate the time and manner of life or death! Yet how natural
it is to hear Him speak thus. No one starts or is surprised, and in
that calm acquiescence there is a testimony to the homogeneousness of
Christ's character. It is of one piece throughout. There is a perfect
consistency between His acts and words.

The ancients thought of their _lives_ as woven on the loom of spiteful
fates, whom they endeavored to humor by calling euphonious names. The
materialist supposes that his life is the creature of circumstances, a
rudderless ship in a current, mere flotsam and jetsam on the wave. The
Christian knows that the path of his life has been _prepared_ for him
to walk in; and that its sphere, circumstances, and character are due
to the thought and care of Him who has adapted it to our temperament
and capabilities, to repress the worst, and educate the best within us.

We are ignorant of the place and mode of our _death_. Our grave may be
in ocean depths with storm-blasts as our dirge, or the desert-waste
with the sands as our winding-sheets. Like that of Moses in a foreign
land, unknown and untended; or within the reach of friendly hands,
which will keep it freshly decked with evergreens. But wherever it may
be, it must befall as Christ has willed. We may die by some lingering
agony, or the