while we see how morbid was their
conception of life, and how completely they got the true order reversed.
And there can be found some here and there, among us to-day, with the same
idea.

But the key-note of the true life is not sacrifice. It is obedience.
Sacrifice is something coming in the pathway of obedience. There come the
places and times where you cannot obey without making a sacrifice.
Obedience involves sacrifice. And the sacrifice may be of the very real,
cutting, hurting sort, personally. The whole instinct of one's being is
against it. This seems to be carrying things quite too far, we think. And
so the test is on. The sacrifice is not sought. It is shrunk from with all
the vigour of one's nature. Obedience means that you go steadily on, no
matter how it cuts, or how much it costs.

And the motive under the obedience is usually the decisive thing. If that
motive be a personal passion for the Lord Jesus, then you only wait long
enough to be quite clear of His leading, of what He would have you do. And
then you go on, regardless of the personal loss or pain to yourself. The
key-note of the "Follow Me" music is obedience, simple, sane, poised, full
obedience.

How Much It Cost God.

One day out in Illinois, while visiting a small church college, I was told
this story of one of the students. He had felt very deeply the need of the
foreign mission lands, and the plea being made for men to volunteer to go
out as missionaries. And after much thought and prayer he had decided to
volunteer. But he felt he must first get his mother's consent. So he wrote
of his purpose and asked if she were willing that he should go. In due
time the reply came back. It was a mother's letter to her son, full of a
mother's endearments. But the paper was marked with tear-stains. She gave
her consent. She said, "I'm glad my boy wants to go, and I'm glad to have
you go, but"--and here the writing was blurred with the teardrops that had
plainly fallen as she wrote--"_I never knew before how much it cost God to
give His Son_."

There was the whole story of sacrifice as it came to that mother. There
was the sore need of the people in foreign lands for the Gospel of Christ.
That need had not been met. The need in its sore pressure had become an
emergency, largely an unappreciated emergency. The tragedy of an unmet
emergency had moved the son's heart to action, under the touch of the Holy
Spirit, and then it came to the mother's he