he One, listening. The
Lord's quiet skilled hand touches the heart meaning of "Follow Me." Its
real meaning is a love meaning. Do you love? Then "Follow Me." Then you
_must_ follow, your love draws you after, even though the path be rough
and broken. This is the same "Follow Me" that Peter baulked at so badly
months before. Its meaning had not changed. It would mean a death, Peter
is plainly told. But now Peter baulks no longer. The Master's great love
had taught Him how really to love. And now not even a cross for himself
would or could keep him from following close up to such a Master.

Here is the meaning of "Follow Me" as it worked out in Peter's
experience--acquaintance, a new life, schooling, service, a sight of
sacrifice, and a baulking, then--a sight of Jesus on the cross, and then a
willingness to go on even though it meant the sorest sacrifice. This is an
etching of the road Peter actually went, an etching in black and white,
with the black very black. Is it a picture of your road? But perhaps you
have never filled out the last part--still back at that baulking place. In
the thick of our present life, in the noise and din of the street of
modern life, comes as of old the quiet, clear, insistent call "Follow Me."

Getting in Behind.

But, some one says, how can we really follow this Lone Man, our Lord Jesus
Christ? He was so pure in His life, stainless in motive, and unstained in
character. And we--well, the nearer we get to Him the more instinctively
we find Peter's lakeshore cry starting up within, "I am a sinful man." His
very presence makes us feel the sin, the sin-instinct, the old selfish
something within. How can we really follow? And the answer that comes is a
real answer. It answers the inner heart-cry.

It is this: we begin where He ended. The cross was the end of His life. It
must be the beginning of ours. It was the climax of His obedience. All the
lines of His life come together at the cross. It is the beginning for us.
All the lines of our lives, the lines of purity, of character, of service,
of power, run back to the one starting point. And we come to find--some of
us pretty slowly--that it is only the lines that do start there that lead
to anything worth while. The starting point for the true life, and for
real service is very clear. And if any of us have made a false start, it
will be a tremendous saving to drop things and go back and get the true
start. "The blood of Jesus His Son clea