the Father, all that the Spirit of the Father had taught Him of the need
of human effort and of human righteousness, all that as He grew up to
manhood He recognised of the deep-seated woes of humanity, and all that
He was prompted to do for the relief of these woes, He made known to His
disciples. The irresistible call to self-sacrifice and labour for the
relief of men which He heard and obeyed, He made known and He makes
known to all who follow Him. He did not allot clearly defined tasks to
His followers; He did not treat them as slaves, appointing one to this
and another to that: He showed them His own aim and His own motive, and
left them as His friends to be attracted by the aim that had drawn Him,
and to be ever animated with the motive that sufficed for Him. What had
made His life so glorious, so full of joy, so rich in constant reward,
He knew would fill their lives also; and He leaves them free to choose
it for themselves, to stand before life as independent, unfettered,
undriven men, and choose without compulsion what their own deepest
convictions prompted them to choose. The "friend" is not compelled
blindly to go through with a task whose result he does not understand or
does not sympathise with; the friend is invited to share in a work in
which he has a direct personal interest and to which he can give himself
cordially. All life should be the forwarding of purposes we approve, the
bringing about of ends we earnestly desire: all life, if we are free
men, must be matter of choice, not of compulsion. And therefore Christ,
having heard of the Father that which made Him feel straitened until the
great aim of His life could be accomplished, which made Him press
forward through life attracted and impelled by the consciousness of its
infinite value as achieving endless good, imparts to us what moved and
animated Him, that we may freely choose as He chose and enter into the
joy of our Lord.

This, then, is the point of this great utterance: Jesus takes our lives
up into partnership with His own. He sets before us the same views and
hopes which animated Himself, and gives us a prospect of being useful to
Him and in His work. If we engage in the work of life with a dull and
heartless feeling of its weariness, or merely for the sake of gaining a
livelihood, if we are not drawn to labour by the prospect of result,
then we have scarcely entered into the condition our Lord opens to us.
It is for the merest slaves to view t