the self-sacrificing life of Christ.

What Christ here shows us, then, is that the principle which regulates
the development of seed regulates the growth, continuance, and
fruitfulness of human life; that whatever is of the nature of seed gets
to its full life only through death; that our Lord, knowing this law,
submitted to it, or rather by His native love was attracted to the life
and death which revealed this law to Him. He gave His life away for the
good of men, and therefore prolongs His days and sees His seed
eternally. There is not one way for Him and another for us. The same law
applies to all. It is not peculiar to Christ. The work He did was
peculiar to Him, as each individual has his own place and work; but the
principle on which all right lives are led is one and the same
universally. What Christ did He did because He was living a human life
on right principles. We need not die on the cross as He did, but we must
as truly yield ourselves as living sacrifices to the interests of men.
If we have not done so, we have yet to go back to the very beginning of
all lasting life and progress; and we are but deceiving ourselves by
attainments and successes which are not only hollow, but are slowly
cramping and killing all that is in us. Whoever will choose the same
destiny as Christ must take the same road to it that He took. He took
the one right way for men to go, and said, "If any man follow Me, where
I am there will he be also." If we do not follow Him, we really walk in
darkness and know not whither we go. We cannot live for selfish purposes
and then enjoy the common happiness and glory of the race. Self-seeking
is self-destroying.

And it is needful to remark that this self-renunciation must be real.
The law of sacrifice is the law not for a year or two in order to gain
some higher selfish good--which is not self-sacrifice, but deeper
self-seeking; it is the law of all human life, not a short test of our
fidelity to Christ, but the only law on which life can ever proceed. It
is not a barter of self I make, giving it up for a little that I may
have an enriched self to eternity; but it is a real foregoing and
abandonment of self for ever, a change of desire and nature, so that
instead of finding my joy in what concerns myself only I find my joy in
what is serviceable to others.

Thus only can we enter into permanent happiness. Goodness and happiness
are one--one in the long-run, if not one in every step of the