ression of self in the desire? It was
a spark from a sacred fire, a drop from an infinite ocean, an echo of a
divine voice. The words of my text would never have been Paul's if the
spirit of them had not first been Christ's. I venture to take them in
that aspect, as setting forth Christ's claims upon us, and bearing very
directly on the question of Christian service and of Christian
liberality.

I. So, then, first of all, I remark, Christ desires personal surrender.

'I seek not yours, but _you_,' is the very mother-tongue of love; but
upon our lips, even when our love is purest, there is a tinge of
selfishness blending with it, and very often the desire for another's
love is as purely selfish as the desire for any material good. But in so
far as human love is pure in its desire to possess another, we have the
right to believe the deep and wonderful thought that there is something
corresponding to it in the heart of Christ, which is a revelation for us
of the heart of God; and that, however little we may be able to construe
the whole meaning of the fact, He does stretch out an arm of desire
towards us; and for His own sake, as for ours, would fain draw us near
to Himself, and is 'satisfied,' as He is not without it, when men's
hearts yield themselves up to Him, and let Him love them and lavish
Himself upon them. I do not venture into these depths, but I would lay
upon our hearts that the very inmost meaning of all that Jesus Christ
has said, and is saying, to each of us by the records of His life, by
the pathos of His death, by the miracle of His Resurrection, by the
glory of His Ascension, by the power of His granted Spirit, is, 'I seek
you.'

And, brethren, our self-surrender is the essence of our Christianity.
Our religion lies neither in our heads nor in our acts; the deepest
notion of it is that it is the entire yielding up of ourselves to Jesus
Christ our Lord. There is plenty of religion which is a religion of the
head and of creeds. There is plenty of religion which is the religion of
the hand and of the tongue, and of forms and ceremonies and sacraments;
external worship. There is plenty of religion which surrenders to Him
some of the more superficial parts of our personality, whilst the
ancient Anarch, Self, sits undisturbed on his dark throne, in the depths
of our being. But none of these are the religion that either Christ
requires or that we need. The only true notion of a Christian is a man
who can trul