freedom blows
inspiringly through it all. The very spirit of the letter is gathered up
in one of its verses, 'I have been called unto liberty,' and in its
great exhortation, 'Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made you free.' It is then sufficiently remarkable and profoundly
significant that in this very letter, which thus is the protest of the
free Christian consciousness against all limitations and outward
restrictions, there should be this most emphatic declaration that the
liberty of the Christian is slavery and the slavery of the Christian is
freedom. He is free whose will coincides with his outward law. He is
free who delights to do what he must do. He is free whose rule is love,
and whose Master is Incarnate Love. 'If the Son make you free, ye shall
be free indeed.' 'O Lord, truly I am Thy servant, Thou hast loosed my
bands.' 'I bear in my body' the charter of my liberty, for I bear in my
body the 'brand of the Lord Jesus.'

II. And so now a word in the next place about these marks of ownership.

As I have said, the Apostle evidently means thereby distinctly the
bodily weaknesses, and possibly diseases, which were the direct
consequences of his own apostolic faithfulness and zeal. He considered
that he proved himself to be a minister of God by his stripes,
imprisonments, fastings, by all the pains and sufferings and their
permanent consequences in an enfeebled constitution, which he bore
because he had preached the Cross of Christ. He knew that these things
were the result of his faithful ministry. He believed that they had been
sent by no blundering, blind fate; by no mere secondary causes; but by
his Master Himself, whose hand had held the iron that branded into the
hissing flesh the marks of His ownership. He felt that by means of these
he had been drawn nearer to his Master, and the ownership had been made
more perfect. And so in a rapture of contempt of pain, this heroic soul
looks upon even bodily weakness and suffering as being the signs that he
belonged to Christ, and the means of that possession being made more
perfect.

Now, what is all that to us Christian people who have no persecutions to
endure, and none of whom I am afraid have ever worked hard enough for
Christ to have damaged our health by it? Is there anything in this text
that may be of general application to us all? Yes! I think so. Every
Christian man or woman ought to bear, in his or her body, in a plain,
literal se