ad soon found to be God's truth. And then he gives up everything.
He throws away every prospect of honor and public respect and social
ambition. He simply dies to himself, and gives himself {55} to the
service of Christ; and, behold, that death of self is the beginning of
life and courage to generation after generation of Christian followers.

The same story might be told of many a man. Just in proportion as
self-seeking dies, life begins. A man goes his way in self-assertion,
self-display, the desire to make an impression, and he seems to achieve
much. He gets distinction, glory, the prizes of life. But one thing
he fails to do; he fails to quicken spiritual life in others. His work
is stained by self-consciousness, and becomes incapable of inspiration.
It is life to him, but death to the things that are trusted to him.
Then some day he absolutely forgets himself in his work. He buries
himself, as we say, in it. His conceit and ambition die, and then out
of the death of self comes the life of the world he serves. That is
the paradox of life. Life is reproduced by sacrifice. The life that
is lost is the only life that is saved. The dead self is the only
life-bearer. Only the man who thus sinks himself in his cause is
remembered as its apostle.

{56}

XXI

CARRYING YOUR OWN CROSS

_Mark_ viii. 34.

"If any man will come after me," says Jesus, "let him take up his cross
and follow." Notice that it is his own cross. This is a different
picture of Christian discipleship from that which is commonly
presented. We are used to thinking of people as abandoning their own
lives, their passions and desires, their own weakness and their own
strength, and turning to the one support and safety of the cross of
Jesus Christ. We remember that familiar picture of the woman who has
been almost overwhelmed in the sea of trouble, and is finally cast up
by the waves of life upon the rock where she clings to the cross which
is set there as a refuge for her shipwrecked soul. Now, no doubt, that
refuge in the cross of Christ has been to many a real experience.
"Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on thee," has been,
no doubt, often a sincere confession. But that is not the {57} state
of mind which Jesus is describing in this passage. He is thinking, not
of some limp and helpless soul clinging to something outside itself,
but rather of a masculine, vigorous, rational life, which shoulders its
own re