Ghost, So shall the Jews at
Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him
into the hands of the Gentiles. And when we heard these things, both we,
and they of that place, besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then
Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am
ready not to be bound, only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name
of the Lord Jesus._" (Acts xxi. 10-13.) When a man has settled that, and
has taken his life in his hand to fulfil a ministry to mankind, he has
but one supreme consideration; his own interests vanish; man's
interests, the estate of the poorest and most wretched of mankind, fill
the sphere of his aims and hopes. (1 Cor. iv. 9-13.) No wonder that
nothing could move him from this ministry, and that life was valueless
save as it might be a "_finishing his course with joy, and the ministry
which he had received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the
grace of God_." Of course, if life was freely laid on that altar, "_as
the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment_," meats would be
freely offered as a sacrifice too. The man who was ready to die for man
was not likely to suffer a morsel of meat, any worldly possession, any
physical or mental pleasure, to stand for an instant in the way of any
help or guidance which he might offer to the weakest of mankind. "_For
though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all,
that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I
might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law,
that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without
law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to
Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became
I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men,
that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's
sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you._" (1 Cor. ix. 19-23.)
We must take this sentence then, as explaining the full readiness of the
apostle, as far as his own tastes, habits, and appetites were concerned,
to eat no meat to his dying day, if he saw that such a course of action
would remove effectually an offence, a stone of stumbling, from the path
of the weakest of his fellow-men.

But all are not apostles. How far is the conduct of this great Christian
teacher to be regarded as giving the rule to us? This