was quick to seize any spoken word, any question, any
exclamation, and to turn it to immediate account. It was so now. The
report that His mother and His brethren were seeking Him, He made the
occasion of a statement of vast import. When we try to think it out, it
was not in the least, as it has been perversely understood, an impatient
rebuff of an untimely interference, an indication that He did not care
for their intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the
medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the
human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is
vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord
interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren
seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take
their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this interest to make
His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."

And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is declaring that
through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God's
work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be
characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so
important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of
life. He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in
that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human
relations. It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it
will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as
not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be
brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our human
relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a
vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish,
insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken.
The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we
find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing,
insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities. In
that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if
it stand in the path o