B y D t ° G. Campbell Morgm i Text. —Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and tha,t I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me; he hath not left me alone; for I do allways the things that are pleasing to him. As he spake these things, many believed on him.—John viii. 28-30.
“ He that sent me is with me ; my Father hath not left me alone.” The perfect ideal for my life, then, is that I live always in the realm of the things that please God; and the secret by which I may do so is here unfolded-—by living in perpetual, unbroken communion with God : communion with which I do not permit any thing to interfere. Then it shall be possible for me to pass into the high realm o f actual realization. It is important that we should remind ourselves in a few sentences that the Lord has indeed stated the highest possible ideal for human life in these words : “The things that please him.” Oh, the godlessness o f men ! The godlessness that is to be found on every hand! The godlessness of, thé men and women that are called by the name o f God ! How tragic, how sad, how awful it is ! because godlessness is always not merely an act o f rebellion against God, but a falling short in our own lives o f their highest and most glorious possibili ties.
HE Master, you will see, in this verse lays before us three things. First o f all, He gives us the perfect ideal o f human life in a short phrase, and that comes at the end, “the things
that please him.” Those are the things that create perfect human life,' living in the realm o f which man realizes perfectly all the possibilities of his wondrous being— “ the things that please him.” So I say, in this phrase, the Master reveals to us the perfect ideal o f our lives. Then, in the second place, the Master lays claim—one o f the most stupendous claims that He ever made—that He utterly, absolutely, realizes that ideal. He says, “ I do always the things that please him.” And then, thirdly, we have the revelation o f the secret by which He has been able to realize the ideal, to make the abstract concrete, to bring down the fair vision o f divine purpose to the level o f actual human life and experience, and the secret is declared in the opening w ords:
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