they have their value; but one loses confidence in the supreme importance of all such accidents of fortune when he remembers that the Teacher of the ages received His education as a carpenter in a country village in Galilee.

Eighteen years of silence. I do not mean that Jesus never spoke to anyone through those years, but He made no noise; it appears that His words at that time claimed no public attention. He was not yet known to His neighbors as the speaker or reader or teacher, but as the carpenter. And even His life of holy deeds caused no great stir in the community. It seems to me wonderfully interesting that a perfectly holy life could have been lived for so many years in a little place like Nazareth, and no one had taken special note of it. It shows what a simple and natural thing goodness may be; nothing pretentious about it, nothing portentous about it. It fits in very harmoniously with the other fair works of God, as beautiful, but as natural and unnoticed as one of those lilies of the field which He himself delighted to consider. Nazareth was not a place distinguished for saintliness in those days; quite the other way; it was of an unsavory reputation; and yet even in disreputable Nazareth a man could live a perfectly holy life, pleasing God by every word and thought and deed, and nobody paid heed to it. They had learned to

take goodness for granted from Him. Patience and purity and truth and kindness and reverence seemed a matter of course with Him. They no more wondered at His holiness than that the sky was blue and the scent of the flowers sweet.

Can we not find a cheering, serviceable workday, every-day example in these earlier years of Jesus? We profess to be following in His steps, but sometimes wonder how we are to set about it; for the most of us are not called to be apostles, not called to make much noise in the world, or to hold high positions before the people; but that does not shut off any of us from walking in the steps of Jesus. Everyone in the great silent majority may take his example from the larger part of His life, those years in Nazareth. And even the few whom God sets in more conspicuous positions would do well to reflect that, if they follow Jesus, the larger side of their lives, too, must be the silent side, the side that is common to them with the great silent majority.

The same apostle who has taught us most of what we know about the doctrine of election, and who himself was always pressing "toward the mark for the prize of the high calling," has also left it as a general rule of life that we "study to be quiet." 1

1I Thessalonians iv, 11.

That is the great example coming down to us from the larger part of the life of Jesus, from those quiet years in Nazareth.

And even His public ministry completed itself at last in a second teaching of the same lesson of quietness. "For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously."

1

The last lesson that the Son of God taught us at His trial and crucifixion was a lesson of patient quietness. To be able to fill a humble place with patience, because God has called you to it-there is no more beautiful fruit of our election than that.

1I Peter ii, 21-23.

CHAPTER VII

2

THE SECOND MILE

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OUR study of the Christian calling has brought us to an examination of the general subject of Christian ethics. But early in this examination the question confronts us, What must be added to the ethical ideals that men had commonly held to justify us in applying to them the adjective "Christian"? That something must be added, appears from such sayings of Christ as Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees," or "What do ye more than others?" or "A new commandment I give unto you." 3 Such sayings imply some distinctive peculiarity in the duties to which Christ calls his disciples. We are much interested to learn what the peculiarity is. The Sermon on the Mount consists largely of an answer to this question, and I select for the subject of the present chapter one of the more striking of its utterances, the forty-first verse of the fifth chapter of Matthew: "Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." This sermon, so-called, is in many ways more like 1 Matthew v, 20. * Matthew v, 47. 3 John xiii, 34.

a poem. The doors to its treasure-house will not open to a reader of prosaic spirit. "Give to him that asketh," our Lord says; but that does not mean that you must give a dagger to every would-be assassin or suicide, or that you must yield to all the solicitings of temptations; or that when your child asks of you a scorpion, thinking it an egg, you must give him the scorpion. "Swear not at all," Christ said; and yet He Himself consented to be put on oath in the High Priest's palace, that He might declare Himself the Son of God. So here He says, "Go with him two miles." That does not mean that because some neighbor happens to want your company for twenty minutes, you must force yourself upon him, whether he wants you or not, for the rest of the day. No, no; the letter killeth. We must not murder these richest and most beautiful of all teachings with such slavish literalism. Let us open our heart wide to what the Lord is patiently urging upon us, when He says, "Go with him two miles;" namely, that we should be more willing to serve our neighbor than he can be to force any service from us-twice as willing.

Here is a needy world surrounding us, and always tugging at us with its persistent appeals; but Christ says that the active, expansive good-will in His follower's heart must be enough to fill and overflow all these demands from the world. The