people to their high office, whatever party intrigues may intervene, because they are accounted dignus, that is, worthy of the eminence. Dignity consists in worthiness and worthiness is proved by service. Exalted position has its only dignity in the opportunity well improved for wider service. Most of us can serve only a few; the head of a nation can serve all. When Luke describes this same contention among the disciples, he reports the Master as bidding them look at the lordship of earthly kings in contrast with the grading of greatness in his kingdom, where he is chief that serves. "I am in the midst of you as he that serveth," he says in word and then in deed.

If there is any limitation of this principle of the dignity of service, it is where the service is compelled, not voluntary, or where it is lowly only because the capacity for higher service is lacking. It is the spirit with which it is done which gives it grace and dignity. But this is only a limitation of comparison. That is the noblest spirit of service which from the highest place stoops to do that. which is menial, only from the desire to help. It is not even conscious of the stooping but only of the lifting. And we recognize it in all callings and positions. The physician, who has learned the noble art of healing, gives his best care and thought to those whose condition may be quite loathsome, and does things which would be repulsive except that all his feelings, as well as all his skill, have been subjected to that for which he has prepared himself, to help the sick back to health again. Mother-love will do a hundred things without grudging, which paid service does, if at all, with grumbling. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, comes down into our earthly life and lights and lifts every man that cometh into the world.

Indeed, in this contrast between position and service, it is conspicuously true that, if one who is not dignus, one who is unworthy, by any success of ambition comes to the

highest place, it is only to be brought into more conspicuous disgrace. If Judas reached the place of honor at the table in the upper room, it was only the more noticeable when he left it and went out to complete his work of treachery and betrayal. And if it be true that Peter took the lowest place, as Edersheim again suggests, he only in this shows the same humility with which he mistakenly protests against the lowly service which the Lord would do for him, and which the same apostle shows again, according to tradition, in his dying hour.

There is this same contention in the larger Church of Christ to-day, of which his disciples gave evidence on that last night-the same in spirit and in form. In the early days of the colonial life, the seats in the meeting-house were dignified, as they called it, and the heads of families were assigned their places according to their political or social eminence. In ours, in most of the churches, the best pews are sold or rented to the men with the largest incomes, and these rights and dignities were and are claimed generally with more politeness and decorum, yet with the same spirit which marked the Twelve, including Judas who got the best. It is the same spirit not only, but the identical system of seating people in God's house, according to the standards of the world without, which the practical James rebukes in his epistle. But the second chapter of his letter is not often read for the morning lesson in our churches and less often made the subject of the sermon. It is only an index of the stolidity of the Christian conscience to a teaching which it does not care to hear and which is against the habit of the well-to-do.

This is only a single illustration of the strife for position in the Christian church and in society, which ought to be as Christian as the Church. I quote this only because it is identical with that which led our Saviour not to this act but to its verbal application. As a minister of another

denomination once said to me, "In your church the leading pulpits are the great prizes, in ours the administrative offices." When will the time come in all the states of the one commonwealth of God when the places of great service shall be the only prizes? Thank God, there are so many of his servants in all communions of whom this is true to-day.

There can be no stronger, clearer closing words to the consideration of this Scripture than its own: "A servant is not greater than his lord; neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them." May we all be able to claim this last beatitude!

George M. Boynton.

JESUS, THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE

JOHN 14: 1–14

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

The gospel is concentrated in this sentence. It is a text for a volume, not a sermon. What not to think and say is our problem. Hence the impression of the saying is as eloquent as its meaning. A phrase of Jesus opens vistas all ways into the infinite. Like this never man spake. It is the accent of the divine. It was at that answer, not at the offered nail-prints, that Thomas should have cried “My Lord and my God." For Jesus the transition from the visible to the invisible was at hand, and his wonted reticence about the heavenly seems about to be broken. In his speech there is a gleam of the splendor and amplitude of the Father's house. But ere many sentences the perspective contracts to the supreme center of interest, the Father himself. All the terms of the text must be explained with this person, not the place, in view. They are successively ascending, or ever more penetrating and inclusive expressions of the same truth. Through Christ we come to God: he is the way; through Christ we know God: he is the truth; through Christ we share the life of God: he is the life. He is for us at once example, insight and energy in attaining the destiny and the consummation of our being. "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." I am the Way, for I am the Truth and the Life.

"I am the truth." This is much more than to say, I

speak the truth. There is a closer relation between Jesus and truth than there is between the teacher and his lesson. The

truth and he were one. Truth lived and worked in him. John the Baptist was a voice crying in the wilderness, heard for what he had to say, himself unheeded. Jesus is more than a voice. He is truth incarnate. "I am the light of the world," "I am the truth." The evangelist works out the contrast. The Baptist, he says, was not the light, but only a witness of the light. "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." In him, light was translated into life. "The life was the light of men."

Truth that is also the life becomes the way, because of its calm certainty. One of the wisest of our religious teachers has called his book of studies into divine things "Guesses at Truth," a not too modest title for all human thinkers. We have our views, we cherish our opinions, we balance arguments and measure probabilities. Jesus alone does nothing of the kind. We never hear him talk of his views or opinions. It is not his way to set forth evidence pro and con, and sum up the case with a strong appeal for what he sets forth as his candid judgment. If there were discovered anywhere a new saying of Jesus, expressed in that manner, we should need no textual critic to pass on its genuineness. We should each know that it was a forgery. Even when dealing with the profound mysteries of existence the style of Jesus is "Verily, verily, I say unto you." Not that he claimed omniscience on earth-he expressly repudiated it. But whatever he did assert, he asserted positively.

But it is not enough to be positive: we want to know who it is that presumes to be positive. It is in virtue of what he is that Jesus dares to speak. "I am the truth, and

the life." And that is what men felt when they heard him. Startled by the question of Jesus, before he had time to