December 9

Service that costs but triumphs

“They loved not their lives unto the death” (Rev. 12:11).
“So will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).

The life of the Church becomes fruitful when it becomes sacrificial. When the Church is easeful she loses her power to redeem. I remember the old story of Pope Innocent IV and Thomas Aquinas, who were standing together as bags of treasure were being carried in through the gates of the Lateran.
“You see,” observed the Pope, with a smile, “the day is past when the Church could say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’”
“Yes, Holy Father,” was the saint’s reply, “and the day is past when the Church could say to the lame man, ‘Rise and walk.’”
When the Church’s life is lived on the plane of ease, and comfort, and bloodless service, she has no power to fertilize the dry and barren places of earth. When the Church becomes sacrificial she becomes impressive. The sacrificial things in history are the influential things today. It is the men and the women who have given away their being, the bleeding folk, who are our present inheritance. “They loved not their lives unto the death.” “And they overcame . . . by the blood of the Lamb.”

The woman who gave the two mites still works as a factor in the life of the race. Sir John Kelynge—have you ever heard of him?—the brutal, cynical justice who thrust John Bunyan for twelve years into Bedford jail, his very name is now a conundrum! John Bunyan, the sacrificial martyr, is still fertilizing the field of common life with energies of rich inspiration. The finders have lost. The apparent losers are at the winning post! The sacrificial are the triumphant.
—J. H. Jowett.

The spirit of self-sacrifice
Stays not to count the price.
Christ did not of His mere abundance
Cast into the empty treasury of man’s store:
The First and Last gave
Until even He could give no more.
His very living—
Such was Christ’s giving.
—Anna E. Hamilton.

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