We see his disciples excited, ardent,--now coming back with triumph to tell how even the devils were subject to them, now forbidding one to cast out devils because he followed not them, now contending who should be greatest; and among them sits the Master, lowly, thoughtful, tranquil, with the little child on his knee, or bending to wash the feet of a disciple, the calmest, sweetest, least assuming of them all.
This should be the model of all Christian reformers. He that believeth shall not make haste is the true motto of Christian reform.
And these great multitudes, to whose hands no special, individual power is given--they are only minute workers in a narrower sphere. Daily toils, small economies, the ordering of the material cares of life, are all their lot. Before them in their way they can see the footsteps of Jesus. We can conceive that in the lowly path of his life all his works were perfect, that never was a nail driven or a line laid carelessly, and that the toil of that carpenter's bench was as sacred to him as his teachings in the temple, because it was duty.
Sometimes there is a sadness and discontent, a repressed eagerness for some higher sphere, that invades the minds of humble workers. Let them look unto Jesus, and be content. All they have to do is to be "faithful over a few things," and in his own time he will make them "ruler over many things."
The Bible presents us with the personality of a magnificent Being--the only-begotten Son of God--who, being in the form of God and without robbery equal with God, emptied himself of his glory and took upon him the form of a servant; and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself and became obedient to death--even the death of the cross.
This great Being, we are told, entered the race of mortality, divested of those advantages which came from his divine origin, and assuming all those disadvantages of limitation and dependence which belong to human beings. The Apostle says, "It behooved him in all respects to be made like unto his brethren." His lot was obedience--dependence upon the Father--and he gained victories by just the means which are left to us--faith and prayer.
Now, there are many good people whose feeling about prayer is something like this: "I pray because I am commanded to, not because I feel a special need or find a special advantage in it. In my view we are to use our intellect and our will in discovering duties and overcoming temptations, quite sure that God will, of course, aid those who aid themselves." This class of persons look upon all protracted seasons of prayer and periods spent in devotion as so much time taken from the active duties of life. A week devoted to prayer, a convention of Christians meeting to spend eight or ten days in exercises purely devotional, would strike them as something excessive and unnecessary, and tending to fanaticism.