art. The decision rested with
her. Her inner heart told her the Master's desire. She obeyed, with
exquisite pain in her heart over the separation, maybe separation for
life, from her son. The key-note is obedience, even though it may mean
cutting pain.

The whole test of love and of life is in sacrifice yielded to as the need
may come. In God's first plan of life there is no sacrifice. God never
chooses sacrifice as His first choice for any one, not even for His Son.
But sin is here, an abnormal, foreign thing. Life is shot through and
through with its ugly markings. You can't go a foot's length down the
pathway of obedience without finding the keen edge of a knife, freshly
sharpened, held across the path with its cutting edge toward you,
challenging your advance, doing its utmost to hold you back.

And only as the breast is bared to the cutting until a bit of your red
life stains the knife, only so can there be any of the power of God in, or
through, or out of, your life. But turn that sentence around, and smile in
your heart as you remember this, as you do push quietly on past the
cutting knife, and say never a word about the knife or the sharp pain--the
best folks never talk about their sacrifices, they are too intent on the
Man just ahead,--as a man so does, there come into his life a fire and a
fragrance that burns and breathes out wherever he goes.

It is sin that makes sacrifice. Sin did the carpenter work on the cross,
our sin. Sin grew the thorns, and then served as weaver to make the
mocking, cutting crown--our sin, yours and mine. Love yields to the
sacrifice, His love for us, His love in us for the others. Sin is
everywhere. Its finger-print is in nature, and its scar on human life. And
sin's ravages make cruel need, and need intensified makes emergency, and
these involve sacrifice as we rise to meet need and emergency.

And love is everywhere. That is, it would be, it will be, if it can find
human feet to carry it. It will be if our Lord may have His way. Sacrifice
is Love's healing shadow. Sacrifice is love giving the oil and wine of its
own life to bind up the wounds that sin has made. The "Follow Me" road is
marked red, so you trace His footprints who went ahead, and theirs who
follow.

What Obedience Has Meant for Some.

But, no one can decide for another what obedience may mean for him. You
may not tell me, nor I you. It is intensely interesting to note what
obedience has meant to some. It