English word "martyr"
comes. We have come to associate that word "martyr" with the idea of
giving one's life in a violent way for the truth believed. This is the
meaning that has grown into the word. But the practical meaning of this
martyr-witness word goes a bit deeper yet than this. It is not merely
giving the life out in the crisis of dying, but that the whole life is
being given out in a continual martyrdom, that is, a continual witnessing.
These words, follower, messenger, witness, run together. In following we
are witnesses. We know something about this Man who goes before, a blessed
something that has entered into the marrow and joints of one's being. We
tell it. We tell it chiefly by living it. We are messengers. The whole
life is a message of what Christ Jesus has done for us, and is to us.

A Confession of Faith in Wood and Nails.

Now, this is the thing--this _living it_--that God has always counted on
most. There are in the Bible most striking illustrations of lived or
_acted messages_. One man actually preached a sermon nearly fifteen months
long merely by the position of his body. You would call that a long
sermon, but it had the desired result, at least partly. The man got the
ears of the people. They were hardened sermon listeners. The talked
sermons had no effect. So they were given an acted sermon.

I think it may help to look at a few of the old-time followers. The one
chief thing that marked these men was that they _lived the messages_. They
experienced the truth they stood for, sometimes to the extent of much
suffering. This _experience_ became part of the man's life. And this it
was that God used as His message. You cannot be a follower fully without
the thing taking your very life, and taking it to the feeling,
deep-feeling, point.

One of the earliest of these followers was _Enoch_. His brief story is
like the first crocus of spring coming up through the cold snow, like a
pretty flower growing up out of the thin crack of earth between great
stones. There was such a contrast with the surroundings. It is in the
Fifth of Genesis, one of the most tiresome chapters in the whole Bible.
Its tiresome monotony is an evidence of its inspiration; for it is a
picture of life with God left out. There are five chapters in Enoch's
biography. He was born; with that he had nothing to do. Like his lineal
descendants and his neighbours he just "_lived"_ for a while, went through
the usual physical and men