may speak of pre-eminence among them, are the imitable
ones, whereby He becomes our Example and our Pattern.

Let no man say that such an injunction is vague or hopeless. You must
have a perfect ideal if you are to live at all by an ideal. There cannot
be any flaws in your pattern if the pattern is to be of any use. You aim
at the stars, and if you do not hit them you may progressively approach
them. We need absolute perfection to strain after, and one day--blessed
be His name--we shall attain it. Try to walk worthy of God and you will
find out how tight that precept grips, and how close it fits.

The love and the righteousness which are to become the law of our lives,
are revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Whatever may sound impracticable in
the injunction to imitate God assumes a more homely and possible shape
when it becomes an injunction to follow Jesus. And just as that form of
the precept tends to make the law of conformity to the divine nature
more blessed and less hopelessly above us, so it makes the law of
conformity to the ideal of goodness less cold and unsympathetic. It
makes all the difference to our joyfulness and freedom whether we are
trying to obey a law of duty, seen only too clearly to be binding, but
also above our reach, or whether we have the law in a living Person whom
we have learned to love. In the one case there stands upon a pedestal
above us a cold perfection, white, complete, marble; in the other case
there stands beside us a living law in pattern, a Brother, bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh; whose hand we can grasp; whose heart we can
trust, and of whose help we can be sure. To say to me: 'Follow the ideal
of perfect righteousness,' is to relegate me to a dreary, endless
struggling; to say to me, 'Follow your Brother, and be like your
Father,' is to bring warmth and hope and liberty into all my effort.
The word that says, 'Walk worthy of God,' is a royal law, the perfect
law of perfect freedom.

Again, when we say, 'Walk worthy of God,' we mean two things--one, 'Do
after His example,' and the other, 'Render back to Him what He deserves
for what He has done to you.' And so this law bids us measure, by the
side of that great love that died on the Cross for us all, our poor
imperfect returns of gratitude and of service. He has lavished all His
treasure on you; what have you brought him back? He has given you the
whole wealth of His tender pity, of His forgiving mercy, of His infinite
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