exing as a gift to royalty than the other
two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal
right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this
King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of
complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the
will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the
humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.

And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of our
humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost of
Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will of God.
This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to self. We are
devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment and wisdom. We are
impatient of all that gets in the way of our self-determination. We have
in these last days made a veritable religion out of devotion to self, a
cult of the ego.

But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he who
will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in the Son,
must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save it. He must
let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This will of the man
which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive, so tenacious, must
be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in its place. Often this
is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we were young we girded
ourselves and walked whither we would; but it must be in the end, if we
make life a spiritual success, that when we are old another shall gird
us and carry us whither we would not.

The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to
sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is
not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we
have entrusted to Him God will do more than we ask or think. When our
will becomes one with the will of God we are surprised to find that we
have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life
in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that
we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.

Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be
For Godes Son born He was of thee,
For to make us free.
Gloria Tibi, Domine.

Jesu, Godes Son, born He was
In a crib