e is undertaking with so
light a heart; to the other He gives the commandment that sounds so
stern: 'Leave the highest duty, if you cannot do it without conflicting
with your higher to Me.'

And so I think that Matthew's arrangement of this pair of companion
pictures is to be preferred to that which we find in Luke, who
localises the incident in a different part of our Lord's ministry, and
on a different occasion. I deal now only with the first of these two
contrasted pictures, and consider the lightly-made vow, and Christ's
sobering treatment of it.

I. The too lightly uttered vow.

There is a certain almost jaunty air of self-complacence about the man
and his facile promise. What he promised was no more than what Christ
requires from each of us, no more than what Christ was infinitely glad
to have laid at His feet. And he promised it with absolute sincerity,
meaning every word that he said, and believing that he could fulfil it
all. What was the fault? There were three: taking counsel of a
transitory feeling; making a vow with a very slight knowledge of what it
meant; and relying with foolish confidence on his own strength.

Vows which rest on no firmer foundation than these are sure to sink and
topple over into ruin. Discipleship which is the result of mere emotion
must be evanescent, for all emotion is so. Effervescence cannot last,
and when the cause ceases the effect ceases too. Discipleship which
enlists in Christ's army, in ignorance of the hard marching and fighting
which have to be gone through, will very soon be skulking in the rear or
deserting the flag altogether. Discipleship which offers faithful
following because it relies on its own fervour and force will, sooner or
later, feel its unthinkingly undertaken obligations too heavy, and be
glad to shake off the yoke which it was so eager to put on.

These three things, singly or combined, are the explanations, as they
are the causes, of half the stagnant Christianity that chokes our
churches. Men have vowed, and did not know what they were vowing,
pledging themselves, in a moment of excitement, to what after years
discover to them to be a hard and uncongenial course of life. They have
been carried into the position of professed disciples on the top of a
wave of emotion which has long since broken and retreated, leaving them
stranded and motionless in a place where they have no business to be.
Every community of professing Christians is weakened, and its