d attending to the last duties to his father. It
is extremely unlike Him to couch His refusal in words that sound, at
first hearing, so harsh and contemptuous, and that seem to say, 'Let the
dead world go as it will; never you mind it, do you not go after it at
all or care about it.'

But if we remember that it is Jesus Christ, who came to bring life into
the dead world, who says this, then, I think, we shall understand better
what He means. I do not need to explain, I suppose, that by the one
'dead' here is meant the physical and natural 'dead,' and by the other
the morally and religiously 'dead'; and that what Christ says, in the
picturesque way that He so often affected in order to bring great truths
home in concrete form to sluggish understandings, is in effect, 'Nay!
For the men in the world that are separated from God, and so are dead in
their selfhood and their sin, burying other dead people is appropriate
work. But your business, as living by Me, is to carry life, and let the
burying alone, to be done by the dead people that can do nothing else.'

Now the spirit of our Lord's answer may be put thus:--It must always be
Christ first, and every one else second; and it must therefore sometimes
be Christ _only_, and no one else. 'Let me bury my father and then I
will come.' 'No,' says Christ; 'first your duty to Me': first in order
and time, because first in order of importance. And this is His habitual
tone, 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of
Me.'

Did you ever think of what a strange claim that is for a _man_ to make
upon others? This Jesus Christ comes to you and me, and to every man,
and says, 'I demand, and I have a right to demand, thy supreme affection
and thy first obedience. All other relations are subordinate to thy
relation to Me. All other persons ought to be less dear to thee than I
am. No other duty can be so imperative as the duty of following Me.'
What right has He to speak thus to us? On what does such a tremendous
claim rest? Who is it that fronts humanity and says, 'He that loveth
father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me'? He had a right to
say it, because He is more than they, and has done more than they,
because He is the Son of God manifest in the flesh, and because on the
Cross He has died for all men. Therefore all other claims dwindle and
sink into nothingness before His. Therefore His will is supreme, and our
relation to Him is the dominant fact in our