yonder, His Victor-Son by His side, and a man down here, in _such
sympathetic touch_ that God can think His thoughts over in this man's
mind, and have His desires repeated upon the earth as this man's prayer.

<u>The Threefold Cord of Jesus' Life.</u>

Think for a moment into Jesus' human life down here. His marvellous
activities for those few years over which the world has never ceased to
wonder. Then His underneath hidden-away prayer-life of which only
occasional glimpses are gotten. Then grouping around about that sentence
of His--"I do always the things that are pleasing to Him"--in John's
gospel, pick out the emphatic negatives on Jesus' lips, the "not's": not
My will, not My works, not My words. Jesus came to do somebody's else
will. The controlling purpose of His life was to please His Father. That
was the secret of the power of His earthly career. Right relationship to
God; a secret intimate prayer-life: marvellous power over men and with
men--those are the strands in the threefold cord of His life.

There is a very striking turn of a word in the second chapter of John's
gospel down almost at its close. The old version says that "Many believed
on His name beholding His signs which He did, but Jesus did not commit
Himself unto them" because He knew them so well. The word "believed," and
the word "commit" are the same word underneath our English. The sentence
might run "many _trusted_ Him beholding what He did; but He did not
_trust_ them for He knew them." I have no doubt most, or all of us here
to-day, trust Him. Let me ask you very softly now: Can He trust you? While
we might all shrink from saying "yes" to that, there is a very real sense
in which we may say "yes," namely, in the purpose of the life. Every life
is controlled by some purpose. What is yours? To please Him? If so He
knows it. It is a great comfort to remember that God judges a man not by
his achievements, but by his purposes: not by what I am, actually, but by
what I would be, in the yearning of my inmost heart, the dominant purpose
of my life. God will fairly flood your life with all the power He can
trust you to use wholly for Him.

Commercial practice furnishes a simple but striking illustration here. A
man is employed by a business house as a clerk. His ability and honesty
come to be tested in many ways constantly. He is promoted gradually, his
responsibilities increased. As he proves himself thoroughly reliable he is
trusted more a