The Living Way

u By a new a?id living way.7’ — Heb. x. 20.

It was a new way because it was a living way. Men had hitherto been seeking in their religion only a dying way. They had thought that Divine worship was something which was good for helping human souls to cross the valley of the shadow; they had never thought of it as mainly useful in helping human souls to support the shadows of life. But when He came He consecrated a new road to God. He told me that I need not wait till the last hour in order to find eternity, that I might find it now. He told me that God’s presence could be reached without dying, that the grandest death of the spirit was the life of love, that the most reasonable service for a man was to present his body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.

My Father, shall I offer Thee only my last hours? Teach me Thy living way. Teach me the life of Him who offered up His soul from dawn to dark unceasingly, who poured out on life’s altar His childhood; His youth, His manhood, one by one; who gave Thee in turn His Bethlehem, His Nazareth, His Calvary. Help me to climb with Him the living way. Help me through His Spirit to yield thee my spirit. Let me not wait to yield it till a dying hour. Give me the power of death iii the midst of life, the surrender of the will amid the haunts of men. In the scenes of busy labour, in the paths of anxious toil, in the struggles for daily bread, in the hours of silent trouble, in sorrow and in joy, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in abundance, help me to yield my soul to Thee and say, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit;” then shall my life on earth be the way to heaven.