Obedience Better Than Sacrifice
11 Behold to obey is better than sacrifice” — i Sam. xv. 22.
When Samuel spoke these words he was a Christian. In that moment he had leapt the gulf of centuries, and left his nation far behind. He had caught the glimmer of a new and better sun — the Light that waited to lighten every man. Well might he cry to his countrymen, “Behold!” for the thing he was about to utter was to them a startling thing. They had thought that the crown of religion was sacrifice, pain, the sense of privation and suffering; he tells them that the crown of religion is the abolition of the sense of pain, the overcoming of the feeling of privation. He tells them that the crown of religion is to obey, to yield the will, to surrender the life, to have a heart harmonious with the thing commanded. Not the pain but the painlessness was the glory, not the suffering involved in the doing, but the delight with which the work was done; to obey was better than sacrifice.
0 Thou that desirest not sacrifice, that seekest not the pain but the glory of Thy people, let me enter into Thy joy — the joy of my Lord. Let me enter into that joy whose delight was to do Thy will, into that rest that under the shadow of a cross could say, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you.” Let me be dead to the law through His spirit of universal love; let the sense of duty itself be transcended in the thought of glorious privilege. There is no pain in love any more than there is fear. Why should I measure my piety by my misery? why should grace be high when the temperature of nature is low? It is not my penance that brings me near to Thee; it is my penance that proves me to be still distant from Thee. When I shall touch Thee there shall be no more penance, no more night, no more sea, no more sacrifice. I shall have reached that perfect obedience which is perfect love, and therefore perfect painlessness. The chains shall fall from me, the clouds shall melt from me, the shadows shall fly from me, and in the spirit of Him who has conquered not only death but sacrifice, I too shall be able to say, “Lo, I come; I delight to do Thy will.”