---

These are the strongest words that human lips have uttered, I think; the strongest, because they give us a glimpse of what elsewhere we cannot find in man or his history — the complete mastery and control of life. Where is the man who comes to life as the workman comes to his clay or marble, and shapes out his idea precisely as he first has thought and designed it, and leaves it fulfilled without that obedient material having demanded any change in the work? How little of such mastery you and I have. Your very purpose in life, of which you speak so proudly, have you not got it by living? And when you had conceived it, when you had said "I will," "That is my purpose," did life flow liquidly and obediently into your mould, and stay there, and harden in it lastingly? Who has just the life he planned? And when you begin to see your purpose, or something like it, coming on:, of life, what control have you over it and its continuance? You have time to say, "Yes, that is the shape of my wish, of my plan," and you or it are hurried away. But even suppose that a man cares not whether his purpose be lasting, if for a moment he reaches the place at which he had aimed; if he stands there where he had struggled through life to be; if he has made life carry him there — is he not master and victor? May he not say, as the soldier who dies in victory, "I die happy"? The hands that stiffen at that moment, are they not, after all, a conqueror's? Oh! but think if the mastery of life does not include something else. It is not only to carry one's own purpose for a moment; it is to do it in such a way as to show that you are not indebted to life's favour for it; that it is not a gift to you; that you will take it at your own time, as one who is completely, unanxiously master; that you will not be hurried by the thought, "Now life is offering me my prize; if not now, never"; but can quietly choose the time of acquisition when it is best, and then reach out the hand to take it. But stop again. Mastery of human life — is it not something vastly more than all of this? Is it not to be above counting it indispensable, to use it only as one help in the working out of the great purpose; to lay it down, and yet win the aim by other help; to lay it down as a workman puts down a tool and takes it again? But who of us is so boldly independent as that? Who can work out his human purpose without the help of human life? But I must go yet one great step farther in this description of what it is to be a master of human life. It is this: Suppose you were independent of this human life, yet you are not master of it if it can with. draw itself and you have no power to keep or resume it. If, after showing your ability to do without it, it were able to keep away from you, if you had no power to take it again, you would not be its master. That is the complete mastery of human life, not only to work out your purpose independently of it, but to really resume it, to take it again when it has been laid down...I find, in the midst of all this history of man and his life — believing himself master, and yet never so in reality — one life which has no such feature, which could never have been troubled by the thought of fate. There is One among all human existences which bears all the marks of the mastership of life, which claims from all the title of Lord and Master. First of all, Christ comes to human life with His own purpose fully formed and self-originated. He brought a Divine purpose to earth. Then see how absolutely, without change, that purpose of Christ's is carried out. Not a feature is altered; not a circumstance is varied, nor any addition made. It is accomplished just according to the heavenly purpose. Life has no power to change it in the smallest particular. But this royal purpose, will not human life override it, and outgrow it, and destroy it, or gather it into itself and its own purpose, like the little rift that your hand makes in the water of the strong river? Will it remain as it was planned? How those words, "the everlasting gospel," answer our question! What is there but the word of God, which endures forever? Oh! what is there today in the world which remains unchanged but the salvation of Christ? But did life give to Him the fulfilment of His purpose, as it does to its favourites, granting the prize to Him in its own time as its favour? I do not know anything more quietly grand about Jesus' life than the way in which He chooses the very time when it all shall be done. "My time is not yet come;" "I lay down My life of Myself"; "I must work today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected," He says, conscious of controlling the time completely. But how His Mastership grows upon us! Still let me go on to show you how His great purpose is independent of human life. Life is not indispensable to it as to our purpose. He can fulfil His purpose in loss of life, and by loss of life. "I lay down My life of Myself. This commandment have I received of My Father." The Divine purpose is not lost, but won, by passing into death. "I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto Me." How little is human life necessary to His purpose, who died that we might live! How little dependent on this human existence is that love of God which came from heaven, which has heaven's life, which is greater than death, which survives the loss of earthly life! There is but one more addition. "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Here is the highest and last sign of the Master. Can you not see how the river of life flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, where Christ, the ascended God-man, sits, who has taken human life again? Christ would take us all into His great purpose. Follow your own human purposes alone, and then, indeed, life is your master. But become our Lord's follower, have a share in His purpose, have a real part and place in the salvation of Christ, and then you, too, have a superiority to life, a mastery of life. Then you, too, are living for an aim which life did not give you; an aim which life cannot modify or destroy; an aim which will be fulfilled in its own chosen time of heavenly happiness; an aim that can survive death and the loss of human life; an aim which, in a resurrection, will be able by its power to resume life as its obedient servant.

(Fred. Brooks.)

---

---

KJV: I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

WEB: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.