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"Who gave Himself for us." We are familiar with the expression that Jesus Christ gave His life for man. I would not take anything away from the meaning and magnitude of the act of dying; but I should be glad to give more emphasis and power to the fact that Christ gave His life as much while He was living as while He was dying, and that to give life may mean either to use it or to lay it down. All Christ's was a giving. Although comprehensively viewed, it was a single gift, yet it was a continuous gift, developing in every direction. It was a multiple force, ever varying. It was one prolonged giving of Himself away to others. For He lived not for Himself. He sought not His own. He did not employ His reason, nor His moral sentiments, nor His active forces, nor His time, nor His power, for Himself. He honoured His Father, and sought the welfare of men. And the three years, or nearly three, that preceded His death, were in some respects a far more remarkable gift than was the death itself. And in the case of our Divine Lord, He gave Himself both while living and while dying. So the lesson to be derived, it seems to me, from many of the descriptions of Christ's gift of Himself, is a lesson to be pondered in regard to the use of our lives, rather than in regard to their termination. We give our life best, not when we die, but while yet we are living. It is true that men often give their lives in some sense as Christ did; but the more obvious and the more common and attainable imitation of the Lord Jesus Christ is that which seeks to imitate His life, rather than His death. No man can give his life for the world as Christ did. Though a man may give his life for the world, no man can stand sinless; but He did. No man is related to God as was the Saviour. From no man reaches out those threads which connect him with the spiritual and invisible realm as Christ was connected with it. What the other side influence was I have said we do not know; but that there was one we are told. And this we cannot have. Here is a grand official difference. There is a universal character belonging to the influence of the death of Christ which does not and cannot belong to that of any man. Yet, in so far as moral influence is exerted by one's death on his fellow men, it is possible, though in a far lower sphere, and in a far less degree, that we should follow and imitate our Lord by giving our life for one another. Every patriot who is sacrificed, on account of the heroic fidelity of his life, to the public weal; every martyr whose blood is shed as a seal and witness of that holy faith by which he would illumine and bless the world; every prisoner lingering in dungeons, and, with long dying, suffering unseen and forgotten by the multitude for whose welfare his life is spent; every man who goes forth to lands of fever and malaria, and to early death, knowing that he carries religion, civilisation, and liberty to the ignorant at the price of his own life, and cheerfully dies in the harness there, where men, being most degraded and thankless, are on that very account more needful of this very sacrifice of some one — all these, and all others whose death is brought about by persistent adhesion to the welfare of men, follow their Lord not less really because the sphere is lower and narrower. They follow their Lord in death and, through death. While, then, it is possible, literally, to give our life for others, and while we may sometimes be called in the performance of our duty to do it, so that we shall not say that dying for others is antiquated; yet, in the main, if we are to follow our Lord, and to give our lives for others, it must be by the use which we make of those lives. Now, he who devotes the active hours of his life to those spheres to which Providence calls men, is really giving himself for others. When a man stands upon the deck, and at the bench, and by the forge, and in the furrow, and in the colliery — then, if ever, if he has a life to live of true piety, is the time; and there, at the post of duty, is the place. For all the humblest avocations and employments are so arranged that, while they serve to support the actor, they do a hundred times as much for the community as they do for him that follows them. Why, that old smith, rugged himself, almost, as the storms he prepares to combat, hammers morning and night upon the links that form the chain which clasps the cable. It may be, as in the olden time, yet more ponderously, that he in the smithy works on the huge shank of the anchor, and when his summer's work or winter's toil is done, and it is sold for the ship, men ask him, "What got you for your labour?" Nobody ever thinks of saying to him, "You have worked a whole winter to make a gift; what have you given to the community? What has he given? It may not be known for a long time. On voyage after voyage the ship goes, and there lies his gift useless and unsuspected. Some day the ship bears back a thousand precious souls, among them mothers whose flowers lie at home waiting for them to return; fathers, who cannot be spared from the neighbourhood; public men of signal service — the very salt of the times in which they live; heroes and patriots many. Then it is that the storm beats clown and seeks to whelm them all in the sea, and to whelm the community in mourning. Then it is that, when every other effort has been made in vain, the anchor is thrown out. And now the storm rages with increased violence, as if it were yet more angry because it is thwarted. But the good blacksmith's work holds. Sinking far out of sight, and grappling the foundations of the earth, it will not let go. And we, for the first time, see the value of his gift. Every link has been properly welded; and, though the wind howls, and the sea wages a fierce and desperate battle, and the strain is tremendous, the storm passes by, and there rides the gallant ship safe! There is what he gave. He gave a chain, an anchor, to the community, and salvation to the hundreds on board the ship, and joy and peace where the tidings came of souls saved from the remorseless deep. And yet, how many men think simply that he made an anchor, and got so many hundred dollars for it! He made an anchor and saved a hundred lives. So men that fill our houses with conveniences, with comforts, with various instruments by which our time is redeemed to higher and nobler uses; men that make implements — they give my brain a gift. He that makes a machine emancipates me. For if matter cannot be made to toil upon matter, then men must toil upon it. And just in proportion as you make slaves — the only slaves that are fit for this world — machine slaves — just in that proportion you redeem the mind to greater leisure, and to a larger sphere for the moral functions of manhood. And all men that labour thus productively and skilfully are real benefactors of the community. Let every man, then, follow the occupation that God has given him, and understand that in following it he is rendering a service to his fellow men; and let him feel, "I am honoured in these appointed channels of God's providence, that I am permitted to give my life for my fellow men — that is, to live it for them." Now, in proportion as you are noble, in proportion as God has made you wise and stronger than anybody else, in proportion as study and opportunity have refined you and cultured you — in that proportion God requires that you should give the benefit of your gifts and attainments to the whole community. You cannot follow Christ except you do it. Lastly, consider the wickedness of what seldom passes for a wicked life. I am not speaking of a life of vice and of crime, which is the diseased form of all wickedness — wickedness carried to its most morbid condition, But see how, all through life, men of repute, men of standing, men of influence, men that are praised while they live and are eulogised when they die, are men that are given to the lust of pride and vanity. They live inordinately for themselves. They do not actually do harm, it may be; but they are men who are full of ambition all for themselves. They are like the oak which stands in the night to gather dew for itself, and then, if the wind in the morning shakes it, is willing to part with the few drops that it really cannot hold on to; and they call themselves benevolent! There are men that spread abroad gigantic arms, and gather the wealth of heaven — whatever God's bounty can give them — meaning it all for themselves; and a few accidental drops of kindness here and there give them some claim to generosity and benevolence. But where are the channels into which their life flows? Where are the uses that these great forces, concentrating in them, subserve? They live for pride, for vanity — the meanest of all feelings when it is in excess — and for self. They live for everything but others. You need not be a criminal, you need not be a very wicked man, you may neither riot or debauch, you may neither steal nor gamble; and yet, you may live stained, leprous, spotted, and hideous before God, before all holy angels, and before right-thinking men. Your life may be a vast activity; and yet may be a huge vortex where everything tends to that centre — self. And that is to be wicked enough. You do not need to be any wickeder. And yet, you may be as wicked as that, and still be very respectable in the eyes of men. This question comes home very nearly to us. What we are doing for others is to measure our following the Lord Jesus Christ; and not what we are doing of necessity, but what we are doing on purpose, what we are doing consciously, what we are striving to do, what we put our heart and soul into. If there be any of you, then, that desire to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and to give yourselves for others, as He gave Himself for our comfort, living or dying ye are the Lord's — lying or dying, and the one as much as the other.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

WEB: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,