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I. IN ITS RELATION TO GOD.

1. Our first clear duty is to know and glorify God. He has made, preserved, and redeemed us. It is, therefore, utterly ignoble to ask with how little we may satisfy His claim. A duke of Brittany during a long imprisonment vowed that if he regained his liberty he would give to the Church his weight in gold, and did so conscientiously, for he went into the balance clad in all his armour. When Don Carlos, the son of Philip II., lay ill, he made a like vow, but on his recovery placed himself in the scale clad in damask and fur. We see at a glance which is the more excellent way.

2. We glorify God the most when we come to Him soonest (Ephesians 1:12), with the free-offering of a life unviolated, fresh, and full of all glorious possibilities — far more than we can by laying fortunes at His feet in distant years (Micah 7:1).

II. IN ITS RELATION TO OUR OWN LIFE. It is our business to make the best of our life throughout, and early consecration gives perfection —

1. To our youth. It secures to the full —

(1) The grace of early days. Like the firefly on a flower, or the rainbow above a waterfall, what was already beautiful the grace of God makes doubly so.

(2) The joy of youth. The light-hearted, free joyousness of life's golden dawn is not damped by the fear of God, only conserved and raised.

(3) The spirit of youth. So far from destroying enthusiasm, the love of God only renders more intense and pure the generous fire.

(4) All the beautiful characteristics of youth. The angel John saw in the sun would not dim the light: religion in youth is that angel giving new splendour to life.

2. To our manhood. A wasted youth tells injuriously on the later stages of life. When the trees in the spring-time are nipped by the frost they never quite recover. But early in Christ means a strong, pure, blessed manhood (Lamentations 3:27). It is an unspeakable advantage to serve the apprenticeship of life under Christ. He can make us workmen needing not to be ashamed in that most difficult art — the art of living.

3. To our age. Andronicus and Junia were admirable people to the last. Age is much what we make it, desolate old age being the bitter fruit of self-will and indulgence, a bright old age the fruit of discipline. The French artist Millet used to say to his pupils, "The end of the day is the proof of the picture." That which will bear the test of the twilight hour is true in character as well as in art.

III. IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL DUTY.

1. Early in Christ we best serve our generation. Andronicus and Junia were famous workers in their generation. As a rule the world can owe but little to men saved in the eleventh hour. At eventide we hear men say, "Well, it is too late to make a good day's work of a bad one."

2. None who in early life devote themselves to Christ ever live to regret having done so. Protracted investigation only shows them the reality of the rock on which they have built; the experiences of life only prove the preciousness of Christ's truth and grace; the sorrows of life only cause them to cherish with profounder satisfaction the consolations and hopes of faith.

3. None who in later life devote themselves to Christ but wish they had done so earlier. Was not this really the wish of Paul here? Andronicus and Junia were rejoicing in Christ while he was haling men and women to prison.

4. That portion of our life which had no spiritual experience in it we feel was lost, no matter our worldly delights, knowledge, wealth, social triumphs. Pontius, the biographer of , passes by the early period of his history with the remark that a man's actions should be recorded not from the time of his first, but of his second birth (Romans 6:20, 21).

5. Few who finally fail to devote themselves to Christ but feel that the fatal mistake of their life was their early neglect of Christ.

(1) The external difficulties of beginning multiply with time, until in the course of years they become apparently insurmountable. The aged sinner is conscious that the gossamer thread which once held him from Christ has become an iron fetter, and the rivulet separating from the great inheritance a river.

(2) The internal difficulties increase — the failure of sensibility, will-power, etc., renders the beginning of a new life almost incredible to him who has for years resisted the Holy Ghost. It is always difficult to make the great renunciation, but the initial difficulty is never less than in life's opening years (1 John 2:14; Proverbs 8:17; Isaiah 26:9).

(W. L. Watkinson.)

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KJV: Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour on us.

WEB: Greet Mary, who labored much for us.