The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-07-10
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Greatness the Reward off Service

A Mark 1032-45-July 12.
 'The Son of Man came not to be min istered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."-v. 45.
 It was at the close of Jesus ministry. For more than three years the Master had been calling His disciples and in- structing them. They had come to recog- nize Him as the Messiah, the Heir of all Gods promises, the One through whom the Messanic kingdom would be set up W hieh would bless all mankind-the dead as we'll as the living.
 The Master had particularly assured them that if faithful they should sit with Him in Ills throne However. He had hot told them that His kingdom would be a spiritual one, that they would need the change of the first resurrection before they could be sharers in 1t, nor that a whole age would intervene before the kingdom would be established amongst men.
 Jesus did, however, begin to break to the disciples a part of the news necessary for them to know and appreciate lest they should be entirel overwhelmed and discouraged. He told them that He was going up to Jerusalem and that the result would be that He would be delivered tc the Gentiles to be crueified St. Peter always courageous, undertook to correct the Master. But Jesus rebulSed St. Peter saying, Get thee behind Me, adversary thou savorest not of the things of God but of the things that be of men,"
 In this lesson Jesus again brings up the matter of the shame. i'll treatment and death which were to come upon Him This time He included the thought of His resurrection from the dead on, the third day. However, the matter was incompre- l,ensibe to the disciples; and they merely said to themselves, This is another oi those dark sayings of the Master which seem so mysterious.
 Not until after Pentecost did the disci- pies get the full grasp of what Jesus had told them. There the Holy Spirit began { omake plain the divine arrangement that the sufferings of all the church must come first before the giories of the King dom would be revealed and the blessing of the world begin.
 On Right Hand and Left
 Another account tells us that the mother of St. James and St. John came with them and voiced their plea for them They believed that the time for dstribut- ing the honors of the kingdom was very near at hand We need not assume that thees two dear disciples sought the posi- tions closest to the Master merely for ambition's sake. Rather, let us suppose that they loved the Lord very dearly, and therefore thought that they could appre- ciate nearness to Him more than could some Of the others. Indeed, they evi- cently appreciated being near to the Master fin his hours of suffering and deep est experiences, and they were permitted to come nearer than the majority of the twelve. They were glorious characters whom the Lord greatly loved.
 Let us mark carefully the words oi Jesus. He did not say, My dear disciples there will be no throne to sit upon. But on the contrary, He declared that while there would be a throne and places oi preference in that throne, these places would not be distributed by Himself but by the Father
 The Father stands as the representa-. tive of absolute justice, while Jesus stands as the representative of mercy compassion, forgiveness. Places in thu millennial kingdom are not to be giver on the score of mercy or favoritism, bu absolutely on the score of quality.
 "Are Ye Able?'-"My Cup, My
 Baptism?"
 Jesus then made known the fact that any position whatever in the kingdom would require the fulfilment of certain conditions. It Iwas not enough that they had been called to discipleship It wal not enough that they had surrendered all to follow the Lord; that they had been with Him, had heard His teachings and had assented to them, so far as they could understand Him. There must be some. thing more, else they might not get into Master declared. saying, Are ye abl' to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and to te baptized with My baptism?"
 Jesus cup was the one to which Ht