April 30

Cross-Bearing

“Let him … take up his cross daily.”
— Luke 9:23

“All must be forsaken in this world: every link with this world must be broken. The nearer anything is to the heart the more dangerous, the more it must be abhorred. Not that the affections are evil things: but Christ being rejected by this world everything that binds us to earth must be sacrificed for Him. Cost what it may, He must be followed; and one must know how to hate one's own life, and even to lose it, rather than grow lax in following the Lord.”

“The cross we shall have: and what of that? It is a good thing for us; it draws us away from the world; it breaks the will; it delivers from self by cutting, it may be, the next link to the heart. The cross has a delicious power, though not a pleasant thing; it would be no cross if it were.”