But, hard as such imitation is, it is only one case of a general
principle. Discipleship is likeness to Jesus Christ in conduct.
There is no discipleship worth naming which does not, at least,
attempt that likeness. What is the use of a man saying that he is
the disciple of Incarnate Love if his whole life is incarnate
selfishness? What is the use of your calling yourselves Christians,
and saying that you are followers of Jesus Christ, when He came to
do God's will and delighted in it, and you come to do your own, and
never do God's will at all, or scarcely at all, and then reluctantly
and with many a murmur? What kind of a disciple is he, the habitual
tenor of whose life contradicts the life of his Master and disobeys
His commandments? And I am bound to say that that is the life of an
enormously large proportion of the professing disciples in this age
of conventional Christianity.

'The disciple shall be as his master.' Do you make it your effort to
be like Him? If so, then the saying is not only a law, but a
promise, for it assures us that our effort shall not fail but
progressively succeed, and lead on at last to our becoming what we
behold, and being conformed to Him whom we love, and like the Master
to whose wisdom we profess to listen. They whose earthly life is a
following of Christ, with faltering steps and afar off, shall have
for their heavenly blessedness, that they shall 'follow the Lamb
whithersoever He goeth.'

III. And now, lastly, likeness to the Master in relation to the
world is the fate that the disciple must put up with.

'If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much