Him' and you will be right. 'Follow Him' and you will be blessed. Do
as Christ did, or as according to the best of your judgment it seems
to you that Christ would have done if He had been in your
circumstances; and you will not go far wrong. 'The Imitation of
Christ,' which Thomas a Kempis wrote his book about, is the sum of all
practical Christianity. 'Follow Me!' makes discipleship to be
something more than intellectual acceptance of His teaching, something
more than even reliance for my salvation upon His work. It makes
discipleship--springing out of these two--the acceptance of His
teaching and the consequent reliance, by faith, upon His word--to be a
practical reproduction of His character and conduct in mine.

It is a call to communion. If a man follows Christ he will walk close
behind Him, and near enough to Him to hear Him speak, and to be
'guided by His eye.' He will be separated from other people, and from
other paths. In these four things, then--Faith, Obedience, Imitation,
Communion--lies the essence of discipleship. No man is a Christian who
has not in some measure all four. Have you got them?

What right has Jesus Christ to ask me to follow Him? Why should I? Who
is He that He should set Himself up as being the perfect Example and
the Guide for all the world? What has He done to bind me to Him, that
I should take Him for my Master, and yield myself to Him in a
subjection that I refuse to the mightiest names in literature, and
thought, and practical benevolence? Who is this that assumes thus to
dominate over us all? Ah! brethren, there is only one answer. 'This is
none other than the Son of God who has given Himself a ransom for me,
and therefore has the right, and only therefore has the right, to say
to me, "Follow Me."'