mistaken, and to affright our industry; He commands us to mark His footsteps, to tread where His feet have stood; and not only invites us forward by the argument of His example, but He hath trodden down much of the difficulty, and made the way easier and fit for our feet. For He knows our infirmities, and Himself hath felt their experience in all things but in the neighbourhoods of sin. And therefore He hath proportioned a way and a path to our strengths and capacities[1]." "He hath left us a pattern that we should tread in His steps," for "he that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." The path wherein we must walk has been pressed by His sacred feet; we are called thither for our own sake; "that we may be partakers of his holiness:" that we may hereafter reign with Him in glory: but He trod it not for Himself, but for us; because He loved us, and had compassion on us in our low estate, and chose rather to leave His Father's throne, and live, and suffer, and die for us, than that we should perish in our sins. And now He bids us follow for the sake of His love who has thus loved us. He sends to us our poor brethren in His own name, and engages that whatever we lay out on them He will repay, "to whom we owe even our ownselves also:" that He will account it to be
- ↑ J. Taylor.—"Exhortation to the Imitation of the Life of Christ." Great Exemplar. Part I. sec. i.
