"were moved with indignation concerning the two brethren." Jesus was very patient with them. Looking beyond their foolish desire He prophesied that they should indeed drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism, and closed with a general exhortation to the twelve to lay aside ambition, saying, "Whosoever would be great among you shall be your minister: and whosoever would be first among you shall be servant of all. For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Mark x. 43-45.) Poor human nature! The only evident effect so far of the high privilege accorded to the three foremost apostles has been to beget rivalry and jealousy between them. The Sons of Thunder display an intolerance and self-seeking which excite the anger of the others; Peter, we may be sure, included, since Peter was the person whose primacy was threatened. Peter had not yet reached the point of willing self-abnegation--far from it, as we shall presently see. Our Lord's object-lesson by means of a little child has, as yet, no result in the character of the "Prince of the Apostles." He was not prepared to exhibit the spirit of a little child, or to conform his own disposition to the heart of a little child. He was, as yet, unable to conceive how the first could be last, or how the master of all could be servant of all. The favour shown to him by his Divine Master has hitherto served but to raise him in his own estimation. From this point we shall see that only through the experiences of humiliation and failure was Peter able to attain to the true idea of Christian service. The point at which we have now arrived is one of the most instructive in the New Testament record of our Lord's view of true manhood. It is frequently supposed that personal ambition is an essential to the progress of society. Great thinkers, before and after Christ, have agreed in recognising that this particular passion has been an instrument in the advancement of society, and hence has served a useful purpose. Before Christ the only alternative to this view seems to have been that of the duty of quiescence, and long after Christ the same theory has been very commonly held. As examples of the former view the reader has only to call to mind the sentiment of Homer's immortal epic, or the odes of Pindar, in order to see that ambition was regarded as the motor quality of heroism. Where this selfish passion was regarded as an evil and renounced in favour of a supposedly higher theory of life, the result nearly always took the form of asceticism or withdrawal from active service in the world. No _via media_ was thought of as possible between thorough-going ambition and the ... fugitive and cloistered virtue,