What, then, was His ideal? It was nothing less than complete renunciation of all self-interest without any diminution of energy and effort in service for the good of the world. Jesus repudiated ambition in any form as the dynamic of human aspiration and endeavour. He required from His disciples the completest self-renunciation, combined with enthusiastic self-devotion to the duty of making the world better. To give up self was not to give up service, it was simply the substitution of a higher motive for a lower. This explains in a measure why Christianity came to replace the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies. Stoicism is exhibited at its best, perhaps, in the nobly active life of the greatest of the Antonines. Its ideal was rigid devotion to duty, that of Christ was service inspired by love. Ambition is a mode of self service, yet if we may so expand the meaning as to make it include the Christian principle we might say that in the place of ambition for the sake of self Christianity substitutes ambition for the sake of God. In each case it is love for a person that supplies the motive for the highest human endeavours. But how incomparably grander and stronger is the Christian principle than that which it replaced! All useful or desirable things that men are accustomed to do for themselves Christianity requires them to do for God. When the apostles finally came to understand this new commandment their Gospel became a resistless force, and whenever since their day the Church has succeeded in doing the same Christianity has arisen in newness of life. [1] Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. Sect. xii. VI. Peter Thinks His Sacrifice Complete. His Consequent Expectations.