No human being can imitate our Lord in that supreme act of self-surrender to His Father’s will, by which He abandoned all His right and power to avenge Himself on His enemies, and became the supreme victim, and therefore atonement, for human sin. But it is possible for men to follow Him in the course of action which brought Him to that awful decision and agony. “He resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” So far as we strive against sin and evil, whatever the consequences to ourselves, we are following Him to the foot of the Cross. It is not the mere endurance of suffering, the mere surrender of life in itself, which renders us followers of our Lord in His sacrifice: men have endured much and sacrificed much for more or less selfish reasons, for ambition or for military glory and power. But the essence of our Lord’s sacrifice was that it was made in the cause of righteousness and truth only. “To this end was I born,” He said, “and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” We are following Him so far as in all our words and acts we are bearing witness unto the truth. That witness may at any time involve suffering and death. God has so constituted mankind that few great causes have ever been finally won without the voluntary sacrifice of life. That sacrifice may sometimes be made, like that of our Lord and of the martyrs, by the voluntary endurance of the cruel penalties inflicted by the enemies of the truth; or it may be endured in obedience to the claim of lawful authorities that we should take up arms and offer our lives, in defence of some righteous cause. Men may act in our Lord’s spirit if they submit to wrong in their own persons, rather than avenge themselves. But the authorities who, as St. Paul says, are the ministers of God, are bound to protect those committed to their charge, and for that purpose have a right to call upon those under them to use the sword at their command to defend the right. In so using the sword at the command of their rulers, at whatever cost to themselves, they also are acting in Christ’s spirit, because they are upholding righteousness and asserting the truth in the manner required by their duty. To all forms of organized sin the witness of the Jewish sacrifices holds good. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” That, so long as the present dispensation lasts, is the unalterable law of God’s Will and Word. Soldiers, therefore, who are obeying a lawful command in defence of the right, are offering their lives in the spirit in which Christ endured the Cross, and may claim the comfort of being fellows with Him in the “holy war” of right against wrong.