The Cost of Service
R. D. Hitchcock, D. D. Luke 8:43-48 And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living on physicians, neither could be healed of any,… I. IN NATURE, WE HAVE WHAT HAS LATELY BEEN TERMED THE PERSISTENCE, OR CONSERVATION OF FORCE. II. THIS LAW OF COST IS ALSO ECONOMIC LAW. In agriculture, what we call the bounty of nature, the gift outright, comes a long way short of what is needed even for merest comfort. The spontaneous products of nature are scanty. So of all industry and useful art. To begin with, there is the cost of raw material, come whence it may, from earth, or sea, or air. Houses, and their furnishing, tax the quarries, the clay-yards and the forests. Our wardrobes suggest cotton-fields, flax-fields, silkworms, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, birds of the air, wild animals of sea and land, from pole to pole. Even wigwams and bearskins are no gratuities. Every coarsest want supplied, every adornment, every luxury, means work. Good things, fine things, cost. III. THIS LAW OF COST IS ALSO MENTAL LAW. Mind is very much more than mere passive capacity; it is vital, organizing force. Learning, rightly apprehended, is not mere passive reception, as of water into a cistern, bringing with it all the accidents and impurities of roof or aqueduct. It is water in oak, or elm, making its way up through living tissue, filtered as it ascends, shaking out its leafy banner, hardening into toughest fibre. IV. BUT THIS LAW OF COST IS PRE-EMINENTLY SPIRITUAL LAW. The so-called passive virtues either are not virtues, or are not passive. Humility, patience, self-denial, and the forgiveness of injuries, are battles and victories. So it has been, and so it shall be, in essence, to the end. Redemption cost infinitely in eternity, and must cost in time. Human history almost began with martyrdom. The blood of righteous Abel inaugurated the stern economy. Scarcely a people have ever been evangelized without the baptism of blood. Scarcely a man has ever been signally useful without the baptism of some great sorrow. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, WEB: A woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her living on physicians, and could not be healed by any,