"Except you hate your father, mother,"
Christ told the crowd that walked behind,
"Yea, wife and children, sister, brother,
And be of life itself resigned,
You dare not My disciple be;
Such is the cost to follow Me."
Christ spoke this melancholy saying
That we might first bethink the cost,
Lest when the cross on us is weighing
We sorely mourn what we have lost.
Risk, if you dare, your flesh and blood;
But only One can be your God.
If this be food for troubled thinking,
Consider what Philemon gained:
A slave, in brotherhood now linking,
By bonds of faithful love constrained.
You, too, with saints from far and near,
Are brothers true and sisters dear.
Let tyrant prate and pirate plunder;
The loss of all things might we bear:
Christ's is the yoke we labor under,
And well He knows our load of care.
He will repay ten-thousandfold
Our present tears with bliss untold.
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