The Call
Hymn by William Pierson Merrill (1911)
1 Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things;
Give heart and soul and mind and strength To serve the King of kings.
2 Rise up, O men of God! His kingdom tarries long; Bring in the day of brotherhood, And end the night of wrong.
3 Rise up, O men of God! The Church for you doth wait, Her strength unequal to her task; Rise up and make her great.
4 Lift high the cross of Christ; Tread where His feet have trod; As brothers of the Son of man, Rise up, O men of God!
“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship
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