" 'Take up thy cross,' the Saviour said,
If thou wouldst my disciple be;
Deny thyself, the world forsake,
And humbly follow after me."
In this stanza we are not only told to take up the cross, but we are also told what the cross is. The words, "Deny thyself, the world forsake," show it to be the conscious, constant effort to live so as to deny a selfhood apart from God, and to forsake the world's false beliefs about God, man, and the universe, including the belief of life, intelligence, pleasure, or pain in matter. This can be summed up in the commands, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." This perfection is not dependent on physicality; it is found in spiritual consciousness.
