Like our Master, we must be willing to take up our cross daily, and to be persecuted both for our doctrine and our practice. Well would it be for the Church if there was more of the true cross to be seen among Christians ! To wear material crosses as an ornament, to place material crosses on churches and tombs, all this is cheap and easy work, and entails no trouble. But to have Christ's cross in our hearts, to carry Christ's cross in our daily walk, to know the fellowship of His suiferings, to be made conformable to His death, to have crucified affections, and live crucified lives, — all this needs self-denial ; and Christians of this stamp are few and far between. Yet, this, we may be sure, is the only cross-bearing and cross-carrying that does good in the world. The times require less of the cross outwardly and more of the cross within.
We should observe, secondly, in this passage, hoxo our Lord was crucified as a Kijig.
The title placed over our Lord's head made this plain and unmistakable. The reader of Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, could not fail to see that He who hung on the central cross of the three on Golgotha, had a royal title over His head. The overruling hand of Goi so ordered matters, that the strong will of Pilate overrode for once the wishes of the malicious Jews. In spite of the chief priests our Lord was crucified as " the King of the Jews."
It was meet and right that so it should be. Even before our Lord was born, the angel Gabriel declared to the Virgin Mary, " The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end." (Luke i. 32, 33.) Almost as soon as He was born, there came wise men from tlie East, saying, " Where is He that is born King of the Jews ? " (Matt, ii. 2.) The very week before the crucifixion, the multi-