TI In one of the best and most widely known hymns on the crucifixion of Jesus — Isaac Watts' "When I survey the wondrous Cross" — attention is concentrated upon that pitiful spectacle of suffering, and a challenge is thrown out. The verse reads —
See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown ?
Those were almost the last words of Matthew Arnold, who died suddenly in Liverpool of heart failure on Sunday, April 15, 1888, when on his way to the Landing Stage to meet his daughter returning from America. He had attended Ian Maclaren's church in the morning, and after service he was heard repeating to him- self the words of the hymn which had been sung by the congrega- tion. The hymn had evidently impressed him — and yet, Hellenist as he was, and typical man of culture, he felt the spell and the power of that awful tragedy in comparison with which all other tragedies pale.1
1 Thomas Sanderson, Unfulfilled Designs, 72.
LAMENTATIONS i. 12 165
I know as I know my life,
I know as I know my pain, That there is no lonely strife,
That he is mad who would gain A separate balm for his woe,
A single pity and cover; The one great God I know
Hears the same prayer over and over.
I know it, because at the portal
Of heaven, I bowed and cried, And I said: "Was ever a mortal
Thus crowned and crucified ! My praise thou hast made my blame;
My best thou hast made my worst; My good thou hast turned to shame ;
My drink is a flaming thirst."
But scarce my prayer was said
Ere from that place I turned; I trembled, I hung my head,
My cheek, shame-smitten, burned ; For there where I bowed down
In my boastful agony, I thought of Thy cross and crown —
O Christ, I remembered Thee.1
I.
1. "A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." This title, from the well-known, marvellous fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which tells of the "suffering Servant of Jehovah," has been applied by universal consent of the Christian ages to the Son of God — the Christ who lived on this earth for men, and died broken- hearted through their sin. When did our Lord begin to realize that His earthly career was to be one of sorrow ? We do not know. We should certainly like to think of His childhood as having been happy. Indeed it must have been so : for they alone are happy who are innocent, and the childhood of Jesus was altogether sinless. His very presence in that humble home at Nazareth must have made it happy ; and when He Himself looked back 1 R. W. Gilder, Five Books of Song.
1 66 THE PERFECTION OF SORROW
afterwards upon His childhood, that season of His life must have seemed to Him like a dream of peace and love. Although we cannot tell at what period our blessed Lord had His first experience of heavy sorrow, or His earliest prevision of the cross, we know that when He was only twelve years of age He had already become alive to the singularity of His relationship to God. And we have evidence also that almost at the very beginning of His public ministry He knew that He was to be crucified for the world's sin ; for He spoke of that to Nicodemus and He had referred to it even earlier (John ii. 19, iii. 14). The solemn event must have been foreknown to Him before His ministry began, even before He had left the home of His youth at Nazareth.
Tf The answer of Jesus (" Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? ") to the reproachful question of His mother (in Luke ii. 48) lays bare His childhood's mind, and for a moment affords a wide glance over the thoughts which used to engross Him in the fields of Nazareth. It shows that already, though so young, He had risen above the great mass of men, who drift on through life without once inquiring what may be its meaning and its end. He was aware that He had a God-appointed life-work to do, which it was the one business of His existence to accomplish. It was the passionate thought of all His after-life. It ought to be the first and last thought of every life. It recurred again and again in His later sayings, and pealed itself finally forth in the word with which He closed His career — It is finished !
It has often been asked whether Jesus knew all along that He was the Messiah, and, if not, when and how the knowledge dawned upon Him — whether it was suggested by hearing from His mother the story of His birth or announced to Him from within. Did it dawn upon Him all at once, or gradually ? When did the plan of His career, which He carried out so unhesitatingly from the beginning of His ministry, shape itself in His mind ? Was it the slow result of years of reflection, or did it come to Him at once? These questions have occupied the greatest Christian minds and received very various answers. I will not venture to answer them, and especially with His reply to His mother before me, I cannot trust myself even to think of a time when He did not know what His work in this world was to be.1