A blue bird built his nest Here in my breast. 0 bird of Light! Whence comest thou? Said he : From God above : My name is Love.
A mate he brought one day, Of plumage gray. 0 bird of Night ! Why comest thou ? Said she: Seek no relief! My name is Grief.1
i. Christ's Suffering.
1. Christ's suffering is in one sense solitary. It stands as a thing by itself and unapproachable, a solitary pillar rising up, above the waste of time, to which all men everywhere are to turn with the one thought, " I can do nothing like that ; I need to do nothing like it ; it has been done once, and once for all ; and what I have to do is simply to lie down before Him, and let the power and the blessings of that death and those sufferings flow into my heart." The Divine Eedeemer makes eternal redemption. The sufferings of Christ — the sufferings of His life and the sufferings of His death — both because of the nature which bore them and of the aspect which they wore in regard to us, are in their source, in their intensity, and in their character, and consequences, unapproachable, incapable of repetition, and needing no repetition whilst the world shall stand.
2. But Christ's sufferings may in another sense be shared by us. The very books and writers in the New Testament that preach most broadly Christ's sole, all-sufficient, eternal redemp- tion for the world by His sufferings and death, turn round and
1 Laurence Alma Tadema.
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say to us too, " Be planted together in the likeness of his death " ; you are " crucified to the world " by the Cross of Christ ; you are to " fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ." He Himself speaks of our drinking of the cup that He drank of, and being baptized with the baptism that He was baptized with, if we desire to sit yonder on His throne, and share with Him in His glory.
3. All the suffering that came upon Christ came out of one of two roots — the root of obedience or the root of sympathy.
(1) Obedience. He went out on behalf of the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness. He bore witness to the super- natural truth of His mission before the Sadducees. " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, neither the power of God." He bore witness to the deep, vital, progressive righteousness which had found utterance in the older prophets, but full expression through the lips of the Son of Man. Before the face of the Pharisees He bore witness to the word of truth and righteousness linked by meekness. Again and again the people at large would have come and made Him a King. But the bruised reed would He not break, and the smoking flax would He not quench, nor would He cry nor cause His voice to be heard in the street ; He bore witness to the word of truth and righteousness. All indignation, all opposition, all rejection, even death, came simply out of that obedience to the uttermost of His mission.
(2) Sympathy. His pain came also from deliberate sympathy. Our Lord describes the life of the selfish: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." Look at the grain of corn. It is the very symbol of a selfish life. There it is, a beautiful thing in its golden integument ; but for ever, in its beauty, barren. It must give itself up to let the moisture of the ground rot that integument of its selfish life ; for only in abandoning itself can the vital principle be made to germin- ate within it and bring forth fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. So our Lord lays before us the principle of the selfish life which He, in His own example, utterly abandons. He hid not Himself from His own flesh ; He would not use the supernatural or natural powers of His position to secure
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advantages to Himself. He simply went out, a man among men. He bore their sicknesses and carried their sorrows.1
Tj There is a great word used of Jesus, and by Him, nine times in the Gospels, the word compassion. The sight of a leprous man, or of a demon-distressed man, moved Him. The great multitudes huddling together after Him, so pathetically, like leaderless sheep, eager, hungry, tired, always stirred Him to the depths. The lone woman, bleeding her heart out through her eyes, as she followed the body of her boy out — He could not stand that at all. And when He was so moved, He always did something. He clean forgot His own bodily needs, so absorbed did He become in the folks around Him. The healing touch was quickly given, the demonized man released from his sore bonds, the disciples organized for a wider movement to help, the bread multiplied so that the crowds could find something comforting between their hunger - cleaned teeth. The sight of suffering always stirred Him. The presence of a crowd seemed always to touch and arouse Him peculiarly. He never learned that sort of city culture that can look unmoved upon suffering or upon a leaderless, helpless crowd. That word compassion, used of Him, is both deep and tender in its meaning. The word, actually used under our English, means to have the bowels or heart, the seat of emotion, greatly stirred.2