ii. Our Suffering.
1. If a Christian has the Spirit and life of Christ in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really, by the same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes will produce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which — Divine, pure, incapable of copy and repetition — in one aspect has ended for ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, by every Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world ; who in like manner has to resist temptation ; who in like manner has to stand, by God's help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new nature of him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.
2. It is not meant that we are to go about seeking pain. It is not meant that we are to refuse the healthy joys that life offers us. It is not meant that we should be morbid and sentimental. It is meant that we should set ourselves to follow,
1 Bishop Gore. 2 S. D. Gordon, Quiet Tails on Service, 103.
504 JOINT-HEIRS WITH CHRIST
deliberately and really, if imperfectly, the principles of our Lord's living.
3. Of what nature, then, are the things which we have to suffer with Christ if we are to be glorified with Him ?
(1) Trial. Let us learn to look upon all trial as being at once the seal of our sonship, and the means by which God puts it within our power to win a higher place, a loftier throne, a nobler crown, a closer fellowship with Him " who hath suffered, being tempted," and who will receive into His own blessedness and rest them that are tempted. " The child, though he be an heir, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all ; but is under tutors and governors." God puts us here in the school of sorrow under that stern tutor and governor, and gives us the opportunity of "suffering with Christ," that by the daily crucifixion of our old nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and change, there may grow up in us a still nobler, purer, and more perfect Divine life ; and that we may so be made capable — more capable, and capable of more — of that inheritance for which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness is faith in His name.
^[ Amidst the eternal illusion that envelops us one thing is certain — suffering. It is the corner-stone of life. On it humanity is founded as on a firm rock. Outside it all is uncertainty. It is the sole evidence of a reality that escapes us. We know that we suffer, and we know nothing else. This is the base on which man has built everything. Yes, it is on the parched granite of pain that man has firmly established love and courage, heroism and pity, the choir of august laws and the procession of terrible or delightful virtues. If that foundation failed them, those noble figures would all crash together into the abyss of nothingness. Humanity has an obscure consciousness of the necessity of pain. It has placed pious sorrow among the virtues of the saints. Blessed are those that suffer, and woe to the fortunate ! Because it uttered that cry the Gospel has reigned over the world for two thousand years.1
T[ Do you remember a picture at Milan in which there is a little cherub trying to feel one of the points of the crown of thorns with his little first finger ? It seemed to me a true thought.2
1 Anatole France, On Life and Letters, 294.
2 B. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present, Day, 3.
ROMANS viii. 17 505
(2) The Opposition of the World. Part of Christ's sufferings sprang from the contact of the sinless Son of Man with a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence and leaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for the Father. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ's sufferings as the Son of God in the midst of sinful men would have been deep and real. " O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I suffer you ? " was wrung from Him by the painful sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs. " Oh that I had wings like a dove ! for then I would fly away and be at rest," must often be the language of those who are like Him in spirit, and in consequent sufferings.
Tf If we are living in oneness of spirit with our Lord, the same thing will sadden us that saddened Him — the world's unbelief and sin, its cold contempt of God, its hard rebellion against His law, its proud rejection of His love. To share in His mission to the world will inevitably make us sharers in His trials and sufferings as we carry it on. We shall need to bear reproach as He did, to be evil-spoken-of as He was, to be shunned and stigmatized for the same faithfulness to God that drew down on Him the enmity of men. The more perfectly we resemble Him, the more of this we shall have to endure ; indeed, the measure in which we suffer it will often be an accurate measurement of the extent of our resemblance to our Lord.1