PHILIPPIANS III. lo, II 349
waterfalls are at play, light awaits the call of science, which can change the midnight darkness of great empires into noonday. And the power of the resurrection, the glory of its unknown forces, its mystic possibilities are not always known in the quiet scenes of life and amidst its pastoral serenities. It was Paul's tribulations that made luminous the force through which the shadows of death and the grave were dispelled. It is through stress and danger, through turmoil and conflict, that the glory of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead manifests itself afresh.^
4. And there is another step. To know the fellowship of His sufferings is to suffer for others as He did.
^ From early childhood we have known and appreciated the sweet German legend of the robin redbreast's crimson feathers. The fable runs that, touched perhaps by that secret attraction which draws all that lives to the Maker of all life, the tiny bird lit upon the Cross of Calvary, and strove with all his force to withdraw one thorn from the crown that was tearing His sacred brow. When success rewarded his efforts, the gush of blood that followed crimsoned his breast, and, in recognition of his action, he was permitted to bear, ever in his body, the " marks of the Lord Jesus." Absolutely certain is it that those who draw forth but one thorn from His brow, by faithfulness, submission, courage, perseverance, self-denial, sympathy, seeking and saving His lost, are lessening His burden, lengthening His arm, rejoicing His heart, sharing in the mystery of His Divine distress, and fulfilling the aspiration of the text, " That I may know him, and the fellowship of his sufferings." ^
^ Blessed, thrice blessed, are ye to whom your Lord has fitted your cross, as He in His righteous but tender love saw best for you. Blessed are ye, if ye but learn your blessedness, whatever cross by nature or by the order of His government He has placed upon you. Ye will not seek high things on whom the lowly cross has been bestowed. But treasure it up for yourselves in your secret hearts, there is no form of it which is not healing — bury it deep there, it will heal you, first through His precious Spirit, and when it has healed you, will through you heal others. Only yield yom-selves to His Fatherly hand who gave it to you, to do to you, in you, through you, His loving and gracious will. To be by suffering made meet for doing well, and to do well and suffer for it, and to suffer in order that we may do well, this is our calling : and if God finds in us thus any secret resemblance to the Son of
' T. G. Selby, Tlic Alienated Crown, 291.
' B. Wilberforce, Following on to Know the Lord, 127.
350 THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION
Man, He may also lift us up towards heaven, and draw men unto us by suffering.^
Yea, through the shadow of an Agony Cometh Eedemption — if we may but pass In the same footprints where our Master went, With Him beside us.
5. How far can one enter into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings ? St. Paul says, to the point of death — " becoming conformed unto his death." The reference is not to the impending death of martyrdom, but to that daily dying unto self and the world which the Apostle exhibited in the heroic self-denials of his resplendent life. This is the climax of what he has said as to fellowship in Christ's sufferings. The last and worst of our Lord's sufferings were in His death. And in this too, St. Paul desired to be made like his Saviour. The plain meaning of his words is, that he would be thankful if, being supported through it all by his Lord's presence and the Blessed Spirit, he were appointed to die by just such a cruel death as Christ died ! But there is another conformity to our Eedeemer's death, which was not absent from His Apostle's mind, and which is more like us. We are made conformable to Christ's death when we die to sin, when we are " dead to sin." And " if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resur- rection." " Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And Paul had attained a real conformity to his Master's death — which yet is within the reach of those whose hands will never be pierced by the nails, and whose limbs will never be stretched upon the Cross when he wrote, " I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."
When Christ let fall that sanguine shower
Amid the garden dew, Oh, say what amaranthine flower
In that red rain upgrew ? 1 E. B. Pusey.