earned for him by the man Christ Jesus who, tasting death for all, delivers us from the fear of death and so from bondage. And this blessing of deliverance from the bondage of the Old Covenant belongs even now to Christians, who have already tasted the powers of the world to come, who are regarded as dissociated from the earthly theocracy and living in view of that which is to come. " The world to come " is in fact the equivalent of the Kingdom of God in the gospel — already present among men, though hitherto as an object of faith, not of sight.
(2) He endured the suffering of death. — There are many ways of winning a crown. Here, and in these great chapters of Eevelation (v., vi.), we see Jesus greeted with unspeakable acclaim because He has suffered. Because of the suffering of death which He bore, because of the way in which He bore it, and because He bore it to such limits of endurance as are possible on earth. He was raised from the cross of shame to the throne of God. If we see truly, He changed the cross of shame into a throne of glory. Because it was He who was crucified, and because of the manner and spirit in which He bore the suffering of death, He Himself transformed and transfigured the shameful cross, until to-day it is the throne from which this universe is ruled.
(3) Because He wears the crown He still drinks man's cup. — " That by the grace of God he should taste death for every man." Jesus did not finish His suffering on Calvary. We have to recall the thought which John taught us when he showed us the Lamb standing in the midst of the throne, as though it had been slain — the thought that Calvary was but the revelation of the suffering of God which was from the foundation of the world, and shall be until earth and heaven are brought to peace and righteousness. So here we have this thought in a new and wondrous form. The crown of Christ and the glory which was awarded Him were like no other crown or glory ever awarded to man. We speak in our poor fashion of Christ's suffering being followed by glory, and we mean a glory according to the fleshly heart of man. We speak of His exchanging the cross for the crown, not knowing that the crown is ever the crown of thorns. This writer tells us that the glory with which He was crowned was the glory of tasting death for every man. That was the glory He won by suffering so supremely on Golgotha. That was the glory He attained to
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because He was very faithful on that narrow cross, even as far as death.
^ The Cross of Calvary was taken into the very heart of the Eternal. From earth there went One who, by the experience of earth, was fitted to regain His place in the fellowship of God. That is the thought that places us at the very heart of what we generally mean by the Atonement. The Saviour who bears the sin of this world to-day is a living crucified Saviour to-day. Wherever there is sin, there is He crucified. So much of it as was possible out of the venom and malice of those Jewish foes fell upon Him in Jerusalem, but to-day He is free from the limits of mortal flesh, and has entered into the eternal Spirit of God once again ; and wherever there is sin, there is Christ crucified. As He died that day for those who then lived, He tastes death in every ruined life, He is crucified in every lustful heart ; His heart is broken in every ruined home, and smitten with pain by our coldness, and failure, and disobedience.^
2. Christ's crown is the prophecy and pledge of man's dominion. He is the pattern of human nature. From Christ comes the power by which the prophecy is fulfilled and the pattern reproduced in all who love Him. Whosoever is joined to Him receives into his soul that spirit of life in Christ which unfolds and grows according to its own law, and has for its issue and last result the entire conformity between the believing soul and the Saviour by whom it lives. It were a poor consola- tion to point to Christ and say, "Look what man has become, and may become," unless we could also say, " A real and living oneness exists between Him and all who cleave to Him, so that their characters are changed, their natures cleansed, their future altered, their immortal beauty secured." He is more than pattern. He is power; more than specimen, He is source; more than example, He is Eedeemer. He has been made in the likeness of sinful flesh, that we may be in the likeness of His body of glory. He has been made " sin for us, that we might be made the right- eousness of God in him."
^ The hopes for the future lie around us as flowers in some fair garden where we walk in the night, their petals closed and their leaves asleep, but here and there a whiter bloom gleams out, and sweet faint odours from unseen sources steal through the