» F. W. Lewis, The Work of Christ, 86.
298 THE CROWNED CHRIST
dewy darkness. We can understand but little of what this majestic promise of sovereign manhood may mean. But the fragrance, if not the sight, of that gorgeous blossom is wafted to us. We know that " the upright shall have dominion in the morning." We know that to His servants authority over ten cities will be given. We know that we shall be " kings and priests to God." The fact we know, the contents of the fact we wait to prove. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Enough that we shall reign with Him, and that in the kingdom of the heavens dominion means service, and the least is the greatest.^
(1) "For every man." The virtue of Christ's cross is for all. Criminals may put themselves outside the pale of human sympathy easily enough. Their misdeeds may slay the sentiment of pity for them even in the heart of the most pitiful. Society, horrified and revolted by their evil doing, may with one voice demand the full penalty of the law. Yes, and even a mother's love, the divinest thing on earth, may not be deep enough to condone the evil. Man by his sin may put himself outside the circumference of the tenderest human affection, beyond the range of the most pitiful human compassion. But no sinner can out- range the infinite love of God. His compassions flow beyond the widest and wildest wanderings of man's transgressions. His tender love is deeper than the lowest depths of vice and wicked- ness. And the death of the Crucified One is gloriously sufficient to atone for the sins of every member of our sinful race.
^ I do find the love of God is the only power in the universe to accomplish any result. All must be the Devil's, if it were not at work. Shall it not in some way or other vindicate aD to itself ? I wish to think awfully on the question, confessing with trembling that there is an unspeakable power of resistance in our wills to God's love — a resistance quite beyond my understanding or any understanding to explain — and not denying that this resistance may be final, but still feeling myself obliged when I trust God thoroughly to think that there is a depth in His love below all other depths ; a bottomless pit of charity deeper than the bottomless pit of evil. And I answer that to lead people to feel that this is a ground for them to stand upon is the great way of teaching them to stand. They are not made to hang poised in the air, which is the position I fear of a good many religious people, in a perpetual
^ Alexander Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 185.
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land of mist and cloud, never seeing the serene heaven, nor feeling the solid earth. " God is in the midst of us, therefore we cannot be moved." What might there is in these words ! ^
(2) Christ's crown and ours are in the last resort the fruits of grace. This was granted to Him — this awful eminence, this sole right and power to taste death for every man, was granted to Him " by the grace of God." It was by God's gracious act and permission that He was welcomed back into the eternal Sonship. He had lived with the Father in eternity before He came to earth, and He went back not only Son of God but Son of Man. He went back the Head of our race. He went back our Brother. He went back, as He is called in this letter, the Leader whose followers we are. We have gained a place in the fellowship of the eternal suffering; our blood is there shed, mingled indis- tinguishably with the blood of God. We see not yet all things won and conquered, but we see this : that from our cradle, and our weakness, and our frailty, and our strife, Jesus has gone into the perfect suffering of God our Saviour, and man with God is on that awful throne. By the grace of God it has been granted. We have been taken into the veriest Divinity, for there is no Divinity ever imagined by man comparable with the Divinity that is revealed in the suffering of God ; and we in Jesus Christ have been united with the very heart of the mystery of God Himself. Many things — all good things — come from the grace of God, which giveth all ; and St. Paul tells us it has been " granted " to us not only to believe, but also to suffer (Phil. i. 29). The word there is the same as the word here — the word "grace." God's highest gift is not the gift of all enjoyment, it is not the gift of all peace and blessedness ; the highest gift of God is the gift of the fellowship of suffering, whereby we are raised into the society and friendship and likeness of no less an One than the Eternal God, who thereby becomes, as He never was before, our Father ; thereby we become, as never before, His children.
^ I have so much cause for wonder at the human as well as