^ Prebendary Cross.
84 A PROPITIATION AND A PATTERN
^ To-day I had a long and strange interview with a lady who has recently become a member of the congregation. . . . She aslced me if I had ever known a case of trial so severe as hers. " Yes," I replied : " numbers ; it is the case of all. Suffering is A'^ery common, so is disappointment." " Are our affections to be all withered ? " — " Very often, I believe." " Then why were they given me ? " — " I am sure I cannot tell you that, but I suppose it would not have been very good for you to have had it all your own way." " Then, do you think I am better for this blighting succession of griefs ? " — " I do not know, but I know you ought to be," Wordsworth was lying open on the table, and I pointed her to these lines : —
Then was the truth received into my heart. That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring. If from the affliction somewhere do not grow Honour which could not else have been, a faith, An elevation, and a sanctity. If new strength be not given nor old restored, The blame is ours, not Nature's.
The deep undertone of this world is sadness : a solemn bass occurring at measured intervals, and heard through all other tones. Ultimately, all the strains of this world's music resolve themselves into that tone; and I believe that, rightly felt, the Cross, and the Cross alone, interprets the mournful mystery of life — the sorrow of the Higliest, the Lord of Life ; the result of error and sin, but ultimately remedial, purifying, and exalting.^
2. Christ is the first of sufferers. Nothing was wanting, humanly speaking, to make patience impossible. The natural sensitiveness of His tender frame, the ingenious appliances of torture, such as a crown of thorns pressed down upon the head and the temples, the coarse brutality of His executioners, the vivid consciousness of the Sufferer sustained from moment to moment, a consciousness directed upon all that He was enduring, and upon all also that immediately awaited Him — the continuous succession of varied sufferings without any relaxation throughout His passion, without any one pause or relaxation — this might well have ex- hausted patience. And what His mental sufferings must have been we may infer distantly from the agony in the garden, in which, without any outward cause. His body yielded all the
1 Life, and Letters of F. W. Rolertson, 285.
I PETER II. 21 85
symptoms of a violent convulsion. His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground.
^ If you will read this Epistle of Peter at your leisure, you will see that while, with Paul, he makes the cross of Christ the centre of his teaching, Paul speaks more about His death, and Peter more about His sufferings. Throughout the letters of Peter the phrase runs, and the phrase has come into modern Christian usage almost entirely from this Apostle. That vivid imagination of his, when brought to the contemplation of his Master's trials, supported by his warm heart, which could have said, not once only but always, and with truth, "Lord, thou knowest that I love thee," led Peter to dwell not merely on the single fact of the death, but also on the accompaniments of that awful death, of the mental and physical pain, and especially the temper of the Saviour.
I saw in Siena pictures,
Wandering wearily; I sought not the names of the masters,
Nor the works men care to see; But once in a low-ceiled passage
I came on a place of gloom. Lit here and there with halos
Like saints within the room. The pure, serene, mild colours
The early artists used Had made my heart grow softer,
And still on peace I mused. Sudden I saw the Sufferer,
And my frame was clenched with pain; Perchance no throe so noble
Visits my soul again. Mine were the stripes of the scourging;
On my thorn-pierced brow blood ran ; In my breast the deep compassion
Breaking the heart for man. I drooped with heavy eyelids,
Till evil should have its will; On my lips was silence gathered;
My waiting soul stood still. I gazed, nor knew I was gazing;
I trembled, and woke to know Him whom they worship in heaven
Still walking on earth below.
'vC
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86 A PROPITIATION AND A PATTERN
Once have I borne His sorrows
Beneath the flail of fate ! Once in the woe of His passion,
I felt the soul grow great ! I turned from my dead Leader;
I passed the silent door; The gray-walled street received me;
On peace I mused no more>
3. The sufferings of Christ are inexplicable on any other supposition than that they were for others. They could not be the due reward of personal demerit ; for, if He suffered more than other men justly, He must have been worse than all men ; instead of which He was the best of men, the sinless One in a world of sinners. If then He could not suffer because of personal ill- desert, being wholly free from fault, did He suffer by the unjust decree of Heaven ? That again is an impossible supposition ; for not only would it destroy the righteousness of God, but it would also contradict the experience of Christ Himself in His sufferings. For He never manifests any sense of being unjustly dealt with. Indeed no other explanation of His painful experiences is possible than that which He Himself gives, and which is repeated in the teachings of the Apostles, namely, that He was a sufferer for others ; that He endured voluntarily that which came upon Him, and with a conscious reference to other persons. " The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep " are His own words. The Apostles simply repeat that which Christ felt and declared when they say, as did St. Paul, " Christ died for us," or as St. Peter, "Christ suffered for us." It was this fact that reconciled our Lord to His sufferings and cross ; it was this that led Him to take them up in a voluntary manner.