^ The most intelligent Christians here cannot see why they should not have everything we have. They have no national costume, and every one of them would like to have clothes just like ours, from hat to shoes, regardless of the fact that they would be miserable in such dress. One of our elders made me fairly shudder, some months ago, by appearing at communion in a thick overcoat. He sweltered in it through a long hot day with a look of suprem.e contentment. It was a white man's coat, and therefore must be right. I suppose I was the only person in the audience who did not envy him.^
5. It is clearly the spirit in which our Saviour acted that we are to follow. The details of our Lord's conduct may be very helpful in showing us how to act in particular situations ; but their highest and most general value consists in their illustrating or interpreting the mind of Christ. As we learn to understand our fellow-men not through metaphysical or ethical descriptions of them, but through the observation of their acts, so is it with our knowledge of the Saviour. It was of infinite importance that
' E. C. Parsous, A Lifefm' Africa, 155.
I PETER II. 21
93
we should know the Son of God to be a living person, and should perceive the Spirit that was in Him to be a fountain of conduct, sending forth the streams of word and deed. Everything He did, every word He spoke, has this value, that it contributes to our knowledge of Him who spoke and acted. The single recorded incident of His boyhood. His conversation with the doctors in the Temple, and what we are told of His submission to His mother and Joseph, and His growing in favour with man as well as with God, cannot be thought of with much profit, except in direct connexion with His nature and character. All the acts of His ministry become most instructive when we see in them so many tokens of the simplicity, the sympathy, the kindness, the fearless- ness of our Lord's character. The actions are most precious and indispensable to bring us into acquaintance with the spirit out of which they proceeded ; and when they have done that, their chief work is done. Thenceforward, what we have to do with is the spirit. ^ It does us good to see how faithful persons have discharged duties which we ourselves are called to perform, those of husbands and wives and parents, of lawyers and merchants, of domestic servants, of Christian ministers ; and how a life that might have been solitary has been glorified, like that of a Mary Carpenter or a Sister Dora, by special enterprises of noble voluntary service. It is clear therefore that the example left us by the Lord Jesus is one which can be largely supplemented by other lives. Good Christians may be said to fill up that which is behind or lacking in the actions and instructions as well as the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church.^
Not Thine the bigot's partial plea,
Nor Thine the zealot's ban; Thou well canst spare a love of Tliee
Which ends in hate of man.
Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may Thy service be ? — Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,
But simply following Thee.
We bring no ghastly holocaust,
We pile no graven stone ; He serves Thee best who loveth most His brothers and Thy own.^ * J. LI. Davies, Social Questions, 115. - John Grecnleaf Whittier.
94 A PROPITIATION AND A PATTERN
ii. Christ is especially an example to sufferers.
1. In His public teaching our Lord made much of patient submission to undeserved wrong. He pronounced those men blessed who suffered for righteousness' sake. " Blessed are ye," He says, " when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely. Eejoice and be exceeding glad." Not in exemption from suffering, but in truthful endur- ance, would His true followers find their peace. " In your patience, possess ye your souls."
2. Our Lord teaches us by His sufferings more than in any other way. By these He reveals to us the love of God : by these He points to the value of heaven. These sufferings are the measure of the gravity of our sins, of the miseries of hell, of the solemnity of life. But, beyond this, our Lord gives us lessons about pain — pain, that stern and strange mystery which follows hard upon the steps of every one of us throughout life, with which, sooner or later, we each of us become familiar, of which, left to ourselves, we know and even can guess so little.
^ Do not complain of suffering ; it teaches you to succour others.!
^ Depend upon it, patient, cheerful acceptance of suffering is a great force which achieves more than many active energies that command the attention of mankind. To take one single instance from the history of this country, how vast has been the effect of the closing scenes of the life of King Charles the First. Had he conquered in his struggle with the Parliament, the English Ee- volution would have been only deferred. Had he died quietly in his bed, whether in exile or as the occupant of a phantom throne, such as at one time after his great defeat his enemies would still have been content to leave him, he would have lived in history as a monarch who had endeavoured to exaggerate the prerogative and to defend the exaggeration, and who, happily, had failed ; and the political and religious history of England might — nay, would — have been widely different. But whatever the mistakes of his earlier life, his last sufferings were covered with a robe of moral glory — the glory of Christian patience. That long imprisonment, borne with such unvarying patient dignity — that refusal at the last to make concessions which did violence to his conscience, but which certainly might have saved his life — above all, that last