3. The necessity of sorrow in the life of Christ came from the spiritual character of His work. From the point of view of the disciples, and the popular conception of tlie Messiah, a certain amount of conflict and hardship could readily be allowed for. The Roman could not be expected to yield without a blow ; and as it became clear that opposition from within His own nation was to be expected, temporary disappointments and mis- understandings would fall within the disciples' scheme of the future. They were ready for the hardships of an earthly struggle, i.e. to drink His cup as they understood it. They were not pre- pared for the Cross, because they had not a deep enough conception of His work. Not Roman or Sadducee, but sin, was the enemy ; His end was the establishment of a spiritual and universal empire. The national mission of the Son of David had passed into the world-wide mission of the Servant of Jehovah,t and the means which might have sufficed for the one would no longer serve the other. His work moved on a higher plane, and the weapons of His warfare must be more mys- terious and spiritual than any outward miracle. These weapons were the attractive and atoning power of service, and sorrow. Mk 10*^ shoAvs this clearly. The Cross, the life of service, and all it implied of sorrow and sufliering, were necessary because He had come to give His life a ransom for many (cf. Jn 12^2).
The fuller discussion of the redemptive value of Christ's sufferings belongs to other articles (see art. Atonement). It must suffice here to insist on what all theories admit, that only as Sufferer could He be Saviour. He had come to serve God as man ; therefore suflering was necessary to the perfection of His obedience (He 2^" 5^). It is a fact of history that as the Sufferer He has conquered and drawn men unto Him. The title ' Man of SorroAvs ' expresses, more perhaps tlian any other, His attractive power ; it has been the inspiration of Christian art and music. The thought under- lying it is not primarily any logical theory of Atonement, but the all-embracing sympathy of the God-man. His 'Come unto me' (Mt IP*) is a comfortable Avord, because it is spoken by One ' Avho, in that he himself suffered being tempted,
* From this point of view the nearest parallel to Christ is .Jeremiah, the ' man of sorrows ' of the OT. There, too, we have the one standing in moral solitude over against the whole nation, in bitterness of soul because he knows that none will listen to his message. If, as is often thought, his experience had some share in moulding the conception of Is 53, that chapter forms a close link between him and Christ, pointing back to the one and forward to the other (cf. G. A. Smith, Isaiah, vol. ii. ch. 2, etc.).
t See Workman, The Servant of Jehovah, ch. vii.
SOKROW, MAN OF SORROWS
SORROW, MAN OF SORROWS 6G;
is able to succour them that are tempted' (He 2^^ 31-, cf. Mt 8").
i. The Christian conception of sorrow.— Sorrow is, properly siieaking, a psychological term, being a description of a state of mind. It should be distinguished from the sutt'ering, mental or physi- cal, which may be its occasion. We may define it as the sense of discord, the consciousness that things are not as they should be, in ourselves, or in the world. It is an experience peculiar to man, and can be attributed to animals only by an etibrt of i)ersonilication.* In the fact of its being a privilege peculiar to man we may begin to see .something of its purpose.
' The inherent necessity in man of sorrow . . . testifies that his essential constitution and nature, as man, is something which all this world's life and the conditions of it — by the very fact that they are what they are — cannot match and cannot satisfy. The very constitution of his being and the necessary conditions of his life are out of harmony together. They do not and cannot fit ; the one is too small to satisfy the other. Set man, being what man is, in this world, as the conditions of this world are, and the necessary result is, sooner or later, sorrow ' (.\Ioberly, Sorrow, Sin, and Beauty, p. 7).
To a creature made in the image of God, sorrow is the necessary condition of the struggle against sin in an imperfect world. Given the fact of sin, suffering ceases to be a problem. Only in a perfect state could it be desirable that sorrow and sighing should Hee away.
Hence if sorrow is a privilege of man as a spiritual being, we shall expect to find that it is in a special sense the privilege of the Christian. The second Beatitude (Mt 5^) speaks absolutely of its blessed- ness. The underlying thought seems to be that dissatisfaction with things as they are will lead to the effort to right them. Discord within the soul, I.e. sin, is specially in view. Mourning is the evidence of the break-up of the self-complacency which is the chief obstacle to the Kingdom of God. Sorrow, indeed, is of no value unless it leads to the striving after higher things. There is no blessed- ness attached to vain regret for the past (Mt 25^' 27^, Mk 10'^-), or to the sorrow which finds its vent in weary sleep instead of in prayer (Lk 22^^). The bearing of pain, voluntary or otherwise, is in itself neutral ; it is effective only when it is the means of rooting out from the self a cause of offence (Mt 5-", etc.). The sorrow which is fruitful is the travail MJuch issues in the birth of a new life (Jn 12-'* 16^'). The one object of the purging is that the branch may bring forth more fruit (Jn 15^).