Morning, April 11
Go To Evening Reading
“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.”
Psalm 22:14
Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In soul
and body, our Lord felt himself to be weak as water poured upon the
ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken him with
great violence, had strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve,
and more or less dislocated all his bones. Burdened with his own weight,
the august sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those
six long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness were overpowering;
while to his own consciousness he became nothing but a mass of misery
and swooning sickness. When Daniel saw the great vision, he thus describes
his sensations, “There remained no strength in me, for my vigour was turned into corruption,
and I retained no strength:” how much more faint must have been our greater Prophet when he saw
the dread vision of the wrath of God, and felt it in his own soul! To us, sensations such as our Lord endured would
have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come
to our rescue; but in his case, he was wounded, and felt the sword; he drained the cup and tasted every drop.
“O King of Grief! (a title strange, yet true
To thee of all kings only due)
O King of Wounds! how shall I grieve for thee,
Who in all grief preventest me!”
As we kneel before our now ascended Saviour’s throne, let us remember well the way by which he prepared it as
a throne of grace for us; let us in spirit drink of his cup, that
we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come.
In his natural body every member suffered, and so must it be in the
spiritual; but as out of all his griefs and woes his body came forth
uninjured to glory and power, even so shall his mystical body come
through the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon it.