Morning, April 7
Go To Evening Reading
“O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame?”
Psalm 4:2
An instructive writer has made a mournful list of the honours which
the blinded people of Israel awarded to their long expected King.
1. They gave him a procession of honour , in which Roman legionaries, Jewish priests, men and women, took
a part, he himself bearing his cross. This is the triumph which the
world awards to him who comes to overthrow man’s direst foes. Derisive shouts are his only acclamations, and cruel
taunts his only paeans of praise.
2. They presented him with the wine of honour . Instead of a golden cup of generous wine they offered him the criminal’s stupefying death-draught, which he refused because he would preserve
an uninjured taste wherewith to taste of death; and afterwards when
he cried, “I thirst,” they gave him vinegar mixed with gall, thrust to his mouth upon a
sponge. Oh! wretched, detestable inhospitality to the King’s Son.
3. He was provided with a guard of honour , who showed their esteem of him by gambling over his garments, which
they had seized as their booty. Such was the body-guard of the adored
of heaven; a quaternion of brutal gamblers.
4. A throne of honour was found for him upon the bloody tree; no easier place of rest would
rebel men yield to their liege Lord. The cross was, in fact, the full
expression of the world’s feeling towards him; “There,” they seemed to say, “thou Son of God, this is the manner in which God himself should be
treated, could we reach him.”
5. The title of honour was nominally “King of the Jews,” but that the blinded nation distinctly repudiated, and really called
him “King of thieves,” by preferring Barabbas, and by placing Jesus in the place of highest
shame between two thieves. His glory was thus in all things turned
into shame by the sons of men, but it shall yet gladden the eyes of
saints and angels, world without end.