esus' own utterances to the
Father. And may they not be correct? "Forgive us _our_ debts," is a
social confession of sin, in which our Lord may well have joined, just
as He underwent John's baptism of repentance, though Himself sinless, in
order to fulfil all righteousness. He regarded Himself as indebted; His
work, His teaching, His suffering, His death, were not to Him a gift
which He was at liberty to make or to withhold. In the "must" so often
on His lips we cannot miss the sense of social obligation. He was (to
borrow suggestive lines of Shelley's)

a nerve o'er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of the earth.

They came home to His conscience, and He could not shake them off. They
were so many claims on Him; He felt He owed the world a life, and He
was ready to pay the debt to the last drop of His blood. "The Son of man
_must_ suffer and be killed." To the end He cast about for some less
awful way of meeting His obligations. "My Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass away from Me." But when no other alternative seemed
conscientiously possible to Him, He went to Golgotha with a sense of
moral satisfaction. "_Ought_ not the Christ to have suffered these
things?" Without any disturbing consciousness of having personally added
to the world's evil, with no plea for pardon for His own sins on His
lips but only for those of others, His conscience was burdened with the
injustice and disloyalties, the brutalities and failures, of the family
of God, in which He was a Son, and He bore His brothers' sins on His
spirit, and gave Himself to the utmost to end them.

A third disclosure of the cross is the incomparable sympathy of the
Victim. How shall we account for His recoil from the thought of dying,
for His shrinking from this death as from something which sickened Him,
for the darkness and anguish of His soul in Gethsemane at the prospect,
and for the abysmal sense of forsakenness on the cross? His
sensitiveness of heart made Him feel the pain and shame of other men, a
pain and shame they were frequently too stolid and obtuse to feel. He
could not see able-bodied and willing workmen standing idle in the
marketplace because no man had hired them, without sharing their
discouragement and bitterness, nor prodigals making fools of themselves
without feeling the disgrace of their unfilial folly. His parables are
so vivid because He has Himself lived in the experiences of others.
"_Cor cordium_" is the ins