but persist on
following the beckoning hand. And it means too, that there will be in a
secondary, a minor sense, a redemptive value in my suffering. That
suffering will be a real thing in completing the work of some man's
redemption.

Listen to Paul. He has been writing to the Corinthian Christians in much
detail, of the suffering he has been going through of both body and
spirit, and then he adds, "_so then death working in me worketh life in
you_."[75] The same thought underlies that wonderful bit of tender,
tactful pleading in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the same letter.
The same thing is put in a rather startling way in the epistle to the
Colossians,[76] "I ... fill up on my part, in my flesh, _that which is
lacking_ of the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake, which is the
Church."

This fits in with the thought in that word "began" in the beginning of the
book of Acts.[77] In a very real sense our Lord depends upon our faithful
following to supplement among men the great thing which only He could do.
Paul knew _a_ Calvary experience, and Peter and John, and so has, and
will, every one who follows the pierced hand that beckons. Ask Horace
Tracey Pitkin at Paotingfu if he understands this. And the China soil wet
with his blood gives answer, and so do the lives of those who were won to
Christ through such suffering throughout China. Ask David Livingstone away
in the inner heart of Africa, and those whom no man can number in every
nation, who have known this sort of thing by a bitter, sweet experience,
some by violence, some by the yet more difficult daily giving out of the
life in hidden away corners.

The Underground Road.

And hard following this came _the Burial in Joseph's Tomb_. "Christ died
for our sins and ... He was buried."[78] "Joseph took the body, ... and
laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock, and he
rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb."[79] "The chief priests and
the Pharisees ... went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone,
the guard (of Roman soldiers) being with them."[80]

Out of that sealed tomb comes with the emphasis of action, the emphasis of
death, this word, "except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth by itself alone."[81] The only pathway of life is the
underground road. For our Lord, Joseph's tomb made the death clear beyond
doubt. The tomb was the climax of the death. He was dead and buried. For
him wh