d operative causes of our redemption as
they were? Oh no. Conceive of that perfect, sinless, really human
life, in the midst of a system of things that is all full of
corruption and of sin; coming ever and anon against misery, and
wrong-doing, and rebellion; and ask yourselves whether part of His
sufferings did not spring from the contact of the sinless Son of man
with a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence and
leaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for the
Father. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ's
sufferings as the Son of God in the midst of sinful men would have
been deep and real. 'O faithless generation, how long shall I be with
you? how long shall I suffer you?' was wrung from Him by the painful
sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs. 'Oh that I had
wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest,' must
often be the language of those who are like Him in spirit, and in
consequent sufferings.

And then again, another branch of the 'sufferings of Christ' is to be
found in that deep and mysterious fact on which I durst not venture
to speak beyond what the actual words of Scripture put into my
lips--the fact that Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a
man, through temptation and by suffering. There was no sin _within_
Him, no tendency to sin, no yielding to the evil that assailed. 'The
Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.' But yet, when
that dark Power stood by His side, and said, 'If thou be the Son of
God, cast Thyself down,' it was a real temptation and not a sham one.
There was no wish to do it, no faltering for a moment, no hesitation.
There was no rising up in that calm will of even a moment's impulse
to do the thing that was presented;--but yet it was presented, and,
when Christ triumphed, and the tempter departed for a season, there
had been a temptation and there had been a conflict. And though
obedience be a joy, and the doing of His Father's will was His
delight, as it must needs be in pure and in purified hearts; yet
obedience which is sustained in the face of temptation, and which
never fails, though its path lead to bodily pains and the
'contradiction of sinners,' may well be called suffering. We cannot
speak of our Lord's obedience as the surrender of His own will to the
Father's, with the implication that these two wills ever did or could
move except in harmony. There was no place in Christ's obe