t did He forget His true mission and sell His spiritual
throne, hard-earned as it was to be, for popular applause and the
glories of the hour. Knowing that only by the utmost of human goodness
and self-sacrifice, and by the utmost of trial and endurance, could any
true and lasting rule of men be gained, He chose this path and the
throne it led to. With the most comprehensive view of the kingdom He was
to found, and with a spirit of profound seriousness strangely
contrasting in its composed and self-possessed insight with the blind
tumult around Him, He claimed the crown of the Messiah. His suffering
was not formal and nominal, it was not a mere pageant; equally real was
the claim He now made and which brought Him to that suffering.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This is more distinctly brought out in the Synoptic Gospels than in
St. John: cp. Mark xi. 1-10.

[5] According to the reading of the scene by St. John, the people needed
no prompting.

III.

_THE CORN OF WHEAT._

"Now there were certain Greeks among those that went up to worship
at the feast: these therefore came to Philip, which was of Bethsaida
of Galilee, and asked him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip
cometh and telleth Andrew: Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell
Jesus. And Jesus answereth them, saying, The hour is come, that the
Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by
itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth
his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal."--JOHN xii. 20-26.

St. John now introduces a third incident to show that all is ripe for
the death of Jesus. Already he has shown us that in the inmost circle of
His friends He has now won for Himself a permanent place, a love which
ensures that His memory will be had in everlasting remembrance. Next, he
has lifted into prominence the scene in which the outer circle of the
Jewish people were constrained, in an hour when their honest enthusiasm
and instincts carried them away, to acknowledge Him as the Messiah who
had come to fulfil all God's will upon earth. He now goes on to tell us
how this agitation at the centre was found rippling in ever-widening
circles till it broke with a gentle whisper on the shores of the isles
of the Gentiles. This is the significance which St. John sees in t