e Cross is attractive as
an open door to the prisoner, or the harbour-heads to the storm-tossed
ship.

Let us not suppose, then, that we are not welcome to Christ. He desires
to draw us to Himself and to form a connection with us. He understands
our hesitations, our doubts of our own capacity for any steady and
enthusiastic loyalty; but He knows also the power of truth and love, the
power of His own person and of His own death to draw and fix the
hesitating and wavering soul. And we shall find that as we strive to
serve Christ in our daily life it is still His death that holds and
draws us. It is His death which gives us compunction in our times of
frivolity, or selfishness, or carnality, or rebellion, or unbelief. It
is there Christ appears in His own most touching attitude and with His
own most irresistible appeal. We cannot further wound One already so
wounded in His desire to win us from evil. To strike One already thus
nailed to the tree in helplessness and anguish, is more than the hardest
heart can do. Our sin, our infidelity, our unmoved contemplation of His
love, our blind indifference to His purpose--these things wound Him more
than the spear and the scourge. To rid us of these things was His
purpose in dying, and to see that His work is in vain and His sufferings
unregarded and unfruitful is the deepest injury of all. It is not to the
mere sentiment of pity He appeals: rather He says, "Weep not for Me;
weep for yourselves." It is to our power to recognise perfect goodness
and to appreciate perfect love. He appeals to our power to see below the
surface of things, and through the outer shell of this world's life to
the Spirit of good that is at the root of all and that manifests itself
in Him. Here is the true stay of the human soul: "Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden"; "I am come a light into the world:
walk in the light."

V.

_RESULTS OF CHRIST'S MANIFESTATION._

"But though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed
not on Him: that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled,
which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath
the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this cause they could not
believe, for that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and
He hardened their heart; lest they should see with their eyes, and
perceive with their heart, and should turn, and I should heal them.
These things sai