than would have been necessary to leave it. It was not by the
nails through His hands and feet that He was held, nor by the ropes
with which His arms were bound, nor by the soldiers watching Him; no,
but by invisible bands--by the cords of redeeming love and by the
constraint of a Divine design.

Of this, however, His enemies had no inkling. They were judging Him by
the most heathenish standard. They had no idea of power but a material
one, or of glory but a selfish one. The Saviour of their fancy was a
political deliverer, not One who could save from sin. And to this day
Christ hears the cry from more sides than one, "Come down from the
cross, and we will believe Thee." It comes from the spiritually
shallow, who have no sense of their own unworthiness or of the majesty
and the rights of a holy God. They do not understand a theology of sin
and punishment, of atonement and redemption; and all the deep
significance of His death has to be taken out of Christianity before
they will believe it. It comes, too, from the morally cowardly and the
worldly-minded, who desire a religion without the cross. If
Christianity were only a creed to believe, or a worship in whose
celebration the aesthetic faculty might take delight, or a private path
by which a man might pilgrim to heaven unnoticed, they would be
delighted to believe it; but, because it means confessing Christ and
bearing His reproach, mingling with His despised people and supporting
His cause, they will have none of it. None can honour the cross of
Christ who have not felt the humiliation of guilt and entered into the
secret of humility.

III.

Let our attention now be directed to a third group. And again it is a
comparatively small one.

As the eyes of Jesus wandered to and fro over the sea of faces upturned
to His own--faces charged with every form and degree of hatred and
contempt--was there no point on which they could linger with
satisfaction? Yes, among the thorns there was one lily. On the
outskirts of the crowd there stood a group of His acquaintances and of
the women who followed Him from Galilee and ministered unto Him. Let
us enumerate their honoured names, as far as they have been
preserved--"Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses
[Transcriber's note: Joseph?], and the mother of Zebedee's children."

Their position, "afar off," probably indicates that they were in a
state of fear. It was not safe to be too closely identif