rk which Thou
hast given Me to do." It is so when He comes to die. Among the Seven
Words from the Cross we are struck by one significant omission: the
dying Sufferer utters a cry of physical weakness--"I thirst"--but He
makes no acknowledgement of sin; He prays for the forgiveness of
others--"Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do"--He asks
none for Himself. The great Augustine died with the penitential Psalms
hung round his bed. Fifty or sixty times, it is said, did sweet St.
Catharine of Siena cry upon her deathbed, _Peccavi, Domine miserere
mei_, "Lord, I have sinned: have mercy on me." But in all the prayers of
Jesus, whether in life or in death, He has no pardon to ask, no sins to
confess.

We are thus brought to the fact upon which of recent years so much
emphasis has been justly laid, namely, that nowhere throughout the
Gospels does Christ betray any consciousness of sin. "Which of you," He
said, "convicteth Me of sin?" And no man was able, nor is any man now
able, to answer Him a word. But the all-important fact is not so much
that they could not convict Him of sin; _He could not convict Himself._
Yet it could not be that He was self-deceived. "He knew what was in
man;" He read the hearts of others till, like the Samaritan woman, they
felt as though He knew all things that ever they had done. Was it
possible, then, that He did not know Himself? Not only so, but the law
by which He judged Himself was not theirs, but His. And what that was,
how high, how searching, how different from the low, conventional
standards which satisfied them, we who have read His words and His
judgments know full well. Nevertheless, He knew nothing against Himself;
as no man could condemn Him neither could He condemn Himself. Looking up
to heaven, He could say, "I do always the things that are pleasing to
Him."[18] This is not the language of sinful men; it is not the language
of even the best and holiest of men. Christ is as separate from "saints"
as He is from "sinners." The greatest of Hebrew prophets cries, "Woe is
me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in
the midst of a people of unclean lips." The greatest of Christian
apostles laments, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of
the body of this death?" Even the holy John confesses, "If we say that
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It is
one of the commonplaces of Christian experience that the