merely as a great prophet, but as the Son
of the Living God, then they understood His conduct, and saw that it
behoved an only-begotten Son of God to suffer all these things
before He entered into His glory.

But the Scribes and Pharisees never understood it. To the last they
were puzzled and angered by that very self-sacrifice of His: He
must be a bad man, they thought, or He would not care so much for
bad men. 'A friend of publicans and sinners,' they called Him,
thinking that a shameful blame to Him, while it was really the very
highest praise. But if they could not see the beauty of His
conduct, can we? It is very difficult, I do not deny it, my
friends, for the selfishness and pride of fallen man: it is
difficult to see that the Cross was the most glorious throne that
was even set up on earth, and that the crown of thorns was worth all
the crowns of czars and emperors: difficult, indeed, not to stumble
at the stumbling-block of the Cross, and to say, 'It cannot surely
be more blessed to give than to receive:' difficult, not to say in
our hearts, 'The way to be great is surely to rise above other men,
not to stoop below them; to make use of them, and not to make
ourselves slaves to them.' And yet the Lord Jesus Christ did so; He
took on Himself the form of a slave, and made Himself of no
reputation: and what was fit and good for Him, must surely be fit
and good for us. But it is a hard lesson to the pride of fallen
creatures: very hard. And nothing, I believe, but sorrow will
teach it us: sorrow is teaching it some of us now. We surely are
beginning to see, that to suffer patiently for conscience sake, is
the most beautiful thing on earth or in heaven: we begin to see
that those poor soldiers, dying by inches of cold and weariness,
without a murmur, because it was their Duty, were doing a nobler
work even than they did when they fought at Alma and Inkermann; and
that those ladies who are drudging in the hospitals, far away from
home, amid filth and pestilence, are doing, if possible, a nobler
work still, a nobler work than if they were queens or empresses,
because they have taken up the Cross and followed Christ; because
they are not seeking their own good, but the good of others. And if
we will not learn it from those glorious examples, God will force us
to learn it, I trust, every one of us, by sorrow and disappointment.
Ah, my friends, might one not learn it at once, if one would but
open one's