d
themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of
offence nor defence, that none but very hardened persons can endure the
thought of it. Now this was just our Saviour's case: He had laid aside
His glory, He had (as it were) disbanded His legions of Angels, He came
on earth without arms, except the arms of truth, meekness, and
righteousness, and committed Himself to the world in perfect innocence
and sinlessness, and in utter helplessness, as the Lamb of God. In the
words of St. Peter, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His
mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered,
He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth
righteously[3]." Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty
practised upon brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling
which the history of Christ's Cross and Passion ought to excite within
you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you
may turn any accounts you read of wanton and unfeeling acts shown
towards the inferior animals, let them remind you, as a picture, of
Christ's sufferings. He who is higher than the Angels, deigned to
humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation, as the Psalm
says, "I am a worm, and no man; a very scorn of men, and the outcast of
the people[4]."

2. Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more
strikingly. How overpowered should we be, nay not at the sight only,
but at the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why
so? for the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because
it was so unable to defend itself. I do not like to go into the
details of such cruelty, they would be so heart-rending. What if
wicked men took and crucified a young child? What if they deliberately
seized its poor little frame, and stretched out its arms, nailed them
to a cross bar of wood, drove a stake through its two feet, and
fastened them to a beam, and so left it to die? It is almost too
shocking to say; perhaps, you will actually say it _is_ too shocking,
and ought not to be said. O, my brethren, you feel the horror of this,
and yet you can bear to read of Christ's sufferings without horror; for
what is that little child's agony to His? and which deserved it more?
which is the more innocent? which the holier? was He not gentler,
sweeter, meeker, more tender, more loving, than any little child? Why
are you shocked at the one, w