seen
soldiers and sailors, brave men, stern men, men who have fought in
many a bloody battle, to whom it is a light thing to kill their
fellow-men, or to be killed themselves in the cause of duty; and yet
most full of tenderness, as gentle as lambs to little children and
to weak women; nursing the sick lovingly and carefully with the same
hand which would not shrink from firing the fatal cannon to blast a
whole company into eternity, or sink a ship with all its crew? I
have seen such men, brave as the lion and gentle as the lamb, and I
saw in them the likeness of Christ--the Lion of Judah; and yet the
Lamb of God.

Christ is the Lamb of God; and in him there are the innocence of the
lamb, the gentleness of the lamb, the patience of the lamb: but
there is more. What words are these which St. John speaks in the
spirit?--

'And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and
every mountain and island were moved out of their places; and the
kings of the earth, and the great, and the rich, and the chief
captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman
hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and
said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from
the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of
the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be
able to stand?'

Yes, look at that awful book of Revelation with which the Bible
ends, and see if the Bible does not end as it began, by revealing a
God who, however loving and merciful, long-suffering, and of great
goodness, still wages war eternally against all sin and
unrighteousness of man, and who will by no means clear the guilty; a
God of whom the apostle St. Paul, who knew most of his mercy and
forgiveness to sinners, could nevertheless say, just as Moses had
said ages before him, 'Our God is a consuming fire.'

Now I think it most necessary to recollect this in Passion Week; ay,
and to do more--to remember it all our lives long.

For it is too much the fashion now, and has often been so before, to
think only of one side of our Lord's character, of the side which
seems more pleasant and less awful. People please themselves in
hymns which talk of the meek and lowly Jesus, and in pictures which
represent him with a sad, weary, delicate, almost feminine face.
Now I do not say that this is wrong. He is the same yesterday, to-
day, and for ever; as tender, as compas