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but the self-denial that grieves and galls him. holy man has bitterness in his very soul at the consciousness of being tempted, and, in resisting, is refreshed by a sense of mastery; but the conception of evil in his heart is full of shame and sorrow. And so to the end of life; as men grow in holiness, they grow in a keen sensitiveness of soul which makes temptation all but intolerable. But with the Holy One, who can express the affliction of being the direct subject of temptation? To hate evil as God hates it, and to be tempted as man is tempted, is a humiliation and a sorrow, as of iron entering into the soul. Surely all the after-assaults of spiritual wickedness to destroy His life were as nothing, compared to the awful mystery of being addressed by the allurements of sin. These approaches of the wicked one were made to the will of the Son of God, with the design of withdrawing the consent of His pure soul from His heavenly Father. They were a thousand-fold more hateful and harrowing than the falsehood of His suborned accusers, or the scourging of His sinless flesh.

2. Again; He suffered a perpetual unmingled sorrow for the sins of men. All the day long He was the mark of their gainsaying and contradicEvery form of falsehood, unfair dealing, misinterpretation, insidious address, malignant slander, were heaped upon Him. All around Him He

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beheld a conscious resistance of the light of truth. Very keen is the suffering of false construction from deaf and prejudiced hearts. We know little of it; but that little is enough. There is an unreasonableness about minds heated into opposition which nothing can allay; and minds otherwise not corrupt pass on into obstinate and sinful perversity. All this He suffered so as never man endured before. The lawyers stood up and questioned, tempting Him; the Pharisees and Herodians sought to entangle Him in His talk; others watched His words, that they might find wherein to accuse Him. They gave to His words such refined perversions of meaning, as are manifold more cutting than the blackest falsehood. Slander is characteristically devilish. They reviled Him for the works which they could not deny. "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils." "Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?" Very little can we conceive of this bitter sorrow; for in Him it was dashed with a far bitterer taste of which we can know still less. The sorest and most hateful part of this contradiction was the ingratitude of man. With the full foresight of all He should suffer for their sakes, and the consciousness that all He then suffered was for their salvation, He bore at their hands all manner of wrong and subtilty. And to this sense

of their ingratitude was joined a knowledge of their self-destruction. Sad and woful sight in the eyes of Him by whom all things were made, to see mankind, God's chiefest creature in this visible world, marred from its original holiness, "earthly, sensual, devilish." To Him the depths of this alienation were ever open; He saw the world of enmity against God which had entered the soul of man. And doubtless as He read the whole outline of the fall, in each sinner that reviled, or lay in wait to ensnare Him, so did He look on to the working out of the mystery of iniquity in the new creation of God. "Have I not chosen you twelve? and one of you is a devil." Surely the sin of Judas sat upon His heart before that last hour, when He said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." He carried about with Him the daily burden of the foreseen sins of His enemies and of His friends. All the awful guilt of His last passion, the betrayal, the false judgment, the impious mockery, the scourge, the cross, the self-accursing cry of God's apostate people, were all foretasted; and surely the forsaking of His Apostles, and the denial of Peter, were not veiled from His sight. And He that afterwards, in the isle of Patmos, unfolded before the eyes of St. John the stream of the world's history, and the fortunes of His Church in the world, daily foresaw all things that

should come hereafter. The sin of the world, and, worse than all, the sin of His Church, lay heavily upon Him day by day. Shall we not believe that the schisms, and strife, and mutual conflict of Churches, the dying out of light, the darkening of truth, the growth of false traditions, the falling away of the latter times, and all the chequered train of these eighteen hundred years, were all before His sight in whom dwelt "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily?" Sin in all its mysteries of origin, and depth, and breadth, and all its masteries, even to the end of the world, were spread before Him who was by peculiar title, "the Man of Sorrows;"" the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world." And as He said to the women that bewailed Him, when He was led away to Calvary, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?"1-so doubtless the destinies of His Church on earth stood like a lowering horizon behind the mount of crucifixion. The rents and

1 St. Luke xxiii. 28-31.

wounds of His mystical body already pierced His spirit; and the false kiss which the world should give, to the betrayal of His Church; and the afflictions of His saints, and the tyranny of the strong, and the pampered self-pleasing of soft spirits, and the plagues of worldliness, and the foreseen apostacy of the latter days, all these dwelt heavily on Him to whom all things to come are as things that are.

3. And, once more; He suffered, throughout we know not how large a portion of His whole life, the natural fear of death and of His coming agony. It is strange that, while we dwell chiefly on the thought of His fleshly crucifixion, we so hastily pass by these natural affections of our manhood wherewith He was encompassed. In His lifetime we forget His fleshly nature in His spiritual; at His death we forget His spiritual in His fleshly. Now it is plain that His whole life, so far as revealed to us in the Gospel, was full of a sad and afflicting foresight of the cup which His Father should give Him; therefore He was wont to say, "Mine hour is not yet come;" and therefore He spoke of "the sign of the prophet Jonas;" and of His lifting up. The fear of death is one of the sinless infirmities of our manhood; and this He bare no less than thirst or hunger. We know with what a piercing strength the first glimpses of a coming sorrow shoot in upon us: how they