"they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." Let a man be blessed with splendid physical health and abundant means, and he feels no need of a Saviour. But once let him be robbed of all the materials of worldly happiness, and he is almost compelled to cry, "Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me." "Before I was afflicted," writes the Psalmist, "I went astray: but now have I kept Thy Word. It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn Thy statutes." And so it was after He Himself had passed through suffering, and was about to enter upon the glory of His perfected nature, that the Representative of our race most fittingly asked His disciples whether they did not perceive that the Christ who would be the Saviour of men must be a suffering Man. For otherwise, what comfort could He impart to those who suffer? If He had come as the Jews loved to dream, as a prosperous, triumphant Prince, what benefit would His advent have brought, except to a favoured few, and to them only for a time? What alleviation could He have imparted to the worst ills of life; and how could such an incarnation of worldly prosperity have taught men to look forward to a nobler life beyond? But, descending as our Saviour did to the lowest depths of human misery, though only to rise superior to them all, and pass to the freedom of a glorified manhood, He has bequeathed the most godlike power

it is possible to think of for all who are willing to follow where He has led the way. And so it was no wonder that the Apostle learned to glory in the instrument of his Master's sufferings, which had at first seemed to Him only a badge of infamy; and so it is that Christian parents are glad to have their children

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signed with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter they shall not be ashamed of the faith of Christ crucified, but manfully fight under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto their lives' end." The faith of a Christian, therefore, is not the faith of one who merely believes in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the faith of one who believes in a Christ Who was the true Saviour of men, although He was crucified, because he has faith in the animating principle of His life which was embodied in the prayer, "Not My will, but Thine, be done," and because the cross is now the symbol of death to evil and of life to good, of the crucifixion of all sin and selfishness, and of consecration to all that is pure and excellent and of good report.

Although, therefore, the first aspect of the Cross is suggestive of the mortification and sorrow through which the conquest of our lower nature has too often to be won, its second aspect is suggestive of that new life unto God which is the sure reward of all who have the courage to take it up and wear it in

their hearts. Hence the death and resurrection of our Master were regarded by St. Paul as but two sides of the same action. That which was death to the old Adam was life to the new. And so all those who are faithful to their baptismal vow find it to be. For the preaching of the Cross, or of a Saviour who was crucified, is not merely the preaching of a past event, but the preaching of the principle that underlies all true vigorous life, which is ever throwing off that which is base and worthless, or which has served its time, and working up fresh material which may contribute to its growth towards the perfection of its

nature.

And it is because men must see that this is so, so soon as they have had sufficient experience of life, and that the Cross is the symbol of the only faith that is really suited to the nature of man, and confirmed by the experience of countless generations who have tried it, that our Saviour's words are ever being fulfilled, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." For all men are drawn just in proportion as they understand what the Cross implies.

But this, I need scarcely say, is a very different thing from a superficial reverence for the name and the wood of the cross. It is an easy thing to wear the cross round the neck, and to regard it with sentimental reverence; but it is not so easy to take to our hearts the spirit of Him Who hung upon it-to

give up our own self-will for the will of God, daily, amid all the common events of our daily lives. And yet, unless we do this, our Saviour Himself has told us we are no disciples of His. And the cross itself becomes to us as an idol; for an idol it is when we only gaze upon it in blank astonishment, and do not realize that it is absurd to talk of having faith in a Christ Who was crucified, if we have no faith to crucify our old selfish animal nature, and consecrate ourselves as He did to the will of God.

XII.

Impatience of Uncertainty.

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”—JOB xiii. 15.

It was said of the late Cardinal Newman, that the key to his life might be found in his impatience of uncertainty with respect to the things which he conceived it his duty to believe. He longed for some infallible authority to whom he might go and say, "Only tell me what I am to believe and do, and I am ready to give up my whole life into your hands. I desire to have no will of my own, but to surrender it entirely to the will of God; only save me from this torture of uncertainty whether I ought to believe this or that, whether I ought to think in this way or that.”

Well, as every one knows, the Romish Church boasts that it is in possession of a faith which has always and everywhere been believed as the only true one, and Newman sought peace of mind by joining it; though by what process of reasoning he could come to the conclusion that he might take it for granted that a Church must be regarded as wholly in the right,