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No attempt is made in these words to minimize the sufferings of Christ. That were impossible and superfluous. He is King in the realm of sorrow; peerless in his pain; supreme in his distress. Though earth be full of sufferers, none can vie with our Lord in his. Human nature is limited. The confines of its joys or sorrows are soon touched. The pendulum swings only hither and thither. But who shall estimate the capacity of Christ's nature? And because of it, he could taste the sweets of a joy beyond his fellows, and of sorrow so excessive as to warrant the challenge: "Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." If it be true, as Carlyle says, that our sorrow is the inverted image of our nobility, how deep must the sorrow have been of the noblest of our race! Well may the Greek liturgy, with infinite pathos, speak of his "unknown sorrows."
Shall the sufferings of Christ cause us to reject Christ? Ah, strange infatuation! As well reject the heaven because of its sun, or night because of the queenly moon; or a diadem because of its regal gem; or home because of mother. The sufferings of Christ are the proudest boast of the Gospel. He himself wears the insignia of them in heaven; as a general, on the day of triumph, chooses his choicest order to wear upon his breast. Yes, and it was the deliberate choice of him, "for whom are all things, and by whom are all things "-and who must, therefore, have had every expedient at his command-that the path of suffering should be his Son's way through our world. Every track through creation is as familiar to Omniscience as the tracks across the hills to the gray-haired, plaided shepherd. Had he wished, the Father might have conducted the Son to glory by another route than the thorny, flint-set path of suffering. But the reasons for this experience were so overwhelming that he could not evade them. Nothing else had been becoming. Those reasons may be stated almost in a sentence.
Our Father has on hand a work greater than his original creation. He is "bringing many sons unto glory." The way may be rugged and tedious; but its end is glory. And it is the way along which our Father is bringing us; for, since we believe on the Son, we have the right to call ourselves sons (John i. 12). And there are many of us. Many sons, though only one Son. We do not go solitarily along the narrow way. We are but part of a multitude which no man can number. The glory of which we have already spoken, and into which Jesus has entered, is not for him alone, but for us also. "Many sons" are to be his joint-heirs; reigning with him on his throne, sharing his unsearchable riches and his everlasting reign.
But all these sons must tread the path of sufering.
Since the first sin brought suffering to our first parents, and bloodshed
into the first home, there has been but one lot for those who will live
Godly. Their road leads to glory; but every inch of it is stained with
their blood and watered by their tears. It climbs to Hermon's summit; but
it descends immediately into somber and devil-haunted plains. It conducts
to the Mount of Olives, with its ascension light; but it first traverses
the glades of Gethsemane, the wine-press of Golgotha, the solitude and
darkness of the grave.
What true soul has not its wilderness of temptation; its conflicts with Sadducees and Scribes; its hour of weariness and watching; its tears over cities full of rebellious men; its disappointments from friends; its persecutions from foes; rejection, agony, friendlessness, loneliness, denials, trial, treacheries, deaths, and burials? Such is the draught which the noblest and saintliest have drunk from the golden chalice of life.
Foreseeing our needs, our Father has provided for us a Leader. It is a great boon for a company of pilgrims to have a Great-heart; for an army to have a captain; for an exodus to have a Moses. Courageous, sagacious, and strong leaders are God's good gifts to men. And it is only what we might have expected that God has placed such a One as the efficient Leader at the head of the long line of pilgrims, whom he is engaged in bringing to glory. The toils seem lighter and the distance shorter; laggards quicken their pace; wandering ones are recalled from by-paths by the presence and voice of the Leader, who marches, efficient, royal, and divine, in the van. 0 heirs of glory, weary of the long and toilsome march, remember that ye are part of a great host: and that the Prince, at the head of the column, has long since entered the city; though he is back again, passing as an inspiration along the ranks as they are toiling on.
Our Leader is perfect. Of course this does not refer to his moral or spiritual attributes. In these he is possessed of the stature of the perfect Man, and has filled out, in every detail, God's ideal of manhood. But he might have been all this without being perfectly adapted to the work of leading many sons through suffering to glory. He might have been perfect in character, and desirous to help us; but, if he had never tasted death, how could he allay our fears as we tread the verge of Jordan? If he had never been tempted, how could he succor those who are tempted? If he had never wept, how could he stanch our tears? If he had never suffered, hungered, wearied on the hill of difficulty, or threaded his way through the quagmires of grief, how could he have been a merciful and faithful High-Priest, having compassion on the ignorant and wayward? But, thank God, our Leader is a perfect one. He is perfectly adapted to his task. His certificate, countersigned by the voice of inspiration, declares him fully qualified.
But this perfect efficiency, as we have seen,
is the result of suffering. In no other conceivable way could he
have been so effectively qualified to be our Leader as he has been by the
ordeal of suffering. Every pang, every tear, every thrill, all were needed
to complete his equipment to help us. And from this we may infer that suffering
is sometimes permitted to befall us in order to qualify us to be, in our
poor measure, the leaders and comforters of our brethren, who are faltering
in the march. When next we suffer, let us believe that it is not the result
of chance, or fate, or man's carelessness, or hell's malevolence; but that
perhaps God is perfecting our adaptability to comfort and succor others.
Are there not some in your circle to whom you naturally
betake yourself in times of trial and sorrow? They always seem to speak
the right word, to give the very counsel you are longing for; you do not
realize, however, the cost which they had to pay ere they became so skillful
in binding up gaping wounds and drying tears. But if you were to investigate
their past history you would find that they have suffered more than most.
They have watched the slow untwisting of some silver cord on which the
lamp of life hung. They have seen the golden bowl of joy dashed to their
feet, and its contents spilt. They have stood by ebbing tides, and drooping
gourds, and noon sunsets; but all this has been necessary to make them
the nurses, the physicians, the priests of men. The boxes that come from
foreign climes are clumsy enough; but they contain spices which scent the
air with the fragrance of the Orient. So suffering is rough and hard to
bear; but it hides beneath it discipline, education, possibilities, which
not only leave us nobler, but perfect us to help others. Do not fret, or
set your teeth, or wait doggedly for the suffering to pass; but get out
of it all you can, both for yourself and for your service to your generation,
according to the will of God.
Suffering educates sympathy; it softens the spirit,
lightens the touch, hushes the tread; it accustoms the spirit to read from
afar the symptoms of an unspoken grief; it teaches the soul to tell the
number of the promises, which, like the constellations of the arctic circle,
shine most brilliantly through the wintry night; it gives to the spirit
a depth, a delicacy, a wealth of which it cannot otherwise possess itself.
Through suffering he has become perfected.
His sufferings have purchased our pardon. He tasted
death for every man. But his sufferings have done more in enabling him
to understand experimentally, and to allay, with the tenderness of one
who has suffered, all the griefs and sorrows that are experienced by the
weakest and weariest of the great family of God.
So far, then, from rejecting him because of his
sorrows, this shall attract us the more quickly to his side. And, amid
our glad songs, this note shall predominate: "It behoved Christ to suffer."
"In the midst of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain."