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XII.

THE SACRED JOY.

"As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.”—II. Cor. i. 5.

THESE words fathom a depth of human experience which can only be touched by those, who seek in the life of Christ the key to the mystery of pain. There is a suffering which is common to man, which is the heritage of the race of Adam; and for man there is, in respect of such suffering, consolation in God. There is a suffering which belongs to life under its highest conditions in this world, which is known in its fullest measure to the purest and loftiest natures-God's priests and kings. The kings who live delicately, who wear soft raiment, and are the regulating wheels in the machine of State, wear golden diadems. The kings whose toil of brain forecasts, and whose toil of spirit clears the way for human progress, whose work lies far in advance. of the great host which struggles on in their tracks, and who in the course of generations get recognised as the master-spirits, wear mostly the crown of thorns.

There are men who work purely from an inward necessity. They must speak the word and do the

work to which some inward pressure moves them. Fame, wealth, power, all the ends for which the mass of the workmen are striving, kindle them not. Whether men will hear, or whether men will forbear, whether men will applaud their work, or whether men will ban it, whether a throne or a prison awaits them, they must say and do what they have been set to say and do; their springs are within and on high. The outward world for them adds nothing to the impulse, while it steals nothing from the sanctions, of duty. They seem to sit on high, above the din and the dust of to-day's battle-" in heavenly places," the apostle calls it so calmly, so steadily, so far above the reach of earth's perturbations, do they accomplish their work. That work may lie in the midst of the throng of the world's activities; they may be princes, statesmen, captains, inventors, philanthropists; but their springs of thought and action flow down from distant celestial fountains, and are strong and constant as the river of God. The world rarely comprehends them till they have passed up from it-the greatest of them hardly till they have been dead for generations; till it has struggled on to the standing ground which they won for it, and left to it as their legacy. Then in the mists which settle over the past, the forms of the great leaders loom grand and colossal, and they, being dead, receive almost worship as demigods, who, living, knew but rare moments of happy and honoured rest. The lives of such men are full of a suffering which the mere man of this world never

tastes; full, too, of a Divine glory and joy which are equally beyond his range.

He

The life of our own great Alfred, for instance, was a life of ceaseless effort and intense endurance. was a martyr life-long to an agonising disease, and yet he measured out his day and his night through the years of a stormy reign with minute exactitude, so as to be able to devote the whole of it, with the severest completeness, to the service of man in the fear of God. Could one see his likeness, one would expect to find it seamed all over with the lines, not of thought only, but of constant, intense, and often agonizing effort; as they may be seen on the brow of Dante, another of the great suffering friends of mankind. It is not easy in these days to enter believingly into the experience of such men, who belong mostly to the formative ages of history; though he who will live godly in Christ Jesus, in any age, may know something of the fellowship both of their sufferings and of their joys, and be able to understand the strength of the self-renouncing purpose which made them find their life in their work for men.

And it was work which brought mostly no pay, no honour, but rather shame, anguish of soul, and peril of death. Could they have been content to be selfish, and to live like the world around them, power and wealth would have been easily within their reach. But because they must needs work for the world, and live for the world, they must needs also suffer for the world. In proportion to the keenness of their

sympathies, the strength of their love,—and these are always the keenest and strongest in such natures,— was the pain and the sorrow which every day they were called upon to endure. You, who live much out of yourselves can understand something of their experience. You whom a large paternal heart binds tenderly to your children, whom a friendly heart binds tightly to your friends; you, who are called daily to self-denying offices of duty and sympathy, and who sorrow more over the pains and woes of others than over your own; you know well how the most cherished things on earth are springs of sorrow as well as of blessing, how each fresh love is a fresh duty, and each fresh duty a fresh pain.

It is no question at all of external losses and bereavements. It is no question of internal anguish through consciousness of guilty sin. It is a pain which belongs to the spirit when the spirit is at its highest; a pain the reason of which we must ask, not of man, but of God. This world can neither explain such lives, nor justify such endurance. Festus, the able man of the world, must always esteem such a man as the Apostle a madman. The foremost man of all the world in his day, a man of whose empire over the minds of men Cæsar's empire was but a shadow, lived, while Cæsar played with the world's sceptre, as he thus describes: "For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak,

but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.”—I. Cor. iv. 9-13.

Who can explain it? Who can justify it? Who can show that it is the way of the blessed life and of the eternal glory? He only who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil. ii. 6-11. "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you on their part He is evil spoken of, but on your