they counted it a joy and an honour to die, as Jesus died. On others His death has seemed to be almost visibly imprinted, who, from intense and continuous meditation on the Passion, have exhibited the marks, and felt something of the bodily pains of the Crucified.1 But to all His followers, in their measure and degree, must a share be imparted in that communion of sacrifice. It is a contradiction, to be "delicate members of a body whose Head is crowned with thorns." Obedience, poverty, and virginity, which are among the characteristic tokens of the Incarnation, are not, as has sometimes been suggested, the specialities of a particular age or condition of society, though the manner of their exercise may vary. Christianity knows nothing of 'dead virtues,' for in the power and example of the Crucified all graces live. And, even as He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom, so we too are likest Him, when we lay down our lives for the brethren. Nor is that sacrifice less acceptably offered in an age, like the present, of high civilisation and refinement, when direct persecution is hardly to be thought of, though it may not win the praise of men or attract their notice. The inglorious martyrdom of labour, or weari

1 There can be no doubt about the fact of what is called 'stigmatization' as in the case of the Tyrolese 'Addolorata,' and others, though it may often have been simulated. It is perhaps to be explained as the physiological result of a peculiar concentration of mind on the Passion, rather than as strictly miraculous. But it is not always easy to draw the line. The Precious Blood, and the Five Wounds are among the most popular 'special devotions' in the Church. See also 2 Cor. iv. 10; Gal. vi. 17.

ness, or contradiction--"the pang without the palm comes nearest His, who on earth was hidden and despised; there are many Saints uncertified by public recognition here, whose names are written in heaven. The lesson of love is taught at Bethlehem, on Calvary love is crucified; but the Incarnate Victim is present still, an abiding Sacrifice, in the Eucharist. To understand what that mystery teaches is to understand the scope of our Christian vocation, our highest law of life. For His was a life-long Sacrifice. That is no fanciful picture, with which Overbeck has familiarised us, of the Boy-Christ on the Cross, with the thrilling prophecy written beneath it, Dolor Meus in conspectu Meo semper.

And the sacrifice was not only life-long but complete. "He emptied Himself." He willed to suffer to the uttermost, to drain to the last dregs the chalice both of mental and physical agony. He used His omnipotence, not to curtail His sufferings or to restrain the fierceness of His enemies, but to prolong bodily life till they had wreaked their worst upon Him. He would teach us, if I may dare to say so, to measure the infinitude of His Divine attributes by the prodigality of His self-abandonment, the generosity-nay, the 'foolishness' of His Cross. Even the bodily pains of the Passion included, it is thought, every form of suffering to which our mortal frames are subject, except two. The Psalmist had prophesied that a bone of Him should not be broken, and it was not fitting that His sacred Flesh should feel the touch of fire,

which is the instrument or the image of the final chastisement of the impenitent. But, with these two exceptions, the Prophet's words are literally true; Vere languores nostros Ipse portavit. He would feel all, that He might pity all, remembering that we are but dust. And as the perfect organization of that Human Body, "made ready for the scourges," which grew as a tender plant from the barren soil of our common nature, constrained Him to feel every pulsation of physical agony more keenly ten thousand fold than is possible to the ruder apprehension even of the most sensitive and finely strung of bodily organisms among His earthly brethren, so, too,—and far more-did the purely natural sufferings of His perfect Human Soul unspeakably exceed in intensity the bitterest sorrows that ever wrung the heart of man. And we must remember that to Him all pains, whether of soul or body, inflicted by others, were aggravated by a love we can but dimly conceive of towards those who smote Him, which reached its culminating point in that last mute appeal to the traitor Apostle, as He knelt on the very night of His betrayal to wash his feet. These were the wounds He was wounded with in the house of His earthly friends. Most of us, indeed, know something of the bitterness of contradiction, ingratitude, deliberate misconstruction, sympathy slighted or betrayed; yet in this element even of His bodily sufferings neither Saint nor Martyr can approach Him, for none can realise the love which made it what it was. But all self-sacrifice involves

suffering of some kind, and what He voluntarily chose for His earthly lot He has made into a privilege for His children. There was a place found for the mourner, the persecuted, the reviled, among the Beatitudes of the kingdom of God.

4. It is a common saying, that cruelty and cowardice go together; so also do self-sacrifice and tenderness. They are different sides of the same idea. And all the delicacy and romance, so to speak, of Christian tenderness is perceptibly an outgrowth of the Cross. If we compare either the characters of holy men, or the broader facts of history, before and since the Crucifixion, there are few contrasts so remarkable as the presence or absence of that special quality which may be called the grace and bloom of sacrifice, which is the chivalry of self-devotion, and gives to heroic patience its winning and attractive power. It seems as though, till Christ had lived and died, that fulness of human sympathy was impossible. Compare Samuel with St. Bernard, or Moses with the Teacher of the Gentiles. The points of resemblance are many and striking, but there is in each case a marked distinction. Moses devoted his life for his people, his brethren after the flesh, and could even pray that his own name might be blotted out of the book of God's remembrance for their sakes; but we seek in vain for that power of world-wide sympathy, at once so universal and so minute, which makes us feel towards the great Apostle even now, as we read his words, as though he were a

personal friend.1 Samuel did not cease to pray for his royal master, till the day of his death; but we see nothing of that intense feeling which melted Bernard into an agony of tears, when he preached over a brother's grave. It is the chief Apostle of the Church who bids us be "sympathizing, lovers of the brethren, merciful, courteous.” 3

2

Or turn from individual to national characteristics. Pain, deformity, sickness, sorrow, old age, are an heirloom of the Fall, but their cure or consolation is an outflow from that Heart which, for us men and for our salvation, was pierced on Calvary. Rome, Athens, Alexandria, in their palmiest days, took no heed of suffering, or heeded it only as an eyesore to be concealed, or even as a crime to be punished. Our hospitals, refuges, sisterhoods of compassion, and the like, are a shadow cast from the Cross. There have, indeed, in terrible visitations of pestilence been scenes of frenzied selfishness in Christian cities, that do but too well recall the worst moral features of the plague recorded by Thucydides and Lucretius; but there was no Borromeo at Athens to stand, as an angel of mercy, between

1 See Newman's Sermons on Various Occasions, Serm. 7 and 8, on the Character of St. Paul. Cf. also Stanley's Epistles to Corinthians, vol. ii. p. 23. 2 It is not of course meant to deny, that there are exquisite touches of tenderness to be met with in the Old Testament history, as in the recognition of Joseph by his brethren, and still more in the tender affection which bound together David and Jonathan, to use the words of a distinguished author, "as by a sacramental union;" but the very vividness with which such instances fix themselves in our memory shows that they are rare and exceptional. I hope it is not an over refinement to add, that they mostly occur in the case of persons who are commonly recognised as partial types of Christ.

3 1 Peter iii. 8.