"_Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do_."

This prayer for His murderers is a revelation of the wonderful nearness and capacity of love. The Saviour pa.s.ses from pole to pole of human ken, to find a ground on which He can plead for the forgiveness of those cruel and wicked men; and He finds it in their ignorance of the stupendousness of their sin against Him. It seems as though He chooses to remain in ignorance of what they did know, and to dwell only on what they did not.

"They know not what they do!"

It was ever so with Him! He has no pleasure in iniquity. Wrong-doers are so precious to Him that He never will magnify or exaggerate their wrong-- no, not a hair's breadth. He will not dwell on it--no, not a moment, except to plead some reasonable ground for its pardon, such as this--the ignorance of the wrong-doer, or the rich efficacy of His sacrifice. He will only name sin to the Father, in order that He may confess it for the sinner, and intercede for mercy and for grace.

This is the old and ever new way of dealing with injuries, especially "personal injuries." _Is it yours_? Are you seeking thus after reasons for making the wrong done to you appear pardonable? Is your first response to an affront or insult or slander, or to some still greater wrong, to pray the Father for those whom you believe to be injuring you, that His gracious gift of forgiveness may come upon them?

That is the principle of Calvary. That is the spirit, the mind of Christ.

That is the way in which

He won the meed and crown: Trod all His foes beneath His feet, By being trodden down.

"_Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit_."

Death has always been held to afford a final test of faith, and here the human soul of Jesus pa.s.sed through that mortal struggle which awaits us all when heart and flesh shall fail. "_Into Thy hands_"--that is enough. As He pa.s.ses the threshold of the unknown--goes as we must--into the Valley of the Shadow, faith springs forth and exclaims, "Into Thy hands." All shall be well. In this confidence I have laboured; in this confidence I die; in this confidence I shall live before Thee.

IV.

_To Himself_.

"_It is finished_!"

Thus in His last, ever-wonderful words Jesus p.r.o.nounces Himself the sentence of His own heart upon His own work. _It is completed._ Every barrier is broken down, every battle is fought, every h.e.l.lish dart has flown, every wilderness is past, every drop of the cup of anguish has been drunk up, and, with a note of victorious confidence, He cries out, "It is finished!" Looking back from the cross on all His life in the light of these words, we see how He regarded it as an opportunity for accomplishing a great duty, and for the fulfilment of a mission. Now, He says, "The duty is done--the mission is fulfilled; the work is finished!" Truly, it is a lofty, a n.o.ble, yea, a G.o.dlike view of life!

Is it ours? Death will come to us. "The living know that they shall die."

The waters will overflow, and the foundations will be broken up, and every precious thing will grow dim, and our life, also, will have pa.s.sed. We shall then have to say of something, "_It is finished_!" It will be too late to alter it. "There is no man that hath power in the day of death."

_What, then, shall it be that is finished_? A life of selfish ease, or a life of following the Son of Man? A life of sinful gratification, of careful thought of ourselves, unprofitable from beginning to end, or a life of generous devotion to the things which are immortal in the honour of G.o.d and the salvation of men?

VIII.

The Burial of Jesus.

Good Friday Fragments.

"_And after this Joseph of Arimathoea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.

There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand_."--John xix. 38-42.

Death has many voices. This death and burial speak aloud in tones of triumph. It as a death that made an end of death, and a burial that buried the grave. And yet it was also a very humble and painful and sad affair.

We must not forget the humiliation and poverty and shame written on every circ.u.mstance any more than the victory, if we would learn by it all that G.o.d designed to teach.

I

"_He tasted Death_."

To many, even among those who have been freed from guilty fear, mortality itself still has terrors. By Divine grace they can lift up their hearts in sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection, and yet they shrink with painful apprehension at the thought of the change which alone can make that resurrection possible. There is probably no instinct of the whole human family more frequently in evidence than this repulsion for the grave. Death is such an uncouth and hideous thing.

Nothing but bones The sad effect of sadder groans; Its mouth is open, but it cannot sing.

All its outward circ.u.mstances help to repel us--the shroud, the coffin, the grave, the silent shadows, the still more silent worms, the final nothingness. The mental conditions, too, generally common to the last acts of life, tend to intensify the feeling: the separation from much that we love, the sense of unfinished work, the appreciation of grief which death most usually brings to others: the reality of disappointed hopes, the feeling that heart and flesh fail, and that we can do no more--all these tend to make it in very truth the great valley of the dark shadow.

To many, even among the chosen spirits of the household of faith, approaching death also starts the great "_Why_?" of unbelief. For, in truth, the death of some is a mystery. It is better that we should say so, and that they should say so, rather than that we should profess to be able to account for what, as is only too evident, we do not understand. In confronting death this mystery is often the great bitterness in the cup.

To die when so young! To die when so much needed! To die so soon after really beginning to live! To die in the presence of so great a task! Oh, why should it be? How much of gloom and shadow has come down on hearts and households I have known, from the persistency of that "Why?" intensifying every repulsion for the hideous visitor, adding to every other the greatest of all his terrors--_doubt_.

Now, in the presence of such doubts--or perhaps I ought rather to call them questionings and shrinkings--has not this vision of the dead body of our Lord something in it to charm away our fears? Does it not say to us: "I have pa.s.sed on before; I that speak in righteousness, Mighty to save. I have trodden the winepress alone. At My girdle hang the keys of life and death; I, even I, was dead; yes, really, cruelly dead; but I am alive for evermore"?

_He tasted death_. The king of terrors was out to meet Him. The long shadows of the gloomy valley really closed Him round, and He crossed over the chilly stream just as you and I must cross it--all alone. Nothing was wanting which could invest the scene, the hour, the circ.u.mstances with horror and repulsion. There was pain, bodily pain; there was mental anguish; there was the howling mob, the horrid contempt for Him as for a malefactor; the lost disciples and shattered hopes; the reviling thief; the mystery of the Father's clouded face; the final sinking down; the letting go of life; the last physical struggle--when He gave up the ghost and died.

Yes. He pa.s.sed this same way before you. He wore a shroud. He lay in a grave. The last resting-place is henceforth for us fragrant with immortality. The very horrors, and shadows, and mysteries of the death-chamber have become signs that death is vanquished. The tomb is but the porch of a temple in which we shall surely stand, the doorway to the place of an abiding rest. "In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you."

Living or dying--but especially when dying--we have a right to cry with Stephen, the first to witness for Christ in this horror of death, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." To Him we commit all. He pa.s.sed this way before with a worn and bruised body, in weakness and contempt, with dyed garments and red in His apparel, and on Him we dare to cast ourselves--on Him and Him alone. On His merits, on His blood, on His body, dead and buried for us. He will be with us even to the end--_He has pa.s.sed this way before us_.

II.

"_A Savour of Death unto Death._"

A celebrated Roman Emperor who had in the very height of his power embarked on a campaign for the extermination, with all manner of cruelties, of the followers of Jesus Christ, spoke one day to a Christian, asking him in tones of lofty contempt and derision:--

"What, then, is the Galilean doing now?"

"_The Galilean_," replied the Christian, "_is making a coffin_!"

In a few years the great Emperor and the vast power he represented were both in that coffin!

Since his day, how many other persecutors have also journeyed surely to it! How many infidels--nay, how many systems of infidelity, have pa.s.sed on to dust and oblivion in that same casket! What mult.i.tudes of doubters--of unG.o.dly, unclean, unregenerate--have been laid within its ever-widening bands! What vast unions of darkness, hatred, and cruelty, under the leadership of the great and the mighty, have been broken to pieces beside that coffin! How much that seemed for a time proud and rich and great in this poor world's esteem, has at last pa.s.sed into it, and disappeared for ever! Yes, the martyr of long ago, on the blood-besmeared stones of persecuting Rome, was right, the Galilean Saviour and King not only made a Cross, but He made, and He goes on making, a coffin!

Will _you_ not have His Cross? Is there no appeal to you to-day from that hill side, without the city wall? Does it not speak to _you_ of the power, the sweetness and n.o.bleness of a life of service, of sacrifice for others, of toil for His world. Has it no message for _you_ of victory over sin and death, of life from the dead--life, abundant life, in the Blood of the Son of Man! Believe me, unless you accept His Cross, He will prepare for you a coffin. "The _wages_ of sin is death." It matters not how n.o.ble your aspirations, how lofty your ideals of life and conduct, how faithful your labour to raise the standard of your own life-- unless you accept the Cross, all must go into the grave. Your highest aims, together with your lowest, your most cherished conceptions, your most deeply-loved ambitions, all must be entombed. "Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder."

If His death-sacrifice be not a savour of life unto life it must be a savour of death unto death. This is the single alternative. Jesus Christ in life and death is working in you, in us all, toward one of these ends-- either by love and tears and the overflowing fountain of His pa.s.sion to gather us into the union of eternal life with Him and with the Father; or to entomb us--all that we have and all that we are--in the death and oblivion of the grave He has prepared.

III.