We  do  not  now  merely  sympathize  as  human  beings
with  the  physical  sufferings  of  a  fellow-man.  We
do  not  merely  endeavour  to  enter  into  His  mental
anguish.  The  appeal  of  such  a  death-scene  is  pre
eminently  moral.  It  sensibly  rebukes  us.  We  feel
the  feebleness,  the  cowardice,  the  aimlessness  of  our
own  moral  life  in  such  a  Presence.  For  a  moment
perhaps  the  tragedy  provokes  our  indignation  against
the  injustice  which  enacts  it ;  but  it  certainly  and
permanently  commands  the  tribute  of  our  reverence
and  of  our  love.  Those  who  have  seen  on  Calvary,  as
we  must  fear,  little  else,  have  seen  thus  much  in  the
Death  of  Jesus  Christ :  for  them  it  is  the  closing
scene  of  a  moral  victory.  They  dwell  with  chas
tened  enthusiasm  upon  "  that  perfect  harmony  of
nature,  that  absolute  self-renunciation,  that  pure  love,
that  entire  resignation,  continued  through  life,  and
ending  in  death,"  as  "  facts  independent  of  their  feel
ings  8."  They  rest  with  grateful  hearts  on  this  spectacle
of  spiritual  grandeur.  And,  indeed,  for  most  men  to
have  reached  middle  life  is  to  have  waded  through
years  of  greater  or  less  unfaithfulness  to  the  law  and
light  of  God.  Accordingly,  in  ordinary  cases  our

s  Heb.  vii.  26.  r  St.  John  viii.  46.
8  Professor  Jowett,  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  ii.  p.  481.
