He Himself was
preeminently a Man of sorrows; He exhausted all forms of suffering;
touching life at every point, at every point He bled; and in Him we
learn how to sustain our burden and to triumph throughout all the
tragedy. In His absolute rectitude, in His confidence in His Father,
in His hours of prayer, in His self-sacrificing regard for His
fellow-sufferers, in His charity, and patience, we see how the
heaviest cross may be borne in the spirit of victory. We learn from
Him how divine grace can mysteriously make the sufferer equal to the
bitterest martyrdom; not putting to our lips some anodyne cup to
paralyze life, but giving us conquest through the strength and
bravery of reason in its noblest mood, through faith in its sublimest
exercise, through a love that many waters cannot quench nor the
floods drown. Poison is said to be extracted from the rattlesnake for
medicinal purposes; but infinitely more wonderful is the fact that the
suffering which comes out of sin counterworks sin, and brings to pass
the transfiguration of the sufferer.
Christ teaches us how, under the redemptive government of God,
suffering has become a subtle and magnificent process for the full
and final perfecting of human character.
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