will be woven into a crown for us, that even through evil we shall rise into a higher, larger, and more enduring good. All these spiritual hints and suggestions are fairly set, like gems of the morning, in Christ's crown of thorns; and they are there that, as we gaze upon them, they may shine into our souls with healing lights of hope. He who wore the crown of thorns, in His infinite grace and pity, did offer Himself a willing sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sin of the whole world. For us men and our salvation He did suffer an agony and passion such as we can never know, can never so much as conceive the thorns pierced His head, and not only His hands and His feet. Because He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, God did highly exalt Him, and give Him a name that is above every name, making of our very thorns an honourable crown for His uplifted head. By His assumption of our nature, the Lord from heaven, the life-giving Spirit, did become the second Adam, and achieve a redemption wide as the world, a victory in which death was swallowed up of life. Through His grace-not through our sins, but through the grace which works through our sins and emancipates us from them-we do rise from natural into spiritual men, "and gain, for earthly Eden lost, a heavenly Paradise." All the hints and suggestions of the Crown of Thorns are confirmed by the revelation of the Divine Love in Christ Jesus our Lord. That it should be so full of hints of truth and hopeful suggestions, shews that in this God's wisdom was once more overruling the folly of man, His grace their malice; that here, as in all things, He was bringing good out of evil, and compelling the very wrath of man to praise Him. 2. But if through the folly of man we have caught clearer and broader glimpses of the wisdom of God, let us now learn one of the deep practical secrets of that wisdom. The secret is: That every true crown is a crown of thorns. We are naturally intolerant of pain; we shrink from suffering; and therefore we are slow of heart to believe that pain is a condition of all pure joy, that only through suffering can we enter into peace and glory. The truth is familiar to us, indeed, for it is the constant teaching of the New Testament, the constant experience of our own lives. But familiar as it is to us, it is nevertheless unwelcome. In our dread-O foolish dread !—of pain and sorrow, we put it from us; and hence we are often unprepared for our sorrows and pains when they come upon us. It may help us to receive and embrace this truth if we approach it by an unfamiliar path, such as our theme indicates. 66 Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," says our great poet; but the aphorism must be qualified. To say the least of it, the uneasiness of kings may have many sources; it does not always spring from the crown. A bad king may be rendered uneasy by every check on his despotic humours, by the prosperity or glory of his rivals, by every sign of growing freedom of thought and action in his subjects. Our kings are little more than kings in name : their pains and troubles, in so far às these are kingly, spring from sympathy with their ministers or their people, not from any grave political responsibility resting on them. But suppose a king to be a king indeed, a king in the ancient sense. Suppose him, like David, really to make laws for his realm, to control the destinies of his subjects, to govern them at his will. In proportion as he is a true and noble king, his uneasiness will flow from a noble and royal source. He will task his powers to devise wise laws, to promote the interests of all classes of his subjects, to supply their wants, to train them in knowledge, capacity, freedom. If pestilence invade them, if the harvest fail, if floods rise, if in their ignorance they resist measures which he sees will be for their good, if he detect his magistrates in injustice, his officers in oppression,whatever goes wrong will bring him pain and grief. And as accidents and offences will come, even in the most favoured lands and the best governed realms, the king will endure greater toils of thought, keener pangs of heart, than any of those for whom he lives and rules. All their troubles will be his troubles, their losses his losses, their shame his shame. His crown, in the very proportion in which he is worthy to wear it, will be lined with thorns. The same law holds in every case in which men are called to rule, whatever the character of the realm, and whether their subjects be many or few. If you are a master and have a few men under authority, if you are a teacher and have a few children to train and control, even your crown will be a crown of thorns. Be hard, negligent, unjust; be yielding, easy, careless; and in either case you are preparing for yourself a sea of troubles. Be wise, just, sympathetic; really concern yourself for the welfare of those whom you rule and for the success of their toils; and even thus you will not pluck the thorns from your crown every accident that befalls your workmen or your pupils, every sign of indolence, or wastefulness, or quarrelsomeness, or vice on their part, will prick and sting you. Yet only as you suffer these thorns, only as you heartily care for the men or children entrusted to you, only as you sadden in their disappointments, grieve over their sins, rejoice in their amendment, and hold yourself the richer for their gains, can you become a good master or a good teacher. There is no escape for us. Every joy has its cost of pain; every honour must be won by labour and suffering. Even the student who isolates himself from his fellows and plunges into books, seeking to conquer knowledge and to rule his thoughts wisely, can only reach his end by toil and pain, by working when he is weary, by vigorously suppressing many natural cravings which, if indulged, would divert him from his aim. The father, who would rule his children, and make home happy, must take much thought and pains. He must not only labour in order to provide food and education for his family, he must lay a wise, often a painful, restraint on his own habits, and looks, and words, lest he should injure them and undo the good effects of home, and school, and church. At times he must brace himself to correct their faults, not by random blows, or angry unconsidered words, or by severities of which he will be the first to tire, but with patience, forethought, stedfastness, at the cost often of a racking brain and a sore heart. Even when he has fairly drawn his children under rule, the thorns do not drop from his crown. For now that a tender and wise love has grown up between him and them, all their faults and sins more sharply pierce his heart. Accidents befall them, and strike him with the deeper pain. Or death seizes them, and his crown of fatherhood is all thorns. Here, then, we begin to see why Christ's crown must be a crown of thorns. What other crown could the Perfect Man wear when the men He loved were so imperfect? or the Perfect King when His subjects, distrusting His wisdom, unwitting of His love, were in hot rebellion against Him, and raised their hands against the Head before which they should have bowed in adoration? | deadly conflict, which we find within. But if He could wear no crown but this, can we, who have His Spirit and are being conformed to His likeness, wear any crown but His? His very Spirit in us calls us to rule ourselves, to bring every high thought, every wandering and extravagant affection, into subjection to His pure law; to cast off all sinful habits, to follow after holiness and virtue. And this interior kingdom, which we are called to rule, has long been wasted by rebellion and strife; false lords have risen up in it and brought it into captivity; errors of thought hold many of our intellectual conceptions in chains; base passions have broken broken into mutiny, and usurped the dominion due to reason, and charity, and holiness; and we, poor kings that we are! have to conquer our kingdom before we can rule it. It is little more than "the likeness of a crown" which wreathes our helmet; but the thorns are there, and pierce through the steel. Whatever progress we have made, if even at rare intervals the whole realm of inward thought, and energy, and affection is brought into a happy consent of obedience and worship, the truce is soon broken. Hardly a day passes without our being made sorrowfully aware that some province of the soul is in fierce insurrection against the authority to which it made a show of yielding. Nay, more the self-same Spirit that calls us to rule ourselves also calls us to the conquest of the world, or of some little corner of it which, however small, is large enough to hold all the forces of the world and all the powers of darkness. have to serve and help our neighbours-we who ourselves stand in such bitter need of help! We We have to contend with the spiritual wickednesses which are in them-we who are so often overcome! Everywhere around us there is the same heavy ask, the same unremitting and And how can we achieve or contribute to that task save by manifold and exhausting labours? how be always in the thick of that conflict without taking as well as giving many wounds? If there were no interior contest, no constant toil at home, the sheer force of sympathy with our neighbours is at times enough to break our hearts, if at least we have our Master's spirit of love and pity. Think how many sorrows there are in the world, what deep and wide miseries, what innumerable and incurable evils! Nay, think how many even in our own narrow circles are at this very moment weeping bitter tears of regret, anguish, despair; how many faint in languor and pain; how manyand these the most pitiable of alleat and drink, and laugh and swear, while the very soul is dying out of them, oppressed and strangled by the lusts of the flesh! If we are Christian in spirit as well as in name, if we have any share of our Master's purity, and tenderness, and grace, all these miseries and evils are as thorns in our crown. We cannot, we dare not, be indifferent to them. At times they tear and sting us well-nigh into despair, till, like Moses and Paul, we could wish ourselves blotted from the book of life if only these poor souls might be healed and saved. What then? Are we to yield to despair? Shall we relinquish the task of self-rule and service because it is hard? Shall we quit the field because the foe is strong, and the conflict bloody, and every arm is needed? Shall we say, "Such a task, such a conflict, is beyond mortal strength?" That will only be to take the thorns without the crown. To yield to our base passions, to make no endeavour to stem the miseries of the world, is to become base and miserable: it is to become thorns in the crown of Christ and in that of all good men. No, let our resolve be, "Never to submit, nor yield, or even parley with the foe." It is through such pains and toils as these that we grow strong in spirit. It is by such sufferings as these that we become perfect and win immortal honour. It is as we redouble our endeavours, as we give ourselves more stedfastly and earnestly to our task, and shew ourselves valiant in the conflict, that these thorns of pain and grief and bitter sympathy with human woes are platted into a crown more lustrous and honourable than fine gold and gems of price. Christ's crown of thorns broke into flower long ago: its sweet healing odours float through the heavenly temple, and are wafted over the earth by every wind that blows. Let us but be patient, stedfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, always shewing a good courage in the wars of the Lord; and in due time our crowns, of which we should hardly be conscious now but for the thorns, will also blossom into flower, and make us glad according to the days wherein they have afflicted us. A RETROSPECTIVE GOSSIP ABOUT MEN, BOOKS, &c. My infant home was one eminently I Having learned to read very early, I not only relished amusing stories, but the narratives of scripture history, and even sermons, were greatly prized. In our family library we had a worn old copy of "Russell's Seven Sermons," one of which is on the "unpardonable sin." This I seriously read and thoughtfully pondered. I was so fond of this volume that one day I took it to chapel with me, and to my surprise and delight the preacher took one of Russell's texts on the occasion; but what was my intense mortification when I found the sermon was not Russell's too, and so I shut my book and felt disgusted with the preacher. Under this kind of home influence, I early became a child preacher, and not lacking energy, though my audience generally consisted of several little playmates, I one day ascended the sofa, to the demolition of a handsome mirror that hung over it. A less perilous rostrum I was careful to select afterwards. I have no doubt to the latest day of my mother's life I was the special subject of her earnest prayers, and particularly that I might become a minister. My early youth was spent in the Grammar School of Oldham, my native town, and one of the best clergymen that ever lived, the Rev. William Winter, was the master. The savour of his holy life and evangelical ministry still rests upon the sphere of his devoted labours. I was Mr. Winter's favourite, and as he knew my constant attendance on the Methodist ministry, on Monday forenoons, when the school had got into working order, he used to call me to his desk and question me about the preachers, text, and sermons I had heard on the Sunday. His smiles and kind words made sunshine for the week. His weekly conversations led me to pay special attention to the discourses I heard, and fostered in my heart a love of preachers and preaching. In my fifteenth year I resided in York, and had a kind friend in the Rev. Isaac Turton, the superintendant of the circuit. But it was here, and under the fervid, powerful preaching of the Rev. A. E. Farrar, that I became decided, and united with the Wesleyans. Few men have been more acceptable and useful than my spiritual father, and whose love and friendship I cherished to the time of his death. Many of the texts and plans of sermons he preached are vividly before me to this day. But in York I resided near to a very old and eccentric preacher, Richard Burdsall, generally known by Methodists as Dicky Burdsall. He had laboured as a kind of roving minister in the time of Wesley, and was celebrated for his plain and striking preaching. A short life of Mr. Burdsall, who lived, I think, until past ninety, is still in print. His conversations about his early life, and sufferings for his divine Master, were deeply interesting, and to his urgent exhortations to begin public speaking in the prayer meetings, I at length responded. In a house where social services were conducted, I ventured to press the Saviour's gracious invitation as my first essay in preaching, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden," &c. The fear and confusion I experienced I shall never forget; but when I was told that a very celebrated preacher was kept by main force in the pulpit on the devery of his trial sermon, I thought it possible that I too might do better on some future occasion. I feel to this day how greatly I was indebted to kind forbearing friends who listened to my crude addresses with so much love and patience, and thus prevented me losing heart as to preaching work. I have no doubt my extreme youth pleaded greatly for me. The Holy Scriptures, a Concordance, and some Methodist Magazines, constituted, at this time, my library; but I was an attentive listener, and heard every week superior sermons from Mr. Turton, Mr. Farrar, Mr. A. Stead, and others. In the establishment where I lived there was a young man a Congregationalist, and he directed my attention to various useful works, and I pretty well exhausted a library in our vicinity of all that was worth reading. My class leader was a most excellent man, and at the early prayer meettings I met with great helpers, and so made progress, by God's blessing, in the new life. Removing to Bradford and its vicinity, I had more frequent opportunities of exercising my feeble talents; but there was a life and energy in the West Riding that gave additional impetus to my own mind. Here I often heard a most fervent preacher, Mr. Womersly, whose soul seemed all on fire with zeal for the conversion of souls; and shortly after I was privileged to sit under that extraordinarily holy and devout minister, David Stoner. His sermons possessed a charm entirely unique. With a most rapid utterance, and yet distinct enunciation, he poured forth, in language most exquisite, streams of gospel truths, and he was alike eminent in the conversion of souls, and the building up of the church of Christ. He had been brought to the Saviour through the labours of the celebrated Billy Dawson, whose remarkable discourses were made a blessing to thousands. |