"_I thirst_."
This is the first of the three words of Christ which relate specially to
His own inner experiences, and which I have placed together for the
purpose of this paper.
"_I thirst_." They gave Him vinegar to drink--or, probably, in a
moment of pity the soldiers brought Him the sour wine which they had
provided for themselves. He seems to have partaken of it, although He had
refused the mixture that had been before offered Him merely to deaden His
pain. To bear that pain was the lofty duty set before Him, and so He would
not turn aside from it one hair's breadth.
But He humbled Himself to receive what was necessary from the very hands
that had been crucifying Him. He, who could have so easily commanded a
whole multitude of the heavenly host to appear for His succour, and to
whose precious lips, parched in death, the princes of the eternal Kingdom
would have so gladly hastened with a draught from celestial springs,
condescended to ask the help of those who mocked Him, and to take the
support He so sadly needed from His triumphant persecutors.
Oh, you who are proud by nature, who are reserved by nature, who are
sensitive in spirit, who feel every wrong done to you like a knife
entering your breast, and who, when you forgive an injury, find it
difficult to forget, and harder still to humble yourselves in any way to
those who, you feel, have wronged you--here for you is a lesson, here for
you is an example, a precious example, of the condescension of Love. Yes.
to love those who seem to be against you, to love those in whom there
always appears to you to be some difference of spirit or incompatibility
of temperament, will mean, if you are made conformable unto your Master's
death, that you will be able to receive at their hands services,
kindnesses, pity, advice, which your own poor, fallen nature would,
without divine grace, have scorned and spurned.