ar.

We may say to ourselves that this is fanciful, that we were not the
Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus, nor the Roman procurator who ordered His
execution, nor the scoffing soldiers who carried out his command; but
the conscience which the cross itself creates charges us with
participation in the murder of the Son of God. That cross becomes an
inescapable fact in our moral world, an element in our outlook upon
duty, a factor tingeing life with tragic somberness. It forces upon us
the conviction that it is all too possible for us to reenact Golgotha,
and by doing or failing to do, directly or indirectly, for one of the
least of Christ's brethren to crucify Him afresh, and put Him to an open
shame.

But if the cross seems to color life somberly, it also gilds it with
glory. As we follow Christ, we discover more and more clearly that all
which we possess of greatest worth has come to us, and keeps coming to
us, through Him. What he endured centuries ago on that hill without the
city wall is a wellspring of inspiration flowing up in the purest and
finest motives in the life of today. There is a direct line of ancestry
from the best principles in the lives of nations, and of men and women
about us, running back to Calvary. Day after day we find ourselves and
the whole world made different because of that tragic occurrence of the
past, shamed out of the motives that caused it, and lifted into the life
of the Crucified. A recent dramatist makes the centurion, in the
darkness at the foot of the cross, say to Mary: "I tell you, woman, this
dead Son of yours, disfigured, shamed, spat upon, has built a Kingdom
this day that can never die. The living glory of Him rules it. The earth
is _His_ and He made it. He and His brothers have been molding and
making it through the long ages; they are the only ones who ever really
did possess it: not the proud; not the idle; not the vaunting empires of
the world. Something has happened up here on this hill today to shake
all our kingdoms of blood and fear to the dust. The earth is His, the
earth is theirs, and they made it. The meek, the terrible meek, the
fierce agonizing meek, are about to enter into their inheritance."

Nor is this all of which that cross convinces us. We find ourselves
giving that crucified Man our supreme adoration; He is for us that
which we cannot but worship. Instinctively and irresistibly we yield Him
our highest reverence, trust and devotion. As we think out what i