, and
let the power and the blessings of that death and those sufferings
flow into my heart.' The Divine Redeemer makes eternal redemption.
The sufferings of Christ--the sufferings of His life, and the
sufferings of His death--both because of the nature which bore them,
and of the aspect which they wore in regard to us, are in their
source, in their intensity, in their character, and consequences,
unapproachable, incapable of repetition, and needing no repetition
whilst the world shall stand. But then, do not let us forget that the
very books and writers in the New Testament that preach most broadly
Christ's sole, all-sufficient, eternal redemption for the world by
His sufferings and death, turn round and say to us too, '"Be planted
together in the likeness of His death"; you are "crucified to the
world" by the Cross of Christ; you are to "fill up that which is
behind of the sufferings of Christ."' He Himself speaks of our
drinking of the cup that He drank of, and being baptized with the
baptism that He was baptized with, if we desire to sit yonder on His
throne, and share with Him in His glory.

Now what do the Apostles, and what does Christ Himself, in that
passage that I have quoted, mean, by such solemn words as these? Some
people shrink from them, and say that it is trenching upon the
central doctrine of the Gospel, when we speak about drinking of the
cup which Christ drank of. They ask, Can it be? Yes, it can be, if
you will think thus:--If a Christian has the Spirit and life of
Christ in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really, by
the same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes will
produce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which--divine,
pure, incapable of copy and repetition--in one aspect has ended for
ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, by every
Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world; who in
like manner has to resist temptation; who in like manner has to
stand, by God's help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new nature
of him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.
For were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings that were
wrought upon Calvary? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the
sufferings which came from the contradiction of sinners against
Himself? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings which
were connected with His bodily afflictions and pain, precious and
priceless as they were, an