d the tenderness of His words, unless you can say this is 'the
Lamb of God,' 'the Word made flesh,' 'who bare our sins, and carried our
sicknesses and our sorrows.' Strike out from the gospel that you preach
'the sufferings of Christ,' and you have struck out the one thing that
will draw men's hearts, that will satisfy men's needs, that will bind
men to Him with cords of love. 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
unto Me.' So, wherever you get what they call an ethical gospel which
deals with moralities, and does not impart the power that will vitalise
moralities, and make them into thankful service and sacrifices, in
return for the great Sacrifice; wherever you get a gospel that falters
in its enunciation of the sufferings of Christ, and wherever you get a
gospel that secularises the Christian service of the Sabbath, and will
rather discuss the things that the newspapers discuss, and the new books
that the reviewers are talking about, and odds and ends of that sort
that are thought to be popular and attractive, you get a gospel _minus_
the thing that, in the Old Testament and in the New alike, stands forth
in the centre of all. 'We preach Christ crucified'; it is not enough to
preach Christ. Many a man does that, and might as well hold his tongue.
'We preach Christ crucified.' And the same august Figure which loomed
before the vision of prophets, and shines through many a weary age,
stands before us of this generation; ay! and will stand till the end of
the world, as the centre, the pivot of human history, the Christ who has
died for men. The Christ that will stand in the centre of the
development of humanity is the Christ that died on the Cross. If your
gospel is not that, you have yet to learn the deepest secret of His
power.

III. Once more, here we have Christ and His Cross as the study of
angels.

'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Now, the word that Peter
employs there is an unusual one in Scripture. Its force may, perhaps, be
best conveyed by referring to one of the few instances in which it is
employed. It is used to describe the attitude of Peter and John when
they stooped down and looked into the sepulchre. Perhaps there may be a
reference in Peter's mind to that incident, when he saw the 'two angels
... sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the
body of Jesus had lain.' Perhaps, also, there floats in his mind some
kind of reference to the outspread wings and bended he