this
Passion cannot sweeten, not even death itself; as the Bride
saith, "His lips are lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh."
[Song of So. 5:13] What resemblance is there between lips and
lilies, since lips are red and lilies white? But she says this in
a mystery, signifying that the words of Christ are most fair and
pure, and that there is in them naught of blood-red bitterness or
guile; nevertheless, in them He drops precious and chosen myrrh,
that is, the bitterness of death. These most pure lips and sweet
have power to make the bitterest death sweet and fair and bright
and dear,--death that, like precious myrrh, removes at once all
of sin's corruption.

How does this come to pass? When, forsooth, you hear that Jesus
Christ, God's Son, hath, by His most holy touch, consecrated and
hallowed all sufferings, even death itself, hath blessed the
curse, glorified shame, and enriched poverty, so that death has
been made a door to life, curse a fount of blessing, and shame
the mother of glory: how can you then be so hard and ungrateful
as not to long for and to love all manner of sufferings, now that
they have been touched by Christ's most pure and holy flesh and
blood, and made unto you holy, harmless, wholesome, blessed, and
full of joy?

For if Christ, by the touch of His most innocent flesh, has
hallowed all waters unto baptism, yea, and every creature
besides; how much more has He, by the same contact of His most
innocent flesh and blood, hallowed every form of death, all
suffering and loss, every curse and shame, unto the baptism of
the Spirit, or the baptism of blood![30] Even as He saith of this
same baptism of His Passion, in Luke xii, "I have a baptism to be
baptised with; and how am I straitened until it be
accomplished!" [Luke 12:50] Behold, how He is straitened, how He
pants and thirsts, to sanctify suffering and death, and make them
things to be loved! For He sees how we stand in fear of
suffering. He marks how we tremble and shrink from death. And so,
like a godly pastor or faithful physician, He hastens to set
bounds to this our evil, and is impatient to die and by His
contact to commend suffering and death unto us. So that the death
of a Christian is henceforth to be regarded as the brazen serpent
of Moses, [Num. 21:8] which indeed hath in all things the
appearance of a serpent, yet is quite without life, without
motion, without venom, without sting. Even so the righteous seem,
in the sight of the unwi