he real, sees what he
must do. The salvation of the lost means the cross for himself. But
why? we ask again. We must look a little closer if we are to
understand him. We shall not easily understand him in all his
thoughts, but part of our education comes from the endeavour to
follow him here, to "be with him," in the phrase with which we
began.

First of all we may put his love of men. He never lost the
individual in the mass, never lost sight of the human being who
needed God. The teacher who put the law of kindness in the great
phrase, "Go with him twain" (Matt. 5:41), was not likely to limit
himself in meeting men's needs. He was bound to do more than we
should expect, when he saw people whom he could help; and it is that
spirit of abounding generosity that shows a man what to do (Luke
6:38). Everywhere, every day, he met the call that quickened
thought and shaped purpose.

He walked down a street; and the scene of misery or of sin came upon
him with pressure; he could not pass by, as we do, and fail to note
what we do not wish to think of. He knows a pressure upon his spirit
for the man, the child, the woman--for the one who sins, the one who
suffers, the other who dies. They must be got in touch with God. He
sits with his disciples at a meal--the men whom he loved--he watches
them, he listens to them. Peter, James, John, one after the other,
becomes a call to him. They need redemption; they need far more than
they dream; they need God. That pressure is there night and day--it
becomes intercession, and that grows into inspiration. Our prayers
suffer, some one has said, for our want of our identification with
the world's sin and misery. He was identified with the world's sin
and misery, and they followed him into his prayer. It becomes with
him an imperative necessity to effect man's reconciliation with God.
All his experience of man, his love of man, call him that way.

The second great momentum comes from the love of God, and his faith
in God. Here, again, we must emphasize for ourselves his criticism
of Peter: "You think like a man and not like God" (Mark 8:33). We do
not see God, as Jesus did. He must make plain to men, as it never
was made plain before, the love of God. He must secure that it is
for every man the greatest reality in the world, the one great
flaming fact that burns itself living into every man's
consciousness. He sees that for this God calls him to the cross, so
much so that when he prays in