ing the temptation in
the wilderness Jesus was too absorbed to be aware of His bodily
necessities; but, when the spiritual strain was removed, He "was
afterward an hungered."

In the present instance, when He came out of His spiritual trance, it
was thirst He became conscious of. I remember once talking with a
German student who had served in the Franco-Prussian War. He was
wounded in an engagement near Paris, and lay on the field unable to
stir. He did not know exactly what was the nature of his wound, and he
thought that he might be dying. The pain was intense; the wounded and
dying were groaning round about him; the battle was still raging; and
shots were falling and tearing up the ground in all directions. But
after a time one agony, he told me, began to swallow up all the rest,
and soon made him forget his wound, his danger and his neighbours. It
was the agony of thirst. He would have given the world for a draught
of water. This was the supreme distress of crucifixion. The agonies
of the horrible punishment were of the most excruciating and
complicated order; but, after a time, they all gathered into one
central current, in which they were lost and swallowed up--that of
devouring thirst; and it was this that drew from our Lord the fifth
word.[3]

I.

This was the only cry of physical pain uttered by our Lord on the
cross. As was remarked in a previous chapter, it was not uncommon for
the victims of crucifixion, when the ghastly operation of nailing them
to the tree began, to writhe and resist, and to indulge either in
abject entreaties to be saved from the inevitable or in wild defiance
of their fate. But at this stage Jesus uttered never a word of
complaint. Afterwards also, in spite of the ever-increasing pain, He
preserved absolute self-control. He was absorbed either in caring for
others or in prayer to God.

It is a sublime example of patience. It rebukes our softness and
intolerance of pain. How easily we are made to cry out; how peevish
and ill-tempered we become under slight annoyances! A headache, a
toothache, a cold, or some other slight affair, is supposed to be a
sufficient justification for losing all self-control and making a whole
household uncomfortable. Suffering does not always sanctify. It sours
some tempers and makes them selfish and exacting. This is the
besetting sin of invalids--to become absorbed in their own miseries and
to make all about them the slaves of their