o the children of men.

But just as obviously was it a work for men with God. This was stamped
on all His words and on the entire tenor of His life. He was bringing
men back to God, and He had to remove the obstacles which stood in the
way. He had to roll away the stone from the sepulchre in which
humanity was entombed and call the dead to come forth. He had to press
His weight against the huge iron gates of human guilt and doom and
force them open. He had done so; and, as He said, "It is finished," He
was at the same time saying to all mankind, "Behold, I have set before
you an open door, and no man can shut it."

The more difficult and prolonged any task is, the greater is the
satisfaction of finishing it. Everyone knows what it is, after
accomplishing anything on which a great deal of labour has been
bestowed or the accomplishment of which has been delayed, to be able to
say, "There; it is finished at last." In the more signal efforts of
human genius and energy there is a satisfaction of final achievement
which warms even spectators with sympathy at the distance of hundreds
of years. What must it be to the poet, after equipping himself by the
labours of a lifetime with the stores of knowledge and the skill in the
use of language requisite for the composition of a "Divine Comedy" or a
"Paradise Lost," and after wearing himself lean for many years at his
task, to be able at last, when the final line has been penned, to write
Finis at the bottom of his performance? What must it have been to
Columbus, after he had worn his life out in seeking the patronage
necessary for his undertaking and endured the perils of voyaging in
stormy seas and among mutinous mariners, to see at last the sunlight on
the peak of Darien which informed him that his dream was true and his
lifework accomplished? When we read how William Wilberforce, the
champion of Slave Emancipation, heard on his deathbed, a few hours
before he breathed his last, that the British Legislature had agreed to
the expenditure necessary to secure the object to which he had
sacrificed his life, what heart can refuse its tribute of sympathetic
joy, as it thinks of him expiring with the shouts of emancipated
millions in his ears? These are feeble suggestions of the triumph with
which Christ saw, fallen behind Him, His accomplished task, as He
cried, "It is finished."

II.

If Jesus had during life a vast work on hand which He was able on the
cross to say