f Christ, has been rapt
itself into a passion of gratitude, an ecstasy of wonder and of love,
which is beautiful, honourable, just, and in the deepest sense most
rational, whenever it is spontaneous and natural.

But there have been thousands, as there may be many here to-day, of
colder temperament; who would distrust in themselves, even while they
respected in others, any violence of religious emotion: yet they too have
found, and you too may find, in contemplating the Passion of Christ, a
satisfaction deeper than that of any emotion; a satisfaction not to the
heart, still less to the brain, but to that far deeper and diviner
faculty within us all--our moral sense; that God-given instinct which
makes us discern and sympathise with all that is beautiful and true and
good.

And so it has befallen, for eighteen hundred years, that thousands who
have thought earnestly and carefully on God and on the character of God,
on man and on the universe, and on their relation to Him who made them
both, have found in the Incarnation and the Passion of the Son of God the
perfect satisfaction of their moral wants; the surest key to the facts of
the spiritual world; the complete assurance that, in spite of all seeming
difficulties and contradictions, the Maker of the world was a Righteous
Being, who had founded the world in righteousness; that the Father of
Spirits was a perfect Father, who in His only-begotten Son had shewn
forth His perfectness, in such a shape and by such acts that men might
not only adore it, but sympathise with it; not only thank Him for it, but
copy it; and become, though at an infinite distance, perfect as their
Father in heaven is perfect, and full of grace and truth, like that Son
who is the brightness of His Father's glory, and the express image of His
person. Such a satisfaction have they found in looking upon the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem of Him who knew that it would be followed
by the revolt of the fickle mob, and the desertion of His disciples, and
the Cross of Calvary, and all the hideous circumstances of a Roman
malefactor's death.

But there have been those, and there are still, who have found no such
satisfaction in the story which the Gospel tells, and still less in the
explanation which the Epistle gives; who have, as St Paul says, stumbled
at the stumblingblock of the Cross.

It would be easy to ignore such persons, were they scoffers or
profligates: but when they number among their ranks