d, "As long
as women and sorrow exist on earth, so long will the gospel of
Christianity find an echo in the human heart." Let it find an echo in
yours. But it will only find one, in as far as you can enter into the
mystery of Passion-week; in as far as you can learn from Passion-week the
truest and highest theology; and see what God is like, and therefore what
you must try to be like likewise.

Let us think, then, awhile of the mystery of Passion-week; the mystery of
the Cross of Christ. Christ Himself was looking on the coming Cross,
during this Passion-week; ay, and for many a week before. Nay rather,
had He not looked on it from all eternity? For is He not the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world? Therefore we may well look on it with
Him. It may seem, at first, a painful bight. But shall it cast over our
minds only gloom and darkness? Or shall we not see on the Cross the full
revelation of Light; of the Light which lightens every man that comes
into the world: and find that painful, not because of its darkness, but
as the blaze of full sunshine is painful, from unbearable intensity of
warmth and light? Let us see.

On the Cross of Calvary, then, God the Father shewed His own character
and the character of His co-equal and co-eternal Son, and of The Spirit
which proceeds from both. For there He spared not His only-begotten Son,
but freely gave Him for us. On the Cross of Calvary, not by the will of
man, but by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, was offered
before God the one and only full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction for the sin of the whole world. God Himself
did this. It was not done by any other being to alter His will; it was
done to fulfil His will. It was not done to satisfy God's anger; it was
done to satisfy God's love. Therefore Good Friday was well and wisely
called by our forefathers Good Friday; because it shews, as no other day
can do, that God is good; that God's will to men, in spite of all their
sins, is a good will; that so boundless, so utterly unselfish and
condescending, is the eternal love of God, that when an insignificant
race in a small and remote planet fell, and went wrong, and was in danger
of ruin, there was nothing that God would not dare, God would not suffer,
for the sake of even such as us, vile earth and miserable sinners.

Yes, this is the good news of Passion-week; a gospel which men are too
apt to forget, eve