ighteousness to an
unrighteous world, and paid with His life the penalty of His daring.
That is the very lowest view which can be taken of His death. No
Unitarian, no unbeliever, will deny that Jesus died as a good man,
choosing rather the shame of the Cross than the deeper shame of treason
to the truth. And thus far Christ is an example to all who follow Him.
In one sense His cross-bearing was all His own, a mystery of suffering
and death into which no man can enter. But in another sense, as St.
Peter tells us, He has left us by His sufferings an example that we
should follow His steps. It is surely a significant fact that the words
which immediately follow Christ's first distinct declaration of His
death are these, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross and follow Me." His death was the supreme
illustration of a law which binds us, the servants, even as it bound
Him, the Master. In the path of every true man there stands the cross
which he must bear, or be true no more. Let no one grow impatient and
say this is no more than the fringe of Christ's thoughts about His
death; even the fringe is part of the robe, and if, as the words I have
quoted seem clearly to indicate, Christ thought of His death as in any
sense at all a pattern for us, let us not miss this, the first and
simplest lesson of the Cross.

There are few more impressive scenes in the history of the Christian
pulpit than that in which Robertson of Brighton, preaching the Assize
Sermon at Lewes, turned as he closed to the judges, and counsel, and
jury, and bade them remember, by "the trial hour of Christ," by "the
Cross of the Son of God," the sacred claims of truth: "The first lesson
of the Christian life is this, Be true; and the second this, Be true;
and the third this, Be true."

II

But though this be our starting-point, it is no more than a starting-point.
If Jesus was only a brave man, paying with His life the penalty
of His bravery in the streets of Jerusalem, it is wasting words to call
Him "the Saviour of the world." If His death were only a martyrdom,
then, though we may honour Him as we honour Socrates, and many another
name in the long roll of "the noble army of martyrs," yet He can no more
be our Redeemer than can any one of them. But it was not so that Christ
thought of His death. The martyr dies because he must; Christ died
because He would. The strong hands of violent men snatch away the
martyr's