lf; and we have
discovered in ourselves the same weariness, the same tendency to sleep,
in the presence of what we tell ourselves is the most important of all
interests. We call up the scene under the olives, and find that we
wander and are inattentive and idle when we most want to be attentive
and alert. We place ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when
the soldiers, led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run
away? And our memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and
again: you have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant
trifles--how insignificant they look now--for fear of criticism, for
fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly
companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over again
you have run away. The things that seemed important when they were
present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.

We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the Sanhedrin, to
the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod. Any impulse to
criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have denied so often under
such trifling provocation. S. Peter was frightened from participation in
the act of our Lord's sacrifice through mortal fear of his life. We have
stayed away from the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from
mere sloth, from disinclination to effort, from the fact that our
participation would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly
amusement. S. Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the
end, looks heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of
the trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our
Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded in
ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have spit upon
our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown of thorns, if
they had believed that He was God. But we believe that He is God. Our
desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of His expressed ideals when
we compromise with the world, our departure from His example when we
excuse ourselves on the ground of very minor inconveniences from keeping
some holy day or fasting day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They
can hardly be said to be founded in weakness, so slight is the
temptation that we do not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we
keep Good Friday, very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear
to us. But we