1. The whole story sounds like a bit of romance. We might almost say that it was a chance conversion. What moved Simon to take that particular turning which brought him to Christ and His cross, and just at the very moment he was needed? For if he had delayed a minute or two, he would have been too late. We cannot say. He is like the man mentioned in our Saviour's parable, who was walking home one evening across the fields, when suddenly he noticed a place where the rains had washed the earth away, and there unexpectedly found a treasure. Simon, too, found that day something he had never expected to find, something he had never once thought of; but ever after it was the treasure of his life.
2. Doubtless to Simon this encounter seemed at the moment the most unfortunate incident that could have befallen him-an interruption, an annoyance and a humiliation; yet it turned out to be the gateway of life. Thus do blessings sometimes come in disguise, and out of an apparition, at the sight of which we cry out for fear, may suddenly issue the form of the Son of Man.
Whatever form of cross-bearing is laid upon us, we feel at first that it is a pressed service, a compulsion which is trying and oppressive. We feel the pain of having to give up our way and to have our liberty restricted. At first we are filled with resentment against the gospel of Christ for spoiling our plans and pleasures. But by and by, as God's grace works in us and makes us willing, the service that we most hated we shall learn most to love. The cross that crushed us to the earth will support us and lift us to heaven. The things that seemed against us we shall find working together for our good. The compulsion of painful circumstances that brought us to Christ will issue in richer life and grander liberty; and the constrained service will be changed into a lifelong fidelity.
In a letter written to her intimate friend, Miss Lily Schlumberger, Adèle Kamm thus refers to that critical time when she presented to God as a “willing sacrifice” the ruin of her earthly hopes:
“My last great spiritual conflict took place at Cannes, when, after a trying journey, I realized that I must remain in bed altogether, that the longed-for recovery was not to be, and when, to crown everything, two vertebræ began to swell, and were so painful that I had to lie on my back entirely.… For a month I was just about as rebellious as any one could be, and I used to cry my heart out every night, till one day our clergyman sang me a beautiful hymn [by Karre] called ‘The Cross' [‘It is at the Cross that the way begins']. These beautiful words touched me. I grew calmer as I meditated on the sufferings of Jesus Christ, which were so much greater than my own, and were borne willingly out of love to us, and especially as I thought of His sublime, glorious love on the Cross. Oh! how I prayed that God would help me to accept my cross, and begin a new life of pure love to God and man. And God did answer me. I am not a bit good, not in the least what I ought to be, but these dreadful conflicts are over, and for a whole year now I have not had any of those dark times which nearly drove me to despair, when a cloud seemed to come between my soul and God.”1 [Note: A Living Witness: The Life of Adèle Kamm, 55.]
3. Simon's experience might have had the opposite effect from what it did have and he might have cursed in his heart not only the soldiers and the mob, but Christ Himself, the innocent cause of his misfortune, and sullenly refused to think of Him unless as having given occasion for his public disgrace. And it is, alas! true that cross-bearing does not always bring blessing with it, or lead those who have to suffer nearer to Christ, but rather tends to harden their hearts against God's pleadings with them, and to make them sullen and defiant. And yet it is clearly one of God's ways-it may seem to us a very roundabout way-of arresting us when we are going on our own paths; and we should pray to be able to see His hand in it, and to get out of it what of good and blessing He intends to bring to us by it. Simon came to see that, though he thought that day he was bearing the cross for Christ, Christ had really been bearing it for him. And so what he had shrunk from as a disgrace and a pain he welcomed as an honour and a joy, and by becoming a Christian bore his Master's cross all his life, and walked by His side not only for a few minutes on the way to Calvary, but every day in the streets of Cyrene.
15th April 1870.-Crucifixion! That is the word we have to meditate to-day. Is it not Good Friday? To curse grief is easier than to bless it, but to do so is to fall back into the point of view of the earthly, the carnal, the natural man. By what has Christianity subdued the world if not by the apotheosis of grief, by its marvellous transmutation of suffering into triumph, of the crown of thorns into the crown of glory, and of a gibbet into a symbol of salvation? What does the apotheosis of the Cross mean, if not the death of death, the defeat of sin, the beatification of martyrdom, the raising to the skies of voluntary sacrifice, the defiance of pain?-“O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?”1 [Note: Amiel's Journal (trans, by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 167.]
Why fearest thou to take up the Cross which leadeth to a kingdom? In the Cross is salvation, in the Cross is life, in the Cross is protection against our enemies, in the Cross is heavenly sweetness, in the Cross is strength of mind, in the Cross joy of spirit, in the Cross the height of virtue, in the Cross the perfection of holiness. There is no salvation of the soul, nor hope of everlasting life, save in the Cross. Take up therefore thy Cross and follow Jesus, and thou shalt go into life everlasting. He went before, bearing His Cross, and died for thee on the Cross, that thou mayest also bear thy Cross and desire to die on the Cross with Him. For if thou be dead with Him, thou shalt also live with Him. And if thou be a partaker of His sufferings thou shalt be a partaker also of His glory. Behold! everything dependeth upon the Cross, and all lieth in our dying thereon; for there is no other way unto life, and to true inward peace, but the way of the Holy Cross, and of daily mortification.2 [Note: Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, chap. xii.]
Looking back along life's trodden way,
Gleams and greenness linger on the track;
Distance melts and mellows all to-day,
Looking back.
Rose and purple and a silvery grey,
Is that the cloud we called so black?
Evening harmonizes all to-day,
Looking back.
Foolish feet so prone to halt or stray,
Foolish heart so restive on the rack!
Yesterday we sighed, but not to-day,
Looking back.
4. What do we mean by cross-bearing now? Surely he bears the cross of Christ who honestly and willingly suffers pain or loss in order to further in the world that for which Christ died. And if He died that the weary and heavy-laden should be raised and cheered, then you would suppose that every stooping form would be touched by us as His form, and every burden lightened as if it were part of the weight which pressed Him down. “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me.” Thus He checked the tears of idle emotion-but only that He might draw out a deeper depth of action. “Inasmuch as ye have done it,” He said, “unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
You might suppose that in nineteen centuries Christians would have learned this simple lesson by heart, and have made the lifting of human sorrow the first test of Christian love. But what do we find? We find that in that long past which lies behind us the tragedy of the Saviour's cross has been made too much a spectacle, a moving drama, complete and apart, and too little a plan, a process, continued and perfected in us. “It is finished,” He cried. But the work of the cross will never be finished until sorrow and sighing have fled wholly away. His own part was finished; He would have done more if they had suffered Him to do it; the wooden beams were unfastened, laid aside, and the very site of the cross is now unknown; but the true cross, of which that other was but an emblem, still remains, and is loaded, or lightened, for Him and for humanity, as we do our part well or ill.
Thomas à Kempis ever preaches the Cross as life's great secret and underlying fact. Christ is to him the perfect example of self-abandonment and oneness with God, and His Cross is the universal Cross. His victory is the triumph of all disciples who live in Him. While the mystic generally thinks solely or mainly of the Incarnation, Thomas à Kempis never forgets the Cross, and thereby at once he safeguards personality as well as preserves his religion from ecstatic excesses. Dying to self and living to God-renouncing self and regaining self in the holy Jesus' love, are the keynotes of his message. The following of Jesus is to him cross-bearing, as the road to inner consolation and peace.1 [Note: D. Butler, Thomas à Kempis, 133.]
That was a great word which Luther spoke when he told the maidens and housewives of Germany that in scrubbing floors and going about their household duties they were accomplishing just as great a work in the sight of heaven as the monks and priests with their penances and holy offices. Indeed it had been said before Luther, and by a woman. Margery Baxter, the Lollardist of the fifteenth century, had the pith of the matter. “If,” she said to her sisters, “ye desire to see the true Cross of Christ, I will show it to you at home in your own house.” Stretching out her arms she said: “This is the true Cross of Christ, thou mightest and mayest behold and worship in thine own house; and therefore it is but vain to run to the church to worship dead Crosses.” In a word, holiness is in our daily service, and the holy places are where it is faithfully done.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Religion and To-Day, 194.]
When men of malice wrought the crown for Thee,
Didst Thou complain?
Nay; in each thorn God's finger Thou didst see,
His love thro' pain.
His finger did but press the ripened Vine,
Thy fruit to prove,
That henceforth all the world might drink the wine
Of Thy great love.
So when the darkness rose about Thy feet
Thy lips met His,
Amid the upper light, in Death's long sweet
Releasing kiss.
And shall I cry aloud in anger when
Men make for me
A Cross less harsh? Nay, I'll remember then
Thy constancy.
And if the darkness hide me from Thy sight
At God's command,
I'll talk with Thee all thro' the prayerful night,
