1. Surely it was an immeasurable gain to Simon. For in the first place this rencontre issued in his salvation and in the salvation of his house. The Evangelist calls him familiarly “the father of Alexander and Rufus.” Evidently the two sons were well known to those for whom St. Mark was writing; that is, they were members of the Christian circle. And there can be little doubt that the connexion of his family with the Church was the result of this incident in the father's life. St. Mark wrote his Gospel for the Christians of Rome; and in the Epistle to the Romans one Rufus is mentioned as resident there along with his mother. This may be one of the sons of Simon. And in Act_13:1, one Simeon-the same name as Simon-is mentioned along with a Lucius of Cyrene as a conspicuous Christian at Antioch: he is called Niger, or Black, a name not surprising for one who had been tanned by the hot sun of Africa. Altogether, we have sufficiently clear indications that in consequence of this incident Simon became a Christian. It would have been contrary both to nature and to grace that any man should come so near Jesus, and should do so much for Him, and not be called into His Kingdom.
Canon Carus tells how the verse in St. Luke's Gospel referring to Simon of Cyrene proved a finger of light once to Simeon of Cambridge. “At an early period of his ministry, and when he was suffering severe opposition, he was in much doubt whether it was his duty to remain in Cambridge.… He opened his little Greek Testament, as he thought and intended in the Epistles, and, finding the book upside down, he discovered he was in the Gospels, and his finger on Luk_23:26, ‘They laid hold on one Simon (Simeon), and on him they laid the cross,' etc. ‘Then,' said Mr. Simeon, ‘lay it on me, Lord, and I will bear it for Thy sake to the end of my life; and henceforth I bound persecution as a wreath of glory round my brow.' ”1 [Note: J. Moffatt, The Gospel of St. Luke, 154.]
I saw a Cross of burning gold
And jewels glorious to behold:
Over it a golden crown,
All the people falling down.
I saw an ugly Cross of wood,
On it there were stains of blood:
Over it a crown of thorn,
Plaited for the people's scorn.
Cross of gold, no fruit was thine,
Nothing but the empty shrine.
Cross of wood, thou living tree,
The true Vine clung fast to thee.1 [Note: Mary E. Coleridge.]
2. But St. Mark tells us at the same time that Simon's reward was greater than the saving of his own soul. It was the answer of his most instant and constant and urgent prayers. Away in Cyrene this pilgrim to the Holy City had left two little sons, and as he looked upon them, exiles from the land of Israel, as he taught them the fear of the God of Jacob, the very passion of his heart was distilled into prayer, that they might grow in the faith and obedience of God. Christ read the heart of His cross-bearer as he walked by His side. He saw the names Rufus and Alexander graven on Simon's heart. And the great reward was given to Simon of seeing both his sons known and loved and honoured in the Church of Christ.
It is not given to every man of God to have his sons follow in his steps. So many influences may bear in upon the impressionable heart of youth, that a father's counsel may remain unheeded, and a father's example be scorned. But no man shall ever bear the cross of Christ without reaping a reward in his children. In the brave Disruption days in Scotland, of which I may speak without heat or passion (for whatever be your judgment on the cause, there is no man who does not honour the deed), there were men who bore the cross after Jesus. Not only, and not chiefly, by those in the ranks of the ministry, who found fame shining on the path of sacrifice, but by many in obscure homes the stern cross was accepted. By costly sacrifice, by long years of patient self-denial, by the enduring of scorn and the suffering of loss, these men and women followed Christ. They left behind them the house of prayer round which their dead were lying; they stood on the moors in the bitter winter blasts of 1844, and by the sea-shore, where their psalms were mingled with the hoarse chant of the waves; they refused emolument and advantage for conscience' sake; they poured with unstinting hand the gifts of their poverty into the common cause; they turned their faces from friendships it broke their hearts to lose-they bore the cross of Christ. And mark their reward. Their children to-day stand strong in the faith and devotion of Christ, their sons' names are loved and honoured in the Church; they are loyal to every cause which promotes the righteousness of the people. When you question them they will tell you that their faith was kindled by their father's sacrifice. He bore a cross for Jesus.1 [Note: W. M. Clow, The Day of the Cross, 165.]
3. Before we leave this interesting story, there is one lesson which we must try to learn. The cross which Simon helped to carry was Christ's cross, not his own. Can we do the same? Christ's cross-bearing is not over yet; after nineteen hundred years He is still carrying it; and somehow we cannot but think of Him as continually tired and needing help. We think of Christ as crucified, and we push Him far back from us, and speak as if the pain of the cross were gone from Him for ever and He were now peaceful and happy evermore. But as long as there are sin and misery in the world, how can Christ be happy? Every day there are things going on which make Him miserable. That is a strong word to use, but knowing Christ as we do, can we use any other? We can help Him to bear His cross. We can do something to relieve the sin and the wretchedness beside which we live; and in relieving it we are making Christ's cross easier for Him to bear.
Intimacy with Christ must begin, for the sinner, by being a fellowship with His sufferings. And, indeed, there is no other way. As no man can come to the Father but by Christ, so no man can come to Christ but by the path of those sufferings by which He put Himself on the level of sinners. The Cross is the doorway through which he must pass.2 [Note: A. Chandler, The Cult of the Passing Moment, 92.]
To his sister Maria, Mr. Denny wrote from Buenos Ayres a few weeks before his tragic death:
“The Cross of Christ is no longer to you the symbol of a bargain between a vindictive Deity and a self-sacrificing Deity, between the individual and selected soul and the Trinity, but the expression of the great truth of life that self-renunciation, the way of the Cross, is the only pathway in spiritual life, and that not as a duty or a trial, but as the only means of freedom, hope, and joy. People will tell you Buddha taught this, and that all the ascetics have taught the same; but their teaching was not like Christ's. They wanted to kill self, an impossible feat. He meant the self to be lost in love for others, and devotion to them; that by the miracle of spiritual life the lost self should return on the great spiral of progress to its old point in the plane, but to such elevation in height that it shines clothed with immortality, and light, and love as with the garments of God's kingdom. This was the joy that was set before Him. This is the unhoped, unexpected joy set before our im eyes.”1 [Note: A. B. Bruce, Life of William Denny, 430.]
Now with wan ray that other sun of Song
Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul:
One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long
'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole.
Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory.
Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields;
Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee,
Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields.
Of reapèd joys thou art the heavy sheaf
Which must be lifted, though the reaper groan;
Yea, we may cry till Heaven's great ear be deaf,
But we must bear thee, and must bear alone.
Vain were a Simon; of the Antipodes
Our night not borrows the superfluous day.
Yet woe to him that from his burden flees,
Crushed in the fall of what he cast away.2 [Note: Francis Thompson, Ode to the Setting Sun.]
