April 3

Ash Wednesday

For Christ also hath once suffered. I S. PETER iii. 18.

WE learn from our Lord's Passion that love of the highest order attains its highest exercise and truest refinement by suffering pain, by enduring disappointment, by labouring under reproach and misconceptions, by meeting hardness, by patiently waiting the time, by submitting all its actings to an overruling will and the stern laws of a perpetual self-sacrifice. It is not that God ever fails to heed the yearnings of a disinterested love, but that there is something greater than the fulfilment of love's fondest desires, the purification of love through discipline and restraint and pain. Again, we learn that love, disappointed of a vent for its energies in one channel, may find another and a truer exercise in other channels. Our Lord accepted occasions and openings for His love, though not always where He sought them; and we must do likewise. If, for instance, thou canst not be a martyr in a foreign mission, thou canst be a patient bearer of the everyday trials at home. If not possessed of a large fortune, thou canst always speak kind words, thou canst commit thy aims to God in prayer and wait to find their accomplishment in some wholly unexpected way. Moreover, if all fail, it may be only a failing to the outward sense. The Cross was the fulfilment of a perfect triumph through utter loss. Canst thou tell, thou who mournest over some disappointed scheme on which love has fastened its desire, what far greater gain of pure spiritual love and union with God may be the result of that sore trial; how a truer, higher, and more blessed energy of heart, even here, may be found through the very loss of all? Then

Come, Tribulation, come!