June 5

Bath given himself for us an offering. — EPH. v. 2.

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. — JOHN X. 17, 18.

CHRIST here asserts his own absolute freedom and voluntariness in dying. No act of self-sacrifice can be conceived of as more unforced. It is the model and warrant, as it has been the inspiration of every noble act of self-devotion from that time till now. He was under no obligation in the first place to throw his own body across the track along which remorseless death was rushing upon mankind. Every step on the road to Calvary he took shrinking yet resolved. His innocent, sensitive nature appreciated the torture, the shame, the horror of the death-pang; but he went forward to meet them. The betrayal, the arrest, the consent of Pilate, the rude violence of the Roman soldiery were only prearranged parts of the process by which his voluntary sacrifice was to be consummated. There was no power in the universe less than God's that could have reft his life without his own consent. Up to the last expiring cry, all was free; the most stupendous act of self-sacrifice the world has ever seen.

Do you love him as you ought, O man, for such a shame, for such a death endured for you; and will you learn from such an example to make some sacrifice at least for the good of others?

Samuel M Hopkin

This was compassion, like a God, That when the Saviour knew The price of pardon was his blood His pity ne'er withdrew.

WATTS.