Weakness is always touching. Cold indeed were our hearts, could they contemplate unmoved Him who was crucified through weakness. Our selfishness might lead us to dwell rather upon the benefits we receive through His death,-these surely we never can nor should forget,-but love will remember that He said, "Could ye not watch with Me one hour ?" that He seemed to ask for sympathy when He said, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." We know He wishes us now to look back and see not merely what He suffered and secured for us, but how He passed through it.

Isaac was bound by his father and laid upon the altar. There is no struggle, as though he were unwilling, but there is the suggestion in the cords, of strength all gone, as our Lord says, " He weakened My strength in the way."

Joseph, when he came on his mission of love, was bound by his brethren. In their repentance they say, ' We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us and we would not hear." That anguish was but the type of the deeper anguish of Him who said, in view of being in the hands of enemies, " Reproach hath broken My heart; . . and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none." As His enemies surround Him, divine power flashes forth, they fall to the ground, but it is at once succeeded by that weakness of submission in which He yields Himself into their hands. So all the way through that dark scene, at the priest's palace, in the judgment-hall, it is in weakness we see Him. " He is led as a lamb to the slaughter." The derision of the crowd before Him, and of the thieves beside Him, fail to bring out the strength we know is there. It is the perfection of weakness. Death comes, the culmination of all weakness. He lies in the loving hands of Joseph and others without a throb or motion in answer to their loving ministrations. It is the weakness of death.

Can the soul fail to worship and adore, as we see Him thus crucified through weakness ? We may not say much here, but how holy, how solemn is the thought! The Son of God lies here in the weakness of death. We well know why. The strong man held us as his goods. This One frees us, but only, though stronger than he, by becoming weak. As we see that tomb, and the One who lay there, can we fail to say, " Thou art worthy, for Thou wast slain " ? and as we think of that " wondrous cross," can we fail to say and mean, " God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" ?

"By weakness and defeat
He won the mead and crown,
Trod all our foes beneath
His feet By being trodden down."