But this truth is conditioned by a fact of the first importance. Jesus says:—"If any man would come after Me, let him" —for cross-bearing is entirely the doing of a man himself—"take up his cross" —a deliberate action of open-eyed choice—"daily" —for once joining that procession, we are never to fall out: it is not a great sacrifice made once for all, but a readiness to die for what we believe all the time—"and follow Me." This reveals that the taking up of a cross is purely optional. Our cross—for each has a cross peculiar to himself: "let him take up his cross"—is not something compulsory, but a thing of choice; it is not misfortune, or disease, or anything unavoidable that comes to us in the way of providence: it is something painful which, because Christ commands it or because Christ experienced it, we deliberately take upon ourselves; with our eyes wide open we lift the cross-beam, and fall into the procession, Knowing that what we carry may cost us our life. Our obedience must be, in will if not in event, obedience unto death.
So a cross lies in each believer's pathway. None of us needs to manufacture one: "there is enough wood in every man's forest to build all the crosses he will ever have to carry"; and they are always waiting at our feet. We have a most remarkable example given by our Lord Himself. Jesus said to the young ruler: —"Take up thy cross, and follow Me" (Mark x. 21): And what was his cross! "Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor." The Lord supposes that we may flinch from our cross, may shirk it, may walk round it; for He says elsewhere, "He that doth not take his cross and follow after Me is [not lost, but] not worthy of Me" (Matt. x. 38). "I shudder," Fenelon wrote to a friend, "at the mere shadow of the cross." But in the admirable words of Archbishop Tillotson: —"He that cannot take up a resolve to live as a saint, has a proof within himself that he is never like to die as a martyr." Said an old mystic: —"Never run after a cross, and never run away from one."
Now it is profitable to ponder why we should take up our cross cheerfully, buoyantly, courageously, joyously. "Let us therefore go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach" (Heb. xiii. i3). For (I) religion must prove its sincerity by its martyrs. John Witherspoon, in a crisis of' American history, said: —"Although these Grey hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather they should descend thither by the hand of the public executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country": it was at these words that the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the United States was born. The rough, jagged edges of the cross cut into the' flesh.' The humiliating ritual; the doctrine which at once involves unpopularity; the loneliness which only compromise can avoid; the practise which at once costs—in purse, in reputation, in health, perhaps life; the impossible attitude (as the world regards it) into' which loyalty to the Word of God forces us: it is in our cross that world sees Christ. A company of unbelievers once followed one of their number to the grave. On the bier was a cross. Someone reproved them for their inconsistency; but they answered, "No, the cross stands for all that is noblest in manhood."
Again (2) the Via Dolorosa is the highway of holiness, "There is no independence upon earth so strong," says Bishop Moule, "and so nobly strong, as that of a Christian who wills wholly to be Christ's servant. There is a power and presence in such a life, be it the poorest and the simplest, which in these days, as in days long gone, can attract more than wonder from those who may least betray the feeling. For what is it but a breath of the victorious martyr-spirit, the spirit in which seventeen centuries ago Polycarp stood invincibly superior before the heathen world and the cruel flame?"
The shadow rend,
And o'er us bend,
O martyrs with your crowns and palms;
Breathe through these throngs
Your battle-songs,
Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms!
Again (3) generations yet to come are depending on our fidelity. When we walk on coral rocks our steps are made sure by the deaths of countless fossil millions: so to-day we ourselves are treading on the laid-down lives of the noble dead; and souls not yet born again are depending on our death-in-life as the dust of their highway to God. A Church-house in Japan was built partly of stones, which were once cast at the missionaries by an infuriated mob: these missiles of destruction the Christians preserved to construct a house for the glory of God. As an early Puritan at hems wrote to the 'Mayflower' emigrants in the midst of their sufferings: —"let it not be grievous unto you that you have been instrumental to break the ice for others. The honour shall be yours to the world's end."
Again (4) the doctrine of a lifted cross counterbalances the 'danger of an unbalanced statement of the doctrines of grace. The Roman Church takes up the cross in order to be saved .We because we are saved: Rome works towards salvation; we work from salvation, towards glory. Nevertheless the enormous Roman martyr-roll speaks to the wise heart. The Societe des Missions Evangeliques de Paris sent out an appeal for a self -denial week. It was accompanied by an extract from a letter of M. Wilfred Monod running thus: "How is it that Protestants have produced on a man like Pere Gratry, the impression which he formulates as follows! 'Protestantism is, in essence, the abolition of sacrifice. To abolish mortification, abstinence and
Fasting; to abolish the necessity of good works, effort, struggle, virtue; to shut up sacrifice in Jesus alone and not let it pass to us; no more to say, as St. Paul did, I fill up that which is wanting in the sufferings of Christ, but rather to say to Jesus on His Cross, Suffer alone, O Lord—there is Protestantism. We know that this is not true; yet no one can live in the heart of Evangelicalism without a profound discomfort over the truth that is in it. In Christ's conception the Christian is a man with something to die for; and the man who has nothing worth dying for has nothing worth living for. Martyrdom may be life-long, or it may be consummated in an instant; but in every case it is the essence of Christianity, and the only legitimate meaning of the cross.
Again (5) no cross, no crown. The sorrow into which the cross plunges us is the furnace in which our crown is forged. "Were the felicities of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live" (Sir Thomas Browne). No sooner had Jesus spoken of His crucifixion, and then of each disciple following with a cross, than we read: —"the fashion of His countenance was altered, and his raiment became white and dazzling." It is a saying of profound truth-carry the cross, and you will find it will carry you. It is the path into the glory.
So, in an ever-deepening crisis of the world's history, let as shoulder our cross strongly, buoyantly, joyously. A draft was to be taken from an American regiment when transport was too limited for all to cross the Atlantic; and lots were cast by putting as many papers as there were men into a hat, and crosses were marked on as many papers as the men to be taken. "If ever I prayed in my life," one lad wrote to his father, "I prayed to-day that I might draw a cross." May God save us from failing Him in the great crisis! I the rally of the Serbians, when they routed the Austrians, was due to one fact. King Peter was an old man over seventy, and crippled with gout; but he went to the front at a desperate moment, and, addressing the men, he said: —"Heroes, you have taken two oaths, one to me, your King, and the other to your country. I am an old, broken man on the edge of the grave and I release you from your oath to me. From your other oath no one can release you. If you feel that you cannot go on, go to your homes, and I pledge my word that after the war, if we come out of it, nothing shall happen to you. But I and my sons stay here." The summons felt like an electric shock; not a man moved; and the Austrians were rolled back in broken and routed legions.
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