"If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross and follow Me."

UCH is our blessed LORD's condition of discipleship, from which there is no escape, and it is not in the bare endurance of a cross which cannot be

avoided, but in the ready bowing down to take it up, that the condition is fulfilled; and before we can do this, we must deny ourselves, for nature loves not the cross, but shrinks from suffering. "No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it:" yet "they that are CHRIST'S

have crucified the flesh, with the affections

and lusts thereof."

"Shall Simon bear the cross alone,

And all the rest go free?

No, there's a cross for every one,
And there's a cross for me,"

said a little active but delicate child, to her mamma, as she quietly resigned herself to the irksomeness of keeping her bed in the glad bright sunshine, when all young creatures were sporting themselves on a merry May-day morning. It was only a little cross, but she took it up, and was at rest.

I was much struck by the truth of an observation that I once heard to this effect; that in the two thieves who suffered with our blessed LORD, we have an example of the two great classes of mankind: all alike sufferers, for sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin, but the one seeking deliverance from the Cross, the other through the Cross: one saying, in the hardness of unbelief, "If Thou be CHRIST, save Thyself and us; come down from the Cross:" the other, in the

penitent humility of faith, acknowledging, "We indeed suffer justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto JESUS, "LORD, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." Perhaps the memory of some such picture as I have seen, will recall to my reader's mind the restless agony of the impenitent thief, and the patient resignation of the other, looking unto JESUS, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

O wondrous virtue of the Cross, that in so short a time transformed one agonized blasphemer into a penitent believer!

"On either side the malefactors hung

In agony of death, nor even then

Forbore the impious taunt of unbelief

'And if Thou be the CHRIST of GOD, come down
From this Thy Cross, and save Thyself and us!'
Awed by the Sufferer's silence, one looked up,
As to the brazen serpent they of old,

And with the venom rankling in his veins,

He look'd, and liv'd! The poison lost its power;
The sting of death pass'd downward-Dust was all
The serpent's meat-The spirit was at rest,—
At rest with his REDEEMER !"'

"I do not wonder," wrote a saint of old,

who for ten years was kept close prisoner at the castle of Vincennes, in France, "that some have painted the Cross-Bearer as a child making crosses in the carpenter's workshop. He is very skilful in the art." And so it is that He Who knoweth our frame, does wonderfully suit His loving discipline to the various characters of those whom He hath called to be saints. Some are called to follow Him, bearing in superhuman might the heavy cross of martyrdom; and we see them treading, with giant steps, the bloodstained Via Dolorosa,* and marvel at the sight. But if we listen, we shall hear them tell us, with that Holy Bishop, S. Ignatius, "I know what is good for me-now I begin to be a disciple. I care for nothing of visible or invisible things, so that I may but win CHRIST;" and they find that, of a truth, to lose their life for Him, is to save it unto life eternal. And some in lowly and neglected estate take up the cross of poverty, and behold, they are rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom, as having nothing, and yet possessThe way to Calvary.