But the Scribes and Pharisees never understood it.  To the last they were puzzled and angered by that very self-sacrifice of His:  He must be a bad man, they thought, or He would not care so much for bad men.  ‘A friend of publicans and sinners,’ they called Him, thinking that a shameful blame to Him, while it was really the very highest praise.  But if they could not see the beauty of His conduct, can we?  It is very difficult, I do not deny it, my friends, for the selfishness and pride of fallen man:  it is difficult to see that the Cross was the most glorious throne that was even set up on earth, and that the crown of thorns was worth all the crowns of czars and emperors:  difficult, indeed, not to stumble at the stumbling-block of the Cross, and to say, ’It cannot surely be more blessed to give than to receive:’  difficult, not to say in our hearts, ’The way to be great is surely to rise above other men, not to stoop below them; to make use of them, and not to make ourselves slaves to them.’  And yet the Lord Jesus Christ did so; He took on Himself the form of a slave, and made Himself of no reputation:  and what was fit and good for Him, must surely be fit and good for us.  But it is a hard lesson to the pride of fallen creatures:  very hard.  And nothing, I believe, but sorrow will teach it us:  sorrow is teaching it some of us now.  We surely are beginning to see, that to suffer patiently for conscience sake, is the most beautiful thing on earth or in heaven:  we begin to see that those poor soldiers, dying by inches of cold and weariness, without a murmur, because it was their Duty, were doing a nobler work even than they did when they fought at Alma and Inkermann; and that those ladies who are drudging in the hospitals, far away from home, amid filth and pestilence, are doing, if possible, a nobler work still, a nobler work than if they were queens or empresses, because they have taken up the Cross and followed Christ; because they are not seeking their own good, but the good of others.  And if we will not learn it from those glorious examples, God will force us to learn it, I trust, every one of us, by sorrow and disappointment.  Ah, my friends, might one not learn it at once, if one would but open one’s eyes and look at things as they are?  Every one is longing for something; each has his little plan for himself, of what he would like to be, and like to do, and says to himself all day long, ’If I could but get that one thing, I should be happy:  If I could but get that, then I should want no more!’ Foolish man, self-deceived by his own lusts!  Perhaps he cannot get what he wants, and therefore he cannot enjoy what he has, and is moody, discontented, peevish, a torment to himself, and perhaps a torment to his family.  Or perhaps he does get what he wants:  and is he happy after all?  Not he.  He is like the greedy Israelites of old, when they longed for the quails; and God sent the quails:  but while the meat was yet in their mouths, they loathed