It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly familiar with the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly in meditation upon His life, and especially upon His Passion.  Love is the constant counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh in our souls by the contemplation of what our Lord has actually done for us.  A general recalling of what He has done has not the same stimulating force as the vivid placing before us of the actual details of His work.  To most of us visible aids to the realisation of our Lord’s action for us are most helpful.  A crucifix on the wall of one’s room before which one can say one’s prayers, and before which also we stop for a moment time and again in the course of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of love, of contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion fresh.  We gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross.  A set of cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes.  It is much to be desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional helps of all sorts.  We are quite too much inclined to think that there is something of spiritual superiority in the attempt to conduct our devotional life without any of the helps which centuries of Christian experience have provided.  It is the same sort of feeling that makes other Christians assume that there is a superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by their dispensing with “forms,” especially with printed prayers.  It is just as well to remember that we did not originate the Christian Religion, but inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have been found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can hardly be treated as valueless, much less as superstitious.  The fact that saints have found them valuable and one has not, may possibly not be a criticism of the saints.

The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus scourged, spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some searchings of heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious life.  Nothing seems to disturb the modern person so much as the suggestion that the chief business of the Christian Religion is not to look after their comfort.  They hold, it would appear, to the pre-Christian notion that prosperity is an obvious mark of God’s favour, and that by the accumulation of wealth they are giving indisputable evidence of piety.  It is well to recall that there is no such dangerous path as that of continual success.  I do not in the least mean to imply that success is sinful or indicates the existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly that the successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man.  He is quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the laws of God.  There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the unsuccessful man, but the Holy Scriptures