SATURDAY.
Christ's Passion in General.
WITH WHAT AFFECTION DOES HE SUFFER?
!. His sufferings were prompted by a most sincere love for us; He earnestly wished beforehand for the hour in which His passion would commence. " I have a baptism," He says, " wherewith I am to be baptized; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" (Luke xii. 50.)
II. His sufferings were endured with the most profuse liberality. One single pain, one drop of blood, would have atoned for the crimes of a thousand worlds, in consequence of the nature of the sufferer; but Christ shed all His blood. " With Him" there is " plentiful redemption." (Ps. cxxix. 7.)
III. He suffered with the greatest meekness; for, "when He was reviled, He did not revile; when He suffered, He threatened not: but He delivered Himself to him who judged Him unjustly." (1 Pet. ii. 23.) And the prophet had foretold that " He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter." (Is. liii. 7.)
IV. He suffered with an insatiable zeal for the salvation of mankind; hence He exclaimed on the cross, "I thirst." (John xix. 28.)
V. In His sufferings He was perfectly humble; hence He might have said of Himself, "I am a worm and no man; the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people." (Ps. xxi. 7.)
VI. He exercised the virtue of poverty during the whole of His passion, and He ultimately died naked on the cross.
VII. His patience and perseverance were uncon-
