Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In soul and body, our Lord felt himself weak as water poured upon the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket shook him with great violence, straining every ligament, torturing every nerve, and dislocating his bones. Burdened with his own weight, the august sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. Faintness and weakness overpowered him; to his own consciousness he became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness.

When Daniel saw the great vision, he described his sensations: "There remained no strength in me, for my vigor was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength." How much more faint must our greater Prophet have been when he saw the dread vision of God's wrath and felt it in his own soul!

To us, such sensations would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue. But in his case, he was wounded and felt the sword; he drained the cup and tasted every drop.

"O King of Grief!" (a title strange, yet true—to you of all kings only due) "O King of Wounds! How shall I grieve for you, who in all grief prevent me!"

As we kneel before our now-ascended Savior's throne, let us remember well the way by which he prepared it as a throne of grace for us. Let us in spirit drink of his cup, that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come. In his natural body every member suffered, and so must it be in the spiritual; but as out of all his griefs and woes his body came forth uninjured to glory and power, even so shall his mystical body come through the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon it.