Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
But such was the transcendent greatness of his office, such were its tremendous responsibilities, such were its magnificent opportunities and its incessant demands, such were its ceaseless calls to consecration, to cross-bearing, to crucifixion, to more and more inwardness of holiness, and to higher and higher heights of heavenly-mindedness, that the apostle was fain to cry out continually, Who is sufficient for these things!
But then they can master all that; they can be pure, charitable; they have gentleness for the hare and the rabbit, like Luther; they kneel piously before the cross-bearing stag, like Saint Hubert. Not so the Italians. They rarely or never paint horrors, or death, or abominations. Their flagellated Christ, their arrow-riddled Sebastian, never writhe or howl with pain; indeed, they suffer none.
Resentful and revengeful persons are so changed that the spirit of forgiveness and forbearance which they exhibit in their lives is the admiration of all who know them. Self-seeking Christians are made into self-sacrificing, cross-bearing saints and soldiers, where formerly they would only be content if they were having their own way. Now, what does this mean?
Jesus always kept this before His disciples. He certainly talked of daily cross-bearing, and following and confessing Him before the world; but He was careful to say to them, 'There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting'.
No Unitarian, no unbeliever, will deny that Jesus died as a good man, choosing rather the shame of the Cross than the deeper shame of treason to the truth. And thus far Christ is an example to all who follow Him. In one sense His cross-bearing was all His own, a mystery of suffering and death into which no man can enter. But in another sense, as St.
Even the ordinary workaday life is full of circumstances which try and tempt and test you. The more you struggle towards living in God's way the more the Devil will attack you. The path which the holy Saviour trod was the way of the cross, and they who follow Him must share the cross-bearing. The ultimate crown is for the overcomer, and not for the untempted one.
And he thought, "How can I now desert the family for any imaginary good, and leave her to reproach me by her patient cross-bearing for dear father and the children's sake?" It cost him a bitter struggle to act in accordance with this view. In the darkness of the night he wrestled long and hard to put down the wish to free himself from the burden that was now laid upon his conscience.
But it was not Simon's own salvation only that was involved in this singular experience, but that of his family as well. How much may follow when Christ is revealed to any human soul! The salvation of those yet unborn may be involved in it of children and children's children. But think how blessed to Simon would appear in after days the cross-bearing which was at the time so bitter!
There has not been another so weak and so evil heart as yours since weak and evil hearts began to be; nor an evil life quite like yours; nor surrounding circumstances so cross-bearing as yours; nor a sinner, beset with all manner of temptations and trials, behind and before, like you.
Down fell on their knees nay, even prostrate on their faces each cross-bearing warrior, prince and knight, page and soldier. Some shouted for joy, some kissed the very ground as a sacred thing, some wept aloud at the thought of the sins they had brought with them, and the sight of the tokens of Zion's captivity the Dome and the Crescent.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking