Now I think it most necessary to recollect this in Passion Week; ay,
and to do more--to remember it all our lives long.

For it is too much the fashion now, and has often been so before, to
think only of one side of our Lord's character, of the side which
seems more pleasant and less awful. People please themselves in
hymns which talk of the meek and lowly Jesus, and in pictures which
represent him with a sad, weary, delicate, almost feminine face.
Now I do not say that this is wrong. He is the same yesterday, to-
day, and for ever; as tender, as compassionate now as when he was on
earth; and it is good that little children and innocent young people
should think of him as an altogether gentle, gracious, loveable
being; for with the meek he will be meek; but again, with the
froward, the violent, and self-willed, he will be froward. He will
show the violent that he is the stronger of the two, and the self-
willed that he will have his will and not theirs done.

So it is good that the widow and the orphan, the weary and the
distressed, should think of Jesus as utterly tender and true,
compassionate and merciful, and rest their broken hearts upon him,
the everlasting rock. But while it is written, that whosoever shall
fall on that rock he shall be broken, it is written too, that on
whomsoever that rock shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

It is good that those who wish to be gracious themselves, loving
themselves, should remember that Christ is gracious, Christ is
loving. But it is good also, that those who do NOT wish to be
gracious and loving themselves, but to be proud and self-willed,
unjust and cruel, should remember that the gracious and loving
Christ is also the most terrible and awful of all beings; sharper