its tenderness and strength to others. It can bring us down on knees and
face at His feet as His love-slaves for ever,--so is its story best told
to others. That breaking heart breaks ours. That pierced side pierces
through all our stubborn resistance. That face haunts us. Its scars tell
of sin, ours. Its patient eyes tell of love, His. Was there ever such sin?
Was there ever such love? Was there ever such a meeting of sin and purity,
of love and hate, of God's best and Satan's worst?

Surely there can be no following _here_! And, strange to say, the answer
is both a "no," with a double underscoring of emphasis, and a "yes," that
will come to have a like emphatic underlining. _No_, there can be no
following. Here, He is the Lone Man who went before. And He remains the
Lone Man in what He did, and in the extent of His suffering. There is only
one Calvary. There was only the One whose death could settle the sin score
for us men. It is only by His death for our sin that there is any way out
of our sore plight of sin, and sin's own result. There the Lord Jesus did
something that had to be done, for the Father's sake; there He broke the
slavery of our sin; there He broke our hearts by His love. There He stands
utterly alone in what He did. Calvary has no duplicate, nor ever can have.
That is the emphatic "no" side of the answer. There can be no following on
that road.

And yet,--and yet, there can be. There is a "yes" side to the true, full
answer. There will be a Calvary experience for every one who really
follows. His was _the_ Calvary experience, ours is _a_ Calvary experience.
It does not mean what His meant for the world. But it enters into the
marrow of our very being, and means everything to us. It means that as I
really follow there will come to me experiences of sacrifice that will
take the very life of my life--_if_ I do not pull back, but persist on
following the beckoning hand. And it means too, that there will be in a