plain utterances, for instance, about His own death and resurrection.
There needs to be an adaptation between the hearing ear and the
spoken word, in order that the word spoken should be of use, and
there are great tracts of Scripture dealing with the sorrows of life,
which lie perfectly dark and dead to us, until experience vitalises
them. The old Greeks used to send messages from one army to another
by means of a roll of parchment twisted spirally round a baton, and
then written on. It was perfectly unintelligible when it fell into a
man's hands that had not a corresponding baton to twist it upon. Many
of Christ's messages to us are like that. You can only understand the
utterances when life gives you the frame round which to wrap them,
and then they flash up into meaning, and we say at once, 'He told us
it all before, and I scarcely knew that He had told me, until this
moment when I need it.'

Oh, it is merciful that there should be a gradual unveiling of what
is to come to us, that the road should wind, and that we should see
so short a way before us. Did you never say to yourselves, 'If I had
known all this before, I do not think I could have lived to face it'?
And did you not feel how good and kind and loving it was, that in the
revelation there had been concealment, and that while Jesus Christ
had told us in general terms that we must expect sorrows and trials,
this specific form of sorrow and trial had not been foreseen by us
until we came close to it? Thank God for the loving reticence, and
for the as loving eloquence of His speech and of His silence, with
regard to sorrow.

And take this further lesson, that there ought to be in all our lives
times of close and blessed communion with that Master, when the sense
of His presence with us makes all thought of sorrows and trials in