noble, something more than of a royal race, for him to be shamed, and mocked, must have been dreadful indeed.
7. Besides some minds are of such a delicate and sensitive disposition that they feel things far more than others. There are some of us who do not so readily perceive an affront, or when we do perceive it, are totally indifferent to it. But there are others of a loving and tender heart; they have so long wept for others’ woes, that their hearts have become tender, and they therefore feel the slightest brush of ingratitude from those they love, and if those for whom they are willing to suffer should utter words of blasphemy and rebuke against them, their souls would be pierced to the very quick. A man in armour would walk through thorns and briars without feeling, but a man who is naked feels the smallest of the thorns; now Christ was so to speak a naked spirit, he had stripped himself of all for manhood; he said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” He stripped himself of everything that could make him callous, for he loved with all his soul; his strong passionate heart was fixed upon the welfare of the human race; he loved them even to death, and to be mocked by those for whom he died, to be spit upon by the creatures whom he came to save, to come to his own, and to find that his own did not receive him, but actually cast him out, this was pain indeed. You tender hearts that can weep for others’ woes, and you who love with a love as strong as death, and with a jealousy as cruel as the grave, you can guess, but only you, what the Saviour must have endured, when all mocked him, all scorned him, and he found no one to pity him, no one to take his part.
8. To go back to the point with which we started — shame is peculiarly abhorrent to manhood, and far more to such a manhood as what Christ carried about with him — a noble, sensitive, loving nature, such as no other manhood had ever possessed.
9. And now come and let us behold the pitiful spectacle of Jesus put to shame. He was put to shame in three ways — by shameful accusation, shameful mockery, and shameful crucifixion.
10. 1. And, first, behold the Saviour’s shame in his shameful accusation. He in whom was no sin, and who had done nothing wrong, was charged with sin of the blackest kind. He was first arraigned before the Sanhedrin on no less a charge than that of blasphemy. And could he blaspheme? — he who said “It is my food and my drink to do the will of him who sent me.” Could he blaspheme? He who in the depths of his agony, when he sweat as it were great drops of blood, at last cried, “My Father, not my will, but yours be done,” — could he blaspheme? No. And it is just because it was so contrary to his character, that he felt the accusation. To charge some of you here present with having blasphemed God, would not startle you, for you have done it, and have done it so often as almost to forget that God abhors blasphemers, and that he “will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” But for one who loved as Jesus loved, and obeyed as he obeyed, for him to be charged with blasphemy, the accusation must have caused him peculiar suffering. We wonder that he did not fall to the ground, even as his betrayers did when they came to lay hold upon him. Such an accusation as that might blight an angel’s spirit. Such a calumny might wither the courage of a cherub. Do not marvel, then, that Jesus felt the shame of being accused of such a crime as this.
11. Nor were they content with this. Having charged him with breaking the first table, they then charged him with violating the second: they said he was guilty of sedition; they declared that he was a traitor to the government of Caesar, that he stirred up the people, declaring that he himself was a king. And could he commit treason? he who said “my kingdom is not of this world, or else my servants would fight”; he who when they would have taken him by force, to make him a king withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed — could he commit treason? It would be impossible. Did he not pay tribute, and send Peter to catch a fish, when he was so poor he could not pay the tax. Could he commit treason? He could not sin against Caesar, for he was Caesar’s lord; he was King of kings, and Lord of lords. If he had chosen he could have taken the purple from the shoulders of Caesar, and at a word have given Caesar to be a prey to the worms. He commit treason? It was far enough from the character of Jesus, the gentle and the mild to stir up sedition or set man against man. Ah no, he was a lover of his country, and a lover of his race; he would never provoke a civil war, and yet this charge was brought against him. What would you think good citizens and good Christians, if you were charged with such a crime as this, with the clamours of your own people behind you, crying out against you as so vile an offender that you must be executed. Would you not be abashed? Ah! but your Master had to endure this as well as the other. He despised the shameful indictments, and was numbered with the transgressors.
12. 2. But next, Christ not only endured shameful accusation but he endured shameful mocking. When Christ was taken away to Herod, Herod set him at naught. The original word means he made nothing of him. It is an amazing thing to find that man should make nothing of the Son of God, who is all in all. He had made himself nothing, he had declared that he was a worm, and not a man; but what a sin was that, and what a shame was that when Herod made him nothing! He had only to look Herod in the face, and he could have withered him with one glance of his fire-darting eyes. But yet Herod may mock him, and Jesus will not speak, and men of arms may come around him, and break their cruel jests upon his tender heart; but not a word has he to say, but “is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is dumb.”
13. You will observe that in Christ’s mocking, from Herod’s own hall, on to the time when he was taken from Pilate’s hall of judgment to his crucifixion, and then onward to his death, the mockers were of many kinds. In the first place, they mocked the Saviour’s person. One of those things about which we may say only a little, but of which we ought often to think, is the fact that our Saviour was stripped in the midst of a vulgar soldiery, of all the garments that he had. It is a shame even for us to speak of this which was done by our own flesh and blood toward him who was our Redeemer. Those holy limbs which were the casket of the precious jewel of his soul were exposed to the shame and open contempt of men — coarse minded men who were utterly destitute of every particle of delicacy. The person of Christ was stripped twice; and although our painters, for obvious reasons, cover Christ upon the cross, there he hung — the naked Saviour of a naked race. He who clothed the lilies had nothing with which to clothe himself; he who had clothed the earth with jewels and made for it robes of emeralds, had not so much as a rag to conceal his nakedness from a staring, gazing, mocking, hard hearted crowd. He had made coats of skins for Adam and Eve when they were naked in the garden; he had taken from them those poor fig leaves with which they tried to hide their nakedness, given them something by which they might wrap themselves in from the cold; but now they part his garments among them, and for his vesture they cast lots, while he himself, exposed to the pitiless storm of contempt, has no cloak with which to cover his shame. They mocked his person, — Jesus Christ declared himself to be the Son of God; — they mocked his divine person as well as his human — when he hung upon the cross; they said, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross, and we will believe on you.” Frequently they challenge him to prove his divinity by turning aside from the work which he had undertaken. They asked him to do the very thing which would have disproved his divinity, in order that they might then, as they declared, acknowledge and confess that he was the Son of God. And now can you think of it? Christ was mocked as man, we can conceive him as yielding to this. But to be mocked as God! A challenge thrown to manhood, manhood would easily take up and fight the duel. Christian manhood would allow the gauntlet to lie there, or tread it beneath its feet in contempt, bearing all things, and enduring all things for Christ’s sake. But can you think of God being challenged by his creature — the eternal Jehovah provoked by the creature which his own hand has made; the Infinite despised by the finite; he who fills all things, by whom all things exist, laughed at, mocked, despised by the creature of an hour, who is crushed before the moth! This was contempt indeed, a contempt of his complex person, of his manhood, and of his divinity.
14. But note next, they mocked all his offices, as well as his person. Christ was a king, and there never was such a king as
