Man's natural feelings toward God & Christ.

"O ye sons of men, How long will ye
turn My glory into shame?
How long will ye love vanity,
and seek after leasing?  (Psalm 4:2)
                    ~  ~  ~  ~

An instructive writer has made a mournful list of
the honors which the blinded people of Israel
awarded to their long expected King.

1.    They gave Him a procession of honor, in which
Roman legionaries, Jewish priests, men and women,
took a part, He Himself bearing His cross. This is the
triumph which the world awards to Him who comes
to overthrow man’s direst foes. Derisive shouts are
His only acclamations, and cruel taunts His only 
paeans of praise.


2.    They presented Him with the wine of honor. Instead
of a golden cup of generous wine they offered Him the
criminal’s stupefying death-draught,    which He refused
because He would preserve an uninjured taste wherewith 
to taste of death; and afterwards when He cried,“I thirst,”
they gave Him vinegar mixed with gall, thrust to His
mouth upon a sponge. Oh! wretched, detestable
inhospitality to the King’s Son.


3.    He was provided with a guard of honor, who
showed their esteem of Him  by gambling over His
garments, which they had seized as their booty. Such   
was the body-guard of the adored of heaven; a quaternion
of brutal gamblers.


4.    A throne of honor was found for Him upon the bloody
tree; no easier place of rest would rebel men yield to their
liege Lord. The cross was, in fact,  the full expression of
the world’s feeling towards Him; “There,”  they seemed
to say, “thou Son of God, this is the manner in which  God
Himself should be treated, could we reach Him.”


5.    The title of honor was nominally “King of the Jews,” 
but that the blinded nation distinctly repudiated, and
really called Him“King of thieves,”  by preferring
Barabbas, and by placing Jesus in the place of  highest
shame between two thieves.


                                      His glory
                              was thus in all things
                                 turned into shame
                                 by the sons of men,
                             but it shall yet gladden
                        the eyes of saints and angels,
                                world without end.