“Could we but crush that ever-craving lust
   For bliss, which kills all bliss; and lose our life,
   Our barren unit life, to find again
   A thousand lives in those for whom we die: 
   So were we men and women, and should hold
   Our rightful place in God’s great universe,
   Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,
   Nought lives for self.  All, all, from crown to footstool. 
   The Lamb, before the world’s foundation slain;
   The angels, ministers to God’s elect;
   The sun, who only shines to light a world;
   The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers;
   The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves
   Flee the decay of stagnant self-content;
   The oak, ennobled by the shipwright’s axe;
   The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower;
   The flower which breeds a thousand velvet worms,
   Born only to be prey to every bird—­
   All spend themselves on others; and shall man,
   Whose twofold being is the mystic knot
   Which couples earth and heaven—­doubly bound,
   As being both worm and angel, to that service
   By which both worms and angels hold their lives—­
   Shall he, whose very breath is debt on debt,
   Refuse, forsooth, to see what God has made him? 
   No, let him shew himself the creatures’ lord
   By freewill gift of that self-sacrifice
   Which they, perforce, by nature’s law must suffer;
   Take up his cross, and follow Christ the Lord.”

And thus Passion-week tells all men in what true goodness lies.  In self-sacrifice.  In it Christ on His Cross shewed men what was the likeness of God, the goodness of God, the glory of God—­to suffer for sinful man.

On this day Christ said—­ay, and His Cross says still, and will say to all eternity—­Wouldest thou be good?  Wouldest thou be like God?  Then work, and dare, and, if need be, suffer, for thy fellow-men.  On this day Christ consecrated, and, as it were, offered up to the Father in His own body on the Cross, all loving actions, unselfish actions, merciful actions, generous actions, heroic actions, which man has done, or ever will do.  From Him, from His Spirit, their strength came; and therefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren.  He is the King of the noble army of martyrs; of all who suffer for love, and truth, and justice’ sake; and to all such he says—­Thou hast put on my likeness, and followed my footsteps; thou hast suffered for my sake, and I too have suffered for thy sake, and enabled thee to suffer in like wise; and in Me thou too art a son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased.