There is only one place where we can receive no answer but peace to our question “Why?” All torturing questions find answer beneath those old gray olive trees. An hour at the foot of the Cross steadies the soul as nothing else can. Love that loves like that can be trusted with this question.

O Christ Beloved, Thy Calvary stills all questions.

For Calvary interprets human life;

No path of pain but there we meet our Lord;

And all the strain, the terror and the strife

Die down like waves before His peaceful word,

And nowhere but beside the awful Cross,

And where the olives grow along the hill,

Can we accept the unexplained, the loss,

The crushing agony, and hold us still.

ROSE FROM BRIER

Every Gethsemane has beside it the serene, sweet heights of the Mount of Olives and from its summit, the resurrection into the heaven of heavens.

We have missed human history if we have not seen that out of the shadows of suffering have sprung the great literatures, the great paintings, the great philosophies, the great civilizations. All of them have blossomed into the light out of the shadows of suffering.

“Where a great thought is born,” said one who knew by bitter experience, “there is always Gethsemane.”

The mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, and the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain.

In Scotland there is a battlefield on which the Scots and their Saxon foes met in deadly conflict. A monument marks the spot; and here and there, tradition tells us, a little blue flower grows. It is called the Flower of Culloden. The baptism of blood, tradition avers, brought the flower into fertilization.

The choicest flowers are always “Culloden flowers.” They spring only from the soil on which lifeblood of a brave heart has been spilt. CHARLES KINGSLEY

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence.

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

I am crucified with Christ.

They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us.

By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report.—All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.—The offence of the cross.

If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye: but let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters.

Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.—If one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.—If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.