xvni. THE BUFFET-GAME. 325 



noble His silence, how godlike His meekness ! In 

 some respects it was the climax of His humiliation 

 and shame. Life had no more humiliating experience 

 to offer. The cross had its scoffing and its sneers in 

 equal measure, but its very awfulness gave it the heroic 

 grandeur which obliterated its meaner features. The 

 men who mocked the Saviour's dying agonies were 

 overwhelmed by the transcendent majesty of the scene, 

 and they must have felt that their mockery was inap- 

 propriate. But here, in the hour of His condemnation, 

 there was nothing to relieve the naked shame nothing 

 to dignify the occasion, except the demeanour of the 

 Sufferer. All the circumstances were ignominious. 

 The power of forbearance and self-restraint which our 

 Saviour showed in the midst of this most humiliating 

 pantomime seems greater than any called forth by 

 His mightiest miracles. Such a picture of meek, un- 

 complaining patience taking all these insults and 

 mockeries calmly, as if He had fully expected them, 

 and was quite prepared for them the world has never 

 seen. No response was made to the question of the 

 buffeters, "Prophesy who is it that smote thee " ; but 

 the conduct of Jesus was a fulfilment to the very letter 

 of the prophecies uttered long ages previously regarding 

 Him : " I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to 

 them that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from 

 shame and spitting." "He was oppressed, and He was 

 afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth : He is brought 

 as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her 

 shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." One 



