(PASSION WEEK -- WEDNESDAY)

We have traced from day to day the life of Jesus through the earlier days of its last week, its triumph of Sunday, its solitude of Monday, its controversies of Tuesday. On each of these days Jesus has come over the hill from Bethany into the city, and has returned to the village at night. And now we come to the last day before the Passover and the betrayal; the last chance to meet his enemies and to enforce his cause. What then does Jesus do on this last Wednesday of his life? So far as we know, he does nothing at all. It is a day without record. There is no New Testament passage from which I can read about it. He appears to have stayed at Bethany, perhaps with his friends, perhaps for a part of the day alone. His work was done, and he used this last day for quiet withdrawal.

What self-control and reserve are here! How would one of us have been inclined to conduct himself, if he found himself with just {155} one more day for active service? "One more day," he would have said; "then fill it with the best works and the best words; let me stamp my message on my time; let me fulfil the work which was given me to do." But Jesus has no such lust of finishing. He simply commits his spirit to his Father, and awaits the trial and the cross. And perhaps on that unrecorded day his real agony was met, and his real cross borne. Perhaps as he went up on that hillside, which still overlooks the little village of Bethany, and looked at his past and at his future, the real spiritual conquest was attained; for he comes back again to Jerusalem on Thursday morning, not with the demeanor of a martyr but with the air of a conqueror; and when Pilate asks him if he is a king he answers him: "Thou hast said it."

So it is with many a life. It has its great days, -- its Palm Sundays of triumphs, its Good Fridays of cross-bearing, and these seem the epochs of its experience; but when one searches for the sources of its strength, they lie -- do they not? -- in some unrecorded day, as the sources of an abundant river lie hidden in some nook among the hills.