The Hottest Part of Life's Furnace

 "Jesus suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach." Hebrews 13: 12, 13.

       There are two kinds of sorrow in this world. There is a sorrow which is incurred in the path of duty - a sorrow within the gate, within the camp. It consists in a soldier's fatigues, in a soldier's wounds. But there is a sorrow which seems to debar from the path of duty - which comes to us outside the gate, outside the camp. It consists in a soldier being stricken by sickness ere the campaign opens, held back from the service of his country. When this latter happens to any of us we are very perplexed in mind; we seem to have been thwarted by heaven. We feel as if our fellow-men were reproaching us for being cast upon their hands, blaming us for being a burden to the world. The sorrow in the path of duty could be tolerated; but it is hard to bear that sense of reproach which comes from the sorrow outside the camp.
       My afflicted brother, the writer of this passage has a great comfort for you. He says that Christ's case was one like yours. He bids you in such moments of depression to come into the Garden of Gethsemane. There you will see a sufferer whose sorrow was outside the camp. He bore no visible wound, no mark of shot or shell. He carried no scar that told of battle won. It seemed to those around Him that He had never joined the battle. He bore the reproach of being a burden on the world, of doing nothing to win the kingdom for humanity, of leading a life useless to man. Yet, my brother, no service was ever like the service of that sick-bed. In His seeming uselessness He was doing gigantic work, herculean work, world work. When I want to measure His work I go to the Garden - the place of seeming uselessness. I do not go to His crowded moments - to the multitude that thronged His breaking of bread, to the concourse that swelled His audience on the Hill. No; I go down to His lonely hour - I and the world together. I and the world magnify that moment when men said He was laid aside, shunted, left behind. We find it the brightest day of all His golden year. We crown Him with the flowers of His Gethsemane; we load Him with the wreaths of His Calvary; we keep as His natal day the night on which He was betrayed. Ye who are suffering outside the camp, rest with Him in the Garden awhile.