Other illustrations of the same sort I must leave untouched at present, and only remind you of the remarkable peculiarity of the language in which all the Evangelists describe the supreme moment when Christ passed from His sufferings. 'When He had cried with a loud voice, He yielded up the ghost,'--He sent away the spirit--'He breathed out' (His spirit), 'He gave up the ghost.' In simple truth, He 'committed His spirit' into the Father's hand. And I believe that it is an accurate and fair comment to say, that that is no mere euphemism for death, but carries with it the thought that He was _active_ in that moment; that the nails and the spear and the Cross did not kill Christ, but that Christ _willed_ to die! And though it is true on the one side, as far as men's hatred and purpose are concerned. 'Whom with wicked hands ye have crucified and slain'; on the other side, as far as the deepest verity of the fact is concerned, it is still more true, 'I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.' But at all events, whatever you may think of such an exposition as that, the great principle which my text illustrates for us at an earlier stage is, at least, irrefragably established--that our dear Lord, when He died, died, because He _willed_ to do so. He was man and therefore He _could_ die; but He was not man in such fashion as that He _must_ die. In His bodily frame was the possibility, not the necessity, of death. And that being so, the very fact of His death is the most signal proof that He is Lord of death as well as of life. He dies not because He must, He dies not because of faintness and pain and wounds. These and they who inflicted them had no power at all over Him. He chooses to die; and He wills it because He wills to fulfil the eternal purpose of divine love, which is His purpose, and to bring life to the world. His hour of weakness was His hour of strength. They lifted Him on a cross, and it became a throne. In the moment when death seemed to conquer Him, He was really using it that He might abolish it. When He gave tip the ghost, He showed Himself Lord of death as marvellously and as gloriously as when He burst its bands and rose from the grave; for this grisly shadow, too, was His servant, and He says to him, 'Come, and he cometh; do this, and he doeth it.' 'Thou didst overcome the sharpness of death' when Thou didst willingly bow Thy head to it, and didst die not because Thou _must_, but because Thou _wouldest_. III. Still further, let me remind you how, in the language of this verse, there is also taught us that there was in Christ a natural human shrinking from the Cross.