On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the sin that has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from sin, looks out on the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment from His personal suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without egotism, and never treats life from that purely personal standpoint that we are constantly tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own interests, occupy the foreground and determine the judgment; and we are rarely able to see in dealing with the concrete case that our own interests are ultimately indentical with the interests of the whole Body. The lesson that if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, that we are partners in joy and sorrow alike, is almost impossible of assimilation by the radical individualists that we are. Our theories break down before the test of actuality. But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His relations with men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division of interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs of others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death. He can impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can attend to the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of His own death as an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a matter concerning Himself alone; and in doing these things He teaches us a much-needed lesson of the handling of life. No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more being influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken of this before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to insist, at whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if his religion mean anything at all, look on the interests of the Body, not as a separate group of interests to which he is privileged or obligated to contribute such help as seems to him from time to time appropriate, but as in fact his own primary interests because his true significance in the world is gained through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ in God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives in the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break the essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the Body but a dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt our egotism rebels against this view of life, but it is certain that it is the view of the Christian Religion. If we would realise the ideals of the Religion we must act as those who are in constant relations with the other members of the Body and whose life gets its significance through those relations.