On the Cross not only did our Lord maintain that composure which witnesses to the supreme power of the soul, but with still balanced judgment He refused to impute sin to the Roman conscripts whose orders were to crucify. He made a last effort to console the grief of His mother and His friend, and set Himself to give hope and encouragement to the suffering thief who believed he was receiving the due reward of his deeds. A genius however great, a gentleman however perfect, could imagine no story of courage more noble or more inspiring than the one set down in the Gospels. A new pity came into the world with Christ. The lump is not yet leavened; even the white race is not yet pitiful. All the same, the emotion of pity is a power, and does, broadly speaking, distinguish Christendom from the heathen world. It is part of the ideal of all those who are conscious of having an ideal at all. Gusts of anger, both national and individual, sweep it out of sight; it is paralysed by fear, rendered blind by use and wont; again and again its scope is narrowed by the reaction which follows upon affectations and exaggerations; but it is never killed. It has been part of the moral equipment of a gentleman since Christ "went about doing good," revealing to men the secret Nature could not teach them--breaking, as it seemed to them, the uniformity of her relentlessness--the secret of the divine compassion. The independence of mind and manner inculcated by our Lord still marks a gentleman to-day. Did He not teach that a man’s conduct must at all times be ruled by his code and not regulated by his company? He must maintain the same attitude towards life whether he find himself among just or unjust, friends or enemies. He must not salute his brethren only, nor be only kind to those that love him. He must remain an honest man among thieves, ready to rebuke an offender to his face, but still a gentleman, who does not "revile again" or suffer the passion of revenge to destroy his judgment. This moral independence is the rock on which character is built. The man whose actions depend upon his environment has but a sandy foundation to his moral nature. Upon this strong rock of moral independence rest also the best manners. Self-assertion and self-distrust are singularly allied. It is the ill-assured who push in their ardent desire to be like somebody else. It is dignity rather than humility which is recommended to us in the parable of those who chose the chief seats at feasts. It is a common thing to hear it said by simple people in praise of some one they regard as pre-eminently a gentleman that "he is always the same." No doubt the publicans and sinners whose friendly advances Christ accepted without apparent condescension said this of Him. He was so entirely Himself among them that the vulgar-minded Pharisees whispered to one another that He must be ignorant of the sort of company He was in, or surely He would make