2. Secondly, we may notice that this requirement of self-effacement is of the nature of an ascetic prescription, as when our Lord said “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.” The necessity for this self-mutilation――cutting off a hand, plucking out an eye――lay in the fact that these limbs, or faculties, or functions of our nature had been so utterly misused that before they could be again used legitimately they must be put under this stern discipline of effacement. So with this instinct of revenge. The instinct has in it something that is right: something of the passion of justice. It is a true instinct which makes us feel that for wrong done man should suffer wrong. It is derived from the divine principle of justice. But in our own cases, where our own interests are concerned, this passion of justice has come to be so mixed up with selfishness, and with those excessive demands which spring of selfishness――in a word, it has become so defiled with sin――that our Lord imposes on it an absolute ban; He says “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” He takes away from us, as it were, the right to administer justice in our own case. “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”[51] He requires us as individuals to acknowledge the law of self-effacement. 3. The requirement which our Lord lays on His disciples is not only made in words. It was enforced, where the enforcement is most striking, in our Lord’s example. You watch our Lord in His passion; and when you look delicately and accurately at the details of the treatment He received, you observe how almost intolerably hard to bear were many of His trials. We can hardly conceive what to Him it must have been to bear the hideous insults and injustices of men. Think for example, to take a subtle but impressive instance,[52] of those false accusations brought against Him which had in them the sound of truth. “And there stood up certain, and bear false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.”[53] He had said in fact not that, but something like it. He had said “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”[54] That is, Suppose you destroy, then I will rebuild. There was a great difference between what He had said and what He was accused of saying. But you know in what atmosphere it is that such accusations are brought. The crowd does not consider details; it listens to the vague sound of the words; it is easily convinced: “He said something of that sort. If he defends himself, he has to quibble.” And thus they rush off and put down to the accused man not what he said, but what he was supposed to have said. Now our Lord had that delicate instinct of the pastor. He knew there were people watching Him, and wondering whether He were the true Messiah or no. To