could have understood this at all but for the thought of the Son of God coming down and sitting with the weary by the wayside, and in the house of grief, and weeping himself at the grave..... We often wonder that it should be said, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him ;" and yet that he should let them suffer so much and so long. So long! He seems to be hiding their tears, and so he is: but meanwhile he sends hidden strength and comfort. "He gives them tears to drink in great measure;" but, like their wanderings, it is in measure. And the language implies, moreover, that the tears shall be brought forth again. It is for this they are marked and preserved.... Whether they be natural tears, as those of Mary and Martha for their dead brother, or contrite tears like those of the woman in Simon's house... they shall be found to have been all kept and recorded and finally answered. JOHN KER.

We beseech Thee to have compassion upon our infirmities: and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, vouchsafe to give us, for the worthiness of Thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

In all their affliction He was afflicted.-Isa. 63:9.

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.-Luke 7:13.

Jesus wept.-John 11:35.

We have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.-Heb. 4:15.

TRUE sympathy is not mere sensitiveness to the suffering of others, as if they were strangers. It is that feeling of the suffering of others which arises from a consciousness of identity between ourselves and them.-R. M. BENSON.

As well might those on the hither side of mortality instruct the souls gone beyond the veil, as souls outside a great affliction guide those who are struggling in it. That is a mighty baptism; and only Christ can go down with us into those waters.-H. B. STOWE.

The sorrows of life are many; and the Saviour made this one of his credentials, that he could transfigure them all into consolation. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, ... to comfort all that mourn . . . In that life and that death, in that voice of sympathy and that heart of love, in those sayings and doings of Jesus Christ which enter into all experience and reach backward and forward into two eternities, above all in that Person, God for us and God with us, who was manifested to bear our sins and carry our sorrows, on purpose that we might never feel earth lonely nor heaven unreal, has been found through eighteen centuries, is found to-day, shall be found in the ages to come, a rest and a peace and a satisfaction which the world can neither give in its joys nor take away in its bereavements. The comfort spoken of is no childish soothing, no effeminate lulling, no palliation of distress, no oblivion of sorrow; it is what its name bespeaks it, a

strengthening and a fortifying thing, because it both pierces to the depth of the reality that is and rises to the height of that other reality that shall be. Comfort is strength, and comfort is fortitude, and comfort is courage for two worlds, and comfort is expansive and diffusive as the love which breathes it, even as it is written, "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation."— DEAN C. VAUGHAN.

One of the loveliest mysteries of the Incarnate Life was the sympathy of our blessed Lord. He not only entered into the sorrows and sufferings of mankind, but really suffered along with them. "He bare our sicknesses." When we speak of sympathy and compassion, this is what the words literally mean-suffering with others—not only feeling for them, but suffering with them. And such was the sympathy of Jesus Christ—the only perfect sympathy that has ever been-the prerogative of his perfect humanity. His was that wholly unselfish sympathy with others which permitted and enabled him not only to regard