THE

CHRISTIAN PIONEER;

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

ISSUED IN NUMBERS, ONE HALFPENNY EACH.

VOLUME XXXI.

1877.

LONDON:

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & Co.

LEICESTER:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY WINKS & SON.

CONTENTS.

THE HEART OF CHRIST.

THERE is no warmer Bible phrase than this: "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." The divine nature is so vast, and the human so small, that we are apt to think that they do not touch each other at any point. We might have never so many mishaps, the Government at Washington would not hear of them; and there are multitudes in Britain whose troubles Victoria never knows; but there is a Throne against which strike our most insignificant perplexities. What touches us, touches Christ. What annoys us, annoys Christ. What robs us, robs Christ. He is the great nerve-centre to which thrill all sensations which touch us who are His members.

He is touched with our physical infirmities. I do not mean that He merely sympathizes with a patient in collapse of cholera, or in the delirium of yellow fever, or in the anguish of a broken back; but in all those annoyances that come from a disordered nervous condition. In our excited American life, sound nerves are a scarcity. Human sympathy in the case we mention amounts to nothing. Your friends laugh at you, and say that you have “ the blues," or the "high strikes," or "the fidgets," or "the dumps." But Christ never laughs at the whims, the notions, the conceits, the weaknesses of the nervously disordered. Christ probably suffered in the same way, for He had lack of sleep, lack of rest, lack of right food, lack of shelter, and under this His finely strung temperament must have become (as we say) nervous.

Chronic complaints-rheumatism, neuralgia, dyspepsia-cease to excite human sympathy. But with Christ they never become an old story. He is as sympathetic as when you felt the first twinge of inflamed muscle, or the first pang of indigestion. When you cannot sleep, Christ keeps awake with you. All the pains you ever had in your head are not equal to the pains Christ had in His head. All the acute sufferings you ever had in your feet are not equal to the acute suffering Christ had in His feet. By His own hand He fashioned your every bone, strung every nerve, grew every eyelash, set every tooth in its socket, and your every physical disorder is patent to Him and touches His sympathies.

He is also touched with the infirmities of our prayers. Nothing bothers the Christian more than the imperfection of his prayers. His getting down on his knees seems to be the signal for his thoughts