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forbid the evil thought! Rather, it is the Rather, it is the property of spotless sanctity to flow forth with the fullest stream of compassion. Who would mourn over a sister's fall so intensely as she who is all pure and full of sensitive fear of so much as a sullying thought? To have fallen and to have repented could add nothing to her intense love and sorrow, to her absolute humiliation for another's transgression. Community in sin is not the source of sympathy, but participation in holiness. The knowledge of the misery of sin which our Lord learned by suffering temptation is no doubt far beyond anything we can learn by consenting to it; for it is consent that so far destroys our true perception of it. Temptations are far more afflicting to holy minds than falls are to the less pure. And all through the life of the truest saint, even while the love of God is shed abroad in his heart, and the stillness of eternal peace reigns in it, there is, in proportion to the growth of sanctity, a growth also in his sorrow for sins long ago repented. His past falls come to be more intensely seen and abhorred. It is as he recedes from his former self, and passes out of the sphere of his past temptations, that he feels all their horror and deadliness. And this explains what we see in the lives of the holiest men -that as they have visibly advanced in holiness, they have multiplied their acts of humiliation and their discipline of repentance; and that instead of being thereby drawn from compassion to those who are still in their sins, they are of all men the most tender, pitiful, forbearing, and compassionate. None live for the conversion of souls so devotedly; none have so ready a sorrow for the sins of others; none deal with them so lovingly, bind up their wounds so softly, console them, even against their own will, so persuasively. And why? Not because of their past sin, but because of their present holiness; not for what they have been, but for

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what they are; not because they have been sinners, but because they are saints. What they have learned of sin by past consent and defilement is a hindrance, not a help to their true sympathy. They attain to this high grace of the mystical body of Christ just as they pass out of themselves into Him.

Now from all this we may sec in what it is that our Lord, by the experience of humiliation in our flesh, has learned-wonderful word!-to sympathise with us.

Not in any motion of evil in the affections or thoughts of the heart; not in any inclination of the will; not, if we dare so much as utter it, in any taint or soil upon the soul. Upon all such as are destroying themselves in wilful commerce with evil, He looks down with a divine pity; but they have withdrawn themselves from the range of His sympathy. This can only be with those who are in sorrow under sin; that is, with penitents. It is in the suffering of those that would be cleansed and made holy that He partakes. Let us now sec how we may draw comfort from this thought.

They who have sinned may go to Him in a perfect confidence that He is able to "be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." We have something in Him to which we may appeal.

1. We may plead with Him on His own experience of the weakness of our humanity. None knows it better than He, not only as our Maker, who "knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are but dust," but as Man, who made full trial of our nature "in the days of His flesh." He knows its fearful susceptibility of temptation-how in its most perfect state, as in His own person, it may be approached and solicited by the suggestions and allurements of the evil one. And if in Him it could be tempted to sin,

how much more in us! May we not believe that it was out of the depth of His mysterious obedience that He spoke, when He said: "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak?" He did not mean sinful flesh only, but humanity itself, the weakness of which was seen in Eden, and was proved by Himself in the wilderness, when "He suffered being tempted." When we confess our sins before Him, we may lay open all. Things we hardly dare to speak to any man, to any imperfect being, we do not shrink from confessing before Him-things which men would not believe, inward struggles, distinctions in intention, extenuating causes, errors of belief,—all the manifold working of the inward life which goes before a fall. Imperfect friends treat all these things with a hard incredulity, or assign them but a light weight in the favorable scale; they fasten only on the prominent features of the case; they cannot throw themselves into our position; their knowledge of human nature is drawn from their view of their own state and character, often flattered and self-deceiving; and that makes them so censorious, upbraiding, unmerciful to lapsed sinners, and so suspicious, distant, and cold, even to penitents. No doubt the want of vivid faith to realize the awfulness of our Lord's presence is partly the reason why we are so much readier to make our confessions to Him than to a fellow-creature. We feel greatly, in the one case, the reality and the penitential character of the act, and little or not at all in the other. Again, confession to any man brings a peculiar shame, which our secret confessions do not involve. And yet, true as this may be, there can be no doubt that there is a more persuasive reason still. It is, that with men we are never safe from false judgments, and severe because imperfect censures; but with Him is perfect equity, fairness, tenderness. With all His awful

holiness, there is something that draws us to Him. Though His eyes be "as a flame of fire," and the act of laying ourselves open to Him is terrible, yet He is "meek and lowly of heart," knowing all our case, "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

So also we must feel towards the elect angels, and all the world unseen, whose eyes, St. Paul seems to say, are on us-a cloud of gazers, ever looking down upon our course. They, too, in the ineasure of their perfection, are perfect; full of pity and of tender compassion; knowing of what spirit their King and Lord is; and like Him in charity to us. And yet it is to Him alone that we are drawn to address ourselves. Our ultimate account is not with them, but with Him. If He be pitiful to us, what more do we need? If He be gracious, they all, as comprehended in His perfection, are with us too. If we be sure of His sympathy, we are sure of theirs. They cannot satisfy the depth of our case, but He can and will.

We must go to Him, and place ourselves before Him; uncover our shame; fall to the earth; pray, if we can speak; if words fail, abase ourselves in silence; and let the silence of our confounded souls appeal to His sympathy who in the garden "fell on His face" under the burden of our infirmities. He will interpret our silence for us, and, by His perfect knowledge of our sins, put into our hearts pleas of deprecation and solace, which we ourselves neither know nor would dare to utter. Wonderful is the Divine justice, and still more the Divine equity. He "weigheth the spirits;" He knows the shades and touches of our case. What to our dull sight would seem refinements, to His arc realities in our spiritual probation; and with wonderful tenderness and most indulgent forbearance He notes and measures them all. In His judgment of penitents He is

more gentle than they are to themselves. Pleas which they reject, He allows for them. While they are writing bitter things against themselves, He is recording the circumstances of palliation and excuse. They hardly dare believe that His face is lifted up in pity and forgiveness upon them; for His mercy is as great a mystery of faith as His Incarnation. "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion, then were we like unto them that dream." When His peace comes down again into our afflicted hearts, then, like the apostles, "we believe not for joy and wonder."

2. Again we may appeal to His experience of the sorrow and shane which came by sin upon mankind. He suffered both as keenly and as fully as it was possible for one that was without sin. Wheresoever in the Psalms deeper notes of sorrow, lamentations greater than repentance, are heard, it is the voice of the Messiah speaking in prophecy. "My God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me? why art Thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my complaint? O my God, I cry in the day-time, but Thou hearest not; and in the night-season also I take no rest. As for me, I am a worm, and no man; a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out their lips, and shake their heads, saying, He trusted in God, that He would deliver him; let Him deliver him; if He will have him. . . . . I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart also in the midst of my body is even like melting wax. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my gums, and Thou shalt bring me into the dust of death."* "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and ac

*Ps. xxii. 1, 2, 6-8, 14, 15.

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