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quainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."* "Save me, O God; for the waters are come in, even unto my soul. I stick fast in the deep mire, where no ground is ; I am come into deep waters so that the floods run over me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dry: my sight faileth me for waiting so long upon my God. . . . For Thy sake have I suffered reproof; shame hath covered my face. . . . I wept, and chastened myself with fasting; and that was turned to my reproof. I put on sackcloth also; and they jested upon me. They that sit in the gate speak against me; and the drunkards make songs upon me. . . . Thou hast known my reproof, my shame, and my dishonor: mine adversaries are all in Thy sight. Thy rebuke hath broken my heart; I am full of heaviness: I looked for some to have pity on me, but there was no man, neither found I any to comfort me." "O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee: oh, let my prayer enter into Thy presence, incline Thine ear unto my calling. For my soul is full of trouble; and my life draweth nigh unto hell. . . . Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in a place of darkness, and in the deep. Thine indignation lieth hard upon me; and Thou hast vexed me with all Thy storms. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; and made me to be abhorred of them. I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth. My sight faileth for very trouble Lord, I have called daily upon Thee, I have stretched forth my hands unto Thee. . . . . . Lord, why abhorrest Thou my soul, and hidest Thou Thy face from me? I am in misery, and like unto him that is at the point

* Isaiah liii. 3, 4.

+ Ps. lxix. 1-3, 7, 10-12, 20, 21.

to die: even from my youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled mind. Thy wrathful displeasure goeth over me, and the fear of Thee hath undone me."* What can we say of this inscrutable mystery of sorrow? Who would have dared to apply these words to the Son of God, if the Spirit of Christ in prophecy had not already done so by His servants? We can only say what the Spirit of Christ Himself hath said. Sorrow, fearfulness, shame, scorn, confusion of face, humiliation, abasement, exhaustion of body, fainting, trembling, blindness for very tears, what ever went beyond all these? "Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger. From above hath He sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: He hath spread a net for my feet, He hath turned me back: He hath made me desolate and faint all the day." What more can we say? All this came on Him because God "made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin." All that sin could inflict on the guiltless He endured; and to that experience of shame and sorrow we guilty may appeal. Though we suffer indeed justly, yet can He feel with us though He did nothing amiss. Though in the bitterness of soul which flows from consciousness of guilt He has no part, yet when we take revenge upon ourselves in humiliation, and offer ourselves to suffer all He wills for our abasement, He pities us while He permits the chastisement to break us down at His feet. He looks in compassion on our heavy hours and mournful days, our secret indignation, our shame which burns inwardly, our bruised and trembling hearts. When vain remorse and resolution come too late, make us smite upon our thigh, and

* Ps. lxxxviii. 1, 2, 5–9, 14–16.

+ Lament. i. 12, 13.

2 Cor. v. 21.

accuse ourselves in secret, He-let us hope, believe, and pray-will pity us with a loving and tender sympathy. "When our heart is smitten down within us, and withered like grass, so that we forget to eat our bread," it is a thought full of consolation, "that we have not an high-priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

Therefore let us ask for consolation from no other. Let us not go, I will not say to the world, and its fair words, smooth persuasions, shallow comforts;-for to these no man whose repentance has any depth or reality in it can bear to go; they are miserable, falsifying stimulants, which heat and bewilder the heart, and leave it open to terrible recoils of sorrow-but let us not go to books or to employinent; no, nor even to the consolation and tender love of friend, brother, wife, husband, spiritual guide; no, nor to the most perfect saint and nearest to Himself; but to Him for whose sake all these must be forsaken, in whom are all the fresh springs of solace which distil in scanty drops through the tenderest and fondest hearts. Let us go at once to Him. We are one with Him, by the mystery of His holy Incarnation, by the gift of our new birth. There is nothing can separate us from His sympathy but our own wilful sins. Let us fear and hate thesc, as for all other reasons, so above all for this, that they cut off the streams of His pure and pitiful consolation, and leave our souls to wither up in their own drought and darkness. So long as we are fully in His sympathy, let our sorrows, shame, trials, temptations, be what they may, we are safe. He is purifying us by them; teaching us to die to the world and to ourselves, that He only may live in us, and that our life may be "hid with Christ in God."

And again that we may so shelter ourselves in Him, let us make to Him a confession, detailed, particular, and

unsparing, of all our sins. Our safest self-examination is made upon our knees; our truest confessions are our selfexaminations uttered aloud. Let us confess before Him morning and night our daily disobedience of thought, word, and deed, the forbidden motions of our hearts, the faulty inclinations of our will; striving truly and thoroughly to know ourselves, and to lay ourselves bare with entire and self-abasing sincerity to Him. In this is true peace, deep consolation, calm unspeakable. This will keep our hearts waking, recall us when we wander, uphold us when we are weak. Whatsoever be our outward lot,-whether we be high or low, esteemed or outcast, held in honor or in scorn, trusted or distrusted, this one thing is enough. What more can they desire who have the sympathy of Christ? What fellowship do they need who have His hourly presence? When men rebuke us, let us thank them, as helping our abasement; when they convince us of new faults, let us carry them in confession to our Lord. Reproofs are healing balms; censures are "spikenard very precious." The more they humble us, the more fully will He admit us to His perfect sympathy. O blind and shortsighted! when the world looks dark upon us, we are afraid. If the great or the many set down our lives as a folly or a dream, we begin to doubt, and half to believe what they say. We are tempted even to give way before their confident censures and their lofty commiseration. We are too proud to be pitied, and would sometimes almost conceal and cast off our sympathy with the Cross, that we may take our share in the smooth and fair things of the world. But if we be His servants, the Cross must be our portion. "The disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord. It is enough for the disciple that

he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord." So that we be His, let us be with this content.

And lastly, let us so live as not to forfeit His sympathy. It is ours only so long as we strive and pray to be made like Him. If we turn again to evil, or to the world, we sever ourselves from Him. The dominion of any sinful habit will fearfully estrange us from His presence. A single consenting act of inward disobedience in thought or will is enough to let fall a cloud between Him and us, and to leave our hearts cheerless and dark. This all know, who after any sins of the temper or spirit, begin their accustomed prayers. They feel themselves in a new condition, and at a strange distance from Him; as if in broad day the sun had suddenly gone in. And besides positive sins, love of the world will shut us out from His sympathy altogether. Love of the world casts out the love of Christ. If, in spite of His word and warning, His life and cross, we will live on in this fallen world without fear or selfdenial, as if it were not fallen; if we will love it, live in it and for it, accept its flatteries and favors, then we must die with it. Follies, laughter, excitement, false happiness, bring bitter retrospect, burning consciousness of inconsistency and declension; and all these hide His presence from our souls. With these He has no sympathy: but only with the humble, bruised, and contrite; with them that forsake all that they may find Him, and follow Him whithersoever He goeth, in darkness and in light, in life and in death, counting all things loss, that they may "win Christ and be found in Him" in the morning of the resurrection.

St. Matt. x. 24, 25.

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