ive! How many good feelings have we destroyed in their germ, because we saw, or fancied we saw, that, if allowed to grow and strengthen, they might excite laughter in some minds! How many unkind actions have we committed, simply because we were touched with a sense of the ridiculous! How by this same sense have we suffered ourselves to be misled, intoxicated with thoughtless mirth, until we have said, and done--and borne, that others should say and do-things which we knew to be offensive to God and injurious to our own souls! How have we not suffered this same element of excitement to be mingled with our pleasures, until at length we have drunk deeply and freely of the effervescing draught of sin, which if offered in another guise, we should have rejected with loathing as poison.

These things we all know-more or less, perhaps, we all feel. If we would learn to be more watchful, let us recal the title written over the Cross, and the scoffs of the Roman soldiers; and think that, in their eyes, even the Crucifixion of Christ was open to the mockery which was but a coarser form of ridicule.

COMMUNITY IN SUFFERING.

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 39.

"And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.”

THE railing of the malefactor touches us, perhaps, more keenly than any other of the human words spoken at our Lord's crucifixion: for it rouses all our better feelings of indignation and sympathy,the first feeling of our heart being, that community in suffering must bring community in feeling. But this expectation is the result of Christian hope, rather than of human experience. The history of all ages, the records of famine, pestilence, and war, most especially in the days of heathenism, show us that suffering, apart from religion, hardens the heart; and that it is the especial touchstone, by which to try whether a disposition is really noble. This, however, is not an effect which we are likely willingly to acknowledge, for we all wish to think ourselves kind-hearted, and in many cases tears rise to the eyes so readily, and the impulse to relieve distress is so quick, that it is difficult to imagine that we can really be wanting in any of

the gentle and affectionate feelings of our nature. But we must remember, that the examples of selfish cruelty, in times of calamity, which meet us in history, or which come before us in seasons of great public distress, are not taken from among the exceptions the monsters of our race. Great national misfortunes are allowed, so far as we can see, to fall upon individuals, and try them without reference to the distinctions of age, or sex, or worth, or circumstances; and it is only through the trial that the character is discovered. The man who lives in our own village, with whom we meet and converse in kindly intimacy, is just as likely to evince new traits of selfishness, or even cruelty, under new and trying combinations of events, as the man who lived in a French village in the days of the French revolution; or in an Athenian village in the days of the Athenian plague. And in like manner with ourselves; even if we strive to judge of what we should be under great trial—in a position of danger—by an examination into what we are now in our daily life, our opinion must be formed with great doubt and self-distrust. With many persons it is no effort to be sympathising when they themselves are at ease -that is, to be what they call sympathising-in other words, to dislike the sight of suffering, and to do their best to free themselves from it. This may seem a severe definition, but is it not in many instances true? Are there not persons who will shrink from the sight of pain of any kind; who

cannot bear even to cause it by the utterance of a disagreeable truth; and who will make real exertions to relieve the misfortune which lies at their door; and who yet will act with deliberate selfishness, and sacrifice the happiness of their children, and their children's children, simply because the sorrows which reason tells them must follow upon their actions, are not actually present, and, therefore, not felt or thought of. Is the kind-heartedness of such persons real? or is it rather a refined selfishness? Are we to believe that, even if touched by community of suffering, we could look to them for support upon any principle but that of the relief which, by affording it, they might afford to themselves?

So again, as another proof of our unconscious selfishness. Is not the first thought that rises in our minds, when we are called upon to speak words of sympathy, a comparison with something which we ourselves have done and suffered? and does not this thought find vent in descriptions of our trials by which perhaps we think to show how well we understand and how much we feel, whilst in reality we are wishing to draw attention to all that we have undergone in our own persons? And has it never struck us how little effect this species of consolation has produced? Or again, when the same kind of comfort is bestowed upon us, how do we bear it? If we feel a distracting pain, and are told that some other person in the house is undergoing yet greater, does it irritate or soften

us? Do we forget ourselves? or do we rather feel as though our peculiar privilege of suffering had been entrenched upon? Does it not often seem hard to us to be compelled to exert ourselves when we also are in pain? Are we not ready to complain of injustice and unkindness in those who think of us less because we are enduring less; and would we not, indeed, willingly bear a larger portion, if we could only feel that we stood alone

that the praise of heroism and patience, and the comfort of sympathy, were ours without any one to share them?

These may be very humiliating feelings, and we may be loth to acknowledge them; but there must be few who are not, more or less, conscious of them, and who have not, therefore, reason to look upon themselves distrustfully; and instead of forming day-dreams as to the sympathy and kindness they would show in imaginary cases, to ask God's forgiveness for what they neglect in those immediately before their eyes.

God does not try us all by the experience of community of suffering in the form of national calamities, but of domestic trials, consequent on the very condition of our earthly existence. The sufferers upon the cross-the weary with life's long toil, the burdened who, in quietness and patience, are bearing the heavy load of life's cares,-they are with us; they dwell with us; we share in their anxieties, we partake in their sorrows. But what sympathy do we offer them? When do we ex