There is deep experimental instruction in this, which deserves the notice of all true Christians. No doubt there is a sense in which our Lord's feeling of being u forsaken" was peculiar to Himself, since He was suf- fering for our sins and not for His own. But still after making this allowance, there remains the great fact that Jesus was for a time " forsaken of the Father/' and yefc for all that was the Father's " Beloved Son." As it was with the Great Head of the Church, so it may be in a modified sense with His members. They too, though chosen and beloved of the Father, may sometimes feel God's face turned away from them. They too, some- times from illness of body, sometimes from peculiar affliction, sometimes from carelessness of walk, some- times from God's sovereign will to draw them nearer to Himself, may be constrained to cry, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?"
It becomes believers who feel " forsaken," to learn from our Lord's experience not to give way to despair. No doubt they ought not to be content with their position. They ought to search their own hearts, and see whether there is not some secret thing there which causes their consolations to be small. (Job xv. 11.) But let them not write bitter things against themselves, and hastily con- clude that they are cast off for ever, or are self-deceivers, and have no grace at all. Let them still wait on the Lord, and say with Job, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." (Job xiii. 15.) Let them remember the words of Isaiah and David, " Who is among you that feareth the Lord — that walketh in darkness, and hath no light ? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and