If There is a remarkable Talmudic legend (Sanhediin 98 a) which tells how a certain Eabbi one day meets Elijah the Prophet, and asks him when Messiah will come. " Go," replies Elijah, " and ask Messiah himself. You will find him at the city gate ; and by this token you will know him, that he sits among the poor and the sick. A man of sorrows himself, he ministers lovingly to those who suffer, and binds up their wounds." The Kabbi finds Messiah, and asks his question, " When wilt thou come, Master ? " "To-day," is the reply. Meeting Eliiah again, the Eabbi cries,
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" Messiah has deceived me ; he says he will come to-day, but he has not come." " Nay," answers Elijah, " he is no deceiver ; in truth will he comie to-day — yes, ' to-day,' as the Psalmist says, ' if you will hearken unto God's voice.' " ^
(1) His care for bodily suffering caused Him sorrow. This is the first element of our Lord's sorrow. I have often observed that while in churches we take offerings for hospitals, very few people ever visit them. They refer to them in their family devotions, but very few go to them, and some of us do not care to see the woeful sights of suffering ; but Christ, if He were to come to London to-night, would not come to church. He would go to the hospital, where they most need His help. His power, and the attestation of His miracles. He is moved to action in the presence of suffering.^
What a blessing it is that the medical profession has inherited so much of this high-minded reserve ! The delicacy, the con- secration and heroism of the doctors of both England and America have always most deeply impressed me. What a day was the advent of this suffering Man for all the sufferings of men — that He who suffered in all things like unto His brethren should so completely and deeply identify Himself with them that suffered everywhere ! And so did Christ heal diseases, for as many as touched Him were made whole.
How beautiful, in this connection, becomes the miracle, recorded by St. Mark only, of the healing of the deaf and stammering man by the Sea of Galilee ; when He, who had the power, and knew that He had the power, to remove the malady, yet, in the very act of doing so, " looked up to heaven and sighed," as He said the all-powerful " Ephphatha " which bade the deaf ear be opened ! That sigh fulfilled the sign given in prophecy of Him that should come. It showed Him, not only as the Almighty One, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the God- head bodily ; but also as that All-pitying One, in whom dwelt all the fulness of humanity too ; as the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief.
1[ There are two epochs in the career of medical life. There is a period in the surgeon's existence when he occupies the position of a student, and belongs to a class of men proverbially reckless.
^ M. .Toseph, The Ideal in Judaism, p. 132. * S. P. Cadman.
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And there is another period in his life when he belongs to a class which all experience forces us to place among the most devoted, the most tender, the most sympathetic of his species. How comes it that the young experimentalist is so marvellously transformed into the benevolent physician ? The secret lies in this. In the outset of the profession a man has to look on suffering as a bystander. The recoil and the faintness of human sensitiveness pass off. He becomes familiar with human anguish. He looks upon the contortions of agony with the cold eye of a theorist. The human frame into which the sharp knife is passing is nothing to him but the material for a lecture. Emotion has dulled itself by repetition. This is the passive acquaintance with sorrow. It would be a miracle indeed if all this did not blunt sensibiHty. For if by God's wise law it did not blunt it, and if the emotion remained as keen as ever, how could the human heart bear perpetual laceration ? That is the first stage. But as medical life goes on it becomes a duty not to look on but to relieve. And then he begins to feel the blessedness of benevolence, and once more his heart expands when he sets about doing good. And year by year the habit deepens : the shudder of inexperience, and the mere emotional useless sickening of the heart, which come from witnessing an operation — all that is gone. It was worth nothing after all ; and in its place there has come something nobler, some- thing that can be made use of in this work-day world, something even in its way Christ-like — that habit of prompt love which will enable a man to put up with much that is disgusting, and much that would shock the false delicacy of mere feeling, in order to do good.i
(2) Mental suffering caused Him sorrow. When He met that funeral procession coming forth from the gate of Nain, with the widowed and now orphaned mother following behind, it was not that He hailed this as an opportunity of " manifesting forth His glory " ; it was not that He coldly or roughly restored the breath to the closed lips, or the warmth to the frozen limbs, or the colour to the pallid cheek and brow of death, as One who would say, " Eeceive the credentials of My Messiahship, and accept Me by this sign as your Lord and King " ; no, a human compassion wrought with the Divine power, and marked the Eedeemer not only as the mighty God, but also as the Man of Sorrows, bearing our griefs. " When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on