There are two great afflictions in which our Saviour may be said to have been afflicted.
(1) There is, in the first place, the affliction of sin. It is a wonderful and overwhelming truth that God in the person of Christ chose to learn by a personal experience the power of evil. This, surely, is the meaning of the temptation, and, perhaps, of the agony and the bloody sweat. It was not that Christ for one moment yielded in deed or thought to the Power of Darkness, to the temptations of evil, but, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, " He suffered being tempted." It was not a mere dramatic representation, the contest of Christ with Satan. It was real. The victory was real, but it was a victory gained not without pain and effort. Nor was it only by the forces of evil combined against His own life that Christ was afflicted in our affliction. He saw all around Him the evidence of the sin of man. When He beheld the city He wept over it. " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! " " He was afflicted in their
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affliction ! " And so ever more and more He, the sinless One, bears the sins of men upon His own heart, feels them even as if they were His own, until at last they seem even to obscure the Father's face. . . . What else is the meaning of the cry, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ! " . . . What does it mean except that, in that darkest hour, the Son of God had so completely identified Himself with His sinful brethren that " in all their affliction he was afflicted " ?
It is this that gives Him His power to-day ; the fact that He stooped to learn by a personal experience all the strength of evil, that He descended to enter into the common human struggle, and in issuing victorious to be the leader against the forces of evil everywhere. " For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities," says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, " but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."
(2) The other great affliction is the affliction of suffering. Sin and suffering — of one kind and another — do not these two words comprehend and cover the whole range of human ills ? Do we not feel the suffering of the world to be one of our great difficulties in the way of believing in the goodness of God — the undeserved suffering of the world ? Are we not impatient at the pious commonplaces that are hurled at us, that " all is for the best," that " God knows what is good for us " ? " It is all very well," we can imagine men saying — " it is all very well to say that God knows what is best for us, but what does God know of suffering ? Is He not high above the suffering of the universe, incapable of feeling it ? what can His perfection know of all this anguish?" That is a natural thought. The mystery of pain is one which baffles us, but at least the great and awful truth of Passiontide saves us from supposing that God is above or beyond the sphere of our suffering. " In all their affliction He was afflicted."
IT Bright February days have a stronger charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the patient plough- horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that the
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beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the same ; their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are ! and the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like as one drives or rides along the valleys or over the hills ! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loam- shire — the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows — I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire : an image of a great agony — the agony of the Cross. It has stood perhaps by the clustering apple blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below ; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would') seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the woods, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish ; perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame. . . . Such things are some- times hidden among the sunny fields, and behind the blossoming orchards, and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a smaU bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it ; no wonder he needs a suffering God.^