1 J. 0. Dykes, Plain Worth on Grenl Themes, 1G5. 8 J. II. BollowelL
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eighteen centuries ago. Yea, it is of far greater value, for the gospel of Christ's sympathy has undergone developments of which the recipients of benefit in Capernaum little dreamed. Christ's compassion signified to them that He was a man to whom they might always take their sick friends with good hope of a cure. How much more it signifies to us! We see there the sin-bearer as well as the disease-bearer, the sympathetic High Priest of humanity who hath compassion on the ignorant, the erring, the morally frail ; who, as a brother in temptation, is ever ready to succour the tempted, whose love to the sinful is as undying as Himself, " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." 1
2. The Son of Man is identified with us not only in nature but in condition. " Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor." His design in coming here at all was to be a Healer, Eescuer, and a Comforter for mankind. To One who came forth from the unseen world of bliss on such an errand, the most suitable place and the most attractive would be the place where lie was needed most. In His own language, the physician must go where the sick are to be found; and the sore, sad sick- ness under which humanity pines away to death is at once sin and the suffering which is sin's shadow. To get near enough to our stricken race that He might probe and know its misery, feel and bear its evil, and win the power at once to stanch its wounds and lift from it its whole burden, Jesus needed to become familiar with men in whom the malady had worked itself out to its pain- fullest consequences. Therefore " he bare our sicknesses and carried our sorrows." He became the companion of the unhappy, and the resort of outcast men and women and of the desperately sick whom no one else could save. It was on the shady side of life that He expected to find a welcome. The proud and prosper- ous are too well satisfied with the world and with themselves to make likely patients for a Divine Healer. Where people had drunk life's cup down to the bitter lees, and found at the bottom only failure, penury, sickness, and sorrow of heart, there He hoped to win a hearing for His soft and soothing call, " I will give you rest."
Tj What is this quality of sympathy which Jesus so constantly revealed ? Certainly it is something more than amiable pity for distress. Such the priest and Levite might have felt, who never-
1 A. B. Bruce, The Galilean Gospel, ISO.
ST. MATTHEW xxv. 40 411
theless passed their wounded countryman on the other side. As its meaning teaches, sympathy is never indifferent. It is a " suffering with " the distressed. It is the " passion of doing good." It is the satisfaction of self in the helping of others. A reader of the woes of soldiers left to die on a battlefield knows the emotion of pity. It is a Florence Nightingale who sympathizes with them by nursing them back to life. One learns with regret and concern of the wretched lives of the lepers in the penal colonies in the south seas. It is a Father Damien who by his self-devotion and tireless labours, ending only in the common death of the afflicted ones, reveals what sympathy in its truest form can mean. Herein is seen the revelation of God's life in Christ. His is not the passionless and unsuffering life which the medieval saints loved to picture.1
3. The Judge is so identified with the moral law that He feels every violation of it as an outrage upon Himself. Dr. Dale of Birmingham used to say, " In God the moral law is alive." We may go further. This word of judgment, which we are now considering, is true only because in Jesus the moral law is alive. To resist His will is a synonym for sin. It is the nature of Christ which is outraged by every sin that is committed. Holiness is simply the will of Christ, and whenever we have put from us truth as we know it, or right as it called to us, whenever we have held down the good within us and given rein to the evil, it was Jesus who was there despised and rejected.
TJ Dora Greenwell, in her poem, A Legend of Toulouse, describes the act of wilful sin as the flinging of a dagger at the heart of God, in desperate revolt against the splendour of His holy nature.
A legend was it of a youth,
Who as it then befell, From out his evil soul the trace Had blotted out of guiding grace,
Abjured both heaven and hell; That once unto a meadow fair,
(Heaven shield the desperate !) Impelled by some dark secret snare, Eepaired, and to the burning sky Of summer noon flung up on high,
1 H. L. Willett, The Call of Liu Christ, 167.
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A dagger meant for God's own heart, And spake unto himself apart Words that make desolate.
The dagger that was meant for God found its mark in the heart of Christ ; and in the blood from His wounds we are to see the appeal of God to the sinner for mercy, upon the cross, and in His crucifixion in the soul of the sinner.