(3) Pity. Christ went out into the world in the spirit of sympathy with, and compassion for, the common weaknesses and infirmities and sins of men. We can share in the suffering which His pity brought Him. " Hide not thyself from thine own flesh." We may clutch at the advantage of our worldly position to screen ourselves as much as ever we can from fellowship in the pains which the great mass of men have to share. " Hide not thyself from thine own flesh." Have some contact with the suffering, and not in a general and vague philanthropy merely, but a real, actual sympathy with some suffering men or women. Have your own burden well in hand, well borne, so that you can lay open the spaces of your heart, and give some of your vacant time really to bear the burdens of others. There are some weaker than you in your office or round about you in your society, some poorer than you, some struggling with great difficulties or great temptations.
1 G. H. Knight.
5o6 JOINT-HEIRS WITH CHRIST
Be at pains with a manly and intelligent sympathy to understand their difficulties, so that as you are walking on you may feel that you have been able to tide over the rough waters of this life some one or other whose case you really know ; that you have been able to help through the moral difficulties and temptations all around some one whom you are drawing with you nearer to God.1
(4) Sin. One part of the sufferings of Christ is to be found in that deep and mysterious fact on which one durst not venture to speak beyond what the actual words of Scripture put into one's lips — the fact that Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation. There was no sin within Him, no tendency to sin, no yielding to the evil that assailed. "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." But yet, when that dark Power stood by His side, and said, " If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down," it was a real temptation, and not a sham one. There was no wish to do it, no faltering for a moment, no hesitation. There was no rising up in that calm will of even a moment's impulse to do the thing that was presented ; — but yet it was presented, and when Christ triumphed, and the Tempter departed for a season, there had been a temptation and there had been a conflict. And though obedience be a joy, and the doing of His Father's will was His delight, as it must needs be in pure and purified hearts ; yet obedience which is sustained in the face of temptation, and which never fails, though its path lead to bodily pains and the " contradiction of sinners," may well be called suffering.
4. Now there is one very comforting fact which we must take into account in all our thought of this mysterious subject. If we participate in the sufferings of Christ, if His death is repro- duced and perpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying our- selves in the present evil world, Christ is with us in our afflictions. We need not hold that there is no reference here to that comforting thought, " In all our affliction he is afflicted."
^f They tell us that in some trackless lands, when one friend passes through the pathless forests, he breaks a twig ever and anon as he goes, that those who come after may see the traces of his having been there, and may know that they are not out of the road. And when we are journeying through the murky night,
1 Bishop Gore.
ROMANS viii. 17 507
and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed, and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrances and hidden strengths in the remembrance of Him as " in all points tempted like as we are," bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.1
5. We must not keep this thought of Christ's companionship in sorrow for the larger trials of life. If the mote in the eye be large enough to annoy us, it is large enough to bring out His sympathy ; and if the grief be too small for Him to compassionate and share, it is too small for us to be troubled by it. Let us never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to hear, and help us to bear, the pettiest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that may come to ruffle us. Whether it be poison from one serpent sting, or whether it be poison from a million of buzzing tiny mosquitoes, if we go to Him He will help us to endure it. He will do more, He will bear it with us ; for if so be that we suffer with Him, He suffers with us, and our oneness with Christ brings about a community of possessions whereby it becomes true of each trusting soul in its relations to Him, that " all mine (joys and sorrows alike) are thine, and all thine are mine."