text attest this as does also that saying of the A^jostle,
" Bear ye one another's burthens, and so fulfil the law of Christ^."]
To such exertions we may well be stimulated, if we consider,
II. The acceptableness of them to the Lord Jesus —
The Lord Jesus identifies himself with his afflicted people —
[He has sympathized with them in every period of the world. What was it but compassion that caused him to under- take the cause of fallen man ? When Israel was in Egypt, he heard their cries, and pitied their sorrows^. Whilst they sojourned in the Wilderness, " in all their afflictions he was afflicted." In his state of humiliation, " he made himself poor for their sakes, that they through his poverty might be rich :" and now, in his exalted state, he considers their cause his own. Are they persecuted? he, as he told the persecuting Saul, is the person injured^. "Whoso toucheth them, toucheth the apple of his eye." Are they relieved? he tells us in the text, that every office of love shewn to men for his sake he accepts, as shewn to him. He esteems the meanest of his people as "a brother," and will acknowledge him as such before the assembled universe : or rather, he esteems him as a member of his own body ; in the prosperity and happiness of which the Head is no less interested than the member itself.j
»■ Job xxix. 11—16. "^ Job xxxi. 16—20, 22.
" Acts iv. 32 — 35. ^ 2 Cor. viii. 1 — 4. ^ Gal. vi. 2.
f Exod. iii. 7. ^ Acts ix. 4, 5.