The Sympathy of Christ E-Book

Octavius Winslow

• Herausgeber: Darolt Books
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

One, and the chief, design of this volume is to exhibit and illustrate the practical character of our Lord's emotional nature thus linking Him in closer and more personal actuality with our circumstances.

Every endeavor to bring into more proximate communion the personality of Christ, and the individuality of the Christian, cannot fail, however imperfect the execution, to promote the holiest interests of experimental Christianity.

Much that passes for sympathy, and is really so, as commonly understood, is deficient in this one essential element, and needs to be remodeled. There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more there is action.

True sympathy may exist impotent to aid, we concede, and its silent expression may not, in some instances, be the less grateful and soothing; but the noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look it is the embodiment of the sentiment in actual help.

It identifies itself with the object of its commiseration so personally and so closely as to realize the apostle's beautiful idea of true sympathy "Remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them; and those who suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." This was preeminently the character of Christ's compassion when on earth.

He was willing Himself to wear the chain He came to loose, to share the sorrow He came to soothe; and the remembrance that He was likewise "in the body" constantly forced itself upon His mind, imparting to His deep sensibility and tender compassion the power and the luster of an actual and personal participation in the calamities He repaired, the needs He met, and the griefs He assuaged. Thus, from His practical sympathy, who is the Great Teacher of the Church, and the "Consolation of Israel," may we derive lessons of holy instruction, and streams of the richest comfort.

To aid this object, the present volume is, with diffidence, offered to the Christian Church. Composed under the pressure of important ministerial, extended pastoral, and continuous public labor, it necessarily partakes of the imperfections of a work thus written, and often at a season when the jaded powers, both of mind and body, demanded the restorative of sleep.

But if the "lame take the prey," the author may humbly hope that this lowly attempt to present the Savior more vividly to the personal realization of the reader, and thus render Him more loved and precious, and His example more closely studied and imitated, will not be without acceptance and blessing to the one Church of God, the sorrowing, suffering Body of a Divine and sympathizing Head.

The Triune Jehovah bless the work, and to the Sacred Three in One shall be the glory! Amen.

Leseprobe

PREFACE

One, and the chief, design of this volume is to exhibit and illustrate the practical character of our Lord's emotional nature thus linking Him in closer and more personal actuality with our circumstances. Every endeavor to bring into more proximate communion the personality of Christ, and the individuality of the Christian, cannot fail, however imperfect the execution, to promote the holiest interests of experimental Christianity. Much that passes for sympathy, and is really so, as commonly understood, is deficient in this one essential element, and needs to be remodeled. There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more there is action.

True sympathy may exist impotent to aid, we concede, and its silent expression may not, in some instances, be the less grateful and soothing; but the noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look it is the embodiment of the sentiment in actual help. It identifies itself with the object of its commiseration so personally and so closely as to realize the apostle's beautiful idea of true sympathy "Remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them; and those who suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." This was preeminently the character of Christ's compassion when on earth.

He was willing Himself to wear the chain He came to loose, to share the sorrow He came to soothe; and the remembrance that He was likewise "in the body" constantly forced itself upon His mind, imparting to His deep sensibility and tender compassion the power and the luster of an actual and personal participation in the calamities He repaired, the needs He met, and the griefs He assuaged. Thus, from His practical sympathy, who is the Great Teacher of the Church, and the "Consolation of Israel," may we derive lessons of holy instruction, and streams of the richest comfort.

To aid this object, the present volume is, with diffidence, offered to the Christian Church. Composed under the pressure of important ministerial, extended pastoral, and continuous public labor, it necessarily partakes of the imperfections of a work thus written, and often at a season when the jaded powers, both of mind and body, demanded the restorative of sleep.

But if the "lame take the prey," the author may humbly hope that this lowly attempt to present the Savior more vividly to the personal realization of the reader, and thus render Him more loved and precious, and His example more closely studied and imitated, will not be without acceptance and blessing to the one Church of God, the sorrowing, suffering Body of a Divine and sympathizing Head.

The Triune Jehovah bless the work, and to the Sacred Three in One shall be the glory! Amen.

SYMPATHY, AN ELEMENT OF CHRIST'S NATURE

For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Hebrews 2:17

It was a noble sentiment of Terrence, the utterance of which electrified the Roman senate, "I am a man, and nothing that is human is foreign to me." With what higher sublimity and profounder emphasis of meaning might our adorable Lord the Divine Man have pronounced these memorable words! His whole life was a living, luminous illustration of the thought. He was the highest type of humanity. Essential

God, He was not the less, but all the more, perfect man. He had all the sympathies of manhood. Descending from a pre existent state of glory, He made His advent to our nature, assuming everything that was essentially human, while relinquishing nothing that was essentially divine. He was intent upon being man, because He was intent upon redeeming man, and "very man of very man" He was. With that one joy set before Him the joy of saving the lost and oh, who can sound its depth? no stoop, no humiliation, no suffering, should deter Him.

His first step was to descend to the nature which He was to ransom and exalt. Around the solar rays of His Godhead He cast the darkling vesture of our manhood, shading and softening, not extinguisting or lessening, the glory of His divinity. In that marvellous, that fathomless descent to our nature, there was one exception we must ever, in our study of this subject, keep in view. He assumed all that was human but the accident of sin. "He knew no sin." The drapery of "flesh" which hung in such ample and graceful folds around His hidden and superior nature, was morally untainted and untinted by transgression. Its entire texture, woof and web, was as essentially pure and undefiled as the divine and ineffable glory it sought in vain to conceal.

Let it be remembered that sin, as we have just remarked, is an accident of, and not a property essential to, our nature. It was not necessary, no, it was not possible, that in creating man God should create him sinful. Sin is a foreign and alien element, not originally entering into the formation of Adam, but exported from some dark and unknown climate into our humanity, since God first created it in His own holy and ineffable image, and then pronounced it very good. So far, indeed, from sin being a necessary and original element of our humanity, we became less human when we became less holy. In proportion as we recede from the prototype of our creation, we descend in the scale of God's workmanship, and sink the rational in the animal.

Sin, despoiling our lower nature, reduces us to a level with the brute creation, from whom God bids us learn: "Ask the beasts, and they shall teach you!" Are not all our faculties and powers paralyzed and prostrated by the Fall? Have we not lost those fine and noble instincts, those traits of beauty, sensibility, and power, which, though human, once looked so divine?

Is not our humanity materially changed and essentially deteriorated by sin? Most undoubtedly we are less human because we are more sinful. We think the less profoundly reason the less accurately feel the less intensely act the less vigorously and achieve the less nobly, because we were shaped in iniquity and conceived in sin. This train of thought will serve to place in a clearer and more impressive light the great and precious truth it is intended to illustrate.

Christ, as we have remarked, was the most perfect type of our humanity. Essentially and entirely free from sin, He was the purest and most exalted specimen of man. The difference between the original formation of His inferior nature and ours is strikingly suggestive. His human body was not, as Adam's, framed of the dust of the ground, but proceeded from ours by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit; so that, while partaking of all the natural properties of the human, it likewise partook of all the essential sanctity of the divine. He was that "holy One" that knew not and could not sin "the holy child Jesus." The thoughtful reader will at once perceive the object at which these remarks have pointed.

We are about to unfold in these pages the perfect human sympathy of Christ with man. And in order that the fact may have all the force of which it is capable, we have sought to present it in the light of its perfect sinlessness, seeing that, as our humanity becomes freed from the brutalizing influence of sin, its emotional feelings, its sensibilities, and sympathies become all the more unselfish, intense, and exquisite; so that we are prepared to find in our Lord Jesus Christ a sympathy with our sorrows and infirmities such as it would be impossible to find in any other being.

Every Christian grace in the believer has its opposite, every human virtue its dark antithesis. If we have faith in God, it is assailed by unbelief. If we love the creature, our affection glides into idolatry. If benevolent, we are exposed to prodigality. But not thus was it with Christ. Every divine grace, and each human excellence, dwelt in Him pure, simple, and unmixed. He could love, without adoration; confide, without suspicion; be cheerful, without levity; be humble, without lowliness; be mild, yet not timid; be firm, yet not tyrannical; secret, yet not crafty; generous, without waste; and tender, compassionate, and sympathizing, without the slightest approach to weakness or unmanliness. And all this because "He knew no sin!"

Now, the emotional an essential element of our humanity belonged to Christ, as we have remarked, in its purest and most intense form.

Our nature is essentially and highly sympathetic. The curious and delicate network of nerve which transmits from the sensorium to the extremity of the body each thrill of pleasure or of pain, is not more electrical in its influence than is this sympathetic principle of our humanity. Its relation to the intellectual part of our nature is intimate and reciprocal. Not less independent are they of each other, than both are dependent upon God. The history of our race supplies many illustrious evidences of the union of the loftiest intellectual powers with the finest sensibility.

There is no necessity whatever why the mind should not act in perfect union with the heart: why we should be less reflective because intensely feeling. In the words of a deep thinker, "Emotion is always attached to some conception formed by the intellectual faculties. Man is so constituted that the conception of certain objects is accompanied with emotion, or, as we would rather say, that certain conceptions are emotional. The conception of probable pain produces fear, and the conception of wrong treatment inflicted, produces anger. Emotions are thus mainly dependent on the intellectual conceptions to which they are attached. But still, as consciousness attests, they are something more than the mere mental conceptions upon which, as well as upon the general train of association, they exercise a powerful influence. The Author of our nature, in making the conception of certain objects emotional, has added vastly to man's capacity of enjoyment, and has also provided for Himself a powerful instrument of government. The basis of every emotion is a conception. But all conceptions do not raise emotions.

The conceptions which raise emotions are all conceptions of objects supposed to be good or evil, or supposed to be connected, for instance, with pleasure or pain, with right or wrong. We thus see the importance of right principles or motive powers in the mind. In a mind of right principles, that which is good is always conceived of as good, and that which is evil as evil, and the emotions flow responsive to the guiding principle. When the motive power is allowed by the will to become perverted, and the objects are conceived of as good which are evil, and as evil which are good the result is a divided sensibility, disturbing the whole equilibrium of the soul, and like the wind carrying it away." (M'Cosh)

No fact will be more vividly brought before the mind of the reader, as we proceed, than the personality of our Lord a truth but imperfectly realized, and yet of surpassing interest and preciousness. Each emotion of His nature, as it passes before the eye, will bring us into the closest contact with Christ as a distinct and real person.

There are teachers who speak of Christ as a traditional and historical being, and yet others as a visionary or ideal being a mode of instruction well calculated to transport the learner far into the mysteries of cloud land. It may be true to a certain extent that our Lord is a historical being, for His whole life is history, and history teaching by the purest, loftiest example, which has been defined the truest philosophy. His gospel has supplied the world with truth, His life with history, and His character with a living model of every divine perfection and human excellence. But our nature craves for more than this. We need fellowship, not with a sentiment, not with a tradition, nor with an idea, but with a real, living, personal being. We seek communion with, and sympathy from, a Savior in alliance with our veritable nature, endowed with real, deep, holy sensibility, disciplined by personal sorrow like our own, and moved with a quick response to every note of "The still, sad music of humanity."

We must know Jesus as once tabernacling in the flesh, and dwelling among men as a man hallowing earthly spots with His presence entering the dwellings of men sitting with them at their tables noticing and blessing their children mingling all the scenes of domestic life smiling upon our loves sanctioning our marriage feasts healing our diseases pitying our infirmities weeping at our tombs consecrating our loneliness and solitude; in a word, unveiling a bosom, the perfect reflection of our own, in all but its sinfulness.

Oh, it is this fact of our Lord's personality that brings Him so near to us, blends Him so closely with our individual history, and which imparts to His presence and sympathy a reality and preciousness so inexpressibly great and endearing. Read in the clear, steady light of this fact, what meaning and what beauty appear in these inspired declarations concerning Him: "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same." "Verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham." "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." "In that He Himself has suffered being tempted, He is able to support those who are tempted."

"We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Such, my reader, is Christ, and such His sympathy with you! And in all the circumstances of your Christian life it is an instructive and consolatory thought, that your humanity is represented in heaven by the Head of all creation; that the Lord Jesus the "first born among many brethren" is still clad in our nature, and occupies the central throne in glory, exalted "far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." From that elevation of dignity, glory, and power, encircling spirits hymning His high praise, there flows down to you a continuous stream of sympathy, grace, and support, meeting your every circumstance, supplying your every need, soothing your every grief, and shedding the soft and cheering luster of a personal presence on your homeward path to glory. And although we no more "know Christ after the flesh," yet, dealing by faith with His personality, we may realize that we possess a Friend, a Brother, and a Redeemer, in whom are mysteriously yet truly united the sympathetic nature of man, with the infinite mind of God.

THE SIGH OF CHRIST

He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Be opened!" Mark 7:34

The sympathy of our Lord evaporated not in mere sentiment cold and unpractical. It was always expressed and embodied in acts of benevolence and in works of power, which, while they conferred upon their recipient a real and permanent good, confirmed His Messiahship, illustrated His boundless resources, and gratified His own manly and man loving nature. Unlike changeable pity which sublimates into thin vapor hollow, heartless, unsubstantial Christ's sympathy, wakeful to every sigh of sorrow and spectacle of suffering, flowed in streams of real and abiding blessing; and of Him it may in truth be said, "He lived in deeds, not words in thoughts not years."

And as we proceed, dear reader, in unfolding the precious truth of this volume Christ's practical sympathy with man let the fact be constantly before your mind, that you are not reading of a Savior who was, but of a Savior who is; that the Lord Jesus is moved by the same sympathy, is possessed of the same power, and is as quickly and as tenderly responsive to the appeal of the sorrowful and the necessities of the needy, as when the tabernacle of His humanity adorned and consecrated our earth, and when to its asylum thronged earth's sons and daughters of suffering and of woe. Oh, it is a truth as replete with comfort as with wonder, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever." Beloved, cling to this Unchanging One! No ebb in the tide of your affection, nor trembling in the needle of your faith, has created, or can create, the slightest variation in His love or faithfulness. Your waywardness has not chilled it, your fickleness has not affected it, your sinfulness has not forfeited it, because He is essentially, immutably, and eternally the same. "If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself."

The first view of Christ's sympathetic nature which we present, brings Him into close relation with the more pensive and subdued feelings of our humanity the sigh of Jesus. "He sighed." How near will this bring the Savior to many a heart! To some minds of delicate sensibility and perception there is no emotion more eloquent and touching than a sigh nothing which carries so deep a meaning, or penetrates the heart with so irresistible a force. What feelings does that sigh betray! what volumes does it speak! We turn to the Savior. "Looking up to heaven, He sighed." Never did He appear more human, or with our humanity more sympathetic! Let us examine THE OCCASION which gave birth to this emotion, and receive from it spiritual instruction.

There was brought to Him for healing, a man bereft of two bodily senses, the deprivation of which entails so much loss of exquisite enjoyment. As if to illustrate our Lord's illimitable power over the physical and mental infirmities of our nature, and thus to confirm our faith in His deity, there was no species of disease which He did not combat and conquer. But a bodily healing was not the end of His interposed compassion and power. There was a hidden and deep significance in every cure He effected. He had come the Divine Healer of a more woeful malady the Physician of a nobler, more diseased and imperilled part of our being. He had come to heal and save the soul. And while all physical disease fled at His command, vanished at His touch, He sought thus to illustrate His deeper compassion for, and His higher power over, the spiritual. The case before us is replete with gospel teaching.

Take the first infirmity mentioned. This poor man was DEAF. The tympanum of the ear was destroyed, and thus a direct and exquisitely constructed inlet to the soul one of the most beneficent creations of God was closed. If for a moment we reflect gathering the evidence from our own experience how the soul is stirred to its depths by the accented sounds of the human voice the breathings of love, the words of friendship, the strains of eloquence, the melody of music we may form some idea of the severity of the loss which the deprivation of this sense must entail. Take a single illustration one of the purest enjoyments of which this sense is the avenue the power of music. I say the purest, for it has been well defined the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge to excess without injury to the moral feelings. (Addison). The power of music in tranquillizing the mind, calming the spirit, and waking the whole soul to elevated thoughts and feelings, is marvellous. Milton, with a licence of expression resigned to poets, speaks of it as "creating a soul under the ribs of death." Luther's remark is, perhaps, less poetical in its conception but more true in idea " Music is the art of the prophets, the only art that can calm the agitation of the soul: it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us." A modern writer, forgetful of his own marvellous power as a poet, generously awards the palm to music:

"Of all the arts beneath the heaven

That man has found, or God has given,

None draws the soul so sweet away

As music's melting, mystic lay;

Slight emblem of the bliss above

It soothes the spirit all to love."

Its necromantic power to reproduce, as it were, the past to summon back its sacred reminiscences, its holy loves, its precious and undying memories, has been exquisitely and touchingly expressed by a master in the sister art:

"Mysterious keeper of the key

That opens the gates of memory,

Often in your wildest, simplest strain,

We live over years of bliss again!

"The sun bright hopes of early youth.

Love, in its first deep hour of truth,

And dreams of life's delightful morn,

Are on your seraph pinions borne!

"To the enthusiast's heart your tone

Breathes of the lost and lovely one,

And calls back moments, brief as dear,

When last 'twas wafted on his ear.

"To gloom of sadness you can suit

The chords of your delicious lute;

For every heart you have a tone

Can make its pulses all your own!" (A. Watts)

There is one view of music which to the Christian mind gives it a transcendent place among the arts I refer to its truthfulness especially as an expression of religious feeling. Poetry, sculpture, and painting faithful as may be their delineations deal more closely with the ideal. The loftiest and most sublime soarings of their genius are upon the eagle plume of imagination, and they delight to revel and to sport amid brilliant worlds of their own creation. But, withdrawing us from the unreal, the gorgeous fancies and subtle refinements of poetry and painting, music brings us into closer communion with the true, into closer communion with ourselves.

To both the 'sister arts' of poetry and music the Church of God will ever acknowledge its profound indebtedness. Sanctified by the grace of God, and consecrated to the high and noble purpose of expressing religious sentiment and pious feeling the holy thoughts of the mind and the spiritual feelings of the heart the saints in all ages, including Moses and David, Solomon and Job, have poured forth their noblest thoughts and loftiest aspirations through the medium of these divine gifts. The poetry and the music of the Bible would be, in the absence of all other evidence, alone sufficient to stamp it as a Divine Book, to authenticate, beyond all doubt, its Divine inspiration. From where but from God himself could those historians, poets, and musicians have derived their sacred annals, lighted their holy fires, and learned their entrancing melody? Truly, their minds were instructed and their muse was kindled and their harps were tuned from other than a human source, and by other than a human hand. And yet there are, styling themselves "Masters in Israel," who would reduce this divine and sublime Book to the level of a human, no, a false and spurious composition, and compel us to receive it, not as it is in truth, the Word of the Most High God, but as an invention of man, "a cunningly devised fable." With regard to music, let the saints of God be jealous of its true glory, which is, its high and holy consecration. "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and snaking melody in your heart to the Lord," you employ the gift in the noblest service, and consecrate it to the highest end on earth. "Praise is lovely." And God has said, "Those who offer Praise glorify me." A praiseful spirit is one of the most deeply sanctified emotions of the soul praise one of the holiest engagements of the Christian.

The service of heaven is the service of song; the chief employment of the glorified is praise. It behooves us, then, to give the holiest, the highest consecration possible to this noble art. Carnal, worldly music breathing from the lips of a saint of God is as incongruous and inharmonious as a drunkard's song breathing from the lips of a glorified spirit. Nothing but what is holy in its sentiment, spiritual in its tone, and edifying in its influence should be uttered by a Christian's lips, should vibrate from a Christian's harp. The magnificent composition of 'Handel's Messiah' supplies no exception to this rule. Admitting the Divine inspiration of the words, the transcendent genius of the compose, the sublime character of the oratorio, and the elevating influence of its skillful and masterly execution, we must yet maintain that the music of the Messiah, as performed in modern times by the unholy and the unsanctified, should be as distasteful and painful to the Christian and spiritual mind, as it is unquestionably, unacceptable and dishonoring to God.

What spiritual mind can listen to the solemn words of Christ, expressive of His heart sorrow, His soul anguish, His bodily sufferings, sung by voices and breathing from instruments of music in a cathedral, used to wake the echoes and the plaudits of a theater, without indescribable torture of feeling and the most depressing sadness of spirit? Could we thus listen to a recital of the humiliating insults, the lingering tortures, and dying agonies of one the nearest and the dearest to our hearts? Never! Beware, then, of the unholy fascination of music. It may lead you from God, allure you from Christ, draw you into the world. It may become an easy and a fatal snare to your soul. Seek the deep sanctification of the gift, and its holy and supreme consecration to God. As such, sacred music, breathing from a spiritual mind, a Christ loving heart, may be a valuable aid to the soul soothing, sanctifying, elevating. God can give you a night song a song in the gloom of your sorrow, loneliness, and woe a song of His love unchanging, of His faithfulness unfailing, of His presence sweetening your sorrow, soothing your grief, cheering your solitude, making you submissive, happy, and cheerful in the darkest and most painful path along which your covenant God is leading you. Beloved, the chief employment of heaven is music. Oh, what melody floats through those bowers, rings through those mansions, reverberates through that dome, from the spirits of just men made perfect!

They sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. They sing of the everlasting love, of the atoning blood, of the sovereign grace that brought them there. Around the Lamb once "slain" they cluster, and upon His head, once filled with bruises, torn and bleeding with the thorn crown, they bind the diadem of their praise. And, oh, how worthy is He of their sweetest anthem, their loftiest song, their loudest hallelujahs! So resplendent will be the unveiling of His divine glory, His human beauty; so great will appear His love, so glorious His work, so rich His grace, and so precious Himself to the heart, that from every creature which is in heaven will be heard the anthem, "Blessing and honor and glom and power be unto Him that sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever." Then, O disciple and follower of Christ, separate yourself from all secular, carnal, worldly music, and learn on earth, in the house of your pilgrimage, in the strange land in which you dwell, and amid your trials, sorrows, and conflicts, the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb, which will employ your tongue throughout eternity. "It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to the Most High. It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning, your faithfulness in the evening, accompanied by the harp and lute and the harmony of the lyre."

But to return from this digression. What a deprivation, then, is the loss of the sense of hearing! To such a one all nature is mute, all beings dumb signs instead of sounds conveying intelligence to the mind and love to the heart. The feeling, too, of isolation and loneliness, the pensive sadness which the loss produces, is often extremely painful and depressing, and should awaken in our heart, on behalf of its subject, the tenderest sympathy and the most delicate attention. Happy, indeed, for such if the trial is so sanctified as to sequester the heart more entirely from others, entwining it more closely with Christ!

Turn we now to the spiritual teaching of this part of the narrative.

There is a still more marvelously constructed and delicate organ the ear of the soul. Through this enter, not the accents of man, but the voice of God! And when He speaks with commanding, irresistible, and saving power, the human soul is yet more deeply conscious of the fact than it ever was of the breathings of love and the words of kindness and sympathy. But this spiritual organ is sealed to the voice of God. The fall of man produced a spiritual concussion of the soul, and from that moment its ear has been closed to the most glorious announcement, the sweetest melody, the most powerful voice that ever chimed upon the ear. We will confirm and illustrate this fact by a reference both to the law and the gospel.

The law of God speaks authoritatively, powerfully, solemnly. It commands perfect obedience demands supreme love threatens eternal judgment thunders the divine curse; but although its dread artillery peals above the sinner, although it confronts him with its commands at every step, exclaiming with imperative tone, "Pay me that you owe," not a sound strikes upon the spiritual ear of the soul! The sinner heeds not the voice of justice, and of wrath, and of condemnation. He is as a deaf man that cannot and that will not hear. So with the gospel. The gospel is the voice of Jesus speaking in mercy, grace, and love. It is the voice of pardon, of peace, and of hope. It affirms the most astounding fact that ever startled the universe, that, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and still the natural man receives not this saying, heeds not this voice, is deaf to this sound. Jesus speaks from Calvary in tones that encircle the earth, that darken the sun, that melt the rocks, that wake the dead, but all is still and motionless as the cemetery of the sleeping dead, over whose graves floats unheeded the music of the spheres.

"They have ears, but the do not hear." With many the case is judicial. In them is fulfilled the awful command of God "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and be healed." That is, leave them to the consequences of their wilful rejection of the Savior and His gospel; give them over to a reprobate mind and to judicial blindness of heart. My reader, God has but to leave a sinner to his wedded idols, to "let him alone," and the unchecked, unbridled, unrestrained passions of his fallen nature will work out their legitimate, certain, and appalling result judicial hardness of heart here, and eternal destruction from the presence of God hereafter! What is the case with you? Examine and determine it is for your life! But glance once more at this condition of the soul. Is it a calamity to be deaf to human sounds to not hear the soft breathings of affection, the entrancing strains of music, the spirit stirring sounds of eloquence?

Oh, infinitely greater the calamity to have the ear of the mind closed to the voice of God, of Christ, of the Spirit, of the gospel! To not hear the voice of life and love, of providence and grace the melting accents of Calvary, the lessons of adversity, the solemn warnings of bereavement, the imperative tones of death this is a calamity and a crime the magnitude and the guilt of which distances all thought and defies all expression! Sinner! the hour is coming when you must hear the voice of Jesus speaking to you not in the all gentle, all persuasive pleadings of a Savior, but in the terrible, overwhelming thunders of a Judge! Believer in Jesus! blessed are your ears, for they hear. You have heard the Shepherd's voice, and it has won your heart, enkindled your affection, and bowed your whole soul to its gentle and gracious supremacy. Oh! is there, amid the voices of the universe, one like unto Christ's? Is there one so powerful, so winning, so gentle, so sweet? Lord! were all other sounds hushed in the profoundest depths of eternal silence, all other voices forever quenched in the stillness of everlasting death, to hear Your gentle tones of pardon, peace, and love quelling my fears, soothing my sorrows, assuring me of an interest in Your salvation, calling me Your own, and promising that I shall be with You forever, oh, that were enough for the eternity of my being!

To the loss of the sense of hearing was added, in the case of this object of Christ's compassion, the loss of the faculty of SPEECH. Language is a divine gift. The power of communicating by articulate and intelligent sounds our thoughts, and feelings, and needs, is one of God's most wise and beneficent arrangements. It is by this faculty we hold communion with intelligent beings. The tongue is a mighty instrument for good or for evil. Solomon reminds us that "life and death are in the power of the tongue." There life in it when it speaks a word in season to him who is weary when it drops into the ear an accent of kindness when it speaks of Jesus' love and compassion to a sad and mournful heart when it quotes a promise of God to a dejected, disconsolate mind when it gives utterance to thoughts that elevate, to counsels that guide, to the breathings of encouragement and sympathy.

Oh, what life is there in the faculty of speech when, holy, and wise, and gentle, it is employed for the good of our fellows and for the glory of God! There is death too in the power of the tongue when it is employed as an instrument of evil by the whisperer, the backbiter, the slanderer, the tale bearer, the untruthful death to reputation, death to character, death to usefulness, death to happiness. The poison of asps may be under the tongue, and death to some injured one may be the consequence! This thought finds a yet more awful illustration in his case who, as a professed minister of Christ's gospel, gives utterance to doctrines fatal in their tendency and effect to the well being of souls. God holds us responsible for the use of this faculty, for He writes, "By your words shall you be justified, and by your words shall you be condemned." Oh, see that your speech is seasoned with grace, administering instruction and edification to the hearer. Let no corrupt thing, no false doctrine, no untruthful statement, no harsh, unkind, unsympathizing, heart wounding word flow from your lips. Speak for God, for Christ, for souls.

But this poor man was mute, or was afflicted with an impediment in his speech, which rendered the faculty distressing if not useless. There is something touchingly affecting in the sight of a mute person! He stands apart, insulated and alone, from his species. All beings, all things, all events, seem to have a language and a speech but him. And yet, perchance, cloistered deep within the recesses of his soul, there are great thoughts reposing, and noble purposes forming, and tender feelings, and sacred sympathies welling up, to which his lips, mute and soundless, can give no utterance. The musings of a mother, bending over her mute and only child, are thus vividly, and with great poetic beauty, described:

"Twas long before I believed

That this one daughter might not speak to me;

Waited and watched, God knows how patiently!

How willingly deceived!

Vain love was long the untiring nurse of faith,

And tended hope until it starved to death.

"Oh! if she could but hear

For one short hour, until I her tongue might teach

To call me 'Mother,' in that broken speech

That thrills the mother's ear!

Alas! those sealed lips never may be stirred

To the deep music of that lovely word.

"I've watched her looking up

To the bright wonder of a sunset sky,

with such a depth of meaning in her eye

That I could almost hope

The bursting soul would burst its binding cords,

And the long pent up thoughts flow forth in words.

"Wills He the mind within

Should from earths Babel clamor be kept free?

Even that His 'still small voice' and step might be

Heard at its inner shrine,

Through that deep hush of soul with clearer thrill!

Then should I grieve? O murmuring heart, be still!

"Not of all gifts bereft

Even now. How could I say she did not speak?

What real language lights her eye and cheek,

And renders thanks to Him who left

Unto her soul yet open avenues

For joy to enter, and for love to use!

"And God in love does give

To her defect a beauty of its own,

And we a deeper tenderness have known

Through that for which we grieve;

Yet shall the seal be melted from her ear,

Yes, and my voice shall fill it but not here.

"When that new sense is given,

What rapture will its first experience be,

That never woke to lower melody

Than the rich songs of heaven,

To hear the full toned anthem swelling round,

While angels teach the ecstasies of sound!"

Ah! see we not our spiritual nature here portrayed? The only being in the universe that has not a tongue to speak for God, lips unsealed to praise, a tongue loosed to show forth His glory and magnify His great name, is the natural man. You have, perhaps, my reader, grown up from infancy to manhood, from manhood you have descended to old age, and to this moment you have remained spiritually mute! The language of God's children is a strange dialect to you, and you cannot understand what they mean or whereof they affirm. They speak of reconciliation with God, of peace through Christ, of pardon, of justification, of adoption, of the power of indwelling sin, of the desperate depravity of their nature, of the constant alienation of their heart, and yet of an assured hope of endless life in heaven but you have never learned their language, and cannot understand their speech, because you have never been admitted to their experience. It is an appalling spectacle to meet an individual whose head is blossoming for the tomb, but upon whose lips have never dwelt the heaven taught accents of a Savior's love.

But how many of the Lord's own people, especially among young believers, maybe said to have a spiritual impediment in their speech they open their mouths so seldom or so imperfectly for Christ. They are tongue tied through fear, or timidity, or shame. They hesitate to own the Lord boldly, to speak unhesitatingly of the great things Jesus has done for them, and to magnify the sovereign grace that has called them to be saints. And even with regard to more matured believers, alas! we understand the language of Canaan but im perfectly.

We are "a people of a stammering tongue." The truth of God, the love of Christ, the accents of prayer and praise and thanksgiving the precious, the endearing name, Abba, Father do but falter upon the tongue of the most advanced, fluent, and eloquent among us. Alas! that there should be so much fear one of the other, striking mute each lip when the saints of God meet together. Why should religion be ignored, Christian experience be tabooed, the name of Christ be banished from the social circle where alone the Savior may be expected to find a welcome and a place? Oh, let us seek to have the heart so replenished with His grace, so glowing with His love, that we may talk of His beauty, and the glory of His kingdom, and the might of His wonderful acts. "Lord, open my lips, and any mouth shall show forth Your praise." Let the well spring of life within my soul be as a gushing fountain; let the beauty of Christ, the glory of His kingdom, the faithfulness and loving kindness of His dealings, be the themes upon which I dwell. "Lord, unloose my stammering tongue who should louder sing than I?"

We approach now THE EMOTION OF CHRIST. "And looking up to heaven, He SIGHED." It may appear, at the first glance, but a common place expression of feeling. How many a sigh do we breathe, of which, perchance, we think nothing. The air around us is agitated, like the waves of the sea, with the sadness, the sighs of woe, breathed by our oppressed humanity. We sigh, some from habit, others from sympathy, yet others more from real grief, and the emotion awakens no response. But there was something in the sigh of Christ profoundly significant in its meaning, inexpressibly touching in its character it possessed an import and a tenderness which no other sigh of our humanity could. Let us not, however, misunderstand it.

Christ breathed His sigh over this deaf and mute man not because He felt unequal to the task of healing him. How frequently do we sigh over our conscious inadequacy to meet a case which implores our aid. Not so with Christ. No depression like this forced that sigh from His lips. Well did He know that power over all flesh was His, that His resources were equal to the demand, and that with a touch He could loose the string, and make those mute lips discourse the sweetest eloquence; and that with a word "Be opened" He could pour into that sealed ear the most delicious melody. Nor did He sigh from anger that they had brought to Him this patient. Never was He known to betray a feeling of displeasure or uneasiness when men appealed to His compassion or solicited His help. Even when His disciples had been more honored than Himself, and a case which had first been brought to them, had been transferred to Him as incurable, He never uttered a word of upbraiding, but took the child and healed it. Ah, how many of us would have felt our self esteem wounded that we had not been given the precedence! Blessed Jesus! we will learn of You, for You are meek and lowly in heart. No sigh ever breathed from Your lips the expression of an angered heart, or wounded pride, or disappointed ambition.

And yet why did Christ sigh? In the first place, I would remark, it was an outgushing of sympathy bursting from a humanity kindred to our own. It was a sigh of compassion. As He benignantly bent over this suffering form, the hidden spring of emotion was moved, and it gave vent in a deep, upbreathed sigh. Ah, beloved! the humanity of your Savior was really like your own, sin only excepted. That audible emotion expressed an identity with your nature, your infirmities, your weaknesses, unutterably endearing. And when grief, or depression, or anxiety, pent up within your breast, finds an outlet in a sigh and for that emotion, perchance, some heartless, unsympathizing one harshly chides you is there no soothing in the thought "Jesus once sighed as I sigh, and still, in the overflowing of His sympathy and compassion, echoes every sigh that breathes from my lips?"

The sigh of Jesus was awakened, too, by a view of the ravages of sin. In that spectacle He beheld the humanity He had originally cast into a perfect, peerless mold, and had pronounced "very good," bruised and crushed its organs impaired, its beauty marred, its nature tainted and, Himself lovely and sinless, He could not look upon that wretched, defaced, paralyzed specimen of our nature without emotion without a sigh. Ah, what a glorious truth does this illustrate the holiness of our Lord's emotional nature! Pure and sinless, it is all the more exquisitely tender and touching. The sin which gives birth to our sorrow, the moral taint inseparable from all that we feel and do, impairs not the compassion and sympathy of the Savior. While on the other hand, so pure and holy is He, He cannot survey the devastating reign of sin, He cannot behold His own image so defaced, a part of His own nature so polluted, without emotion heaving His bosom and breathing from His lips. Beloved! Jesus knew more of the exceeding sinfulness of sin than we shall know through all eternity. There was more of the essence of the sorrow and suffering and fruit of sin in one drop of that cup which could not pass His lips undrunk, than we should have known had we been left to drink the wrath of a holy God forever.

Oh, how should this impart to us a holy disgust and loathing of sin! How should we hate the garment spotted by the flesh, and walk humbly and mournfully and softly with God on account of our transgressions; and seek more sympathy with Jesus in His emotion at the ravages and ruin which the fall has produced! Do you sigh for sin the sin you see in others the sin yet more visibly and deeply traced in yourself? Ah, there is no calamity that can befall you, were your future pathway to the tomb strewed thick with trials, over which you have more need to sigh than this. And if the deep consciousness of sin heaves your bosom with this emotion, be assured your holy sigh, as it rises, meets and blends with your Savior's.

It was a sigh of practical benevolence. I have remarked upon the hollow, vapid nature of human pity and compassion. How much of it evaporates in thin air! It is needless, it is heartless, no, more, it is criminal, to say, "Be warmed, be clothed, be fed, be healed," and yet extend not a hand, and stir not a foot to help. "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be warmed and filled; notwithstanding you give them not those things which are needful to the body; what does it profit?" Oh, let us authenticate our faith by our works; for, "faith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone." Not so was the emotion of Christ. His pity was a real, tangible, practical principle. It was always connected with some sorrow comforted, some need supplied, some burden unclasped, some help needed, some blessing bestowed. Oh, we deal with the REAL, the sincere, the true, when we deal with Christ with facts, not fables; with realities, not fictions; with compassion and sympathy robed with the beautiful garment of real, practical charity.

"The Son of God, in doing good,

Was fain to look to heaven and sigh;

And shall the heirs of sinful blood

Seek joy unmixed with charity?"

Now trace THE MARVELLOUS CURE, and see how He blends the power of His deity with the tenderness of His humanity, and illustrates, at each step, the higher healing of the soul. The first move was the separation: "And He took him aside from the multitude." He would make it apparent that there was no collusion, no trickery, no finesse in the cure; but, by making it visible and palpable to all, the miracle should be apparent and the witnesses confounded. What is real conversion the spiritual opening of the mouth and the unstopping of the ear but a separation? When the Lord Jesus converts a sinner, He separates him from the world, from his family, from his former self; takes him apart from the multitude, from his associates, from his worldly, sinful pursuits, and He becomes consecrated to God. "The Lord has set apart him that is godly for Himself." The religion of Jesus is a separating religion.

Christ said that He had come to sever the dearest ties of nature, to sunder the closest relations of life, and to divide a house against itself. And often when He is about to work a spiritual miracle like this the conversion of the soul by His providence He takes the subject of it apart from all others, isolates and exiles him, and thus performs the work and secures to Himself the glory. Let Christian, praying parents glean instruction and comfort from this. You have, perhaps, mourned the event that sundered you from your child, that separated him from your influence and your counsels not your prayers by oceans and continents removing him into exile and loneliness. Ah! many a one can testify that it was not until thus separated, taken thus apart from a loved circle, into that strange land, in that solitude and loneliness, on that stormy sea, threading that interminable prairie, crossing that burning desert, or in that distant, quiet, and, perhaps, sick chamber, the Spirit of God moved upon the heart and led it to Jesus. My beloved reader, has the grace of God separated you?

And then came THE SIMPLE MEANS. Jesus touched his tongue. He did not stand at a distance, like some proud and haughty patron, conscious of superior dignity, of higher sanctity, about to confer a favor which He felt a great obligation to bestow. Oh, no! how unlike Jesus would this posture and air have been! But He placed the Divinity that was about to heal, in an angle with the humanity that was to be healed. The Sinless should be brought into contact with the sinful the Divine should heal the human! He inserted His finger into the ear, and He placed it upon the tongue, and the mute spoke and the deaf heard! Oh, how near does Jesus bring Himself to us when He would, as with a word or as with a touch, open our ear to hear the voice of life, and loose our tongue to speak the words of love. Christ's plans and modes are simple. A touch a word and a work is done, greater, sublimer, holier, and more lasting than when He said, "Let there be light, and there was light." Do not be suspicious of sudden conversions, nor afraid of encouraging an immediate repentance and faith. God's ways are not as our ways, nor are His thoughts as our thoughts. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye a touch of His hand, a word from His lips "Be opened!" and a new moral creation bursts into existence! a son is given an heir of glory is born!