g, long
waiting. He knew hunger and bodily weariness, and the pinch of scanty
funds. He was homeless at a time when a home would have been most
grateful. He knew what it meant to have the life-plan broken, and
something else, a bitter something else thrust in its place.

And he knew, too, the sweets of human life, of human love, of the
helpfulness of others' sympathy, of the Father's pleased smile, of the
Holy Spirit's indwelling, of the wondrous inner peace that follows
obedience in hard places, of the joys of service, of the delight of being
able to sympathize. His experience ran through the whole diapason of human
feelings, and so He can find a key-note in every one of its tones for the
sweet rich symphony of sympathy.

There is again an exception to be noted here. There could be no
fellow-feeling in choosing wrong, or in yielding to the low or base or
selfish. He is the Lone Man there. Does this make all the stronger His
sympathy with us in our upper reach out of such things? Surely it does.
The exception makes it stand out more sharply that our Lord Jesus felt our
feelings. Wherever you are, however tight the corner, or narrow the road,
or lonely the way, or keen the suffering, you can always stop and say: "He
was here. He was here _first_, and _most_. He understands." As you kneel
and look up, you can remember that there's a Man on the throne, a
fellow-man, with a human heart like mine, and like yours. He understands.
He feels. With utmost reverence let it be said, there's more of God since
our Lord Jesus went back. Human experience has been taken up into the
person of God.

And let me remind you again, that the "Follow Me" here will mean nothing
less than fellowship in the sufferings of our fellows, fellowship to the
point of radically affecting our lives. Sympathy will go deeper than a
sense of pity for those less fortunate, and a giving to them a warm hand
and a good lift up. The poor woman, living in a slum district, being
visited by a mission visitor, spoke for the universal human heart when she
said earnestly, "We don't want _things_; we want _love_." As we get up
close to our Lord Jesus there will come the indwelling in us of the spirit
that controlled Him. We will see through His eyes, we will feel with His
heart, our hands will reach out to grasp other human hands with the
impulse of His touch upon them. We shall know the exquisite pain of real
sympathy with men in need, and the great joy of sharing and