rows that he is able to bear away. Heartless
help is no help. It does not matter whether he who 'stands and says, "Be
ye clothed and fed,"' gives or does not give 'the things necessary,' he
will be but a 'miserable comforter' if he has not in heart and feeling
entered into the sorrows and pains which he seeks to alleviate. We need
not dwell on the familiar truths concerning Him who was a 'man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief.' All through His life He was in
contact with evil, and for Him the contact was like that of a naked hand
pressed upon hot iron. The sins and woes of the world made His path
through it like that of bare feet on sharp flints. If He had never died
it would still have been true that 'He was wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.' On the Cross He
completed the libation which had continued throughout His life and
'poured out His soul unto death' as He had been pouring it out all
through His life. We have no measure by which we can estimate the
inevitable sufferings in such a world as ours of such a spirit as
Christ's. We may know something of the solitude of uncongenial society;
of the pain of seeing miseries that we cannot comfort, of the horrors of
dwelling amidst impurities that we cannot cleanse, and of longings to
escape from them all to some nest in the wilderness, but all these are
but the feeblest shadows of the incarnate sorrows whose name among men
was Jesus. Nothing is more pathetic than the way in which our Lord kept
all these sorrows close locked within His own heart, so that scarcely
ever did they come to light. Once He did permit a glimpse into that
hidden chamber when He said, 'O faithless generation, how long shall I
be with you, how long shall I suffer you?' But for the most part His
sorrow was unspoken because it was 'unspeakable.' Once beneath the
quivering olives in the moonlight of Gethsemane, He made a pitiful
appeal for the little help which three drowsy men could give Him, when
He cried, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye
here and watch with Me,' but for the most part the silence at which His
judges 'marvelled greatly,' and raged as much as they marvelled, was
unbroken, and as 'a sheep before her shearers is dumb,' so 'He opened
not His mouth.' The sacrifice of His death was, for the most part,
silent like the sacrifice of His life. Should it not call forth from us
floods of praise and thanks to God for His unspeakable gift?

II