or being shipwrecked than you and I
have. He had no more pleasure in being stoned, in being publicly
whipped, in being thrown into dark dungeons and stenchful prison cells
than you and I have. He no more delighted in being ridiculed and
ostracized than you and I would delight in these things. Paul took no
more pleasure in hunger and cold, in peril and nakedness, in agony and
tears than you and I would take in them.

Yet we find him longing to share in the sufferings of Christ. Why did
he long for this strange privilege? There are two reasons. He longed
to share in Christ's sufferings, first, because he genuinely and
passionately loved Christ. If you have ever at any time truly loved
anybody you will be able to understand this longing of Saint Paul. It
is the nature of love to always seek either to spare or to share the
pain of the loved one.

One of the sweetest stories in our American literature, I think, is
that of "The Wife" told by Washington Irving. You remember it. It has
been re-enacted a thousand times over. A man of wealth has lost his
fortune. He is heart-broken over it, not on his own account but on
account of his wife. She has been tenderly nurtured. He is sure that
poverty will break her heart. But he has to tell her. The lovely home
in the city must be given up. They must move to a cottage in the
country. He enters upon the hard ordeal. It is his Gethsemane. But
to his utter amazement he finds his wife more joyous, more genuinely
happy in the midst of this trying experience than he has ever known her
to be before. What is the secret? She is in love with her husband and
loving him, it is her keenest joy to be able to share his sorrow with
him.

The wife of the southern poet, Sidney Lanier, was just such a one as
Irving's heroine. You will recall what a long hard fight Lanier had
with sickness and poverty and what a tower of strength through it all
was the gentle and tender woman who loved him.

"In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie,
Beneath the many-changing sky
And mirror all of life and time,
--Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,
And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns,
--Thus heaven and earth together vie
Their shining depth to sanctify.

Always when the large For