on the lost and
ruined of this world without grief. He cannot behold the tragic
quarrel of man with Himself without taking it to heart. There is
nothing more true nor, in the deepest sense, more reasonable than this
tender sentence: "In all their afflictions He was afflicted." Our
afflictions must afflict Him because "His nature and His name is love."

J. Wilbur Chapman tells how he one night explored the slums of New York
with Sam Hadley. About one o'clock in the morning they separated to go
to their own homes. Dr. Chapman said he had not gone far before he
heard Mr. Hadley saying, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" And he looked back to see his
friend wringing his hands in deepest agony. He hurried to his side
thinking that he had been taken suddenly ill. "What is the matter?" he
asked. And the great mission worker turned his pain-pinched face back
toward the slums out of which they had come and said, "Oh, the sin!
Oh, the heartache! Oh, the wretchedness! It will break my heart. It
has broken my heart."

Now, just as Christ cannot be Christ and not suffer in a world like
ours, so He cannot be Himself and fail to make a sacrificial effort to
save this world. What says the gem of the Gospel? "God so loved the
world that He gave." What was the song that abidingly made Paul's
heart to pulsate with heavenly hallelujahs? Just this: "He loved me
and gave Himself for me." Love grieves. It does more. It serves.
Love beholds the city and weeps over it. But it is not satisfied with
that. It also goes to the Cross for that city over which it weeps.
Sam Hadley wrings his hands in grief over the wretched in New York's
slums, but he does more. He goes to their rescue.

So when Paul said, "I long to share His sufferings" he meant, "I long
to be, in the truest sense, like Him. I long to see the world through
His eyes. I long to feel toward men as Christ feels toward them. I
long to sacrifice for them in my finite way as He sacrificed for them."
And what was the outcome of this longing? There are some ambitions
that God cannot gratify. To do so would only mean our impoverishment
and our ruin. But such is not the case here. God graciously granted
the satisfying of this longing of Saint Paul.

Listen to the testimony to the truth of that fact from his own lips.
"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me." Again he says, "For to me to live is Christ."
That is, "For to me to live is