to stand before
Caesar. He reaches Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, dejected and
depressed. Brethren come from Rome, a distance of sixty miles, to offer
their _sympathy_. The aged man is cheered! His spirit, like Jacob's,
"revived!" "He thanked God, and took courage!"

Reader! let "this mind," this holy, Christ-like _habit_ be in you, which
was also in your adorable Master. Delight, when opportunity occurs, to
frequent the house of mourning--to bind up the widow's heart, and to dry
the orphan's tears. If you can do nothing else, you can whisper into the
ear of disconsolate sorrow those majestic solaces, which, rising first
in the graveyard of Bethany, have sent their undying echoes through the
world, and stirred the depths of ten thousand hearts. "Exercise your
souls," says Butler, "in a loving sympathy with sorrow in every form.
Soothe it, minister to it, succor it, revere it. It is the relic of
Christ in the world, an image of the Great Sufferer, a shadow of the
cross. It is a holy and venerable thing."

Jesus Himself "_looked_ for some to take _pity_, but there was _none_;
and for comforters, but He found _none_!" It shows how even _He_ valued
sympathy, and that, too, in its commonest form of "_pity_," though an
ungrateful World denied it.

"ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."

Twelfth Day.

FIDELITY IN REBUKE.

"The Lord turned and looked upon Peter."--Luke, xxii. 61.

Jesus never spake one unnecessarily harsh or severe word. He had a
Divine sympathy for the frailties and infirmities of a tried, and
suffering, and tempted nature in others. He was forbearing to the
ignorant, encouraging to the weak, tender to the penitent, loving to
all,--yet how faithful was He as "the Reprover of sin!" Silent under His
own wrongs, with what burning invectives did He lay bare the Pharisees'
masked corruption and hypocrisy! When His Father's name and temple were
profaned, how did He sweep, with an avenging hand, the mammon-crowd
away, replacing the superscription, "Holiness to the Lord," over the
defiled altars!

Nor was it different with His own disciples. With what fidelity, when
rebuke was needed, did He administer it: the withering reprimand
conveyed sometimes by an impressive _word_ (Matt. xvi. 23); sometimes by
a silent _look_ (Luke, xxii. 61). "Faithful always were the wounds of
_this_ Friend."

Reader! art thou equally faithful with thy Lord in rebuking evil; not
with "the wrath of man,