Zacharias spoke, for the confirmation of his faith, of his own high place in heaven, he only said, ‘I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God.' His noblest prerogative was to stand, seeing God; and so to catch and reflect light from the Uncreated Light.

Yet even thus shall it be with us if we attain to the Kingdom where all darkness, spiritual, moral, and intellectual, shall pass away; since in that holy Presence all our being shall be pervaded with the pure rays of the glory of God.

And comforted with this hope, the faithful are content to wait for a season, walking meantime by faith and not by sight; if they may at the last be with Him from whom springs all joy, with whom is the satisfaction of every noblest desire, the fulfilment of every largest promise, the presence of all purity, and the accomplishment of all perfection.

III. The Sympathy of Christ our Lord is the subject of one of the sections into which this book is divided. But here, too, some words must be spoken on this inexhaustible theme, for this is, indeed, an ever-flowing fountain of Comfort.

The highest instincts that God has given us attest that sympathy is the true law of our nature.

The heathen world acknowledged this when once a vast audience rose with one electric impulse at the utterance of these simple words, ‘I am a man, and nothing affecting man is indifferent to me.' This line conveys to us Christians only an obvious and familiar thought, for we have learned that He who was the perfect Man, out of the fulness of His human heart, rejoiced with them that did rejoice, and wept with them that wept.

The tears shed by our Lord, as at the tomb of Lazarus, answer by anticipation such dreary questionings as these: 'How can we know that Christ feels with us? What evidence is there to prove that He does?' Nay, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' He who Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses, is not an High Priest who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities.' His intercession implies His sympathy.

The value of this, His sympathy, is well understood by every devout heart. For it is one thing to acknowledge, as we often do, that sorrow is needful chastisement or wholesome medicine, that all is ordered for the best, that in the end light will come out of darkness, and that in the meantime we must bear our burthen patiently: it is quite another thing to know and feel that the love of the

Divine Master is ours; that He is with us by the bed of suffering; that He is not thinking only of the end and issue of all this anguish, but that He is feeling for and with the afflicted, now; that He stands by the grave wherein our earthly hopes are buried, not as their future Restorer only, but as our present Friend. It is one thing to look forward through the long vista of the years before us, to the place where our tears shall be for ever wiped away: it is another to know that now, even in our darkest hour, when the weight of the present seems ready to crush us; now, when the effort to realize a happy future would be impossible, that even now Christ is with us, and that if we needs must weep bitter, bitter tears we may lean upon His breast, like the beloved disciple, and weep them there.

There is much indeed to intercept this view of His love; the sense of our own unworthiness, doubts of our own reality, distressing doubts of Him. But perhaps that which most haunts us is the recurring and perplexing question, how that fullest sympathy can exist in Him without its yielding for us an immediate deliverance from our trouble. For He, our Lord, Perfect God as well as Perfect Man, has all resources at His command. He could in a moment bear back the

swollen tide of affliction. He has but to speak the word, and the fainting heart must at once revive, the racking pain must instantly cease, the sick recover, nay, even our dead, at His bidding must come forth and live. And yet sorrow, pain, disease, and death, accomplish their work unrebuked by Him. His beloved are sorely afflicted, and the relief, that even our poor earthly sympathy would almost at any cost instantly afford, is withheld by the Lord of love.

This grievously tries the faith of many-not in His purposes of ultimate mercy, but in His present tenderness and pitifulness.

Yet what we may see around us helps to explain this. A wise and loving father has assigned to his child some difficult and tedious task, but still one which lies within his power to master. He struggles with it, and yet fails to accomplish it. His hours of recreation are abridged, his day is spoiled by it. Any casual acquaintance witnessing this can hardly bear to see him suffer, and will readily, though it may cost him some trouble, do his work for him. But his father will not. He will not touch it, will not look at it. It is needful, he says, that his child should accomplish it himself. Now, has the helpful stranger more true sympathy with the boy than the unhelping father ?

He will not himself think this. His father has watched over him since he was born-has loved and cherished him, and knows his heart, and his troubles, and his struggles, better than any stranger can; but just because he loves him best and most, just because he is his father, he does not help him

now.

And so again when he has chosen for his son, now sent forth into life, some difficult and arduous career. The young man's heart perhaps after a time fails him; he is weary of his work, he would fain return home; existence so spent is a burthen that seems to him too heavy. Compassionate onlookers would remove him to an easier and more congenial position, but his father does not. He knows that to do so would be utter ruin to him. Does he therefore sympathize less with his son than the others do? Does he not follow him with daily anxious prayers? Will he not alleviate, perhaps in quiet unnoticed ways, the suffering which he deems it best not to remove? Does love cease to be love because its manifestations are checked by the counsels of wisdom?

Our comfort from the belief in Christ's sympathy will increase in proportion as we accept the truth, that we are undergoing, if we be indeed His, a process of training and education, of which