IT is a truth, in dwelling on which we never weary, that Christ fully enters into the feelings of His followers; that His sympathy is so perfect, that "in all their affliction He is afflicted;" that "He suffered, being tempted," and is therefore

able to succour them that are tempted;" that He not only "bare our sins," but that He also "carried our sorrows." Nor is it a matter for wonder that we should love to dwell upon this truth knowing, as we do, how impossible it is that we should perfectly sympathize with each other.

There are times, it is true, when we feel that there are some who are able to understand us, and to feel with us; and a consciousness of their sympathy is almost sufficient to make us forget our grief; but there are seasons when "the heart knoweth its own bitterness," and then it is that we feel the preciousness of the One Friend who can be "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

While, however, we may well linger over this truth, and draw from it the strength and encouragement which it is calculated to impart, we shall do well to bear in mind that we are VOL. LXXII.-NEW SERIES, No. 10.

called to the high privilege of sharing in the sufferings of Christ.

If we are not mistaken it was of this latter truth that Paul desired a fuller knowledge. He desired not only to have the assurance of his interest in the sufferings of Christ, but also to participate in them. He wanted not merely to know that the Saviour suffered for and with His disciples, but also that he himself as a disciple suffered for and with the Saviour.

This was one of the first truths which Christ sought to impress upon the minds of His disciples. "Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple;" and the sons of Zebedee expressed their willingness to suffer with their Master if they might but share in His glory. "Are ye able," said the Saviour, "to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And they said, we are able."

If we had heard them utter these words we should have been ready to have said, "surely He will rebuke their presumption, not only in de

siring the most distinguished places in His kingdom, but more particularly in supposing that it was possible for them to drink of His cup, and be baptized with His baptism;" and yet, strange to say, instead of telling them that they could not do this, He distinctly assured them that they could and should participate in His deepest suffering. He said to them, "Ye shall, indeed, drink of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with."

He knew that their union with Him would necessitate their sharing in His bitter pain, though they, in all probability, when professing their readiness to do so, did not fully comprehend the meaning of His cup and baptism. Peter, in after years, laid hold of the truth to which the Saviour gave utterance in the words just given, and he sought to impress it upon the minds of the persecuted

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strangers" to whom he wrote. "Rejoice," said he, "inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." How fully Paul grasped the truth, and how often it was before his mind, may be gathered from his frequent reference to it. When writing to the Colossians, and refering to himself, he said, "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake, which is the church."

That tender remonstrance which fell upon his ears on the road to Damascus, "Why persecutest thou me," taught him not only that Christ suffered with His persecuted followers, but also that the followers suffered with Christ; that there was a real community of suffering between Christ and His disciples; and ever after he desired to enter more fully into this fellowship.

Let us, however, be sure that we do not make a fatal mistake concerning the import of the above passages. Let us not think that by any suffering of ours we can add anything to the sacrificial work of Christ, as if

that were in any way incomplete and needed supplementing. Such a thought would be most dishonouring to Christ. He completed His atoning work-" there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin;" and the suffering which that atonement involved both in its intensity, and in its moral aspect godward and manward stands entirely alone, and neither needs to be nor can be repeated or supplemented. Our "fellowship" is rather a proof of the completeness of His sacrifice, and that the spirit of that sacrifice is working in us. Our suffering with Christ is the sign of the presence and development of the new life which has come to us through His perfect work.

While, however, we carefully guard against falling into such an error, it will be well for us if we can understand in what way, and to what extent, it is possible for us to suffer with Christ?

What are we to understand by "Bearing His Cross," "Drinking of His cup, and being baptized with His baptism," "Filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ ?" Will the scourging, imprisonment, hunger, nakedness, and toil to which the disciples were subject sufficiently explain these words? We think not.

Great as their sufferings were in these respects they only formed a part, and we venture to think a small part, of the fellowship of which Paul speaks. Did the poverty and weariness and persecution which Christ endured constitute His cross," cup," and "baptism ?" Will these things sufficiently account for His "strong crying and tears," His being "sorrowful even unto death," His blood-like sweat? Ah! no. These expressions tell us of an anguish of soul which no merely physical causes could have produced, which we cannot fully understand, but in which we must share in virtue of our union with Him. If the followers of Christ can only be said to have fellowship with Him in His sufferings when

their outward circumstances are similar to His, then thousands of disciples in our day could not be said to have this fellowship at all.

How many of those who read this paper can, with any degree of truthfulness adopt the words of the Master, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head."

What have we ever been called upon to give up on account of our adherence to Christ? Who ever

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persecuted us on account of our religion? Not one in a thousand of us know "the fellowship of His sufferings" in these respects; but if we can be brought to understand what He meant by His "" cross," cup," and "baptism," we shall doubtless be able to see how we may participate with Him in these things independently of any outward circumstances. Mark then, that Christ, the perfectly pure one, must have been intensely pained by the very existence of evil.

Most of us have, at some time or other in our lives, been brought into contact with something exceedingly loathsome, from which our whole soul recoiled. Now and then we hear of some revolting deed which fills us with horror, and we can scarcely help exclaiming, "Oh, how dreadfully wicked." What, then, must Christ have felt, meeting with sin, as He did, in its blackest forms? We, purblind with sin, often fail to see the loathsome thing; and when we do see it, we are in constant danger of becoming unconcerned as to its existence. But it was not so with Him. No sin escaped His eye. He saw it lurking in the heart of the professed disciple as well as in those "whited sepulchres" whom He so fearfully denounced. And more than this, He took in at a glance the corporate evil of the whole world. His soul was not only oppressed as ours may be, by the guilt connected with the individual acts which He daily saw around Him,

but the world's guilt, in all its magnitude and hideousness, was present to His mind. And it always appeared the same to Him.. In whatever form it presented itself, its loathsomeness was in no way diminished; it remained the same foul abhorrent thing from which His soul recoiled.

Let Mark take us to Gethsemane, and tell us again what he has told us so many times, and let us try to catch the import of his words.

When narrating the circumstances which took place on the night in which the Redeemer was betrayed, he says, "And. He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and very heavy." The word here rendered amazed is expressive of astonishment mingled with fear. At what, then, was He " sore amazed ?" At what was He astonished? What caused the trembling to take possession of His heart? Was it the prospect of the judgment hall, and the scourge and the mocking and the cross? To think this would be to degrade the Saviour below many of His followers who have welcomed the gibbet, the block, or the stake.

But it was not these things only which perplexed His soul and made the tabernacle quake, but rather His full view of, and His perfect feeling with regard to the root whence all the hatred and violence of His enemies sprung; or as Langre forcibly puts it, "The traitorous, false, despairing world represented in Judas fills Him with horror to amazement. He shudders before it, before the abyss of wickedness in this spiritual hell." Now great as the Saviour's bodily sufferings must have been (and God forbid that we should ever think lightly of them) we cannot help thinking that this perfect knowledge of, and perfect feeling with regard to the world's sin, must have filled His soul with such anguish as would outweigh all His bodily sufferings. And may we

have fellowship with Him in this? We not only may, but if we are disciples we must. We repeat that His sufferings will always rise infinitely above ours in intensity; but there can be no real union with Him without a participation in them, and the degree of our suffering with Him will be regulated by our likeness to Him. Still as the films of sin are removed from our eyes, we shall understand more fully what the world's sin really is.

Still, as our moral sensitiveness, which sin has deadened, is restored to its proper tone, we shall feel something of the horror and loathing which the Sinless One felt, and be able to spell out a part of the meaning of the words, "Himself bare our sins." We shall know "the fellowship of His sufferings."

But then the perfect feeling of Christ toward the world's guilt was but one element of His suffering. His life was one continued conflict with evil, and in this conflict He suffered.

Had it been possible for Him to have been conscious of the existence of the evil without coming into direct contact with it, even then, we think, it must have been to Him a source of intense pain; but He did not come into the world to be an idle spectator of its sin, but He came to battle with it; and in this contest, although He conquered, He did not escape unscathed.

"He

bruised its head, gave it its death blow, but it bruised His heel." It is true that the Sinless One had no evil in Himself to subdue but in its approaches to Him, and its attempts to overcome Him, we are distinctly told that He "suffered, being tempted."

And here you will readily perceive how the disciple may have fellowship with his master. At the moment of our union with Christ we enter upon the same conflict. And is it likely that we shall ever gain any decisive victory over the evil that is in us and about us without

suffering? It cannot be. The "old man" clings to us too tightly to be put off without a struggle. Crucifying "the old man" is a slow and painful process. Mortifying the deeds of the body is no mere child's play. But this "putting off," this crucifying and mortifying, has to be done even though it may involve an amount of anguish equal to that occasioned by the cutting off of a right hand, or the plucking out of a right eye.

Christ's conflict with evil has to be repeated in us, and if the final result is to be the same, namely, victory, the accompanying result will be the same, namely, suffering.

Again, Christ not only suffered in the way to which we have referred, but He had the fullest knowledge of all the sorrow and misery which sin brought in its train; and in spite of the fact that men had brought this sorrow upon themselves, the compassionate Redeemer took it into His own heart. The world was groaning under the weight of its sorrows, and Christ's love prompted Him to assume the burden as His own. This is the truth of which the prophet spoke when he said, "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows ;" and who can conceive the depth and intensity of the anguish which He endured? Every throb of agony that shot through the hearts of men lodged in the heart of the "Man of Sorrows," till at length that heart broke with the weight of its load. And we are called to have fellowship with Him in this. If "the same mind be in us which was also in Him," then the same causes will produce similar results, differing only in degree. the sorrows of the world so oppressed Him, they will be sure to oppress us in proportion as we are living under the influence of His mighty love. But His sympathy was no mere passive thing. He did not merely sigh over the world's woes, but was prepared to make any sacrifice in order

If

to remove them. He would cheerfully have taken the load Himself; but men, for the most part, madly refused to avail themselves of His proffered aid, and it may be that this opposition to His loving desires and efforts formed the bitterest ingredient in His cup, the sharpest pang of His cross. But how weak and inadequate words are to express the keenness of His anguish. When He Himself gave utterance to His emotions, how far short we fall of fully comprehending their depth.

And yet we cannot fail to catch at least some faint idea of what He must have felt when His intense love, deep anxiety, and bitter disappointment blended in that piteous wail, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." But the longer we dwell upon this theme the more we must feel how little we at present know of "the fellowship of His suffering."

And yet some of Christ's followers have had such close fellowship with Him that, as we study their lives and words, we are almost ready to doubt our discipleship. Listen to one of them-"I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness, and continual sorrow in my heart, for

I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." Do not these words indicate a closeness of fellowship with the Master to which most of us are strangers? Did not the writer enter into the very spirit of Christ's life and sacrifice, in being willing to sacrifice (at least) his highest earthly good in order to save his brethren? Hear him again-" My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you." Here you see he evidently participates in the soul-travail of Christ. Nothing less than the pangs of maternity will fully represent his suffering, love, and anxiety for his fellow-men. Nor can it be otherwise with us when we experience as fully as the apostle did the power of Christ's life working in us.

Be it ours, then, disciples of Jesus, thus to bear the cross and seek to know more fully the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death." Let us cherish a deeper abhorrence of sin, and an intenser love for the sinful. Let our lives be one continued effort to lessen the sin and sorrow of the world by leading men to Christ, and if we thus enter into the sufferings, we shall also "enter into the joy of our Lord." Stalybridge.

NOTES ON

I. IT seems to be very full of assumption and presumption does that remark of yours-"He is an ignorant fellow!" I am not quite sure as to your incurring the danger of an action for libel. Pray how much less does he know than yourself? Some years ago he was the better fellow of the two. At any rate he understood the duties and the demands of his calling, and you were only a curly-haired young urchin whose greatest mystery was your hummingtop. You have been "educated" since then! And pray what do you know

IGNORANCE.

now? A little Latin, rather a smaller quantity of Greek, you can recite a few lines from "Paradise Lost," and do it tolerably well. Oh! yes! your tutor did suggest that you should not think of "Paradise Regained." But do you know any more relatively than he does? It is quite true he is only an agricultural labourer, but is he less efficient in his calling than you are in yours? Is he oftener put to confusion or led to extreme measures at a venture than you are! If he is not, he knows quite as much as you do. He knows