ing even to the joints and marrow," making body and mind act and react on each other with fearful violence, darkening often the whole of life, and giving to it one uniform character of suffering-still remain; and the eye sees the external writhing, the ear hears the irrepressible cry of unsubdued agony. But wherever Christ is preached, and Christ is known, there has His Gospel come "with healing on its wings," and made the very punishment of sin a cure for sin itself, and bodily sickness minister effectually and permanently to the health of the soul.

To every Christian sufferer Christ is still present, if not with His healing touch-if often, it may be, prolonging and deepening the visitation; nay, often permitting it to baffle all the resources of human skill-yet is He present, whose love and compassion flowed forth without restraint at the sight of suffering: He is present, to "comfort the afflicted, to bind up the broken-hearted ;" to whisper, by the gracious breathings of His Spirit, Faith, Peace, and Hope; imparting the spiritual efficacy of His own sufferings; making every pang minister to "correction, to reproof, to instruction in righteousness ;" and forming in the soul that patient, resigned, and contented spirit, which is indeed "an ever present help in trouble ;" which soothes the weary day and sleepless night, and enables the Christian sufferer to know and feel, that every thing, even that from which nature most shrinks, does indeed "work together for good to them that love God."

So is the Great Physician ever with us, ever ministering in offices of Mercy, and effecting greater and more lasting

cures than those He wrought in the days of His flesh. They indeed were and could be but for a time: the sick then healed could but enjoy their restored health for a few short years. But not so is it with those, by whose bed Christ is present in sorrow, in sickness, and in death, and whose souls have received the Healing Medicine mingled in the cup of bitterness. These are cures wrought not for Time, but for Eternity: amidst bodily decay and change, the soul is putting on its changeless, undecaying garments, soon to come forth in glory, in brightness, and in majesty, to be "ever with the Lord," and see Him face to face, whom heretofore it has not seen, but yet has believed.

Oh, solemn and sacred, yet most soothing and cheering, thought! ever to remember, amidst the sights and sounds of sadness that meet us at every step, that in the darkest scenes of suffering and sorrow Christ is there; that where there is the severest, most protracted pain, there are often the signs of sound and increasing spiritual health, and while the thoughtless world passes by, and shrinks from the sight of, what to it appears, unmingled suffering,—to think of how much happiness there is with so much misery

-a happiness, indeed, unseen,—a joy which the world can neither understand nor intermeddle with, but real, true, and eternal in the heavens.

But deeply consoling as is this view of the dealings of God with man, it is not the only glimpse which Holy Writ affords us of that Divine Economy which, though only partially seen, helps us to understand some of the phenomena which most perplex us, connected with the existence of

Moral and Physical Evil. We may not doubt that there are other and most important objects combined with the permitted existence of disease and suffering; namely, the spiritual improvement and development, not only of the sufferers themselves, but of those who witness the suffering: and it is not an improbable suggestion, that the more aggravated forms of disease have, in the Divine intention, the special object of drawing forth and strengthening the habits of mercy, charity, and compassion, so essential a part of the all-pervading principle of Love, which God Himself is emphatically said to be, and without which, according to its measure and degree, the spiritual life in every soul must wither and die.

Here again our Lord, in His Human Nature, is our perfect example; and His gracious cheerfulness at the Marriage Feast, and His tears over the Grave of Lazarus, em body and exemplify the moral force and beauty of the command, to" rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with them that weep." Sympathy with suffering is an indispensable note of the Christian character; nor can there be, in the lowest degree, the Love of God, where this mark is wanting of Love to Man; according to the pregnant sentence of the Beloved Disciple, containing the germ of so much true philosophy, that "he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen." Here, too, how consoling is it to see evil overruled for good. We need all of us to be called away from the contemplation of self. Self is to every one his great enemy: we must go out of ourselves, have external

objects on which our sympathies and affections may be exercised, till, by Divine Grace, those holy, loving, selfdenying tempers are formed in us, and be strengthened by exercise into active habits, which are ready at the first call of visible, sensible, undoubted distress, to hasten to relieve it.

True, this is but the first step in that ladder of Divine Love, whose foot is on earth, but whose top is in the heaven of heavens; and, it may be, there are many who stop short at the lower rounds; who are affected at the sights and sounds of misery, and are not unwilling to relieve it, but who go not further in their upward progress, and make not the love of man the foundation from which to rise to the contemplation and love of God. Sure, indeed, I am, that in the heart that responds not to this appeal, the love of God cannot be; and equally sure, that the uniform and consistent exercise of Charity, in its lowest and most obvious forms, can only be depended on, where the gifts of natural kind feeling, and the blessing (for such it is,) of a spirit easily and deeply moved at the sight of distress, have been expanded, ripened, and sanctified by "the love of Him who first loved us." Where natural kindly feeling alone is trusted to, there will ever be danger of its being checked and deadened by the cold and chilling climate of the world. It is the love of God alone, to which by grace we ascend from the love of man, which will grave deep on the conscience, heart, and will, influencing permanently all our natural, moral, and spiritual relations, the great principle of the love of God for his own sake, and of man for God's sake.

It is the glory of the Gospel that it has drawn forth and exhibited the combined action of this great principle on the heart, and that Hospitals, Infirmaries, and Places of Refuge for every form of human suffering, first arose under the Christian system. Then it was that men begun to shake off the deadening weight of merely selfish care, and to feel the duty of not "caring each only for his own things, but also for the things of others." And doubtless it was not only the Spirit of Christ, but His undying example which has animated the Christian mind to sustained efforts of piety and charity. Men have felt, that, in so doing, they are in an especial sense walking in His steps: they have remembered Him, "who for our sakes became poor;" and that He has consecrated and commended to our best and holiest affections every form of poverty and suffering by His gracious sympathy: that the poor of the flock are especially Christ's poor-they, at the sight of whose sufferings "His Spirit was most deeply stirred within Him:" and that the claim of a poor Christian brother on Christian charity and compassion, comes with a prevailing power at the thought of Him who was Himself an houseless wanderer, and of that Sacred Form which often had not where to lay its head.

These are thoughts which should make our hearts turn. within us; and God, by the course of His Natural Providences, seconds and enforces the strivings of His Word with the heart of man. It is His Will that the poor should never cease out of the land; and ever, while the world standeth, the cry of Physical Suffering, the cry as of a great