"In all their affliction he was afflicted." - Isaiah 63:8.

We need not feel so bitterly towards affliction, since we are indebted to it for the knowledge of this most wonderful fact, that our divine Friend enters into our sorrow with all his heart, and perfectly identifies himself with us in our tribulation.

Sympathy is really a more valuable proof of love, sometimes, than the hindrance of the calamity would have been. Every king can scatter handfuls of gold and save many from want; but where is the king whose eye melts, whose heart overflows, in sympathy with the, sons and daughters of want? Ah, we have to seek in heaven for such a king as this. " Saul, Saul," he says, " why persecutest thou me. I have felt keenly the reproaches thou hast uttered against my disciples; the stripes inflicted on them were to me the same as those that I endured in the house of Pilate; the drops of their blood were precious to me as those that I myself let fall from my own thorn wounded head."