THE WARM HEART OF CHRIST.
The first night that old Dominie Scattergood sat at our tea-table, we asked
him whether he could make his religion work in the insignificant affairs of
life, or whether he was accustomed to apply his religion on a larger scale.
The Dominie turned upon us like a day-dawn, and addressed us as follows:
There is no warmer Bible phrase than this: "Touched with the feeling of our
infirmities." The Divine nature is so vast, and the human so small, that we
are apt to think that they do not touch each other at any point. We might
have ever so many mishaps, the government at Washington would not hear of
them, and there are multitudes in Britain whose troubles Victoria never
knows; but there is a throne against which strike our most insignificant
perplexities. What touches us, touches Christ. What annoys us, annoys
Christ. What robs us, robs Christ. He is the great nerve-centre to which
thrill all sensations which touch us who are his members.
He is touched with our physical infirmities. I do not mean that he merely
sympathizes with a patient in collapse of cholera, or in the delirium of a
yellow fever, or in the anguish of a broken back, or in all those
annoyances that come from a disordered nervous condition. In our excited
American life sound nerves are a rarity. Human sympathy in the case I
mention amounts to nothing. Your friends laugh at you and say you have "the
blues," or "the high strikes," or "the dumps," or "the fidgets." But Christ
never laughs at the whims, the notions, the conceits, the weaknesses, of
the nervously disordered. Christ probably suffered in something like this
way, for He had lack of sleep, lack of rest, lack of right food, lack of
shelter, and His temperament was finely strung.
Chronic complaints, the rheumatism, the neuralgia, the dyspepsia, after a
while cease to excite human sympathy, but with Christ they never become an
old story. He is as sympathetic as when you felt the first twinge of
inflamed muscle or the first pang of indigestion. When you cannot sleep,
Christ keeps awake with you. All the pains you ever had in your head are
not equal to the pains Christ had in His head. All the acute suffering you
ever had in your feet is not equal to the acute suffering Christ had in His
feet. By His own hand He fashioned your every bone, strung every nerve,
grew every eyelash, set every tooth in its socket, and your every physical
disorder is patent to Him, and touches His sympathies.
He is also touched with the infirmities of our prayers. Nothing bothers the
Christian more than the imperfections of his prayers. His getting down on
his knees seems to be the signal for his thoughts to fly every whither.
While praying about one thing he is thinking about another. Could you ever
keep your mind ten minutes on one supplication? I never could. While you
are praying, your store comes in, your kitchen comes in, your losses and
gains come in. The minister spreads his hands for prayer, and you put your
head on the back of the pew in front, and travel round the world in five
minutes.
A brother rises in prayer-meeting to lead in supplication. After he has
begun, the door slams, and you peep through your fingers to see who is
coming in. You say to yourself, "What a finely expressed prayer, or what a
blundering specimen! But how long he keeps on! Wish he would stop! He prays
for the world's conversion. I wonder how much he gives toward it? There! I
don't think I turned the gas down in the parlor! Wonder if Bridget has got
home yet? Wonder if they have thought to take that cake out of the oven? Oh
what a fool I was to put my name on the back of that note! Ought to have
sold those goods for cash and not on credit!" And so you go on tumbling
over one thing after another until the gentleman closes his prayer with
Amen! and you lift up your head, saying, "There! I haven't prayed one bit.
I am not a Christian!" Yes, you are, if you have resisted the tendency.
Christ knows how much you have resisted, and how thoroughly we are
disordered of sin, and He will pick out the one earnest petition from the
rubbish and answer it. To the very depth of His nature He sympathizes with
the infirmity of our prayers.
He is touched with the infirmity of our temper.
There are some who, notwithstanding all that is said or done to them can
smile back. But many of you are so constructed that if a man insults you,
you either knock him down or wish you could. While with all resolution and
prayer you resist this, remember that Christ knows how much you have been
lied about, and misrepresented, and trod on. He knows that though you said
something that was hot, you kept back something that was ten times hotter.
He takes into account your explosive temperament. He knows that it requires
more skill to drive a fiery span than a tame roadster. He knows how hard
you have put down the "brakes" and is touched with the feeling of your
infirmity.
Christ also sympathizes with our poor efforts at doing good.
Our work does not seem to amount to much. We teach a class, or distribute
a bundle of tracts, or preach a sermon, and we say, "Oh, if I had done it
some other way!" Christ will make no record of our bungling way, if we did
the best we could. He will make record of our intention and the earnestness
of our attempt. We cannot get the attention of our class, or we break down
in our exhortation, or our sermon falls dead, and we go home disgusted, and
sorry we tried to speak, and feel Christ is afar off. Why, He is nearer
than if we had succeeded, for He knows that we need sympathy, and is
touched with our infirmity.
It is comforting to know that it is not the learned and the great and the
eloquent that Christ seems to stand closest by. The "Swamp-angel" was a big
gun, and made a stunning noise, but it burst before it accomplished
anything, while many an humble rifle helped decide the contest. Christ made
salve out of spittle to cure a blind man, and the humblest instrumentality
may, under God, cure the blindness of the soul. Blessed be God for the
comfort of His gospel!