“When He saw the multitudes He was moved” (Matt. ix. 36).
He is able to be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” The word
“touched” expresses a great deal. It means that our troubles are His
troubles, and that in all our afflictions He is afflicted. It is not a
sympathy of sentiment, but a sympathy of suffering.
There is much help in this for the tired heart. It is the foundation of
His Priesthood, and God meant that it should be to us a source of
unceasing consolation. Let us realize, more fully, our oneness with our
Great High Priest, and cast all our burdens on His great heart of love. If
we know what it is to ache in every nerve with the responsive pain of our
suffering child, we can form some idea of how our sorrows touch His heart,
and thrill His exalted frame. As the mother feels her babe’s pain, as the
heart of friendship echoes every cry from another’s woe, so in heaven, our
exalted Saviour, even amid the raptures of that happy world, is suffering
in His Spirit and even in His flesh with all His children bear. “Seeing
then we have such a great high Priest, let us come boldly to the throne of
grace,” and let us come to our great High Priest.