It tenderly sympathizes with all the suffering believers. Here is the evidence of our own membership with the family of God. "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." And it is in this exercise of Christian sympathy that "the members have the same care one for another." The Church of God is a suffering Church. All the members are, more or less, and variously, tried. Many are the burdens of the saints. It would be impossible, we think, to find one, whose lip has not touched the cup of sorrow, whose spirit has not felt the pressure of trouble. Some walk in doubt and darkness- some are particularly set up as a mark for Satan- some suffer from a nervous temperament, discoloring every bright and beautiful picture of life- some are the subjects of personal affliction, pining sickness excluding them from all participation in the songs of Zion and the solemn assemblies of the saints- some are bereaved, sorrowing like Rachel for her children, or mourning, like the sisters of Bethany, for their brother. Some are suffering from narrowed and exhausted resources; and there may do not be a few, suffering even from actual poverty itself.
Ah! how many will say, "You have touched upon every sorrow but mine," -so extensive is the field of Christian sympathy! But what scope for the play of those heaven-born affections begotten in the heart of each true believer! "A new commandment give I unto you," says Christ, "that you love one another." And how is this commandment to be obeyed? The apostle answers, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Therefore the bearing of one another's burdens is a necessary effect and proper exercise of this holy love. It will delight to recognize the suffering Savior in his suffering members. And it will go and lift the pressure from the spirit, and chase the sorrow from the heart, and dry the tear from the eye, and supply the pressing need. And if it cannot accomplish this, it will take its place by the side of the sufferer, sharing the sorrow and the need it has no power to comfort or remove. Is this law of Christ- the law of love- thus exhibited in you?
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