Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 189, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1913 — Short sermons FOR A Sundan half=hour [ARTICLE]

Short sermons FOR A Sundan half=hour

Theme; THE COMPASSIONATE - CHRIST. \ ++ + > BY THE LATE REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D. 4 ♦ ♦ There is no place in which human sorrows are felt as they are felt In the heart of Jesus. No one knows human weakness as He knows it, or pities as He can pity. Every suffering of the body is known to our sympathizing Lord, and every grief that makes the heart ache. Human pity is often worn out from overuse. It impatiently mutters, ‘"ls that poor creature here again? I have helped him a dozen times already.” Or it says, "That miserable fellow has taken to drink again, has he? I am done trying to save him. He makes himself a brute; let him die like the brutes!” Human pity often gives way just when It should stand the heaviest strain. - __

Compassion dwells in the heart of Christ, as inexhaustible as the sunlight. Our tears hang heavier on that heart than the planets which His Divine hand holds In their orbits; our sighs are more audible to His ear than the blasts of wintry winds are to us. When we pray aright, we are reaching up and taking hold on that compassion. The penitent publican was laying hold of *it when he cried out of that broken heart, "Be merciful to me, a sinner!" It Is His sublime pity that listens to our prayers and hears our cries and grants us what we want. Therefore let us come boldly to the throne of grace and make our weakness, our guiltless, and our griefs to be their own pleas to Him who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. One of the most characteristics, stories of Abraham Lincoln is that A poor soldier’s wife came to the White Houbc, with her infant in her arms, and asked admission to see the President She came to beg him to grant a pardon to her husband, who was under a -military sentence. “Be sure and take the baby up with you,” said the Irish porter at the White House door. At length the woman descended the stairway, weeping for Joy; and the Irishman exclaimed, “Ah, mum, it was the baby that dia It!” So doth our weakness appeal to the compassionate heart of eur Redeemer. There 1b no more exquisite description of Him than in this touch: "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; He shall gather the lambs in His arms and carry them In |His bosom; He shall gently lead those that are with young.” Such is our blessed Master’s tender mercy to the weak. It Is tender because It never breaks the bruised reed or quenches the feeblest spark. This world of ours oontalns vastly more weak things than strong things. Here and there towers a mountain pine of stalwart oak; but the "’frail reeds and rushes are Innumerable. Even in the Bible gallery of charaotere, how few are strong; yet, none hut had some weakness. Abraham's tongue Is once twisted to a falsehood; the temper of Moses is not always proof agalnßt provocation; Elijah loses heart under the Juniper tree, and boastful Peter turns poltroon under the taunts of a servant-maid. But evermore there waits and' watches over us that infinite compassion ■ that knoweth what is in poor man, and remembereth that we are but dust. For our want-book He has an Infinitely larger supply-book. The same sympathizing Jesus who raised the Jewish maiden from her bed of death, who rescued sinking Peter, and pitied a hungry multitude, and wept with the sisters of Bethany ere He raised a dead brother to life, is living yet. Hla love, aa Samuel Rutherford said, "hath neither brim nor bottom.” This compassionate Jesus ought to be living also in the persons of those whom He makes His representatives. "Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” That law Is love, This law of Christian sympathy works In two ways; it either helps our fellow-oreatures get rid of their burdens, or If failing In that It helps them to carry the load more lightly. "We that are strong ought to bear the Infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Here, for example. Is a strong, rich, well-manned church, some of Its members are dying of dignity and others are debilitated with Indolence. Yonder la a feeble church In numbers and money. Let the-man who counts BBS In the strong church go where he can count ten In the weak church. If the opmpassionate Christ should come into some of our churches, I suspect (hat Hs would order more than one rich, well-fed member off his cushion, and send him to work m some mission school or struggling young enterprise. That early Church was saturated with the compassionate spirit of their Lord. They fulfilled the "law of Christ” The only genuine succeesore of those apostles are the load-lifters. Jeeus Christ exerted His Divine might and Infinite love in bearing the load of man's sin and sorrows. Consecration mean.] copying the compassionate Christ Power means debt —the debt we owe to the poor, the feeble, the alek. the ignorant the fallen, the gull tar and the perishing. May God Am mtnm*om4 Mb m to mv mt d#4?