alone from the cares of business or the schemes of ambition, but also from the clash and collision of jarring tempers, and the discord of mutual jealousies. Oh, may He who alone can bring us safely to the beginning of any day, and defend us through the same with His mighty power, may He close for us this day and each day of our lives without a thought of anger or ill-will; until He brings us to the final night which closes all in this world, when we shall say for the last time, 'I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest; for it is Thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety.'

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SERMON XIII.

LOOKING ON THE THINGS OF OTHERS.

PHILIPPIANS, ii. 4.

'Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.'

HERE can be no question that one of the

THERE

greatest of the distinctively Christian virtues is sympathy-the power of feeling with and for others. The heathen type of virtue was the self-contained man, to whom others were nothing, and he nothing to them, and who perfected a solitary excellence in a voluntary self-seclusion from the wants and weaknesses of his fellow-men. But the Christian type, as exemplified in Christ Himself, is the man who feels for others, even when they have almost ceased to feel for themselves; who is alive with instantaneous sympathy alike to the joy and sorrow, the honour and the reproach, of his brethren. He is placed as it were in the midst of a complicated net-work of common interests and feelings, whose furthest ramifications extend to the remotest of those who are called by the Christian name, and

he is sensitive to all that befalls any one of them anywhere in the vast system-he 'feels at each link and lives along the line.'

This great Christian virtue of sympathy S. Paul describes in the text by the expression looking on the things of others, and not only on our own. By which I do not understand him merely to describe in general terms unselfishness, or the feeling which acknowledges the wants and interests of others as well as its own; but I conceive him to mean the sympathy which consists in putting yourself in thought in the place of others, and then considering all that interests them from their point of view. This putting yourself in the place of others is just what Christ did. He did it in fact, as S. Paul goes on to say in the next verse: 'Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; Who made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.' It was the emperor voluntarily changing places with the beggar. And He did it also in feeling. I mean that He felt and still feels for every one of His servants in every one of their trials and troubles, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows. is a mysterious subject, this sympathy of Christ. Whence, we may ask, does it spring? Has He it by virtue of His Godhead-by possessing the Divine Eye which looks down with penetrating glance into the deepest recesses of every human

It

spirit? Or has He it by virtue of His manhood— by being the representative and typal man of the human race; so that just as there is no act or word of truth, love, and wisdom, which is not to be found, actually or potentially, in His human example, so also there is no trial or emotion of our being which does not find its place in His human heart: and we may almost say, that no temptation or weakness, so that it be short of actual sin, can exist in our hearts, except it has first existed in the heart of Christ. However this may be, it is one of the most comforting of Christian doctrines, that Christ does possess this perfect sympathy-that 'we have not an High-priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are.' And every Christian is Christ-like in proportion as he possesses this sympathy.

And now let me make but two applications of the text.

I. Our doing good to others and being a blessing to them, will depend in great measure on this power of sympathizing with them by putting ourselves in their place, and looking at what concerns them from their point of view. Yes, my Brethren, I think all experience tends to convince us more and more strongly, that if we would point to the man who diffuses most powerfully a Christian influence around him, we must not single out the man who is re

markable for the most rigid adherence to every tittle of the moral law-who tithes his mint and anise and cummin with the most scrupulous exactness; who never practised in himself, or allowed in another, the slightest deviation from any commandment of God or man, Church or State. Such a man may be flawless in his own life, but he is not the man to influence for good the lives of others. He is too hard, too stiff, too unbending, too unsympathetic. He is not the man to whom we should turn when we desire to obtain comfort in some great affliction, or pardon for some grievous sin, or counsel in some unlooked-for difficulty. For to him every temptation, if it be not in a form which he has himself experienced, is in itself a sin; every doubt, however unwillingly harboured, is as bad as a professed infidelity; every fault, however sincerely grieved for, is an unpardonable transgression. And so we turn rather under such circumstances to someone who is known for his large and wide sympathies-who having himself conquered many faults, can feel for those who are still struggling against them, and whose kindly ear can listen to the tale of our difficulties without starting back in horror from the weakness which our confessions reveal. Such a man can look on our things as well as on his own; and remembering S. James's charitable text, 'In many things we offend all,' he can allow for our weaknesses even