"The Lord hath heard thy affliction," was the message sent to comfort her. All the Bible story shines with records of like divine care. The Psalms likewise are full of assurances of God's personal interest in men. Christ teaches the same truth. He speaks over and over of the Father's thought and care. He told his disciples that God clothes the grassblades and the lilies, amid all his care of the worlds finds time to attend to the feeding of the birds, and in all the events of the universe notes the fall of a little sparrow. He assured them further that the very hairs of their heads are all numbered, meaning that God personally cares for all the minutest affairs of our lives.

Not only did Christ teach that God cares. for his children, but that he cares for them as individuals. His love is not merely a diffused kindly sentiment of interest in the whole human family, but it is personal and individual as the love of a mother for each one of her children. The Shepherd calleth his sheep by name. St. Paul took the love

of Christ to himself as if he were the only one Christ loved. "He loved me and gave himself up for me."

God's love is personal. His heart lays hold upon each life. He cares for us, for me. He enters into all our individual experiences. If we suffer, he suffers. In a remarkable passage in the Old Testament, the writer, speaking of the love of God for his people, says: "In all their affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old." How could the care of God for his children be expressed in plainer or more positive way? In their afflictions he was afflicted. When they suffered he suffered. In their sorrows he sorrowed. We know how Jesus entered into all the experiences of his disciples. Their life was his. It is the same to-day. In heaven he is touched with the feeling of his people's infirmities. If you are weak, the burden of your weakness presses upon him. If you are hurt, the hurt is felt

by him. If you are wronged he endures the wrong. There is no experience of your life that he does not share. Whatever your need, your trial, your perplexity, your struggle may be, you may be sure that he knows and cares and that when you come to him with it, he will take time amid all his infinite affairs to help you as if he had nothing else in all the world to do.

"Among so many, can he care?

Can special love be everywhere?"

I asked. My soul bethought itself of this,—
"In just that very place of his

Where he hath put and keepeth you,

God hath no other thing to do."

God cares. His love for each one of us is so deep, so personal, so tender, that he shares our every pain, every distress, every struggle. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." God is our Father and his care is gentler than a human father's as his love exceeds human love. Much human care has no power to help, but when God cares he

helps omnipotently. Jesus said that when his friends would leave him alone, yet he would not be alone "because the Father is with me." When human friendship comes not with any relief, then God will come. When no one in all the world cares, then God cares.

"You Will Not Mind the Roughness"