Sorrow can

time, seems to centre on the joys of life. draw us out of ourselves; it has an heroic side; it is never unworthy of us to comfort grief; on the way to Calvary, the Saviour regarded the weeping daughters of Jerusalem. But pleasures, satisfactions, what are these? The toys of children, an impertinent intrusion on our solemnity, a mockery to the strained and burdened heart.

And yet amid the stupendous interests in the midst. of which these men to whom Paul wrote were living, the break-up in judgment of the old world and the coming of the kingdom of God, and even while their spirits were stirred by the solemnities of the gospel, the outward world of domestic and social life was continuing as before. Circumstances were occurring, some to make men happy if some made men sad. The young mother was bending merrily over her merry child; the lover was rejoicing in his bride; plans for household comfort or farm management or business enlargement were succeeding; sons were winning honours and daughters acquiring graces; yes, and in Christian households the light of God was touching and hallowing all this. It is a mark of the thorough frankness of the Apostle Paul, his honest, manly nature, that he looks at it, and will not have the Roman Christians forget it. "You cannot be al

ways in the cloud; the solemnities of God's revelation are not intended to quench the homely sympathies, and daunt men's hearts. Look out on the living world about you; see how human it still is; how the common instincts are still moving, the common social sentiments still with room to play.

It is yours to

Lofty as are the

sympathise with and to share it all. purposes inspired in you, and heroic as is your spirit, your life should be simple and true. Rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping."

Our life should be simple and true-here is one great lesson which Christians have to be always learning. No range of thought, however lofty; no strain of discipline, however hard; no composure of experience, however tried; no solemnity of incidents in which we live; nothing in the surroundings of our Christian life, nor any quality in the Christian life itself, should be allowed to narrow our sympathies or close our hearts against any form of human feeling. The end of all God's dealings with us is to make us more purely human; and he is most human who has the largest fellowship, the most open soul.

The breadth of the Christian spirit is only a manifestation of God's method in human history. If our hearts are to reflect His thoughts, we must be men of varied sympathies; for in this world, they that rejoice

are ever meeting and mixing with them that weep. We are as Tennyson so beautifully describes the linnets: "One is glad; her note is gay,

For now her little ones have ranged;

And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol'n away."

We cannot, if we would, confine our sympathies to one set of emotions; for each one of us is the centre of a circle of many friends, and we pass from the house of mourning to the house of feasting. A letter, full of gladness and calling for congratulations, comes to us just when we have shrouded our windows in funereal gloom; the congratulations we send back are no less hearty and no less welcome because a tear has dropped on them. We have good news to communicate, and the first friend we think of is down in the fight; we can help him the better because God has lightened our heart.

How good all this is! how wonderful is the human story in which the tenderest, purest, most varied sources of emotion are being ever appealed to; the whirring shuttles carrying dark and bright threads of every hue! How wonderful a God is He whose heart is large enough for fellowship with all the various emotions. which are thrilling the great human household; of whose large tenderness sorrow and joy are but con

trasted expressions! Love needs it all to reveal itself; needs sorrow, for no affection is holy until it has been baptized with tears; needs joy, for love is ever forgetting that sorrow has been in gladness that itself is.

We are sometimes impatient of another strain of feeling than our own; and look upon the sight of sorrow in our gladness, or of gaiety in our gloom, as an intrusion on our privileges, almost as a personal offence. We know not how much we owe to those incidents which distract our emotions, to the calls made on us to come out of our own emotion and share the emotions of another. If all the griefs of a nation or of a family happened simultaneously, the heart of the nation or of the family would be crushed. If all our joys fell together, there would be no check on our levity, and our paradise lost could scarcely be regained. It is better, far, far better as it is; that joy should lighten sorrow and sorrow chasten joy, and both alike bring to all alike new lessons and new influences from God.

The breadth of the Christian spirit is needed for the fulness of Christian influence. If you study the context of the words on which we have been meditating, you will see that the place of Christians in the church and in the world underlies the various injunctions of the closing chapters of the Epistle to the

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Romans. There are men and women whom the sad can touch; men and women whom the happy can touch; but we ought to desire to touch all. We ought to desire it, not for our own sakes only, because it is blessed to have many who call us friend; but for their sakes also, because in the Christian touch there resides the blessing of Him whose touching made men and women whole. And largeness of sympathy is itself a spiritual force: it means not only an extended sphere of influence, it is a personal quality of a marked and valuable kind. The latent sympathy with cheerfulness is felt underlying consolation; the depth of the eye reveals even in mirth that it is no stranger to tears. The choicest friends and ministers to humanity are those who share its large capacity for gladness and for sorrow; and regarding each as sacred, because each is both human and divine, "rejoice with those that do rejoice, and weep with those that weep."