IN the autobiography of the poet Goethe, it is related that when Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, passed through Strasburg, on her way to Paris to be married to the Dauphin, a proclamation was published forbidding every person afflicted with any unsightly disease to appear along the royal route. Fortunately, we are not obliged to suppose that this command was issued at the request of the young and beautiful princess herself, so celebrated afterward for her own misfortunes, and for the dignified fortitude with which she bore them; for it is just in keeping with the utter heartlessness which prevailed at the court of Louis XIV., whose guest she became on entering Strasburg, and of whose grandson she was the betrothed, a king who could attend the rehearsal of an opera almost within an hour of his own brother’s death.
Yet it is impossible to read the incident without its suggesting another royal progress; a progress throughout which those that were taken of divers diseases, the halt, the maimed, the blind, the impotent, and even the possessed, were conspicuous! The Prince of Life turned not away His eyes from the wounded of His people, but stood, and touched, and healed them all; He did more, He Himself took their infirmities, and bare their sicknesses. And this does not mean that He merely felt, in an intensified degree, the wistful sympathy of which even we are capable, but that in some mysterious way, which love can understand but not express, He made each human grief His own, and felt each pain He deigned to heal: this manner of His love betrays itself all through the gospels, it cannot be concealed. The Lord’s habitual custom of touching those whom He healed is very significant of it. The act is intensely expressive of the love which impelled Him to identify Himself with the afflictions of His people, and was not dispensed with even when crowds came to be healed; as in the case of the multitude at Capernaum, “He laid His hands upon every one of them, and healed them.” It is true that there were exceptions, but these were few, and always for some special, some divine reason. “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them.”
Three times in the Gospel of Matthew we read that when He saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion; on the first occasion, because they fainted, and were as sheep having no shepherd. And again when they followed Him, bringing their sick with them, to the desert place to which He had withdrawn with His disciples to rest, “He was moved with compassion towards them,” it is said; “and He healed their sick,” and then, we learn, He fed them all. And yet again, when the “multitudes came unto Him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus feet, He healed them.” Then He called His disciples, and said, “I have compassion on, the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat, and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.” Nor is to be forgotten that in Mark, looking up to heaven, He sighed ’ere even He said to the shut ears, “Ephphatha,” Be opened; and in Luke, meeting the funeral at Nain, Hi; heart was moved with compassion for the widowed mother, and He said unto her, “Weep not,” ’ere even He touched the bier to raise the dead to life again.
But it is in John above all, that this suffering sympathy of the Lord finds most intense expression. At the grave of Lazarus, although He Himself knew what He would do, yet when He saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also weeping which were with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled (or, as it has been rendered, “shuddered”), and said, “Where have ye laid him?” And when they said unto Him; “Come and see,” Jesus wept. And when He came to the grave, He again groaned in spirit. It would seem that we have no words which accurately convey the deep emotion which is expressed by the word “groaned.”
Thus, taking the infirmities, and carrying the sicknesses of His people, bearing then griefs, and sorrows, can we be surprised that many were astonished at Him? His visage was so marred more than any man. At thirty men felt it safe to say He was not fifty; and some thought Him the weeping prophet, Jeremias raised again! And how truly we can say “We have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities... Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” And let us often be found meditating on the sorrow, which the sorrows of men caused Him from day to day, that we may in some little measure know more of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. We often sing to Him,
“Oh, tell me often of Thy love
Of all Thy grief and pain”;
but how seldom do our souls sit long enough still in His presence to listen while He does it.